THE COTTON MANUFACTURERS IN THE CENTRAL INDUSTRIAL REGION, 1880\u27S - 1914: MERCHANTS, ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

This dissertation studies one of the major groups of Russian industrialists, the central cotton manufacturers. In general, the historians\u27 interest in the role of the state and foreign entrepreneurship in Russian industrialization or their concern with the formation of a Russian bourgeoisie has led them to neglect Russian industrialists. In particular, preoccupation with 1917 has focused attention on those groups who represented the liberal-democratic tradition usually associated with a bourgeoisie at the expense of the non-liberal industrialists. As a result, the existing literature on Russian industrialists has hardly progressed beyond the pre-revolutionary stereotype of that group as politically weak and economically dependent on the government. This study challenges that stereotype. It focuses on three interrelated problems: the entrepreneurial strategies the cotton manufacturers developed to promote the growth of their industry; their interaction with other social groups as they defended their industry against public criticism; and their relationship to the government as revealed in their attempts to influence government policy affecting industry, e.g., tariffs, freight rates, labor legislation, the development of the peripheries and Russia\u27s role in Asia. This investigation shows that between 1861 and 1914 the central cotton manufacturers\u27 efforts to further the growth of their industry produced a politically outspoken, professionally organized and distinct community in Russian society. The basis of this community was the common ethnic identity, social background, economic interest and regional loyalty of the manufacturers. The changing character of entrepreneurship, social attitudes and political consciousness were closely interwoven in the evolution of this community. The interplay of these variables, also holds the key to understanding the role of Russia\u27s commercial-industrial bourgeoisie as a whole. This study demonstrates that by 1914 Russia\u27s trade-industrial community had become an economically powerful, politically active and relatively independent social group. But beneath this image were two inherent weaknesses, internal fragmentation and social isolation, caused by the economic, regional and social differences that divided the community and the industrialists\u27 persistent belief that the successful economic development of Russia depended on the partnership between government and industry. These weaknesses proved devastating to the industrialists in 1917