Moscow entrepreneurial community: value orientations and milestones of socio-cultural evolution (last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries)

The study aims to establish the milestones in the socio-cultural evolution of Moscow entrepreneurs in the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries, as well as to determine the value characteristics of representatives of the city’s business community during this period. The conclusions are based on an analysis of the results of scientific research undertaken by Russian historians and cultural scientists mainly in recent years; works of Russian portraiture of the late 19th - early 20th centuries were also studied. The nature of the problem under consideration, related to one of the aspects of the history of the Russian business community, determined the sociological approach as the methodological basis of the study. At the same time, the need to reconstruct past events led to the use of diachronic, system-historical and comparative-historical methods, and the methodology of system-structural analysis. During the research, the circumstances and factors that determined the socio-cultural evolution of the Moscow merchant class in the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries were examined. Considerable attention was focused on the characteristics of Moscow entrepreneurs in terms of their value orientations, and an analogy was drawn between the socio-cultural guidelines of representatives of modern business circles and their predecessors, whose creative activities a century and a half ago formed the basis of economic life in the Russian Empire. The following value characteristics of representatives of the Moscow business community were identified: non-acquisitiveness, mutual assistance and cooperation within the religious community, lack of desire for profit as the only goal of entrepreneurship, sovereignty, religious tolerance and openness to new things, and a tendency to provide charitable assistance. The socio-cultural evolution of Moscow merchants and entrepreneurs at the turn of the 20th century went in several successive stages: (1) the formation of the Moscow merchant class, which took place, among other things, on the basis of peasants and adherents of the Old Believers; (2) the gradual increase in entrepreneurs’ education level, which created a new class of wealthy and culturally sophisticated business people; (3) the growth of entrepreneurial capital, which led to the development of philanthropy among business people; (4) the gradual inclusion of entrepreneurs-philanthropists in the political life of society against the background of transformation processes that took place in the Russian state at the beginning of the 20th century