‘Luxury’ As the Pedagogical Project of the Russian Emperors and Empresses: The History of the Concept in the 18th Century

Abstract

Luxury has always been an intrinsic part of world history, but only in the 18th century the core of this phenomenon came up for discussion in Europe. During these debates the concept of luxury was gradually demoralized by economic liberalism and reshaped as “modern and more objective economic concept”. Eventually the concept of luxury became a universal concept with the only commonly accepted meaning (Sekora). A seminal role in this process played translations, as far as for the continental translators of the key writings “there was no need to invent an entirely new vocabulary of political economy or of cultural practice…” (Reinert). Thus, European thinkers coordinated their positions even if they disagreed with each other. But, how had the notion of luxury been conceptualizing outside of the European Roman world? Russia is an interesting example raising some intellectual puzzles. First of all, it was a relatively backward country, where luxury per se was the essential part of national self-representation. This contradiction caused the real economic problems of indebtedness. One way of fixing it up was the introduction of sumptuary laws which became an important channel of defining the concept of luxury. Secondly, starting from Petrine time Russia got more acquainted with the European political economy masterpieces, translating and adopting them. But “translators lost the security of compatibility when they turned to extra-European languages and traditions” (Reinert). How did Russian translators accomplish the task of describing such a relatively new phenomenon as luxury? By the 1760s, as a result of two processes of the development of legislation and translation the European writings starting the concept of luxury became not an economic term on a large scale, as in European tradition, but a pedagogical project, when the subjects had to acquire mostly the unwritten rules of permissible levels of luxury.