Lieven D. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 2: Imperial Russia, 1689-1917
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Russian society, law and economy
population increase that put pressure on the land by maintaining communal
and repartitional land tenure, and introducing it in outlying regions, as a way
of keeping households’ land and labour resources in conformance.
On the other hand, the changes in wider society were also sowing seeds that
led to changes in the ways peasants had organised their lives in central Russia
since the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The reduction in the
level of exploitation that followed the reforms, together with the removal of
noble landowners from authority over their former serfs, led also to a reduction
in the control exerted by household heads and village elders over the younger
generation. The coincidence of interests between nobles and state officials
and the elders of peasant society started to erode. The younger generation
found greater independence for other reasons. The military service reform of
1874, with selection of conscripts by ballot for shorter terms of service, meant
that village elders could no longer threaten to send, and send, recalcitrant
young men to the army for twenty-five years. Younger peasants, both men
and women, could find greater financial independence by working as wage
labourers in the cities or on commercial farms. The growth of schooling and
literacy gave younger peasants more access to ideas outside village culture.
One result of these changes was the start of the breakdown of the complex
household system in some areas, but later in the Central Black Earth region,
as the younger generation sought to set up their own homes, independent
of their parents’ control. Many migrant workers and soldiers separated from
their parents’ households when they came home.
41
This was a reversion to
the practices of household divisions before the deaths of the heads of house-
holds, and the consequent development of a large proportion of small, simple
households, that seem to have been widespread in central Russia prior to the
late seventeenth century.
There was another area in which peasants in late Imperial Russia reverted to
practices that had disappeared in central Russia over the preceding period. The
stresses and strains that accompanied the changes in society led to an increase
in peasant discontent with their continued subordinate status. To the extent
that some peasants were experiencing improvements in their living standards,
dissatisfaction may have been fuelled by rising expectations, including hopes
for a new land reform. Poverty among peasants who felt aggrieved by the
land settlement of 1861 also caused disaffection. Over the same period, other
groups in society, including the new middle classes and industrial workers,
accumulated grievances. The authorities seem gradually to have been losing
41 See Frierson, ‘Razdel’; Worobec, Peasant Russia,pp.76–117.
392
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Peasants and agriculture
their ability to keep control over society at home and to defend Imperial
Russia’s international status abroad. In 1905 and 1917, military defeats by Japan
and Germany led to revolutions in the cities. On both occasions, peasants
joined in and spread the revolutions to the villages with the aim of seizing the
land still owned by non-peasants. Thus, in the early twentieth century, peasants
resumed the earlier practice of open, direct protest with radical aims. The rural
revolution of 1917–18 was marked by other elements of continuity. The peasants
who seized land were continuing the practice of increasing production to feed
more mouths by bringing more land into cultivation rather than adopting
more intensive and productive methods. The revolution in the villages led also
to the resurgence of traditional peasant institutions, especially the household
and commune.
42
The elements of continuity were short-lived, however, as the
peasantry’s ways of life were shattered by Stalin’s forced collectivisation of
agriculture in 1930.
∗∗∗
At both the beginning and end of the imperial period, Russia’s population
was made up overwhelmingly of peasants, most of whom devoted a large
part of their energies to agriculture. Thus, the peasants and their ways of
life endured. They were able to ensure their subsistence and livelihoods by
their ability to adapt to change. By adapting and changing their practices and
customs, moreover, Russia’s peasants were able to cope with the demands of
landowners and the state, feed their ever larger numbers and settle in parts of
the outlying regions of the vast empire. While peasants were constrained to
some extent by the natural environments in which they lived, they were able to
adapt to support themselves in conditions as diverse as the forests of the north
and Siberia, and the steppes of the south and south-east. In their struggles to
meet the burden of exploitation and support the growingpopulation, however,
peasants transformed and degraded these environments, clearing vast areas of
forest and steppe grasslands, thus sowing the seeds for the far greater human
impact on the environment of Russia in the twentieth century.
