The result of the rapid development of the economy of the Russian Empire by the end of the 19th century was a well-functioning capitalist system. How did its formation take place and how did subsequent historical events that occurred in the 20th century affect the state of the economy? Information about this will be interesting for history buffs.
The state of the economy in the pre-reform period
In the 19th art. The Russian empire became a powerful power with a huge territory covering Eastern Europe and part of North Asia and North America. By the middle of the 19th century. the country's population reached 72 million people compared to the end of the 18th century.
The main problem of the country at that time was the continued serfdom, which led to stagnant processes in the development of agriculture. The labor of the serfs was unprofitable and unproductive, many landowners had debts, and part of the noble estates was overloaded. Peasants in many provinces were unhappy - there was a threat of riots. There is a need to abolish serfdom.
In industry, there was a process of transition from serfdom to civilian labor of workers. Those industries where feudal relations were preserved (metallurgy in the Urals and others) fell into decay, and where civilian workers (textile industry) worked, steady growth in production was observed. There was also a crowding out by large enterprises of small and medium-sized enterprises, which could not afford to buy expensive equipment and machinery.
Beginning in the 1840s, almost 60-80 years later than Europe, an industrial revolution began to take place in the economy of the Russian Empire, the essence of which was the transition from manual labor to mass machine production.
A braking effect on the economy was exerted by the state of transport in Russia, which was undeveloped and backward: most of the cargo was transported by water. After the Patriotic War of 1812, the pace of laying highways was accelerated (by 1825 their length was 390 km, and by 1850 - 3.3 thousand km). In the era of the reign of Emperor Nicholas the 1st, the construction of railways began, which by the 2nd half of the 19th century began to lead in terms of the volume of goods transported. In the 1830s the Tsarskoye Selo railway was created, 27 km long, which ran between St. Petersburg and Pavlovsk, and the Warsaw-Vienna railway, which connected the Polish capital with European countries, was laid in 1845. In 1851, 2 capitals were finally connected by rails: Moscow and St. Petersburg (650 km). Thus, by 1855 the total length of the railways was already more than 1 thousand km.
After the accession of Nicholas I to the throne, the state of the financial and banking systems of Russia was in decline. As Minister of Finance, General E.F. Kankrin replaced obsolete and depreciated bank notes with new banknotes, introducing special deposit tickets and state treasury tickets (series). Nowadays, there were metal coins that were equated with paper money.
Economic development in the 2nd half of the 19th century
The abolition of serfdom in 1861 had a positive impact on the rapid development of the economy and industry. The freed peasants began to relocate to the cities and enter the factories as cheap labor. Subsistence farms quickly began to grow rich, which helped fill the domestic market with products.
A powerful breakthrough in the economy of the Russian Empire in the 19th century took place along with the industrial revolution, which ended by the beginning of the 1880s. The foundations were laid for new industries - engineering, coal, and oil. The country was covered by a network of railways. This period became significant for the formation of new classes of the population - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
As a result of the reforms of the 1860s and 70s. favorable conditions have developed for the development of productive forces and the formation of market relations. In these years, road construction has been significantly accelerated by attracting foreign and domestic private investments. In 1862, a railway was opened from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod, connecting the capital and the venue of the famous fair, which facilitated access to the western market. Then the roads were laid to the Urals and, finally, the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was started - by 1894 the length of the railway was 27.9 thousand km.
After the transition from forced labor in industrial enterprises to civilian (after the mass arrival of peasants), the economy of the Russian Empire began to grow rapidly in the 19th century. The country has seen an increase in entrepreneurship due to the widespread opening of various private shops, and some unprofitable enterprises began to revive sharply after transferring them to private hands by order of the government.
By the end of the 19th century. textile became the leading industry in Russian industry, doubling in 20 years the production of fabrics for every citizen of the country. Growth was also noticeable in the food industry, due to which Russia began to export sugar.
The development that slowed down in the 1860s due to the need for urgent technical re-equipment, the metallurgical industry was able to cope with problems by the 1870s by arranging regular smelting of iron and steel. During these years, there has been a rapid growth of the mining and metallurgical industries in the Donbass, as well as the oil industry in Baku.
Due to the insufficient technical equipment of Russian engineering, the first steam locomotives and railway trains had to be imported from European countries, however, with the support of the government, by the second half of the 1870s. all rolling stock has already been produced at modernized enterprises in Russia.
Economic growth trends of the Russian Empire
In these years, there was a gradual rapprochement of the Russian and world economies, which caused market fluctuations. This became the reason that in 1873, for the first time in the history of the economy of the Russian Empire, it was affected by the global industrial crisis.
In the second half of the 19th century. the final formation of the main industrial regions of Russia took place. They became:
- Moscow, which hosted many textile industries.
- Petersburg, representing engineering and metal industry.
- South and Ural - the base of the metallurgical industry.
