The Imperiia ProjectMain MenuResearch Dashboardsmaps, visualizations, and moreVeles: The Data CatalogOngoing ProjectsThe MapMaker PodcastEvery story starts somewhere.Teach with MapsGalleriesKelly O'Neilldc20b45f1d74122ba0d654d19961d826c5a557f5The Imperiia Project // Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University
12025-03-20T01:04:43-04:00Kelly O'Neilldc20b45f1d74122ba0d654d19961d826c5a557f5Kubyshkin's shop in OryelKelly O'Neill1plain2025-03-20T01:04:43-04:00Kelly O'Neilldc20b45f1d74122ba0d654d19961d826c5a557f5
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12025-03-12T22:43:41-04:00Who owned the factories?29Sweet Things pageplain2025-09-26T09:23:19-04:00 Use the bookmarks to study the data at town scale. Click any location to reveal the name and status of the factory owner.
What does this map tell us?
We can think about the "who" question two ways. We can think about the men and women listed in our source as individuals with experiences, expertise, family connections, ambitions, and tastes. We can also think of them as representatives of the empire's social structure. The Factory Index was published two decades after the emancipation of the serfs and the rollout of the Great Reforms that promised to unleash the full economic and cultural potential of the population. Because of this, it paints a social profile that would have been unimaginable just a generation earlier.
On the one hand we have a minor player like Vasilii Mikhailovich Kubyshkin, who established a small confection factory in Oryel. His 6 workers baked gingerbread and prepared caramels, montpensiers, pastila, and marmalade. On the other hand we have someone like Evdokiia Ivanovich Maksimovich, the widow of Georg Landrin. Evdokiia oversaw the chocolate empire her late husband established in the 1840s. What began as a small caramel factory in Saint Petersburg grew into a sprawling complex that produced over one million rubles of confection annually.
It almost seems anyone and everyone owned confection factories. Men, women, peasants, merchants, Italians, Ottomans... Use the map to take a close look at the distribution of social status. Does anything surprise you?
