M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin on Russian merchants (real description and reflection)

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, in his works and journalism, could not hide his antipathy to the nouveau Russian bourgeoisie that came from the pre-reform social classes, mainly from wealthy peasants. The main features of these entrepreneurs were greed, rudeness and lack of basic cultural skills. However, in our opinion, such features were mainly inherent to regions where the manorial economy dominated in the most severe forms: in the form of corvee (labor) economy. In places with cash rents or, like in Siberia, with no serfdom, forms of business were more humane. The great writer often expressed his rejection of the new masters of life and their activities, contrasting them with, for example, the French bourgeoisie. The main reasons for this attitude to Russian merchants and business in general was, in our opinion, the origin, education and professional career of the writer. Reaching the rank of General in the civil service, occupying responsible positions of the Head of the Chancellery in Vyatka Province, of Vice-governor in Ryazan and Tver Provinces, Saltykov-Shchedrin was far from the common people that witnessed the complex processes of selection of the most active and enterprising leaders. On the other hand, Saltykov-Shchedrin's sarcasm in relation to Russian bourgeoisie is caused by his convictions close to the views of the revolutionary democrats who connected their hopes for positive changes with the peasant community, but not with the guild merchants. However, according to his beliefs, Saltykov-Shchedrin was certainly not a revolutionary; he was rather the enlightener, an heir to the views of the Decembrists in the period of exile in Siberia, when reconstruction of society was associated with education of people, with improvement of their financial and legal status. No wonder his closest friend and colleague was a pupil of the Siberian Decembrists, N.A. Belogolovy, who came from a family of Irkutsk merchants. He was a personal doctor of Saltykov-Shchedrin and author of memoirs about him. Comparing Saltykov-Shchedrin's description of entrepre-neurship and Dostoevsky's comments on Russian bourgeoisie, it is obvious that in spite of the negative features of merchants in The Insulted and Humiliated and his other early works, later F.M. Dostoevsky changed his mind and saw some positive features in merchants, while Saltykov-Shchedrin never found good words for this class. It is not just Dostoevsky's personal observations, but also the reflection of the Pochvennichestvo theory in his work, where the people is not only the peasantry, as in the early Slavophiles, but also the urban population: tradesmen and merchants. Saltykov-Shchedrin had a different attitude to merchants, although by his origin he was a merchant and knew the life and customs of Moscow and provincial merchants.

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