The conditions for the emergence of capitalism in Russia (an economic system based on private property and freedom of enterprise) developed only in the second half of the 19th century. As in other countries, it did not appear out of nowhere. Signs of the birth of a completely new system can be traced back to the era of Peter the Great, when, for example, civilian workers worked in the Demidov Ural mines in addition to serfs.
However, no capitalism in Russia was possible as long as there was an enslaved peasantry in a huge and poorly developed country. The liberation of the villagers from the slave position in relation to the landlords became the main signal for the beginning of new economic relations.
The end of feudalism
Russian serfdom was abolished by Emperor Alexander II in 1861. The former peasantry was a class of feudal society. The transition to capitalism in the countryside could only take place after the stratification of the rural population into the bourgeoisie (kulaks) and the proletariat.(labor workers). This process was natural, it took place in all countries. However, capitalism in Russia and all the processes accompanying its emergence had many peculiar features. In the village, they were to preserve the rural community.
According to the manifesto of Alexander II, the peasants were declared legally free and received the rights to own property, engage in crafts and trade, conclude deals, etc. Nevertheless, the transition to a new society could not take place overnight. Therefore, following the reform of 1861, communities began to appear in the villages, the basis for the functioning of which was communal land ownership. The team monitored the equal division into individual plots and the three-field system of arable land, in which one part of it was sown with winter crops, the second with spring crops, and the third was left fallow.
Peasant stratification
The community leveled the peasants and slowed down capitalism in Russia, although it could not stop it. Some of the villagers became poor. One-horse peasants became such a layer (two horses were required for a full-fledged economy). These rural proletarians subsisted by earning money on the side. The community did not let such peasants go to the city and did not allow them to sell allotments that formally belonged to them. Free de jure status did not match de facto status.
In the 1860s, when Russia embarked on the path of capitalist development, the community delayed this evolution due to its adherence to traditional farming. The peasants within the collective did not needtake initiative and take risks for their own enterprise and desire to improve agriculture. Compliance with the norm was acceptable and important to conservative villagers. In this, the then Russian peasants were very different from the Western ones, who had long ago become entrepreneurial farmers with their own commodity economy and marketing of products. For the most part, the native villagers were collectivists, which is why the revolutionary ideas of socialism spread so easily among them.
Agrarian capitalism
After 1861, the landed estates began to rebuild on market methods. As in the case of the peasants, the process of gradual stratification started in this milieu. Even many inert and inert landlords had to learn from their own experience what capitalism is. The definition of the history of this term necessarily includes a mention of freelance labor. However, in practice, such a configuration was only a cherished goal, and not the original state of affairs. At first, after the reform, the farms of the landowners were kept on working off the peasants, who took rented land in exchange for their labor.
Capitalism in Russia took root gradually. The newly liberated peasants, who were going to work with their former owners, worked with their implements and livestock. Thus, the landlords were not yet capitalists in the full sense of the word, since they did not invest their own capital in production. The then mining can be considered a continuation of the dying feudal relations.
The agricultural development of capitalism in Russia consisted intransition from archaic natural to more efficient commodity production. However, the old feudal features can also be noted in this process. The peasants of the new era sold only part of their products, consuming the rest on their own. Capitalist marketability suggested the opposite. All products had to be sold, while the peasant family in this case bought its own food with funds from its own profits. Nevertheless, already in its first decade, the development of capitalism in Russia led to an increase in demand for dairy products and fresh vegetables in cities. New complexes of private gardening and animal husbandry began to form around them.
Industrial Revolution
An important result of the emergence of capitalism in Russia was the industrial revolution that swept the country. It was fueled by the gradual stratification of the peasant community. Craft production and handicraft production developed.
For feudalism, handicraft was a characteristic form of industry. Having become mass in the new economic and social conditions, it turned into a handicraft industry. At the same time, trade intermediaries appeared, which connected consumers of goods and producers. These buyers exploited the handicraftsmen and lived off the trading profits. It was they who gradually formed a layer of industrial entrepreneurs.
In the 1860s, when Russia embarked on the path of capitalist development, the first stage of capitalistrelations - cooperation. At the same time, the process of a difficult transition to wage labor began in the branches of large-scale industry, where for a long time only cheap and disenfranchised serf labor was used. The modernization of production was complicated by the disinterest of the owners. Industrialists paid their workers low wages. Poor working conditions markedly radicalized the proletariat.
