Political Economy, Civic Virtue, and the Subjective World of the Elite, 1780–1825

Abstract

It is well know that political economy became a fashionable discipline at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Russia, both in academic and government circles. Yet little has been written about the broader impact of political economy on the nobility, especially the upper nobility, which after all assumed important economic functions through the management of its vast estates. To explore this impact and shed light in particular on its subjective, identity‐forming dimensions, this article proposes a close analysis of three case studies, two members of the elite, Princess Natal'ia Petrovna Golitsyna and Prince Ivan Ivanovich Bariatinskii, and a member of the middling nobility, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Bakunin. The choice of these figures was dictated by the availability of archival records illustrating their subjective world. The study documents not only the engagement of these three protagonists with political economy, but also the internal contradictions that emerged as a result of it. While none of them lived up to the promise of progressive reform inherent in their interest in political economy, they experienced both objective and subjective tensions as exposure to political economy exacerbated contradictions between social norms, the pursuit of economic rationality, psychological aspirations for autonomy, and moral concern for serfs. None managed to reconcile their patriarchal identity as serf owners with the emerging notion that only self‐interest and the security of property can truly incentivize industriousness and productivity, yet political economy encouraged unconventional behavior and unsettled their subjective identity, putting into motion a process that eventually led to a fundamental questioning of the moral aspects of property (and serf) ownership.