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Big Business in Russia: The Putilov Company in Late Imperial Russia, 1868-1917. By Jonathan A. Grant. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press, 1999. 256 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth, $45.00. ISBN 0-822-944110-4.
Reviewed by Fred Carstensen
Jonathan Grant sets out to bring business "development" in the late Tsarist period within the mainstream of western business behavior through his short history of the Putilov Company. Putilov operated Russia's largest private factory and was a leading armaments supplier to the Russian government as well as a major producer of steel, locomotives, railroad equipment, cranes, oil presses, and machine tools.
Grant's study is a straightforward chronology that begins with the dramatic rise and fall of Nikolai Putilov's St. Petersburg metalworking company. Putilov took advantage of the government's drive to build railroads, providing a hefty share of the steel rails needed for construction. But by 1880 the factory was heading for bankruptcy and state ownership. After Putilov's death, a new board resurrected the company, returning it to private control. Grant devotes a chapter to this recovery period (1885-1900), during which Putilov became the leading defense contractor. In the chapter entitled "The Russian Krupp," Grant discusses the critical years 1900 to 1907, when Putilov developed highquality artillery for the Russian government. Chapter 4 looks at the period from 1907 to 1914, when the ownership of Putilov came...