A. F. Pisemskyand Joint-Stock Companies in the Middle of 19th Century: Economic Processes and Literary Commentary (On the Basis of the Novel The Turbulent Sea)

Abstract

In the following article, we analyze the trends in literary depiction of an important economic process in the post-war times (late 1850s), namely joint-stock companies, in A. F. Pisemsky’s novel The Turbulent Sea (1863). We detect and offer commentary on the parallels between descriptions of the ‘joint-stock fever’ depicted in the novel, and the materials on private enterpreneurship published in late 1850s. We offer a detailed analysis on the references to polemics between members of the Russian Society of Steamship Companies and Trade, one of the most influential joint-stock companies of the time, and N. P. Perosio, a journalist and economist, as well as the creator of The Reading Library and The Saint-Petersburg Bulletin. Our research is based on N. P. Perosio’s works, namely Notes on the Report by the Russian Society of Steamship Companies and Trade, The Protest, as well as Tondi’s The Reply to Sir Perosio’s Notes on the Report by the Russian Society of Steamship Companies and Trade, and V. Shultz’s A Dispute Between Sirs Perosio and Smirnov, The Response of Administrator Director of the Russian Society of Steamship Companies and Trade N. A. Novoselsky to Articles Criticizing Company Management, Notes and Projects of Establishment of a Coal Mine on Don, etc. We conclude that the analysis of strategies of depiction of economic processes in the novel offers a clearer understanding of A. F. Pisemsky’s perception of the ‘era of great reforms’. The novel shows that the idea expressed by the new government (development of private enterpreneurship) resulted in the emergence of unskilled enactors: the joint-stock companies were joined by people who lacked practical knowledge and did not wish to learn it, which, in its turn, resulted in wide-scale frauds performed by directors.