Seeking salvation: moral economies and management atthe Morozov mills, 1885–1905*

Abstract

Moscow’s most famous textile dynasty, the Old BelieverMorozovs, pioneered not only new technology, but also ways of managingtheir peasant-workers. This article focuses on the distinctive approachesof the two rival families who owned neighbouring factories: theSavva Morozov Company and the Vikula Morozov Company. In these factoriesthe Morozov families desired to create a ‘moral community’ usingthe spiritual discipline of the Old Believer faith to bond workersand management to productive goals. But their peasant-workers also broughtto the factories their own ‘moral economy’ assumptionsabout the duties and obligations of worker and master. The articlevisits three sites where the developing management practices ofthese two competing factories are expressed: clan rivalry and mentalities; labour–managementconflict; and the battle between bureaucracy and factory over contested taxes.The identities of the rival families – one pious and private,the other publicly political – symbolize their differentapproaches. Nevertheless, it is their conflicts with labour andthe tsarist bureaucracy which most vividly illustrate the significantrole of moral economies in management practice. Moral economiesand the Old Believer experience of the Morozovs provide keys tounderstanding the ‘special worlds’ of their factoriesand the relationships between management, labour and bureaucracy.Oursalvation is in work.