On the Question of the Trade Policy Imperatives of the Zemstvo Liberal Fronde of Northern Ukraine (60–80s of ХІХ cent.)

Abstract

The investigation is devoted to finding out the imperatives of the trade policy of the Zemstvo Liberal Party of Northern Ukraine in the 60-80s of the 19th century. The author came to the conclusion that trade policy issues occupied not the last place in the economic program of the Zemstvo liberal movement in the north of Left Bank Ukraine in the 60-80s of the 19th century and were an organic part of the social doctrine of the specified trend in the liberation movement in the Russian Empire. At the level of city self-government, liberal citizens initiated the elimination of taxation of the trade system in order to avoid the processes of cartelization of the industry and to stimulate healthy competition between producers of products, both in terms of quality and at the level of price parameters. In order to destroy corruption and monopolies in the trade sphere, the representatives of the liberal opposition insisted on diversifying the service market, by granting the right to engage in relevant business to everyone, not only interested representatives of the region's Jewish commerce. In the field of public trade and commerce, Zemstvo progressives took a distinctly flexible economic position, trying to eliminate the ground for the emergence of any financial speculation and to maximize the portfolio of commercial offers on the market. In the context of the conservative clerical policy of the Russian autocracy, members of the opposition liberal front of the Northern Left Bank defended the right of representatives of the trade system to hold traditional fairs and bazaars on a regular basis for the purpose of neutralizing the threat of breaking economic ties between the cities and the province and avoiding the loss of the market for products which could lead to an increase in prices for socially important and sensitive groups of goods. Representatives of Zemstvo liberalism in northern Ukraine defended the idea of the need to transfer the area of trade to municipal or state ownership, which would allow, from their point of view, to control pricing procedures.