Capitalism in Russia. The development of capitalism in Russia. What is capitalism: the definition of history

The conditions for the emergence of capitalism in Russia (an economic system based on private ownership and freedom of enterprise) were formed only in the second half of the XIX century. As in other countries, it did not appear from scratch. Signs of the birth of a completely new system can be traced back to the Petrine era, when, for example, on Demidov's Ural mines, in addition to serfs, civilian workers worked.

However, no capitalism was possible in Russia until the enslaved peasantry existed in a vast and poorly developed country. The release of the villagers from the slave position in relation to the landowners was 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 occur only after the stratification of the villagers into the bourgeoisie (the kulaks) and the proletariat (farm laborers). This process was natural, it took place in all countries. However, capitalism in Russia and all its attendant processes had many unique features. In the village they consisted in preserving 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 landed property. The collective followed an equal division into individual plots and a three-field system of arable land, in which one part was sown with winter crops, the second - with spring crops, and the third was left under steam.

Stratification of peasants

The community equalized the peasants and hindered capitalism in Russia, although it could not stop it. Part of the villagers was poor. This layer became one-horse peasants (for a full-fledged economy, two horses were required). These rural proletarians existed at the expense of earnings on the side. The community did not release such peasants into the city and prevented them from selling allotments that they formally belonged to. Free de jure status did not correspond to de facto status.

In the 1860s, when Russia embarked on the path of capitalist development, the community delayed this evolution because of its commitment to traditional farming. Peasants within the collective did not have to take the initiative and take risks for their own enterprise and the desire to improve agriculture. Compliance with the norm was acceptable and important for conservative villagers. This then the Russian peasants were very different from the western, already long-established farmers-entrepreneurs with their own commodity economy and the sale of products. The native inhabitants of the villages were collectivists, because of which the revolutionary ideas of socialism were so easily disseminated among them.

Agrarian capitalism

After 1861, landlord farms began to be reorganized into market methods. As in the case of the peasants, the process of gradual stratification was launched in this environment. Even many inert and inert landowners had to learn from their own experience what capitalism is. The definition of the history of this term necessarily includes the mention of civilian labor. However, in practice, such a configuration was only a cherished goal, and not the original state of affairs. At first, after the reform of the economy, the landowners kept on working off the peasants who, in return for their work, rented the land.

Capitalism in Russia took root gradually. The newly liberated peasants, who went to work for the former masters, labored with their implements and cattle. Thus, the landlords were not yet capitalists in the full sense of the word, since they did not invest their own capital in production. Then the working off can be considered an extension of the feudal relations that have died off.

The agricultural development of capitalism in Russia consisted in the transition from archaic natural to more efficient commodity production. However, in this process it is possible to note the old feudal features. The peasants of the new quenching sold only part of their products, consuming the remainder independently. Capitalist marketability assumed the opposite. All the products had to be sold, whereas the peasant's own family in this case bought their own food for money from their own profit. Nevertheless, already in the first decade of its development, the development of capitalism in Russia led to an increase in demand for dairy products and fresh vegetables in cities. Around them began to form new complexes of private truck farming and livestock.

Industrial Revolution

An important result, which led 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. Handicraft production and handicraft production developed.

For feudalism, the characteristic form of industry was the craft. Having become mass in new economic and social conditions, it has become an artisanal industry. At the same time, trade intermediaries appeared that connected consumers of goods and producers. These buyers exploited handicraftsmen and lived at the expense of commercial profits. They gradually formed an interlayer of industrial entrepreneurs.

In the 1860s, when Russia embarked on the path of capitalist development, the first stage of capitalist relations began-cooperation. At the same time, the process of a difficult transition to wage labor in the branches of large-scale industry was started, where until then only cheap and disenfranchised serf labor was used. The modernization of production was complicated by the disinterest of the owners. Industrial workers paid workers a small salary. Bad working conditions markedly radicalized the proletariat.

Joint Stock Companies

In total, capitalism in Russia in the 19th century experienced several waves of rapid industrial growth. One of them fell on 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 became embodied by numerous joint-stock companies. Figures of economic growth of the late XIX century speak for themselves. In the 1890's. The output of industrial products has doubled.

Any capitalism is going through a crisis when it degenerates into monopoly capitalism with bloated corporations that own a certain economic sphere. In Imperial Russia, this did not happen to the full, including thanks to a variety of foreign investments. Especially a lot of foreign money flowed into transport, metallurgy, oil and coal industry. It was at the end of the XIX century that foreigners switched to direct investments, whereas earlier they preferred loans. Such deposits were explained by greater profits and the desire of businessmen to earn.

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. On the contrary, the domestic economy willingly accepted injections from more developed countries. Just at this time in Europe, accumulated "surplus capital", which sought their own application in promising foreign markets.

Conditions for the export of Russian capital simply did not exist. He was hampered by numerous feudal vestiges, huge colonial outskirts, and relatively unimportant development of production. If capital was exported, it was mainly to the eastern countries. This was done in production form or in the form of loans. Significant funds settled in Manchuria and China (only about 750 million rubles). A popular sphere for them was transportation. About 600 million rubles were invested in the Sino-East Railway.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian industrial production was the fifth largest in the world. At the same time, the domestic economy was the first in terms of growth indicators. The beginning of capitalism in Russia was left behind, now the country hastened to catch up with the most advanced competitors. The empire occupied the leading position in terms of the concentration of production. Its large enterprises were places of work for more than half of the entire proletariat.

Character traits

The key features of capitalism in Russia can be described in several paragraphs. The monarchy was a country of the young market. Industrialization began here later than in other European countries. As a result, a significant number of industrial enterprises were built quite recently. These facilities are equipped with the most modern technology. In general, such enterprises belonged to large joint-stock companies. In the West, the situation remained exactly the opposite. European enterprises were smaller and their equipment less perfect.

