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The Russian Industrial Society and Tsarist Economic Policy, 1867–1905

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Thomas C. Owen
Thomas C. Owen
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803.
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Abstract

The Russian Industrial Society, the first national organization of commercial and industrial interests in the empire, attempted to win governmental support for a comprehensive program of economic development. It enjoyed some successes in the fields of tariff protection, factory legislation, and the conquest of Central Asia. The tsarist bureaucracy, however, proved unwilling or unable to implement rational reforms in such key areas as subsoil mineral rights, monopolies, and corporate law. Moreover, policy disagreements among the society's regional branches, especially those in Moscow, Warsaw, and Lodz, weakened the organization from the 1880s onward.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 1985 , pp. 587 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

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References

For generous financial support he wishes to thank the International Research and Exchanges Board, the W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia University, and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, D.C. The Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois located numerous rare editions and provided microfilm copies through interlibrary loan. Parts of this paper were originally presented to conventions of the Southwestern Association for Slavic Studies and the Economic and Business Historical Society. A brief account of the society's activities appeared in The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, vol. 32 (1983), and is reproduced with the kind permission of Academic International Press, Gulf Breeze, Florida. Useful comments were made by K. Peter Harder, Donald McCloskey, and two anonymous reviewers.Google Scholar

1 On intervention by the state, see Gerschenkron, Alexander, “Russia; Patterns and Problems of Economic Development, 1861–1958,” in his Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), pp. 119–51; andGoogle ScholarVon Laue, Theodore H., Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia (New York, 1963).Google Scholar On debilitating effects, see Kahan, Arcadius, “Government Policies and the Industrialization of Russia,” this JOURNAL, 27 (12 1967), pp. 460–77;Google ScholarCrisp, Olga, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914 (New York, 1976); andCrossRefGoogle ScholarHeller, Klaus, Die Geld- und Kreditpolitik des russischen Reiches in der Zeit der Assignaten (1768–1839/43) (Wiesbaden, 1983).Google Scholar

2 For examples of this genre, see the articles and documentary collections issued by the Institute of History of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, notably Sidorov, A. L. et al. , eds., Dokumenty poistorii monopolisticheskogo kapitalizma v Rossii [Documents on the history of monopoly capitalism in Russia], vol. 6 of Materialy po istorii SSSR [Materials on the history of the USSR] (Moscow, 1959);Google ScholarViatkin, M. P. et al. , eds., Iz istorii imperializma v Rossii [Essays on the history of imperialism in Russia], vol. 1 of Trudy Leningradskogo otdeleniia insliruta istorii [Proceedings of the Leningrad branch of the institute of history] (Leningrad, 1959);Google Scholar and Sidorov, A. L. et al. , eds., Ob osobennostiakh imperializma v Rossii [On the distinctive features of imperialism in Russia] (Moscow, 1963).Google Scholar These works cite the major Soviet books and articles in this field in the Stalin and Khrushchev years. Since then hardly any shift in the theoretical approaches of Soviet social and economic historians has taken place, although a slightly greater concern with factual documentation and some interest in computer modeling can be discerned. See Owen, Thomas C., review of Koval'chenko, I. D., ed., Massovye istochniki po sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi istorii Rossii perioda kapaalizma [Aggregate statistical sources in the social and economic history of Russia in the capitalist period] (Moscow, 1979) inGoogle ScholarKritika: A Review of Current Soviet Books on Russian History, 17 (Winter 1981), pp. 44–56.Google Scholar

