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Community and Growth: Muddling Through with Russian Credit Cooperatives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2010
Abstract
This article examines the evolution of the Russian government's policies between 1861 and 1917 in the sphere of rural credit, especially the extent to which social and cultural factors and ministerial politics impinged on the choice of banks and their development. Discussions concerned measures for economic change that could take place within the traditional and legal framework of the village community. The Ministry of Interior supported a classbased estate bank. The Ministry of Finance opted for the cooperative credit association which was to foster rural pacification and agricultural development by mobilizing peasant collective habits and private initiative that favored cooperative organizations.
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- Papers Presented at the Thirty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
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- Copyright © The Economic History Association 1977
References
1 Information on the problems of rural banking is based on “Istoricheskii obzor i sovremennoe polozhenie uchrezhdenii melkogo kredita v rossii,” Central State Historical Archives (TsGIA), Leningrad, f. 1233, op. 1 (1902), d. 45, pp. 1–6–; “Kratkaia zapiska o sel'skoi kredite v rossii,” f. 583, op. 19 (1892), d. 61, pp. 282–96; “Sravnitel'nye dannye o razvitii melkogo kredita na 1 ianvaria 1910 i 1912 gg., i material'nogo sodeistvii pravitel'stva etomu kreditu,” f. 582, op. 6, d. 486. The reports of 49 provinces on small credit presented to Witte's Special Conference were published in Borodaevskii, S. V., ed., Kredit: Svod trudov komitetov po 49 guberniiakh evropeiskoi rossii (St. Petersburg, 1904), pp. 183–219, 1–26Google Scholar. An excellent source on the yearly developments in rural banking are the accounts (Otchety) of the Komiteta o sel'skikh, ssudosberegatel'nykh i promyshlennykh tovarishchestvakh of the Imperial Moscow Agricultural Society, St. Petersburg, 29 accounts, 1873–1914, and the Ministry of Finance's Otchety o sostoianii kreditnykh tovarishchestv, ssudo-sberegatel'nykh i zemskikh kass melkogo kredita, St. Petersburg, 1907–1914.
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27 Quoted in “Dokladnaia zapiska. O merakh k razvitiiu uchrezhdenii melkogo kredita,” f. 582, op. 6 (1917), d. 457, p. 17.
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36 “Stenograficheskie protokoly zasedanii,” 1903, p. 187.
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38 “Materialy po osobennomu soveshchaniiu po zemledel'cheskomu kreditu,” f. 1291, op. 121 (1908), d. 141, p. 116; “Osoboe soveshchanie po melkomu kreditu,” f. 1291, op. 54 (1908–09), d. 14, p. 1.
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49 Vestnik melkogo kredita, 24 (June 20, 1914), p. 979, 982; and 10 (Mar. 7, 1914), p. 384. An example of the effect of credit banks in a central, industrial province is Kolobov, M., Sel'skii kredit v moskovskoi gubernii (Moscow, 1914), pp. 163–74Google Scholar. See also Petersen, Anita B., “The Development of Cooperative Credit in Rural Russia, 1871–1914,” unpub. diss., Cornell Univ., 1973, pp. 233–332.Google Scholar
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