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‘LUXURY BEYOND MORALS’: THE RISE AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE CONCEPT IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2022

Elena Korchmina
Affiliation:
Elena Korchmina: University of Southern Denmark, ekor@sdu.dk.
Mikhail Kiselev
Affiliation:
Mikhail Kiselev: Institute of History and Archeology of Ural Branch of RAS; Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, m.a.kiselev@urfu.ru.

Abstract

Luxury has always been an intrinsic part of world history, but the words “luxe” or “luxury” in the conventional sense are quite new, entering the French and English languages only in the seventeenth century. It was only at the end of the seventeenth 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. Translations played a seminal role in the defining of the concept of luxury. 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 luxury, although finding itself outside the bounds of morality, continued to be only condemned in the economic sphere.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the History of Economics Society

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Footnotes

We thank the two anonymous referees of the JHET. We are especially grateful to Vladislav Rjéoutski for his insightful advice about how to improve this paper. We also thank Jonathan Chapman, Georgi Derluguian, Igor Fedyukin, Sergey Polskoy, and Paul Sharp.

References

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