42 See O. Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917–1921)
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
393
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
19
The Russian economy and
banking system
boris ananich
Introduction
The beginning of the eighteenth century was a period of radical change
in Russia’s economy. These transformations are connected with the name
Peter I, but they proved possible thanks to the development of trade and the
accumulation of capital by the Muscovite government in the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries. The main sources of this capital growth were domestic and
foreign trade, salt mines, fishing, payments to the treasury, customs duties and
income from taverns. Capital was concentrated in the merchant class, the state
and monasteries. Monasteries sold bread, salt and fish, and to a certain extent
performed the functions of banks, undertaking credit transactions. Econom-
ically, Russia lagged behind the leading countries of Western Europe, where
developed banking and stock markets already existed and where concepts such
as bills of exchange and promissory notes were widespread.
In many ways, Peter I’s transfer of the Russian capital to St Petersburg
and his declaration of a Russian ‘empire’ predetermined the later develop-
ment of the Russian government and economy. Peter’s ‘Europeanisation’
of the country occurred during wars and was accompanied by the break-
down of old customs and societal structures. The foundation of the empire
was an enormous financial burden on peasants and urban dwellers, and
limited their freedom of movement as well. Peter I introduced a poll tax,
military conscription and internal passport system. But the decisive role
in Russia’s economic development belonged to the government and state
enterprises.
The 21-year war with Sweden greatly influenced Peter’s commercial and
industrial policies. Providing the army and navy with everything it needed
required an intense development of industry and trade, all of which needed
to occur in an extremely short period of time. Peter I went down in history
394
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The Russian economy and banking system
as one of the founders of active government entrepreneurship.
1
As a result of
the Petrine reforms there was a sharp jump in the development of manufac-
turing.
2
The state financed not only the construction of new factories but also
founded new industrial districts. It owned industrial enterprises and enjoyed a
monopoly over areas of foreign and domestic trade. In 1705 a state monopoly
was introduced over salt and tobacco, products which brought state coffers
significant revenues. The state also monopolised the right to sell key Russian
exports. In 1706 yet another monopoly was introduced, this time on trade with
China.
Peter I sought to turn his empire’s capital city into a commercial and finan-
cial centre. He forcibly moved merchants from various Russian cities to St
Petersburg, and when he opened a stock exchange in the city he forced mer-
chants to appear and trade at the exchange at designated times.
Before the beginning of the eighteenth century, Russian foreign trade was
conducted through the northern port of Archangel. In 1713 Peter broke with
this tradition, declaring St Petersburg to be Russia’s main trading port. Fur-
thermore, delivering hemp, Russia leather (iuft’), potash and other exports
to Archangel was prohibited. Despite these measures, however, the state’s
share of the export trade in Russia in the first quarter of the eighteenth cen-
tury did not exceed 10–12 per cent.
3
Russian financial transactions in Western
Europe were conducted during this time mainly through foreign financiers
and merchants, while credit transactions in the country were carried out by
administrative institutions.
By the end of the Great Northern War, Peter I’s commercial-industrial poli-
cies had changed in certain respects. As a result of the reforms of 1719–24
the Mining, Manufacturing and Commercial College was created to manage
trade and industry. In these same years a series of measures was approved to
encourage private enterprise in trade and industry. Beginning in 1719 govern-
ment monopolies were eliminated for almost all export goods. In the 1720s
the transfer of state manufacturing enterprises into private hands became a
relatively common occurrence.
4
If in the seventeenth century salt mines and
1 T. v o n L a u e , Sergei Witte and the Industrialisation of Russia (New York and London:
Columbia University Press, 1963). E. Anisimov, Vremia petrovskikh reform (Leningrad:
Lenizdat, 1989).
2 E. Anisimov, Gosudarstvennye preobrazovaniia i samoderzhavie Petra Velikogo v pervoi chetverti
XVIII veka (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 1997).
3 P. N. Miliukov, Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo Rossii v pervoi chetverti XVIII veka i reforma
Petra Velikogo, 2nd edn (St Petersburg: Tip. M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1905), pp. 364, 485;N.I.
