DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2023.1.39571

Abstract: The study deals with the most significant crisis in the history of Russian banking, which occurred when 49 municipal banks and 13 mutual credit societies went bankrupt from 1882–1889. Historians have explained the causes of the crisis in various ways; however, these explanations are not fully verifiable due to lack of consolidated quantitative data on operations for municipal banks and mutual credit societies. Therefore, a new quantitative data set on these credit institutions was composed for this study. Comparison of the dynamics of joint-stock commercial banks, municipal banks, and mutual credit societies for 1875–1895 revealed that the decline in municipal banks was particularly sharp and deep, and it did not correlate with the dynamics of other banking institutions. This paper proves that the municipal banks crisis was caused by the accumulation of bad loans, poor financial stability, and the lack of proper control by municipal councils and the Ministry of Finance. Overcoming of these problems launched a new phase of banking regulation and supervision in the Russian Empire, which has been underestimated in historiography. The “pushing out” of municipal banks from risky operations was necessary to protect the financial interests of the municipal self-government associated with these banks. However, the crisis also had a pronounced regional perspective because most of the bankruptcies occurred in the Central Black Earth Region, and therefore the crisis was caused by a contraction in agricultural exports due to falling prices, combined with local crop failures in the first half of the 1880s.

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2022.6.39231

Abstract: This study deals with the causes of the crisis of municipal banks in the Russian Empire in the 1880s. The focus is on the most difficult years of 1882–1887, when 39 banks were closed. In total, 60 out of 287 banks (more than 20%) left the market between 1878 and 1893. Municipal banks were accountable to city councils, which were responsible for these banks’ operations; therefore, their success or failure had a serious impact on cities’ fortunes. This study is based on the public accounting statements of municipal banks from 1877–1894. Through a financial analysis, it proves that the crisis was largely caused by the weak stability of the banks’ operations. Many banks did not employ sufficient care to insure the risks of their operations in case of a possible crisis, throwing an excessively large proportion of their highly liquid assets into circulation. This behavior left them virtually defenseless against a panic withdrawal of deposits. Similar trends were observed in many banks, but the surviving banks were on average more conservative than those that eventually closed during the crisis. By the mid-1890s, the financial stability of municipal banks had markedly improved, which was largely the result of tightening regulations.

DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2022.4.39037

Abstract: This article deals with the domestic interregional cash flows in the Russian Empire, which flowed in the opposite direction to the flows of commodities and services; thus, they can be used as proxies of the resource allocation and uneven development of regions. This study is based on the statistics of transfers between branches of the State Bank of the Russian Empire, and it conducts a network and geoinformation analysis for 1868, 1878, 1888, and 1898. The study proves that the top segment of the payment network, including ties with St. Petersburg and Moscow, was organized like a “double star” (i.e., a star-type network with centers in two capitals with a huge flow between them). From St. Petersburg, the largest proportion of payments for goods and services were dispersed throughout the country, while Moscow was primarily a nationwide center for buying goods or receiving payments. The metropolitan segment always serviced more than half of all settlements in the country. In the European part of the empire, the largest regional ties (beyond the capitals) looked like the flows in the “pre-railway” period (1868); then, the largest flows were redistributed along the principal railways (1878); later, the flows compressed during the depression (1888); and then, the intraregional (local) flows increased sharply due to the expansion of local railroads (1898). Large interregional flows in the Asian part of the empire were inferior in size to those in the European part; until the 1890s, their main axis was the ties between Tomsk and Irkutsk as well as access to Nizhny Novgorod in the European part (through Yekaterinburg from the 1870s onwards). In the 1890s, new segments appeared in the Far East, in the Steppe Region (Kazakhstan), and in Central Asia.

DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2021.4.37027

Abstract: The article examines the financial system of the Russian Empire in the form of money flows between the largest centers, implying that these flows were opposite to the flows of goods and services. The resource allocation pattern is thus revealed in aspects of the markets’ geography and hierarchy, which clarifies the capacity of the financial system to support economic growth. The source for this study is the statistics of the commercial transfers of the State Bank of the Russian Empire for 1898 (excluding treasury transfers), processed through network and geoinformation analysis. The study results show that the highest level of the payment network in the financial system topology of the Russian Empire was located around St. Petersburg and Moscow, which indicates a strong centralization of national money flows. To a great degree, Moscow was a nationwide wholesale center for the sale of goods and services, while St. Petersburg developed into the principal center for resource allocation throughout the country, implying various forms of investment in the economy. In such a centralized system, there was no great need for second-level interregional ties. For regional payment networks (the third level, around Odessa, Warsaw, Kiev, Riga, Baku, Nizhniy Novgorod, Kharkov, and Rostov-on-Don), closer and more intensive financial ties are revealed in the west, in the Odessa-Kiev-Warsaw “triangle”, which indicates a greater saturation of the western and southwestern regions with financial resources.

DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2021.1.35447

Abstract: The article analyzes money flows associated with agricultural products exports from Orlovskaya Guberniya which help the authors to trace the geography of incomes from interregional trade and conclude about the economic changes in this agrarian region. The source base is statistics of interregional bank transfers, loans against goods transported by railways and bills of exchange with the payment outside the guberniya. These statistics refer to the Oryol Commercial Bank and the Oryol and Yelets branches of the State Bank of the Russian Empire in 1868, 1878, 1888 and 1898. Network and spatial analysis are applied to these data. To interpret the results the authors use narrative sources telling about the economical state of Orlovskaya Gubernia. The study concludes that the Riga-Oryol railway that assigned the gubeniya the interregional trade status partially lost its importance in 1890 as far as exports from the Black Earth Region are concerned. This led to more diversified form of profits based on agricultural products trade. Big money flows from St. Petersburg and Moscow can be explained not only by payment for goods but also by broader ties of the guberniya with the capitals. The latter fact requires further study. Exports to the southern regions of European Russia were less important and those to the east were negligible. In the 1890s many new interregional railways stimulated sharp trade increase within the Central Black Earth Region, but this phenomenon of regional development has also been poorly studied.

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2019.6.31310

Abstract: The article is focused on the little-studied problem of how Russian commercial banks, private and state-run, credited agricultural production enterprises and agricultural trade in the second half of the 19th century. The dominant economic theory during those years did not consider agriculture to be part of the commercial banks' responsibility, and this industry's clientele affiliation is poorly reflected in banking statistics. However, the actual contribution of banks in agricultural regions met the urgent needs of the economy. The author analyzes banking practices for servicing wholesalers and landlords using archived and published material of the Oryol Commercial Bank (1872-1908) and the branches of the State Bank of the Russian Empire operating in the governorates of Central Chernozem, South and West of European Russia. The article calculates the turnover of the two banks' operations related to providing services to agriculturers for 1866-1901. Based on this data, the author reveals a protracted economic crisis in the Oryol Governorate in the 1880s, linked to a fall in agricultural prices, unfavorable railway tariffs, and a series of low crop yields. As a result, in the 1890s, the Oryol Commercial Bank had expanded its network of branches outside the Oryol Governorate. Sharp fluctuations in the 1880s weighted down operations of exporting goods, while operations related to local consumption remained relatively stable, which disproves the so-called concept of “hungry exports”. The policy of the State Bank, which set out to expand banking services to agriculture in the 1890s, must be evaluated through the fact that similar operations undertaken by a private bank were significantly more developed in the territory under examination.

DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2019.3.30739

Abstract: This article is another contribution to a discussion organized by the editorial board of “Historical Information Science” journal about the development trends in Russia regarding the use of information technologies in various fields of the humanities, but primarily in history. These are such non-identical academic fields as historical information science, digital humanities and digital history. However, historical information science is the principal topic of this article. The author is a professional historian specializing in research projects aimed at generating new historical knowledge and evaluates the opportunities modern electronic information environment provides. Supporting the diversity of creative and career paths of a historian as well as the experimental academic environment in which various “technological” fields of history develop, the author notes the paucity of historical studies recognized by a broad community of historians. 

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2018.4.25404

Abstract: In this article, the author examines on a micro-level the securities market in Moscow in the 1910s. The author's focus is placed on the banking segment of this market, for which the main source is the complete set of bookkeeping records on demand loans guaranteed by securities (on-call credit) in the Moscow Bank (Ryabushinskiy Bank) for 1912. The research objects of this study are the clients (369 people), their accounts and the notes on the purchase and sale of securities on these accounts (12,406 transactions). Based on the results of the author's cluster analysis, the clients of the Ryabushinsky Bank differed in their behavioral patterns on the securities market: some clients bought securities only to open an account; others engaged in long-term investments; some sold their securities. In addition to this, the author identified a large and homogeneous in behavior group of stock speculators of different proportions. The stock speculation involved a special technique for buying shares with the subsequent quick sale. The author was able to identify a figurehead among the major clients, on behalf of whom the bank owners were speculating, as well as the group of securities market professionals who had direct access to the Moscow stock exchange and were more likely to serve their own clientele. Thus, the market of bank credit and the securities market were closely intertwined in Moscow in the 1910s, and the author's research was also able to demonstrate that the Moscow intermediaries had direct access to the St. Petersburg securities market, which broadens our understanding of how the regional securities markets worked in the 1910s Russia.