Krott Ivan I.,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Omsk State Pedagogical University, Omsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Yesterday’s Outskirts as a Breakthrough Place: Agricultural Enterprise in Western Siberia in the late 19th – Early 20th Century
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2018-2-2
The article is based on archival and published sources, discusses the formation and development of agricultural entrepreneurship in Western Siberia in the late 19th – early 20th centuries, which became one of the markers of changing socio-spatial structures of the Russian empire after the construction of the Siberian railway. The author concludes that Siberia, as the “yesterday’s” outskirts, became a “modern place”. The turn to economic activity caused by the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and “demographic engineering” changed the daily life, behavior strategies of the representatives of the rural community of the region. Shopping, sales of various goods, the use of modern technology, became commonplace in the lives of rural residents of Siberia, who were in new conditions drawn into economic activity. It is also indicated that the new community of “rural” entrepreneurs acted in the region as a “market enzyme” changing the Siberian society, it was an “agent” of the socio-economic and cultural modernization of the Siberian space. At the same time, agricultural entrepreneurship itself experienced a powerful external influence from the host society. Rural entrepreneurs at the beginning of the 20th century played a significant role in the production and processing of agricultural products in the region; they were characterized by norms of behavior (ideas), economic strategies that differed from those existing within the culture of the pre-railway Siberian society.
How to cite: Krott I.I. Yesterday’s Outskirts as a Breakthrough Place: Agricultural Enterprise in Western Siberia in the late 19th – Early 20th Century // Historical Courier, 2018, # 2. Article 2. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2018/ISTKURIER-2018-2-02.pdf
Links: Issue 2 2018
Keywords: Siberian Railway; Trans-Siberian Railway; rural business enterprises; agricultural entrepreneurship; Western Siberia; the image of Siberia; the Siberian margin; agricultural colonization; modernization; socio-cultural changes; commercialization of the local community; rationalization of agriculture; agriculture; animal husbandry; agricultural machinery and tools; technological innovations