Pavlenko, ‘Torgovo-promyslennaia politika pravitel’stva Rossii v pervoi chetverti XVIII
veka’, Istoriia SSSR 3 (1958): 58–9.
4 Pavlenko, ‘Torgovo-promyslennaia’, 50–1.
395
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Russian society, law and economy
trade in Siberia had been an important factor in capital accumulation, then in
the first quarter of the eighteenth century government contracts, wine sales
and tax farming had become the main sources of capital.
5
Peter the Great was
an advocate of mercantilism. In 1724 a protectionist tariff was enacted to defend
the interests of Russian merchants. The 1729 statute on promissory notes and
bills of exchange, which was under preparation in Peter’s lifetime, helped the
development of international trade and financial ties.
The reforms of Peter I provided an impetus and new direction for economic
development in Russia.
6
This new dynamic continued during the reign of
Elizabeth Petrovna through the reforms of P. A. Shuvalov. Internal customs
duties were eliminated while conditions for a freer development of trade were
created.
7
Only in the middle of the eighteenth century did the creation of
Russian banks to finance merchants and the nobility become possible. In
1754 the Loan Bank (Zaemnii Bank) was established. This was a mortgage
institution (for long-term credit) and commercial institution (for short-term
credit). In fact it was made up of two constituent banks: a Bank for the Nobility
and a Bank for the Merchant Estate.
The Catherine system
The second half of the eighteenth century represented a new stage in the
development of trade and banking in Russia.
The commercial-industrial and financial policy of Catherine II furthered the
‘Europeanisation’ of the Russian economy. The credit system created under
her reign became known as the ‘Catherine credit system’, and lasted until the
middle of the nineteenth century.
8
Catherine II declared herself a supporter of the economic teachings of the
Physiocrats. The customs tariffs of 1767 and 1782 were a further step towards
free trade. For the first time, Russian state credit gained access to the interna-
tional monetary market. The state’s encouragement of trade promoted the
intensification of foreign commerce, especially with England.
9
Reformsinthe
5 Pavlenko, ‘Torgovo-promyslennaia’, 65–6.
6 See Anisimov. Gosudarstvennye preobrazovaniia.
7 E. V. Anisimov, ‘Rossiia v “epokhu dvortsovykh perevorotov”’, in B. V Anan’ich, et al.
(eds.), Vlast’ i reformy. Ot samoderzhavnoi k sovetskoi Rossii (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin,
1996), pp. 162–3.
8 More details in S. Ia. Borovoi, Kredit i banki v Rossii (seredina XVII veka – 1861 (Moscow: Gos-
finizdat, 1958); See ‘Banki i bankiry. Ekaterinskaia sistema: 1760–1850e’, in B. V. Anan’ich
et al. (eds.), Petersburg. Istoriia bankov (St Petersburg: Tret’e Tysecheletie, 2001), pp. 34–108.
9 H. Kaplan, Russian Overseas Commerce with Great Britain during the Reign of Catherine II
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1995).
396
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The Russian economy and banking system
area of local government helped industrial development in the provinces. The
accumulation of capital, as well as the improvement of banking and mon-
etary circulation, created conditions for private credit and the expansion of
industrial production.
10
The number of factories using hired labour increased
to 2,000 during Catherine II’s reign, a fourfold increase. Most of these hired
workers were peasants on obrok (quit-rents).
11
However, these changes did not
undermine the foundations of the serf system.
Wars and the growth of the empire exerted an enormous influence on
the Russian economy, especially through the annexation of the economically
developed areas of Poland and the Crimea. The expansion of the empire’s bor-
ders proved hugely expensive but also promoted the development of industry
and foreign trade. At the end of the eighteenth century, this development
became very noticeable. Western European states gladly purchased inexpen-
sive Russian raw materials. Russia in return imported cotton, wool, silk and
colonial goods including tea, coffee, sugar and wines.
