Evgeniya Vladislavovna Komleva,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“I Was and Remain on Trial”: M.K. Sidorov and the Regional Administration (1840s–1870s)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-6-7
The article, based on the biography of the outstanding Russian merchant M.K. Sidorov (1823–1887), characterizes the interaction of representatives of private capital with regional authorities in remote, inaccessible and sparsely populated territories of the Russian Empire: in Arkhangelsk province, Western and Eastern Siberia. About a dozen cases of conflicts between M.K. Sidorov and high-ranking officials have been revealed. His opinion on the goals of the administrative apparatus and the productive, from his point of view, attitude of the authorities to private (primarily merchant) initiative has been considered. The examples of M.K. Sidorov’s positive assessment of administrators, including N.P. Rumyantsev, Minister of Commerce of the first quarter of the 19th century, and Prince A.B. Lobanov-Rostovsky, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs in the 1870s, have been given. The presented material testifies not only to the personal qualities of a particular person – M.K. Sidorov, who undoubtedly had a difficult character, but also in general about how public-private partnership developed during the 1840s – 1870s – in many ways, a transitional period in the economic, cultural and socio-political development of Russia, when new trends in a variety of areas became more noticeable. The success of the development of the northern outskirts of the country was largely determined by how successfully it was possible to establish cooperation between regional authorities and private entrepreneurs, whose activities, ultimately, were aimed at achieving a common goal – the involvement of hard-to-reach territories with harsh climatic conditions into a single economic and socio-cultural space of the empire. However, the revealed facts from the life of M.K. Sidorov allow us to illustrate how the mutual interest of the management staff and merchants in combining efforts and capital for various reasons often led to serious conflicts, and sometimes to open confrontation.
Publishing: 28/12/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 07/10/2023
How to cite: Komleva E.V. “I Was and Remain on Trial”: M.K. Sidorov and the Regional Administration (1840s–1870s) // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 6 (32), pp. 95–106. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-6-07.pdf]
Links: Issue 6 2023
Keywords: public-private partnership; Russian North; Siberia; regional administration; merchants; M.K. Sidorov