THE DEVELOPMENT OF MERCHANT FAMILIES AND THE MERCHANT ELITE’S FORMATION IN VYAZMA IN THE XVIITH-XVIIITH CENTURIES
The article examines features of the formation and development of the merchant elite in Vyazma in the XVII-XVIIIth centuries. The author considers that Vyazma merchant elite of the second half of the XVIIIth century was formed on the basis of the local merchant dynasties of the XVIIth century. The article consistently analyzes handwritten documents found by the author in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. The complex of documents consists of Vyazma customs books from 1649 to 1680, Vyazma census book dated back to the XVIIth century, materials of the first and second revisions (population census), records of the composition, activities and problems of Vyazma merchants in 1764 as well as court cases from the Fund of the Chief Magistrate. In addition, the article studies documents of the State Archive of the Smolensk Region. They are metric books of the XVIIIth century and materials from the Baryshnikovs’ Fund. The documents analysis has made it possible to identify a number of features in the development of Vyazma merchant class and its elite. Although Vyazma merchants of the XVIIth century were less rich than Smolensk ones, the development of merchant families in Vyazma was characterized by stability and a fairly high level of capital continuity. Unlike Smolensk, Vyazma did not survive the active change in the top of the merchant elite at the turn of the XVIIth-XVIIIth centuries. In the first quarter of the XVIIIth century, representatives of the emerging Vyazma merchant elite began to combine trade with industrial entrepreneurship, which helped merchant families to survive. The lack of Vyazma residents’ privileges, although Smolensk bourgeois people had them, stimulated the entrepreneurial activity among Vyazma merchants. The demographic factor also influenced the capital sustainability. For numerous merchant families lived in Vyazma the support of not only close, but also distant relatives was commonplace. The study results, conducted during the article preparation, complement the scientific view of the development of the merchant class especially its elite, in Russia of the XVIIth-XVIIIth centuries.