Mark D. Steinberg

Moral Communities: The Culture of Class Relations in the Russian Printing Industry, 1867-1907

This study offers a rare perspective on the social and political crisis in late Imperial Russia. Mark D. Steinberg focuses on employers, supervisors and workers in the printing industry as it evolved from a state-dependent handicraft to a capitalist industry. He explores class relations and the values, norms and perceptions with which they were made meaningful. Using archival and printed sources, Steinberg examines economic changes, workplace relations, professional organizations, unions, strikes and political activism, as well as shop customs, trade festivals and everyday life. He describes efforts to build a community of masters and men united by shared interests and moral norms. The collapse of this ideal in the face of growing class conflict is also explored, giving a full view of an important moment in Russian history.

Melancholy and modernity: Emotions and social life in Russia between the revolutions

This article addresses the various manifestations of a new fascination with melancholy, as it developed in various sectors of Russian society early in the 20th century. The new atmosphere seemed, in part at least, a response to rapid social change, and it joined popular moods to discussions by leading intellectuals. The result provides a distinctive cultural moment in Russian history, and contributes as well to the larger study of emotions in history.

Russia's fin de siecle, 1900-1914

The critical years from the turn of the century to the eve of the First World War were a time of uncertainty and crisis for Russias old political, social and cultural order. The year 1904 saw the start of the Russo-Japanese war, a disastrous conflict sparked by Russias expansion into China and Korea in the face of Japans own regional desires, further fuelled by Russian over confidence and racist contempt for the Japanese. Marxists believed they possessed a more scientific and rationalistic understanding of society and history. Marxists tended to take an essentialist view of the proletariat: this was the class destined by the logic of history to emancipate humanity from injustice and oppression. The sense of crisis and opportunity that marked so much of the Russian fin de siecle was evident in the experience of being a non-Russian subject of Russian empire, as well as in state policy towards the nationalities problem.