Socio-psychological aspect of the Russian merchants in the historical literature and in the works of writer P.D. Boborykin rout

The article is devoted to the history of the Russian merchant class, reflected in the work of Peter Boborykin and to the opinions of contemporary critics to Boborykin's novels. The main periods in the writer's work are identified and marked in the article: firstly, he followed the canons of the natural school in Russian literature, then became a westernizer and was a supporter of the liberal-democratic trend in Russian literature. This evolution was reflected in literary criticism, which is also examined and analyzed in our work. Boborykin's works of art, his memoirs, and critical articles about him in periodicals were used as the main sources. In addition, the author of the article studied many works of historians, sociologists and literary critics who showed and defined the features of Boborykin's creativity. His works allowed tracing the evolution of the socio-psychological image of the Russian merchants during almost four decades of the XIX century. The closest concept to convictions of the author of this article was one, proposed by the well-known historian of literature and critic D. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, who believed that the merchant class was an inseparable part of the common people and brought many positive qualities that are undervalued in contemporary society. It concerns both the class as a whole and its individual representatives. His work was based on a deep knowledge and understanding of the way of life and activity of the merchant class. And only recently Boborykin's works have become known through many historical studies. Boborykin as a novelist showed the new features of new relationships in the Russian reality at the second half of the nineteenth century, which gave positive results.The article notes that Russian entrepreneurship and commerce in the post-reform period were covered by Boborykin in different ways. At first they were marked as rudimentary and primitive, but after 30 years certain changes had already been noted. There were showed some of the results of such development: the most of merchants had a good education, got interested in politics and culture, often traveled abroad, became the leading force in the economy of the country and even advocated for the ecological safety of its individual territories, primarily the Volga region, which is being remained relevant in our days.

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