MERCHANTRY VS NOBILITY: KHARKIV ELITE IN THE SECOND HALF OF XIX – THE EARLY XX CENTURY

Abstract

The article attempts to trace the effect of the Pareto elite circulation law on the example of the Kharkiv city elite in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The author investigates the involvement of the nobility and the merchants in the management of the city. According to the author's hypothesis, a significant transformation of the local elite took place in the cities of the Russian Empire, in particular in Kharkiv. Author notes that, unlike the previous period, the power of the merchant-top ceased to be a monopoly, there were groups of nobles and intellectuals, which created their confrontation, which in turn facilitated the exercise of mutual control. In the area of ​​economic capital, merchants had an undisputed priority, they were an inherently more open social layer, and therefore easier to perceive innovation, which was one of the reasons that this condition united the core of the entrepreneurial class. An indicative change was the merchants' marriage strategies: if in the pre-reform period it was vital for them to obtain the title and corresponding status in society using kinship with nobles, then in the second half of the nineteenth century. The economic condition of the future family member comes to the fore. At the same time, the nobility was filling the ranks of the intelligentsia, occupying a prominent position in the cultural field, while the merchants, not being able to grasp this capital fully, remained an unprivileged layer in the social consciousness. The image of the illiterate, selfish, greedy merchant still lived in nonfiction and humorous press. However, there was an attempt by merchants to enter the cultural space of the nobility, following the norms of its everyday culture. Summarizing, the author notes that during the modernization of Kharkiv as a provincial industrial city, it became the main driver of the economic development of the province, which, in turn, reflected in a significant increase in the political and economic status of merchants as the top of the city social ladder. The gentry, which gradually settled in the cities, failed to adapt to the new conditions, and thus lost its status as a political and economic elite, at least in Kharkiv, which remained a merchant city mostly.