12
A sharp budget deficit, worsened by expenditures on the 1769–74 war with
Turkey, became one of the reasons for introducing paper money into circula-
tion at the end of December 1768. Special banks were opened in Moscow and
St Petersburg in 1769 for financial transactions with the new paper money. In
1786 these banks were united into a single State Paper Money (Assignat) Bank.
From 1783 to 1790 a new building for the bank was built by the Italian architect
Giacomo Quarenghi in St Petersburg, at the intersection of the Catherine canal
and Sadovaia Street. Printed money was exchanged mainly for bronze coins.
It was also traded for silver coinage, but in 1772 the exchange rate of paper
money vis-
`
a-vis silver began to drop, and further trading into silver became
rare. The government used the resources of the Paper Money Bank to cover
emergency expenditures, including war needs.
In 1786 Catherine II signed a manifesto transforming the Bank of the Nobil-
ity into a lending bank. This bank provided credit for real estate, including
industrial enterprises and the construction of private stone houses. The bank
offered 4 per cent interest rates to depositors and issued loans for a period of
eight years, including to cities. The bank also opened an insurance company.
Besides banks, other institutions also conducted credit transactions, in par-
ticular the Moscow and Petersburg foundling homes. These organisations
10 V. Vitchevskii, Torgovaia, tamozhennaia i promyshlennaia politika Rossii (St Petersburg:
Izdanie D. A. Kazitsina i Iu. D. Philipova, 1909), pp. 24–5.
11 See also R. Tugan Baranovskii, Russkaia fabrika v proshlom i nastoiashchem (Moscow:
Moskovskii rabochii, 1922), pp. 41–2.
12 See Kaplan, Russian Overseas Commerce.
397
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Russian society, law and economy
were directed by committees of ‘guardians/trustees’. They paid interest on
deposits, conducted money transfers between Moscow and St Petersburg and
offered loans, accepting real estate and precious metals as collateral.
During Catherine II’s reign the so-called ‘court bankers’ began to appear.
These court bankers continued to exist in Russia until the 1860 reforms. As
a rule, court bankers were foreign. In Russia they served both the private
and state sectors. Amongst the court financiers of the second half of the
eighteenth century was the English merchant William Gomm, who traded
through Archangel, the Dutch merchant Fredericks, and Richard Sutherland,
who became widely known as a court financier of Catherine II. A central func-
tion of the court bankers was to manage the government’s foreign payments
and search for international credit. During Catherine II’s reign, Russia began
to take out foreign loans regularly. In 1769 the government of Catherine, with
Fredericks serving as the middleman, concluded its first major loan with the
Amsterdam banking house Raymond and Theodore De Smeth. The money
was used to cover military expenditures, specifically the upkeep of the Russian
fleet in the Mediterranean Sea and to strengthen Russia’s influence in Poland.
The loan of 1769 marked the beginning of the growth of Russian foreign
debt. Russia’s main creditor became the Dutch banking house of Hope and
Company. This firm financed Russia’s military operations during the entire
Russo-Turkish war of 1787–91. Russia took out eighteen loans from Hope and
Company just between 1788 and 1793. Richard Sutherland was the intermedi-
ary between Hope and Company and the government of Catherine II until his
death in 1791. In addition, three loans were taken in Genoa from the banking
firm of Aim
´
e Renny from 1791 to 1793. To help pay for the foreign debt, the tax
on wine was increased.
13
After Paul I’s accession to the throne Russian debt to Dutch bankers was
consolidated. The total was 8,833,000 guilders. This included the debt of the
last Polish king and some private Polish debts. Paul I decreed in 1797 that a Spe-
cial Committee for paying the debt be founded. The emperor reorganised the
institute of court bankers. A royal decree of 4 March 1798 created the Office of
Court Bankers and Commissioners (Vaught, Velho, Rally and Co.) to manage
domestic and foreign financial operations. Their task was to maintain good
relations with the Russian government’s foreign contacts. Paul I intended to
stop borrowing from abroad. However, in 1798 an agreement was concluded
with the English government for a loan of
£225,000 sterling plus £75,000 sterling
13 See B. V. Anan’ich and S. K. Lebedev, ‘Kontora pridvornykh bankirov v Rossii i
Evropeiskie denezhnye rynki (1798–1811)’, in Problemy sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoiistorii Rossii
(St Petersburg: Nauka, 1991), pp. 125–47.