The most powerful Moscow region relied basically on small artisan enterprises, which gradually began to enlarge and form factories. Here, manual labor is already being replaced with machine labor - such a transition from manufacturing to factory production is called an industrial revolution.
The process of technical re-equipment in industry is a long-term process and, as a result, leads to the predominance of products that are manufactured only at enterprises equipped with machines. In the Russian Empire, the beginning of the industrial revolution occurred in the 1850-60s, however, its development was uneven and depended on the region and industry. Most quickly, it occurred in the light cotton industry and by 1880 had already ended. The machine industry safely grew into an industrial expansion in the 1890s.
The growth of cities and enterprises, the financial system
This period was accompanied by the rapid growth of cities and towns - some in a few years turned from a provincial town into administrative centers, in which several factories and plants worked. Moscow and St. Petersburg during these years were almost equal in population (about 600 thousand inhabitants), since a huge number of workers from peasants moved here, who worked in factories in the cold season, and returned to their homeland in summer to harvest.
Over time, many of the temporary workers remained in the city, but the bulk of the proletariat was made up of more skilled industrial workers. The largest cities after the capital and Moscow were: Odessa (100 thousand people) and Tobolsk (33 thousand).
After the abolition of serfdom, agriculture was in poor condition. Even with an increase in the area under grain sowing, yield and total grain volume remained low. In the regions of Central Russia during this period, landowner landholdings experienced a deep crisis, but in the steppe regions and in the North Caucasus, farming and entrepreneurial production was gradually and confidently established - this region became the breadbasket of the state and was the main exporter of bread.
In the financial sector, Minister Reiter addressed the issues of stabilization and the formation of a balanced budget. He took measures to reduce excess government spending, which helped to eliminate the deficit. His dream was to recognize the gold standard of the ruble in Russia, but political and economic circumstances prevented this.
Economic development of Russia at the turn of the 19-20th century
At the end of the 19th century. The Russian Empire remained the only state in which absolute obedience to autocracy was proclaimed. Emperor Nicholas II ascended the throne in 1894, after the death of his predecessor, the conservative Alexander III, and announced that his only political goal was to maintain autocracy in the country, but not to carry out economic reforms.
However, the development of capitalism in Russia was in full swing. Minister of Finance S.Yu. Witte, who held this position in 1892-1901, convinced the tsar of the urgent need to implement the program he developed for the development of industry, which involved maintaining the national industry on the part of the state in order to increase the growth rate of the economy of the Russian Empire.
The program had 4 main points:
- tax policy providing benefits for industrial production imposed a burden on the urban and rural population, including a strong increase in indirect taxes on certain goods (wine, etc.), served as a guarantee of the release of capital and its investment in industry;
- protectionist ideas that allowed to protect enterprises from foreign competitors;
- the implementation of monetary reform (1897) should guarantee the stability and solvency of the Russian ruble, which was provided by gold;
- incentives for investing foreign capital - investments in the form of government loans that were distributed in the markets of France, Germany, the UK and Belgium, the share of foreign capital was 15-29% of the total.
Such a policy attracted foreign investors to the Russian market: at the end of the 19th century. the French and Belgians invested 58% of investments in metallurgy and coal industry, the Germans - 24, etc. However, this led to opposition from some ministers who believed that foreign investors would pose a threat to the national security of the state. The further development of the economy of the Russian Empire was also hindered by a low level of consumption, especially among the population of rural areas, and an underdeveloped consumer market.
The main consequence of economic growth in the late 19th century. it was the formation of the working class, among which, by the beginning of the 20th century, dissatisfaction was accumulating with conditions and wages. However, until 1905, relations between professional revolutionaries and the proletariat were weak.
Economics at the beginning of the 20th century
By this time, the capitalist system had finally formed in the country, which resulted in an increase in entrepreneurship and the amount of capital invested in production, its improvement, technical re-equipment, and a sharp increase in the number of workers in many sectors of the economy.
At the beginning of the 20th century. capitalism in many countries has entered a monopolistic stage, which is characterized by the formation of large industrial and financial monopolies and unions. Powerful industrial and financial groups are becoming increasingly important in the economy - they affect the volume of products and their sales, dictate prices, while dividing the whole world into separate spheres of influence.
This process was also characteristic of Russia, affecting its political, economic and social spheres. Features of the economy of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century consisted of the following:
- She moved to capitalist relations later than other European countries.
- Russia is located on a large territory, which has completely different climatic and environmental conditions, which are developed unevenly.
- The autocracy, land ownership by landowners, class distinctions, national problems, and political powerlessness of most representatives of the people continued to persist in the country.
The process of monopolization of the economy of the Russian Empire took place in 4 stages:
- 1880-1890-the appearance of cartels on the terms of temporary agreements on prices and redistribution of sales markets, strengthening the influence of banks;
- 1900-1908 - the formation of large syndicates, monopolies of banks;
- 1909-1913 - the creation of vertical syndicates (which combined all production chains - from the purchase of raw materials, its production to sales); the emergence of concerns and trusts, the gradual rapprochement and coalescence of banking and industrial capital, the emergence of financial capital;
- 1913-1917 - the formation of state-monopoly capitalism and the merging of capital and monopolies with the state apparatus.
