Marina Konstantinovna Akol’zina,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Tambov State University named after G.R. Derzhavin, Tambov, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Leather Production in the Tambov Province in the Nineteenth Century (According to the Materials of the State Archive of the Tambov Region and the State Archive of Ancient Acts)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-5-5
The article is devoted to the problem of studying the formation and development of the leather industry in the Tambov province mainly in the first half of the 19th century. The relevance of this study is determined by the need to fill the source and historiographical gap in the study of entrepreneurship in this industry in the region in the pre-reform period. The scientific novelty of the work is connected with the consideration of leather industrial enterprises belonging to representatives of the merchant and peasant estates at the micro level. The study of the operating conditions of the leather industry allows us to more fully characterize the specifics of the formation of factory and artisanal entrepreneurship in this industry in the region in the pre-industrial period. The activity of entrepreneurs in the leather industry, their role in the process of modernization of agrarian society in the region has so far remained undisclosed in specifically historical manifestations. The issues of the development of the leather industry in the Tambov province have not yet become the subject of serious scientific analysis. There are no special historical works about the merchant industry of the Tambov province in the 19th century to the present time. Tambov Province was located at an important crossroads of trade and transport routes, there was an exit to the Vorona, Khoper and Don rivers through the Tsnu River. From the south, a path passed through the territory of the region, connecting the province with Moscow and the Oka-Volga cities: Kolomna, Ryazan, Murom, Nizhny Novgorod, as well as with Astrakhan and the Lower Don. Since the second half of the 18th century, Tambov province has become a center of transit trade in cattle, skins, bread, and beef fat. Ships returning from Rybinsk to Morshansk in the autumn (participating in the spring rafting of grain and cereals) brought, among other goods, chemicals for leather production. In the first half of the 19th century, there were many merchants and industrialists in the region, mainly owners of enterprises processing agricultural products, including tanneries. The raw materials for leather production were the carcasses of cattle, which were brought from the south in large batches of tens of thousands of heads. The cattle were walking along the Voronezh–Tambov highway. Previously, they were fattened in the Kushelevskaya steppe (Borisoglebsky Uyezd). The trade in cattle, tallow and skins brought huge profits. Among the meat merchants of the Tambov province, the merchants Platitsyns from Morshansk took the first place in terms of their turnover and income. Since the 1870s, the drive of cattle from the southeastern steppes to Morshansk gradually stopped, which led to the complete decline of the salting and tanning enterprises in the city. At that time, the cities located in the steppe south of the Tambov province – Kozlov, Lipetsk, and Usman, – remained the centers of leather production.
Publishing: 28/10/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 30/06/2023
How to cite: Akol’zina M.K. Leather Production in the Tambov Province in the Nineteenth Century (According to the Materials of the State Archive of the Tambov Region and the State Archive of Ancient Acts) // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 5 (31), pp. 84–100. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-5-05.pdf]
Links: Issue 5 2023
Keywords: industry; leather production; entrepreneurship; Tambov province in the 19th century; industrial specialization of the region; merchants; factory industry; handicraft production; small-scale industrial production