398
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The Russian economy and banking system
monthly. This money was intended to finance a joint Anglo-Russian expedi-
tion in Holland and Russo-Austrian operations in northern Italy. Russia was to
receive the money through the London banking house of Harman and Com-
pany. Many European banking houses, primarily from Hamburg, transferred
money to the places of Russian troop deployment. London and Hamburg
were the main centres through which Russian financial operations abroad
took place. Through Harman and Company Russia received
£815,000 in 1799,
£545,494 in 1800, £250,000 in 1802, £63,000 in 1803 and £614,183 in 1807.
14
The
court bankers also played a crucial role in financing Russian ground and sea
military operations during the Napoleonic Wars (1805–14).
In 1801 Alexander I came to the throne. In 1802 a decree was issued to
create ministries in Russia. In 1803 the Ministry of Finance set up an Office for
Foreign Monetary Matters. Some of the court bankers’ functions became the
responsibility of this new unit. In 1811 the Office was formally closed, although
it continued until 1816 to conduct limited money transfers abroad. In 1806 the
Finance Committee was created. To a large extent, this committee determined
the government’s finance policies. After 1811 international financial operations
were supervised by the Third Department of the Chancellery of the Ministry
of Finance, which had been created to replace the Office for Foreign Monetary
Matters. In 1824 it became the Credit Chancellery of the Finance Ministry
and was subsequently again renamed as the Special Credit Chancellery of the
Ministry of Finance. This chancellery controlled all foreignfinancial operations
in pre-revolutionary Russia down to 1917.
The first minister of commerce, Count N. P. Rumiantsev, like Alexander I,
was an advocate of free trade, which was fashionable in European intellectual
circles at that time. But already by 1806 trade policy had become totally depen-
dent on military affairs. In 1807 Alexander signed a treaty with Napoleon I at
Tilsit. At France’s insistence Russia joined the Continental System blockade
against England, its main trading partner. The Continental System dealt a
sharp blow to Russia’s economy. But at the same time, it boosted the devel-
opment of Russia’s textile and sugar industries and furthered the develop-
ment of trade relations in southern Russia. For example, Odessa’s role as a
major commercial port grew. Trade relations with England returned to nor-
mal only after the break with Napoleon I and the Grand Army’s invasion
of Russia. Under the influence of the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Russia intro-
duced a customs tariff in 1816. This allowed much freedom for foreign trade.
Soon after, the tariff of 1819 brought even lower duties on imported industrial
14 Anan’ich, ‘Kontora pridvornykh’, p. 136.
399
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Russian society, law and economy
goods.
15
However, within two years the government had returned to the pol-
icy of protectionism. The tariff of 1822 prohibited the import of 300 types of
goods and the export of 21.
16
This tariff lasted until 1841, when it was slightly
relaxed, and remained in its revised form until 1851.
17
Despite the policy of
protectionism the period of the 1820s–40s saw continued growth in Russia’s
foreign trade. Within twenty years the value of Russian exports almost dou-
bled, from 55 to 100 million roubles; the value of imports did in fact double,
from 40 to 80 million roubles. Seventy-five per cent of Russian exports were
agricultural goods, 11 per cent were timber and commercial goods and 14 per
cent were industrial goods.
18
Beginning in the 1830s, grain becomes an impor-
tant Russian export as well. Sixty-two per cent of bread exports went through
Odessa and other Mediterranean ports, 7 per cent through Archangel, 25 per
cent through ports on the Baltic Sea and 6 per cent via land routes. The rise
of bread prices on the European market further encouraged grain exports in
the 1840s and the development of Russian factories specialising in agricultural
equipment and tools.
