ЕКАТЕРИНБУРГСКОЕ КУПЕЧЕСТВО: ПРОБЛЕМА ПРЕЕМСТВЕННОСТИ (ВТОРАЯ ПОЛОВИНА XIX — НАЧАЛО XX в.)

Abstract

The article analyzes the problem of succession in the ranks of Ekaterinburg’s merchant class and the variants of its solution used in the second half of the 19th — early 20th centuries. Succession is considered as a process of capital transfer by Ekaterinburg merchants to their heirs in order to continue the commercial and industrial affairs of the testator. The article discusses the methods of training merchants’ successors, including their use as employees and their inclusion in family companies as partners. Considerable attention is paid to studying the mechanism of inheritance transfer in emergency situations and conflicts that arose during inheritance process. The author explores the cases when the heirs on a female line (widows, daughters) acted as the successors of commercial and industrial affairs, the examples of involvement of sons-in-law in the management of family capital are also given. The article uses documents from the funds of the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk region (GASO), as well as the periodical press (newspapers “Permskie gubernskie vedomosti”, “Ekaterinburgskaya nedelya” and others). From archival materials, documents from the funds of the Ekaterinburg City Duma and the Ekaterinburg District Court are mainly used. The following conclusions are made. The procedure of transferring the inheritance by Ekaterinburg merchants to their successors was a complex and ambiguous process. Not all Ekaterinburg merchants managed to solve the problem of succession: for this reason, a number of family firms existed only during one generation. At the same time, many representatives of the city merchant class managed to solve the problem of succession by various ways, at least for 2–3 generations. The instability of merchant capital was largely a consequence of state policy, and to a lesser extent, the result of the unresolved problem of succession.