3 On foreigners, see McKay, John P., Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–1913 (Chicago, 1970);CrossRefGoogle ScholarTolf, Robert W., The Russian Rockefellers: The Saga of the Nobel Family and the Russian Oil Industry (Stanford, 1976);Google ScholarCarstensen, Fred V., “Foreign Participation in Russian Economic Life: Notes on British Enterprise, 1865–1914,” in Guroff, Gregory and Carstensen, Fred V., eds., Entrepreneurship in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union (Princeton, 1983), pp. 140–58; andGoogle ScholarCarstensen, Fred V., American Enterprise in Foreign Markets: Singer and International Harvester in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill, 1984).Google Scholar Some recent works on native entrepreneurs include Rieber, Alfred J., Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill, 1982);Google Scholar Thomas C. Owen, “Entrepreneurship and the Structure of Enterprise in Russia, 1800–1880,” and Kahan, Arcadius, “Notes on Jewish Entrepreneurship in Tsarist Russia,” in Guroff and Carstensen, eds., Entrepreneurship, pp. 59–83, 104–24.Google Scholar The largest company ever founded in the empire (capitalized at over 144 million rubles in 1857) is described in a stimulating article by Rieber, Alfred J., “The Formation of La Grande Socitété des Chemins de Fer Russes,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 21 (09 1973), pp. 375–91.Google Scholar The Persian Discount and Loan Bank, controlled by Russians, is the subject of a well-documented monograph by the Leningrad historian Anan'ich, Boris V., Rossiiskoe samoderzha vie i vyvoz kapitala, 1895–1914 gg. (po materialam Uchetno-ssudnogo banka Persii) [The Russian autocracy and the export of capital, 1895–1914, according to materials of the Persian discount and loan bank] (Leningrad, 1975).Google Scholar

4 On the Petersburg Society of Manufacturers, see King, Victoria A. P., “The Emergence of the St. Petersburg Industrial Community, 1870 to 1905: The Origins and Early Years of the Petersburg Society of Manufacturers” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1982).Google Scholar On the Sovet “ezdovpredstaviteleipromyshlennostii torgovli [The council of congresses of representatives of industry and trade], see Roosa, Ruth A., “The Association of Industry and Trade, 1906–1914: An Examination of the Economic Views of Organized Industrialists in Prerevolutionary Russia” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1967);Google ScholarRoosa, Ruth A., “Russian Industrialists Look to the Future: Thoughts on Economic Development, 1906–1917,” in Curtiss, John S., ed., Essays in Russian and Soviet History (New York, 1963), pp. 198–218;Google Scholar and Goldberg, Carl A., “The Association of Industry and Trade, 1906–1917: The Successes and Failures of Russia's Organized Businessmen” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1974) (UMI #75–702).Google Scholar

5 The study of these organizations, as of Russian business history in general, is poorly developed, especially in Soviet historiography. Three general works are: Gushka, A. [Ermanskii, Osip A., né Kogan], Predstavitel'nye organizatsii torgovo-promyshlennogo kiassa v Rossii [Representative organizations of the commercial-industrial class in Russia] (1912); E. S. Lur'e, Organizatsiia i organizatsii torgovo-promyshlennykh interesov v Rossii [The organization and organizations of commercial-industrial interests in Russia] (1913); andGoogle ScholarLivshin, Ia. I., “‘Predstavitel'nye’ organizatsii krupnoi burzhuazii v kontse XIX-nachale XX v” [‘Representative’ organizations of the upper bourgeoisie in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries], Istoriia SSSR [History of the USSR], no. 2 (Marck–April, 1959), pp. 95–117. (All works in Russian cited in the footnotes were published in St. Petersburg unless otherwise noted.)Google Scholar

6 For annual reports and policy statements, see the following: Obshchestvo dlia sodeistviia russkoi promyshlennosti i torgovle [The Russian industrial society], Materialy [Materials] (1868), thereafter entitled Otchet o deiaiel'nostj … [Report of the activities], published annually for the years 1868–1882 in 1869–1883, except the years 1876–1878, which were published in 1879. Volumes of essays in the irregular series Trudy Obshchestva … [Proceedings of the society] appeared in 30 volumes (1872–1913). Among the society's many reports on specific issues was a discussion of the best route for the Trans-Siberian railroad, published over 20 years before construction began: O napravienil Sibirskoi zheleznoi dorogi [On the direction of the Siberian railroad] (1870).Google Scholar For records of the 1870 and 1880 congresses, see fabrikantov, Vserossiiskii s'ezd, zavodchilcov i lits, interesuiushchikhsia otechestvennoiu promyshlennost'iu [All-Russian congress of factory- owners, plant-owners, and persons interested in domestic industry], Stenograficheskii otchet 1-go (through 5-go) otdeleniia pervogo vserossiiskogo s''ezda … promyshlennost'iu [Stenographic report of the first (through fifth) section of the first all-Russian congress… industry] (1872); and Trudy vysochaishe razreshennogo torgovo-promyshlennogo s'ezda, sozvannogo Obshchestvom dlia sodeistviia russkoi promyshlennosti i torgovie v Moskve v iiule 1882 g. [Proceedings of the imperially sanctioned commercial-industrial congress convened by the Russian industrial society in Moscow in July 1882], 2 vols. (1883). The pamphlets are Otchet O deiatel'nosti vysochaishe utverzhdennogo Obshchestva… s 1867 po 1892g. [Report of the activities of the imperially sanctioned society… from 1867 through 1892] (1892) and Protokol torzhestvennogo sobraniia… [Protocol of the celebration] (1892).Google Scholar

