‘Luxury beyond morals’: the rise and transformation of the concept in 18th century Russia

Abstract

Luxury has always been an intrinsic part of world history, but the words ‘luxe’/’luxury’ in the conventional sense are quite new, entering the French and English languages only in the 17th century. It was only at the end of the 17th century that the core of this phenomenon came up for discussion in Europe against a backdrop of development of international trade and incipient economic growth. During these debates, the concept of luxury was gradually demoralized by economic liberalism. A seminal role in the defining of the concept of luxury was played by translations. European thinkers coordinated their positions even if they disagreed with each other. How was the notion of luxury conceptualized outside the European Roman world? Russia is an interesting example that helps to understand it. The article answers when and why the concept of luxury entered Russian political thought and why although the luxury, finding itself outside the bounds of morality, continued to be only condemned in the economic sphere.

How rich were the rich? An empirically-based taxonomy of pre-industrial bases of wealth

“…Furthermore, a number of recently created social tables (e.g. for Sweden 1613 by Anderson and Molinder, 2022; Moscow province for 1811 by Korchmina and Malinowski, 2022) combine the data from nonregular (ad hoc) personal income taxes with the data from the occupational surveys or censuses to create social tables that more explicitly than before include the top of income distribution.…”