19
The 1840s also saw a growth in the development of Russian industry. In 1833
there were more than 5,500 factories and mills in Russia. By 1850 that number
rose to 9,848, and the number of workers employed in them increased from
227,670 to 500,000.
20
Gradually, factories that employed serfs began to disap-
pear. In 1839 Finance Minister E. F. Kankrin proposed to phase out factories
with permanently assigned serf labour (posessionnye) forces.
21
In the first half
of the nineteenth century, serf-labour factories slowly became capitalist, and
the number of factories employing free labour grew greatly, their owners now
sometimes being not only nobles and landowners, but also peasants.
22
Free
labour was used, first of all, in the cotton industry. In the 1830s–50s, this industry
experienced significant success. In these years railway construction also began
in Russia. In 1837 the first railway was opened from St Petersburg to Tsarskoe
Selo, and from 1843–51 a second rail line was built connecting Moscow and St
Petersburg.
15 V. I. Pokrovskii, Sbornik svedenii po istorii i statistike vneshnei torgovli Rossii (St Petersburg:
Departament Tamozhennykh Sborov, 1902), p. 30.
16 Vitchevskii, Torgovaia,p.51.
17 A. S. Nifontov, 1848 v Rossii. Ocherki po istorii 40-kh godov (Moscow and Leningrad: Sot-
sial’no economicheskoe izd. 1931), p. 15.
18 Nifontov, 1848,pp.16–17.
19 Nifontov, 1848,pp.19, 31.
20 Nifontov, 1848,p.34.
21 Vitchevskii, Torgovaia,p.80.
22 Tugan-Baranovskii, Russkaia fabrika,pp.80–3.
400
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The Russian economy and banking system
Despite these economic successes in the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, Russia, devastated by the Continental System and the Napoleonic Wars,
began to lag economically behind the West European powers, although its
military prestige in Europe remained extremely high until the Crimean War.
This economic backwardness was above all clear as regards the iron indus-
try. In the first half of the eighteenth century Russia produced significantly
more cast iron than England and until the end of the century it maintained
a strong position in the world market. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, however, the export of iron from Russian began to decline rapidly as
Russia lost its ability to compete with the economically developed European
countries.
Beginning in this period, economic backwardness becomes a chronic phe-
nomenon in Russia, and the government’s commercial-industrial policy takes
on a cyclical character. Periods of economic stagnation are followed by
reformist activism aimed at catching up its European competitors and retain-
ing Russia’s influence in Europe.
23
Many Russian senior officials believed that
the thirty years of stagnation during the reign of Nicholas I was the reason for
Russia’s economic backwardness.
24
The Napoleonic Wars also disrupted the Russian monetary system and
caused a budget deficit. To combat these ills, in 1839 Finance Minister E. F.
Kankrin introduced monetary reform. A fixed exchange rate for paper money
and silver was established, and then beginning 1 July 1841 it was announced that
new banknotes would be introduced to replace the old paper money (assig-
nats). By 1848 the old paper money had been fully exchanged into bank-notes
(credit roubles) and the Paper Money Bank (Assignat Bank) was abolished.
Bank-notes were also exchanged into silver, but with the beginning of the
Crimean War this practice stopped.
In 1841 the emperor signed a decree creating savings banks. These were
unique because they served all classes of society. The first savings bank opened
in St Petersburg on 1 March 1842 on Bolshaia Kazanskaia Street. As indus-
try and trade grew in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the question
of commercial credit also became increasingly pressing. In January 1818 the
Commercial Bank was established specifically to address this issue. One of the
bank’s main functions was inventorying bills of exchange. But by the middle
of the nineteenth century, it became clear that the system of state banks had
become obsolete. Indeed defeat in the Crimean War demonstrated the degree
23 T. Taranovskii (ed.), Reform in Modern Russian History: Progress or Cycle? (New York:
Woodrow Wilson Centre Press and Cambridge University Press, 1995).
24 Ananich et al. (eds.), Vlast’,p.423.
401