7 See his arguments for industrial development in Ob usloviiakh razvitiia zavodskogo dela v Rossii [On the conditions of the development of plants in Russia] (1882); Bakinskoe neftianoe delo [The Baku petroleum industry] (1886); and Tolkovyi tarif, ili issledovanie o razvitii promyshlennoi Rossii v sviazi s ee obshchim tamozhennym tarifom 1891 g. [The systematic tariff, or an investigation of the development of industrial Russia in connection with its general tariff of 1891] (1892). Two useful doctoral dissertations are: Almgren, Beverly S., “Mendeleev: The Third Service” (Brown University, 1968) (UMI #69–9938);Google Scholar and Stackenwalt, Francis M., “The Thought and Work of Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev on the Industrialization of Russia, 1867–1907” (University of Illinois at Urbana, 1976) (UMI #76–24181).Google Scholar

8 Khalfin, N. A., “Obshchestvo dlia sodeistviia russkoi promyshlennosti i torgovle i Sredniaia Aziia” [The Russian industrial society and Central Asia], Voprosy istorii [Questions of history] (08 1975), p. 45. As its title indicates, this article deals only with the society's policy recommendations for Central Asia.Google Scholar

9 Owen, Thomas C., Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 68, 109, 111.Google Scholar

10 See the brief sketch of the Technical Society's history to 1882 in Semechkin, Leonid P., ed., Trudy s''ezda gg. chlenov Imperatorskogo Russkogo Tekhnicheskogo Obshchestva v Moskve 1882 g. [Proceedings of the congress of members of the imperial Russian technical society in Moscow in 1882], 3 vols. (1883), vol. 1, pp. 6–18.Google Scholar The only accounts in English are Balzar, Harley D., “Russian Technical Society”, The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History (Gulf Breeze, Florida, since 1976), vol. 32, pp. 176–80; andGoogle ScholarZelnik, Reginald, Labor and Society in Russia: The Factory Workers of St. Petersburg, 1855–1870 (Stanford, 1971), pp. 285–300.Google Scholar

11 Zelnik, Labor, footnote on p. 284.Google Scholar This footnote reiterated the incorrect form of the society's name given by A. Ermanskii, “Krupnaia burzhuaziia do 1905 g”. [The upper bourgeoisie before 1905], in Martov, L., Maslov, P., and Potresov, A., eds., Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossli v nachale XX-go veka [Social movements in Russia in the early twentieth century], 4 vols. (1909–1914; reprinted The Hague, 1968), vol. 1, p. 333.Google Scholar The correct title is Obshchestvo dlia sodeistviia russkoi promyshlennosti i torgovie [literally, The Society for the Promotion of Russian Industry and Tradel].

12 Otchet [Report], p. 3; Khalfin, “Obshchestvo” [The society], pp. 48–49. Shipov claimed that the free-trade meeting was attended by “a Prussian agent”: “Rech' vitse-predsedatelia A. P. Shipova” [The speech by vice-president Shipov, A. P.], Zaria [The dawn], 3 (04 1871), second pagination, p. 92.Google Scholar

