Defense Contracts as a Factor of Intensification of the Financial Capital Formation Process on the Eve and During World War I (on the Example of the Joint-Stock Company of Bryansk Factory and the Russo-Asiatic Bank)

Abstract

This article discusses the role of defense contracts as a factor of intensification of the financial capital formation process in Russia on the eve and during World War I. The author made an attempt to analyze how the activities of private enterprises carried out for the Ministry of War influenced their merging with commercial banks on the example of the Joint-Stock Company of Bryansk Factory and the Russo-Asiatic Bank. The switch of leading Russian metal-working and metallurgical corporations to military production was caused by objective reasons, since it allowed them to increase profitability and avoid many economic risks. The profits obtained as a result of the fulfillment of government contracts stimulated the banking sector to invest more actively in the industrial complex, which led to merging banks with industrial firms and to the creation of monopoly concerns of a higher level. In the case of the Bryansk Factory Company and the Russo-Asiatic Bank, it was a matter of large-scale production of army products and of particularly large operations in the Russian market. Among other things, the activities of these companies were closely associated with the foreign capital represented by French financial industrial groups. This study is based on such historical sources as documentary materials from the archives in St. Petersburg and Moscow.