Anthrozootic Capital: People and Animals in “Moscow and Muscovites” by V.A. Gilyarovsky

Abstract

What if a person did not have hoofed animals to move himself and various goods in space? What if he or she did not consume cow’s milk or meat, his or her house and property were not guarded by dogs, and supplies by cats? When we talk about the history of Moscow, we usually talk about people and events; however, we also ought to talk about the multitude of animals that inhabited the city, essentially making it a zooanthropic one. Should we carefully reread “Moscow and Muscovites”, a popular book of the Russian writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky who worked at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we will be surprised to encounter an array of “non-human” Muscovites that played an enormously important role in the life of the rapidly growing and urbanizing capital city.