13 Otchet [Report], pp. 3–4; Khalfin, “Obshchestvo” [The society], p. 49; Shipov, “Rech'” [The speech], pp. 92–93. On Reutern, see Russia, Ministerstvo finansov [The ministry of finance], Ministerstvofinansov, 1802–1902 “The ministry of finance, 1802–1902], 2 vols. (1902), vol. I, p. 543.Google Scholar First quotation is from Kipp, Jacob W., “M. Kh. Reutern on the Russian State and Economy: A Liberal Bureaucrat during the Crimean Era, 1854–60”, Journal of Modern History, 47 (09 1975), p. 453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Reutern's solicitation of the opinions of manufacturers in the 1860s, see Shepelev, Leonid E., Tsarizm i burzhuaziia vo viorol polovine XIX veka: problemy torgovo-promyshlennoi politiki [Tsarism and the bourgeoisie in the second half of the nineteenth century: questions of commercial and industrial policy] (Leningrad, 1981), pp. 126–27.Google Scholar In this as in many other cases, the motives of the tsarist ministers are far more clear than those of the business leaders, owing to the superior documentation on the government's side. It should be stressed that Kipp's term “liberal” is somewhat misleading when applied to the ministers of Alexander II (who ruled from 1855 to 1881) because the “Great Reforms” entailed no weakening of the autocrat's power, only an increase in the amount of advisory opinions that the government deigned to receive from its subjects.

14 The society's charter appears in Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii [Complete collection of laws of the Russian empire], 2nd 5cr., no. 45169 in the volume for 1867 (quotation from Article 3).Google Scholar

15 On Shipov, see Ocherk deiatel'nosti A. P. Shipova, predsedatelia birzhevogo iiarmarochnogo komiteta v Nizhnem Novgorode [A brief account of the activities of A. P. Shipov, president of the exchange and fair committee in Nizhnii Novgorod], appendix to Narodnaia gazeta [The people's newspaper] (1866); on the “merchant-Slavophile alliance,” see Owen, Capitalism, chap. 2. Rieber, Merchants, chaps. 4–5; andGoogle ScholarLaverychev, Vladimir Ia., Krupnaia burzhuaziia v poreformennoi Rossii, 1861–1900 gg. [The upper bourgeoisie in post-reform Russia, 1861–1900] (Moscow, 1974), chap. 4, discuss this same episode.Google Scholar

16 Otchet [Report], p. 5. See the obituary of Poletika in lstoricheskii vestnik [The historical herald] (11 1888), smes' [miscellany], pp. 519–20.Google Scholar

17 Otchet [Report], p. 5; Timofeev, Aleksandr G., Istoriia S.-Peterburgskoi birzhi [History of the St. Petersburg exchange] (1903), appendix 8.Google Scholar

18 Otchet [Report], pp. 5–6. On Skal'kovskii, see the entry “Skal'kovskii, K. A.” by Owen, Thomas C. in The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, vol. 35, pp. 157–60.Google Scholar

19 Khalfin, “Obshchestvo” [The society], pp. 48–50.Google Scholar

20 Trudy [Proceedings], vol. 6 (1874), 167–94. This bias towards Great Russians (and, by implication, against Jews, Germans, Poles, Armenians, and other minorities within the Russian Empire, as well as the European nationalities) was stated by the Russian Industrial Society's very name. Although the society operated throughout the empire, the word russkoi in its name meant “Russian” in the narrow ethnic sense of Russian language, culture, and folklore. The correct word would have been rossiiskoi, which denotes the entire Russian empire ruled by the Romanov dynasty and uniting all the various ethnic groups within the empire's political boundaries. This difference in the word “Russian” does not exist in the major European languages or in Polish.Google Scholar

21 Owen, Capitalism, pp. 64–66.Google Scholar

22 Trudy [Proceedings], vol. 6 (1874), pp. 167–79.Google Scholar

23 Owen, Capitalism, pp. 66–68. Khalfin, “Obshchestvo” [The society], p. 62, argued rather unconvincingly that the Moscow manufacturers showed “passivity” towards this campaign of conquest.Google Scholar

24 Nor did Demidov derive prominence from his title, Prince San-Donato, since it had been purchased by his uncle from the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1840 and was not recognized by the Petersburg court until 1872. See Esper, Thomas, “Demidov Family in the Nineteenth Century,” Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, vol. 9, pp. 53–55; and “Demidov, Pavel Paviovich,” in Russkii biograficheskii slovar' [Russian biographical dictionary], 25 vols. (1896–1918), vol. 6, pp. 227–29.Google Scholar