Joint-stock companies
In total, capitalism in Russia in the 19th century experienced several waves of industrial boom. One of them was in the 1890s. In that decade, the gradual improvement of economic organization and the development of production techniques led to a significant growth of the market. Industrial capitalism entered a new developed phase, which was embodied by numerous joint-stock companies. The economic growth figures of the late 19th century speak for themselves. In the 1890s industrial output doubled.
All capitalism goes through a crisis when it degenerates into monopoly capitalism with bloated corporations owning a certain economic area. In imperial Russia, this did not happen to the full extent, including thanks to versatile foreign investments. Especially a lot of foreign money flowed into transport, metallurgy, oil and coal industries. It was at the end of the 19th century that foreigners switched to direct investment, while previously they preferred loans. Such contributions were explained by greater profits and the desire of merchantsearn.
Export and import
Russia, without becoming an advanced capitalist country, did not have time to start mass export of its own capital before the revolution. The domestic economy, on the contrary, willingly accepted injections from more developed countries. Just at that time, "surplus capital" accumulated in Europe, which were looking for their own application in promising foreign markets.
There were simply no conditions for the export of Russian capital. Numerous feudal survivals, vast colonial outskirts, and a relatively unimportant development of production prevented him. If the capital was exported, it was mainly to the eastern countries. This was done in the form of production or in the form of loans. Significant funds settled in Manchuria and China (about 750 million rubles in total). Transport was a popular area for them. About 600 million rubles were invested in the Chinese Eastern Railway.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian industrial production was already the fifth largest in the world. At the same time, the domestic economy was the first in terms of growth. The beginning of capitalism in Russia was left behind, now the country was hastily catching up with the most advanced competitors. The empire also occupied a leading position in terms of concentration of production. Its large enterprises were the places of work for more than half of the entire proletariat.
Characteristics
The key features of capitalism in Russia can be described in a few paragraphs. The monarchy was the country of the young market. Industrialization began here later than in other European countries. As a result, a significant part of industrial enterprises was built quite recently. These facilities are equipped with the most modern technology. Basically, such enterprises belonged to large joint-stock companies. In the West, the situation remained exactly the opposite. European factories were smaller and less sophisticated.
With significant foreign investment, the initial period of capitalism in Russia was distinguished by the triumph of domestic rather than foreign products. It was simply unprofitable to import foreign goods, but investing money was considered a profitable business. Therefore, in the 1890s. citizens of other states in Russia owned about a third of the share capital.
A serious impetus to the development of private industry was given by the construction of the Great Siberian Railway from European Russia to the Pacific Ocean. This project was state-owned, but the raw materials for it were purchased from entrepreneurs. The Trans-Siberian Railway provided many manufacturers with orders for coal, metal and steam locomotives for years to come. On the example of the highway, one can trace how the formation of capitalism in Russia created a sales market for various sectors of the economy.
Domestic market
Along with the increase in production, the market also grew. The main items of Russian exports were sugar and oil (Russia provided about half of the world's oil production). Cars were imported in bulk. The share of imported cotton decreased (the domestic economy began to focus on its Central Asianraw materials).
The formation of the domestic national market took place in an environment where labor power became the most important commodity. The new distribution of income turned out to be in favor of industry and cities, but it infringed on the interests of the countryside. Therefore, the backlog of agricultural areas in socio-economic development in comparison with industrial areas followed. This pattern was characteristic of many young capitalist countries.
The same railways contributed to the development of the domestic market. In 1861-1885. 24 thousand kilometers of tracks were built, which amounted to about a third of the length of the tracks on the eve of the First World War. Moscow became the central transport hub. It was she who connected all regions of a huge country. Of course, such a status could not but accelerate the economic development of the second city of the Russian Empire. The improvement of communication routes facilitated the connection between the outskirts and the center. New inter-regional trade relations were emerging.
It is significant that during the second half of the 19th century, bread production remained approximately at the same level, while industry developed everywhere and increased the volume of output. Another unpleasant trend was the anarchy in railroad tariffs. Their reform took place in 1889. The government is in charge of regulating tariffs. The new order greatly helped the development of the capitalist economy and the domestic market.