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 not profitable to import foreign goods, but investing money was considered a profitable business. Therefore, in the 1890s. The subjects of other states in Russia owned about a third of the share capital.

A serious impetus to the development of private industry was provided by the construction of the Great Siberian Railway from European Russia to the Pacific Ocean. This project was a state project, but the raw materials for it were purchased from entrepreneurs. Transsib for years ahead provided many producers with orders for coal, metal and locomotives. On the example of the highway, one can see how the formation of capitalism in Russia created a market for various sectors of the economy.

Domestic market

Along with the growth in production, the market also grew. The main items of Russian exports were sugar and oil (Russia gave about half of the world's oil production). Massively imported machines. The share of imported cotton declined (the domestic economy began to focus on its Central Asian raw materials).

The folding of the domestic national market took place in conditions when the most important commodity was the labor force. The new distribution of income turned out to be in favor of industry and cities, however, it affected the interests of the village. Therefore, the agricultural areas lagged behind in the socio-economic development in comparison with the industrial regions. A similar pattern was characteristic of many young capitalist countries.

The development of the domestic market was promoted by all the same railways. In the years 1861-1885. 24 thousand kilometers of roads were built, which was about a third of the length of the tracks on the eve of the First World War. The central transport hub was Moscow. It was she who connected all the 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 the communication routes facilitated the connection of the margins and the center. New inter-regional trade ties arose.

It is significant that during the second half of the 19th century the production of bread remained approximately at the same level, while the industry was everywhere developing and increasing the output. Another unpleasant trend was anarchy in tariffs in the field of rail transportation. Their reform took place in 1889. Regulate the tariffs the government took. The new order greatly helped the development of the capitalist economy and the domestic market.

Contradictions

In the 1880s. In Russia monopoly capitalism began to take shape. His first sprouts appeared in the railway industry. In 1882, the "Union of Rail Factory Owners" appeared, and in 1884 - the "Union of Rail Fasteners" and the "Union of Bridge Building Plants".

The industrial bourgeoisie was forming. In its ranks included large traders, former tax farmers, tenants of estates. Many of them received financial incentives from the government. The merchant class was actively involved in capitalist entrepreneurship. The Jewish bourgeoisie has formed. Because of the Pale of Settlement, some outlying provinces of the southern and western bands of European Russia were overflowed with merchant's capital.

In 1860, the government established the State Bank. It became the foundation of a young credit system, without which the history of capitalism in Russia does not appear. It stimulated the accumulation of financial resources from entrepreneurs. However, there were also circumstances that seriously hampered the increase in capital. In the 1860s. Russia experienced a "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 nineteenth century with France in the era of Louis XIV, where the protection of the interests of domestic producers also created all conditions for the growth of manufactories.

Formation of the proletariat

Any signs of capitalism in Russia would not make any sense if the country did not have a full-fledged working class. The impetus for its appearance was the industrial revolution of 1850-1880-ies. The proletariat is the class of a mature capitalist society. His appearance was the most important event in the social life of the Russian Empire. The birth of the working masses changed the entire socio-political agenda of the vast country.

The Russian transition from feudalism to capitalism, and consequently, the emergence of the proletariat, were swift and radical processes. In their specifics, there were other unique features that arose from the preservation of the survivals of the old society, the estate system, the landowning landownership and the protective policy of the tsarist government.

In the period from 1865 to 1980, the proletariat's growth in the factory industry amounted to 65%, in the mining sector - 107%, in the railway industry - an incredible 686%. At the end of the XIX century there were about 10 million workers in the country. Without an analysis of the process of forming a new class, it is impossible to understand what capitalism is. The definition of history gives us a dry formulation, but behind the laconic words and figures were the fates of millions and millions of people who completely changed the way of their life. The labor migration of huge masses led to a significant increase in the urban population.

The workers existed in Russia before the industrial revolution. They were serfs who worked at manufactories, the most famous of which were the Urals enterprises. Nevertheless, the liberated peasants became the main source of growth for the new proletariat. The process of class transformation was often painful. The farmers were impoverished and deprived of their horses. The most extensive departure from the village was observed in the central provinces: Yaroslavl, Moscow, Vladimir, Tver. The least affected this process was the southern steppe regions. Also, the waste was small in Belarus and Lithuania, although it was there that there was agrarian overpopulation. Another paradox was that people from the outskirts, rather than from the nearest provinces, aspired to industrial centers. Many features of the formation of the proletariat in the country were noted in his works by Vladimir Lenin. "The development of capitalism in Russia", dedicated to this topic, was sent to the press in 1899.

The low wages of the proletarians were especially characteristic of small-scale industry. It was there that the most ruthless exploitation of workers was traced. The proletarians tried to change these difficult conditions with the help of a difficult re-qualification. The peasants engaged in small-scale fisheries became distant pastures. Among them, transitional economic forms of activity were common.

Modern Capitalism

The domestic stages of capitalism associated with the tsarist era can now be viewed only as something distant and infinitely divorced from the modern country. The reason for this was the October Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks who came to power began building socialism and communism. Capitalism, with its private property and freedom of enterprise, has remained in the past.

The revival of the market economy became possible only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The transition from planned to capitalist production was sharp, 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. In December, the liberalization of prices was carried out , which entailed hyperinflation. At the same time, voucher privatization began, which was necessary to transfer state property to private hands. In January 1992, the Freedom of Trade Decree opened new opportunities for entrepreneurship. Soon, the Soviet ruble was abolished, and the Russian national currency survived a default, a collapse of the exchange rate and a denomination. Passing through the storms of the 1990s, the country built a new capitalism. It is in his conditions that modern Russian society lives.