25 MacKenzie, David, “Ignat'ev, Nikolai Paviovich,” in Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, vol. 14, p. 129.Google Scholar

26 On presidents and honorary members, Orchet [Report], pp. 5–6; Trudy [Proceedings], vol. 16 (1886), pp. 233–34; and Iablonskii, P. O., ed., Adresnaia kniga goroda S.-Peterburga na 1902 g. [Address book of St. Petersburg for 1902] (1902), col. 1664.Google Scholar

27 Quoted in Khalfin, “Obshchestvo” [The society], pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

28 Otchet [Report], pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

29 A. P. Panov, “O neobkhodimosti reformy birzhevogo ustava 1832 goda” [On the need to reform the law code of 1832 regarding the exchange], report to the society dated April 13, 1888, appendix to Slavianinov, M., Birzha i gil'dii [The exchange and the guilds] (1894), also printed in Birzhevye vedomosri [Exchange news], no. 11 (04 10, 1888); Otchet [Report], p. 5 (quoted). See the list of presidents of the exchange in Timofeev, Istoriia [History], appendix 8.Google Scholar

30 On Shavrov's many pleas for state aid to ethnic Russians, especially in shipping and railroads, see his obituary in Istoricheskii vesinik [The historical herald], year 20, vol. 76 (May 1899), pp. 793–95,Google Scholar and the works cited therein. Quotations from Otcher [Report], pp. 7, 12.Google Scholar

31 Trudy [Proceedings], vol. 6 (1874), pp. 42–44.Google Scholar

32 One indication of the nationalist fervor of that time is the fact that the Moscow industrial exhibition of 1882 witnessed the world premiere of Petr I. Chaikovskii's hyperpatriotic “1812 Overture”.Google Scholar

33 Khalfin, “Obshchestvo” [The society], pp. 50–59; Obshchestvo … [Society], Materialy pa voprosu o torgovykh putiakh v Sredniuiu Aziiu [Materals regarding trade routes to Central Asia] (1869); Otchet [Report], pp. 63–65, 18, 51–52, 71, 42, 46–47, 65.Google Scholar

34 Otchet [Report], pp. 14–15, 59, 34–36, 39–40; Torgovo-promyshlennye s''ezdy v Rossii: obzor deiatel'nosti [Commercial-industrial congresses in Russia: a survey of their activities] (1896), p. 30; and Neftianoe delo [The petroleum industry], year 6, no. 23 (December 22, 1904), section “Khronika” [Chronicle], cols. 2251–52 on the 1903 law.Google Scholar

35 Otcher [Report], pp. 58, 53, 66–69, 21–22.Google Scholar On several pleas for a separate Ministry of Trade and Industry, see Owen, Capitalism, pp. 111–13, 194; and Shepelev, Tsarizm [Tsarism], pp. 157–60. Like many Soviet historians, Shepelev at times mistakenly called the society “The Society for the Promotion of the Development (razviriiu) of Russian Industry and Trade” (p. 272). The fact that increased revenues remained the state's first priority over the centuries is explicitly stressed by Heller, Geld (p. 245) for the period from 1768 to 1843; by Kipp, “Reutern” (pp. 442, 453) for the 1850s and 1860s; and by Shepelev, Tsarizm [Tsarism] for the period 1850–1903 (for example, pp. 171–76).Google Scholar

36 Otchet [Report], pp. 19 (quoted), 20, 44. On the bill of 1871, “Doklad kommissii … fevralia 10 dnia 1871 goda” [Report of the commission… 02 10, 1871], Zaria [The dawn], 3 (04 1871), second pagination, p. 59.Google Scholar