Contradictions
In the 1880s. began to take shape in Russiamonopoly capitalism. Its first shoots appeared in the railway industry. In 1882, the Union of Rail Manufacturers appeared, and in 1884, the Union of Rail Fastener Manufacturers and the Union of Bridge Building Plants.
The industrial bourgeoisie was being formed. Its ranks included large merchants, former tax-farmers, tenants of estates. Many of them received financial incentives from the government. Merchants were actively involved in capitalist entrepreneurship. The Jewish bourgeoisie was formed. Due to the Pale of Settlement, some outlying provinces of the southern and western strip of European Russia were overflowing with merchant capital.
In 1860 the government founded the State Bank. It became the foundation of a young credit system, without which the history of capitalism in Russia cannot be imagined. It stimulated the accumulation of funds from entrepreneurs. However, there were circumstances that seriously hindered the increase in capital. In the 1860s Russia survived the "cotton famine", economic crises occurred in 1873 and 1882. But even these fluctuations could not stop the accumulation.
Encouraging the development of capitalism and industry in the country, the state inevitably embarked on the path of mercantilism and protectionism. Engels compared Russia at the end of the 19th century with the France of the era of Louis XIV, where the protection of the interests of domestic producers also created all the conditions for the growth of manufactories.
Formation of the proletariat
Any signs of capitalism in Russia would not havemakes no sense if a full-fledged working class had not been generated in the country. The impetus for its appearance was the industrial revolution of the 1850-1880s. The proletariat is the class of a mature capitalist society. Its emergence was the most important event in the social life of the Russian Empire. The birth of the working masses has changed the entire socio-political agenda of a huge country.
The Russian transition from feudalism to capitalism, and consequently the emergence of the proletariat, were swift and radical processes. In their specificity, there were other unique features that arose due to the preservation of the remnants of the former society, the estate system, landownership and the protective policy of the tsarist government.
From 1865 to 1980, the growth of the proletariat in the factory sector of the economy amounted to 65%, in the mining sector - 107%, in the railway - an incredible 686%. At the end of the 19th century, there were about 10 million workers in the country. Without analyzing the process of formation of a new class, it is impossible to understand what capitalism is. The historical definition gives us a dry formulation, but behind the laconic words and figures stood the fate of millions and millions of people who completely changed their way of life. Labor migration of huge masses has led to a significant increase in the urban population.
Workers existed in Russia before the industrial revolution. These were serfs who worked at manufactories, the most famous of which were the Ural enterprises. Nevertheless, the liberated peasants became the main source of growth for the new proletariat. Processclass transformation has often been agonizing. The peasants, who had become impoverished and lost their horses, became workers. The most extensive departure from the village was observed in the central provinces: Yaroslavl, Moscow, Vladimir, Tver. This process affected the southern steppe regions least of all. Also, there was a small retreat in Belarus and Lithuania, although it was there that agrarian overpopulation was observed. Another paradox was that people from the outskirts, and not from the nearest provinces, sought to industrial centers. Many features of the formation of the proletariat in the country were noted by Vladimir Lenin in his works. "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", dedicated to this topic, was published in 1899.
The low wages of the proletarians were especially characteristic of small-scale industry. It was there that the most merciless exploitation of workers was traced. The proletarians tried to change these difficult conditions with the help of difficult retraining. Peasants engaged in small-scale crafts became distant otkhodniks. Transitional economic forms of activity were widespread among them.
Modern Capitalism
The domestic stages of capitalism associated with the tsarist era can today only be regarded as something distant and infinitely cut off from the modern country. The reason for this was the October Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks who came to power began to build socialism and communism. Capitalism with its private property and freedom of enterprise is a thing of the past.
Rebirthmarket economy became possible only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The transition from planned production to capitalist production was abrupt, and its main embodiment was the liberal reforms of the 1990s. It was they who built the economic foundations of the modern Russian Federation.
The transition to the market was announced at the end of 1991. Prices were liberalized in December, resulting in hyperinflation. At the same time, voucher privatization began, which was necessary to transfer state property into private hands. In January 1992, the Free Trade Ordinance was issued, opening up new business opportunities. The Soviet ruble was soon abolished, and the Russian national currency went through a default, a collapse in the exchange rate, and a denomination. Through the storms of the 1990s, the country built a new capitalism. It is in his conditions that modern Russian society lives.