However, a strong influence on the establishment of a market economy in the Russian Empire was exerted by the intervention of the state and the tsar in economic life, which consisted of the creation of military production, the control of state bodies for railway transport and the laying of roads, state ownership of most of the land, the prevalence of the public sector in the economy, etc. d.
The economic crisis of 1901-1903 and the first revolution
The deterioration of the situation in the economy of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century was due to the crisis of 1901-1903. and later grew into social tension in the country. The catalyst for the beginning of the revolutionary uprisings of 1905 was the failure of the troops in the Russo-Japanese War. In the summer of 1904, Minister of Internal Affairs V.K. Pleve was shot dead, and in the fall a meeting of liberal and revolutionary Russian parties was held in Paris, and then the 1st Zemstvo Congress opened in the capital. At it, demands were expressed for the formation of a national assembly, representatives of which could be elected by the people.
The first workers to stop work were January 3, 1905, Putilov workers in St. Petersburg, and then the strike spread to all the capital's enterprises. And on the 9th, crowds of people rushing to the square near the Winter Palace with icons in their hands and singing psalms were greeted by gunfire of soldiers. About 1 thousand people died due to panic and shots, 5 thousand were injured. This "Bloody Sunday" was the beginning of the revolution, which lasted until 1907.
And although the emperor and the government tried to make concessions, peasants also joined the revolutionaries, under the influence of which the All-Russian Peasant Union was created. Striking workers put forward economic demands. As a result, the government decided to create and conduct elections to the State Duma.
Reforms of Stolypin
The history and economic transformations in Russia in the period after the 1st revolution are inextricably linked with the reforms of P. A. Stolypin, who served as prime minister from 1906 to 1911. According to his concept, the transformation of the economy and modernization of the state should be carried out by 3 conditions:
- peasants became owners of the land;
- general literacy of the population (4 classes of elementary school);
- industrial growth should be based on domestic resources of Russia and the further development of the economic market.
However, the implementation of the Stolypin reform in practice did not go quite smoothly due to its ignoring of regional differences and the idealization of the influence of land acquisition on private property on peasants. As part of its implementation, a huge migration of Russian peasants to the lands of Siberia took place (more than 3 million people left during the period 1906-1916), but not everyone was able to get accustomed, some later returned to their homeland and became “returnees”. The land privatization project in Siberia was not implemented, and the situation of peasants in the central regions of the Russian Empire continued to deteriorate. Reforms were interrupted due to the death of Stolypin as a result of an attempt on him at the Kiev Opera in September 1911.
The state of the economy of the Russian Empire before the First World War
1909 ., 1910- (), . 1913 . 400 .
Over the following years, the economy of the Russian Empire grew rapidly: in 1913 the total volume of industrial production grew by 54%, and the number of its workers - by 31%. All industries were on the rise, starting from metallurgy, oil production and ending with the production of machinery for agriculture. Trade and profits indicated rapid growth. Trusts and financial cartels increasingly monopolized production in all sectors, and their concentration was ensured by the work of large banks that completely controlled the market.
By the beginning of 1914, 1/3 of the number of shares accounted for foreign capital, most of the banks' capital was also in the hands of foreigners. The period 1908-1914 historians consider the golden age of the development of capitalism in Russia.
However, according to the level of industrial production, the economy of the Russian Empire in 1913 lagged behind many European countries (France - 2.5 times, Germany - 6 and, especially, the USA - 14 times). The drawback was also the specific Russian model of capitalism, in which the growth of the economy did not change anything in the well-being and everyday life of the Russian people. This was the cause of subsequent political events in 1917.
Statistics and conclusions
In the period from 1880 to 1914, the economic growth data of the Russian Empire and its place in the world are as follows:
- the share in world industrial production increased from 3.4% (1881) to 5.3 (1913);
- for the period 1900-1913 the volume of industrial production in Russia increased by 2 times;
- in the period 1909-1913. the growth rate of heavy industry was 174%, light industry - 137%;
- the annual earnings of employees rose on average from 61 (1881) to 233 rubles. (1910), i.e. almost 4 times;
- production of agricultural machines and for the period 1907-1913. increased 3-4 times, smelted copper - 2 times, engines - 5-6 times.
With the outbreak of World War I, the majority of European states were drawn into it, which is why all the capacities of their industry were already directed to military needs. In Russia, this ended with the October Revolution and the establishment of the power of the Bolsheviks.
Many Soviet economists, comparing the economies of the Russian Empire and the USSR, called it "backward." However, all history and statistics confirm the opposite - according to all parameters of economic development, the Russian Empire for the period from the middle of the 19th century. and until 1914 it had significant success, slightly lagging behind the developed countries of Europe (Germany, France) and the USA, but in some respects it was ahead of Italy and Denmark.