37 Otchet [Report], p. 49 (quoted); Polnoe [Complete], 3rd ser., no. 4286 (03 14, 1887), no. 5664 (12 24, 1888), no. 14121 (05 19, 1897), and others; Kaminka, Avgust I., Aktsionernaia kompaniia: iuridicheskoe issledovanie [The joint-stock company: a juridical investigation] (1902), pp. 28, 127–32, 392–94;Google ScholarOzeroff, Ivan [Ivan Kh. Ozerov], Problèmes économiques et financiers de la Russie moderne (Lausanne, 1916), pp. 21, 126–29;Google ScholarLöwe, Heinz-Dietrich, Antisemitismus und reaktionäre Utopie … 1890–1917 (Hamburg, 1978), pp. 134–42, on the 1911–1914 period.Google Scholar On the various abortive plans for reform, see Shepelev, Leonid E., Aktsionernye kompanii v Rossii [Joint- stock companies in Russia] (Leningrad, 1973), pp. 111–21, 188–222, 281–88.Google ScholarShepelev, Tsarizm [Tsarism], p. 234, noted that Witte, who favored a registration system, blamed the Ministry of Internal Affairs for blocking the reform.Google Scholar

38 On the illegality of cartels, see Berlin, Pavel A., Russkaia burzhuaziia v staroe I novoe vremia [The Russian bourgeoisie in early and recent times] (Petrograd, 1922), pp. 261–63.Google Scholar Quotation from Shepelev, Tsarizm [Tsarism], p. 253.Google Scholar

39 Charter, Article 25. The society headquarters in Petersburg tried to reassure both Lodz and Moscow that neither side needed special government aid because each enjoyed certain economic advantages: lower cotton costs and better entrepreneurial skills in Lodz; and longer workdays, cheaper labor costs, and lower fuel expenses in Belov, Moscow. V. D., “Lodz' i Sosnovitsy” [Lodz and Sosnowiec] in the society's Trudy [Proceedings], vol. 22 (1892).Google Scholar

40 Trudy [Proceedings], vol. 16 (1886), p. 236;Google ScholarPietrzak-Pawlowska, Irena, “Praca organiczna wobec wielkokapitalistycznych przemian w Kroliestwie Polskim” [Organic work in the face of capitalist transformations in the Kingdom of Poland], Przeglad Hisroryczny [Historical review], 54, no. 3 (1963), pp. 449–51.Google ScholarAccording to Adres-kalendar' g. Varshavy na 1897g. [Warsaw address register for 1897] (Warsaw, 1897), first pagination, p. 245, in that year the Warsaw branch had 695 members.Google ScholarPietrzak-Pawlowska, “Praca” [Work] (p. 450, note 50) observed that the archive of the warsaw branch has not been located and that only its published reports for 1884 and 1885 survive.Google Scholar

41 Sergei F. Sharapov, secretary of the Moscow branch, opened the controversy in 1885 with speeches and brochures containing racial slurs against Germans and Jews in the Lodz and Sosnowiec textile industry, whom he accused of enjoying unfair economic advantages over Moscow. He advocated a sweeping law banning foreigners and Jews from trade and industry in the border area. The Lodz branch retorted with a well-researched pamphlet in Russian: Po povodu broshiury S. F. Sharapova, “Pochemu Lodz' I Sosnovitsy pobezhdaiut Moskvu?” [On Sharapov's, S. F. brochure, “Why are Lodz and Sosnowiec beating Moscow?”] (Lodz, 1886), translated from Dziennik lodzki [The Lodz daily].Google Scholar An extremely useful overview of the entire controversy written by a Polish historian is U. A. Shuster, “Ekonomicheskaia bor'ba Moskvy s Lodz'iu (iz istorii russko-pol'skikh ekonomicheskikh otnoshenii v 80-kh godakh proshlogo veka)” [The economic struggle between Moscow and Lodz: aspects of the history of Russo-Polish economic relations in the 1880s], Istoricheskie zapiski [Historical notes], vol. 5 (1939), pp. 188–234. In 1894 the Lodz branch proposed a law to limit the length of the workday: Proekt zakonodatel'noi normirovki rabochego vremeni vfabrichnykh I remeslennykh zavedeniiakh Ross ii [A bill to regulate the length of the workday in factories and workshops in Russia] (Lodz, 1894), to which the Moscow branch replied with a defense of the free market in labor: Materialy, sobrannye Moskovskim otdeleniem Obshchestva… [Materials compiled by the Moscow branch of the society] (Moscow, 1895).Google ScholarLuxemburg, Rosa, The Industrial Development of Poland, trans. De Carlo, Tessa (New York, 1977), chap. 2, emphasized that this struggle had historical roots going back to the 1820s.Google Scholar

42 See Witte's, Sergei account of his rationalization of freight rates: Vospominanhia [Memoirs], 3 vols. (Moscow, 1960), vol. 1, pp. 203–10, 245.Google Scholar However, Skal'kovskii alleged that the government's freight rate schedule hurt agriculture in the central region and the petroleum and manganese industries in the Caucasus. “If coal and metallurgy did not suffer, this was simply because they had in the southern coal and iron congresses a vigilant and watchful defender of their interests”. Za god: vospominaniia [A year later: memoirs] (1905), p. 237.Google Scholar

43 For example, in the debate preceding the tariff of 1891, the society opposed one zinc producer's demand for higher duties on zinc bars and sheets (to 60 kopeks and I ruble per pud, respectively) on the grounds that manufacturers who used these products would be hurt by the increased cost. With typical excess, the Moscow men proposed duties of 1.20 rubles and 1.50 rubles, respectively. Sobolev, M. N., Tamozhennaia politika Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka [Russian tariff policy in the second half of the nineteenth century] (Tomsk, 1911), p. 747. Sobolev repeatedly referred to “the Moscow organizations” as a unit because they spoke for extreme protectionism with one voice.Google Scholar

44 Russia, Torgovo-promyshlennyi s''ezd [Commercial-industrial congress], Trudy vysochaishe uchrezhdennogo torgovo-promyshlennogo s''ezda 1896 g. v Nizhnem-Novgorode [Proceedings of the commercial-industrial congress of 1896 in Nizhnii Novgorod, instituted by the tsar], 8 vols. (1897), vol. 1, pp. xix–xx.Google Scholar

45 Sharapov, Sergei F., Doklad Obshchestva …. 29 aprelia 1898 g. [Report of the society …. 04 29, 1898]; and Shepelev, Tsarizm [Tsarism], p. 223. In a report to the society in March 1899, Sharapov fretted that “the most important natural resources of Russia are passing, one by one, into the hands of foreign companies”. Quoted in Laverychev, Krupnaia [The upper], p. 224.Google Scholar

46 Shepelev, Tsarizm [Tsarism], p. 230.Google Scholar

47 Speech to the society by one “Mr. Merkuloff” (that is, Merkulov), reported in the London Standard (05 5, 1903). National Archives, Despatches from United States Consuls in St. Petersburg, 1803–1906, microfilm roll 18, vols. 23–24, item no. 309.Google Scholar

48 Avrekh, A. La., Stolypin i tret'ia duma [Stolypin and the third duma] (Moscow, 1968), chap. 4.Google Scholar

49 Gerschenkron, “Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective,” in Economic Backwardness, p. 22.Google Scholar

50 On the prewar boom, Gatrell, P., “Industrial Expansion in Tsarist Russia, 1908–1914,” Economic History Review, 35 (01 1982), pp. 99–110.Google Scholar On the criticism voiced by the Association of Industry and Trade, see Roosa, Ruth A., “Russian Industrialists and ‘State Socialism,’ 1906–17,” Soviet Studies, 23 (01 1972), pp. 395–417. Goldberg devoted separate chapters to the labor question, monopolies, taxes, zemstvos, tariffs, railroads, the Jewish question, pollution control, and chambers of commerce.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 On the Duma's hostility to capitalism, see Berlin, Russkaia [Russian], pp. 243–44, 264–83. On the attitudes of various ministries, see Rieber, Merchants, pp. 417–18. Quotation from Gerschenkron, “Russia,” p. 125.Google Scholar

52 In an unusually critical passage in his biography of Witte, Laue, Von (p. 304) noted that by “substituting state activity for private initiative [Witte] crippled the sense of independence and dynamic initiative which is an essential ingredient of the Western urban-industrial society… The freedoms of the Western model were incompatible with government initiative in the Russian tradition”.Google Scholar

53 McKay, John P., “Entrepreneurship and the Emergence of the Russian Petroleum Industry, 1813–1883,” Research in Economic History, 8 (1982), pp. 47–91; andGoogle ScholarMcKay, John P., “Baku Oil and Transcaucasian Pipelines, 1883–1891: A Study in Tsarist Economic Policy,” Slavic Review, 43 (Winter 1984), pp. 603–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar