The Regulation of Money Circulation by Partisans and Soviet Power in the Steppe Altai (September 1919 — March 1920)

Abstract

This paper focuses on a little-studied aspect of the financial history of the Civil War in Western Siberia. The author aims to highlight the financial and economic activities of the Steppe Altai partisans in autumn 1919 referring to published and newly discovered sources and show the influence of these actions, not always coordinated with the central government, on the subsequent policy of the Altai Provincial Revolutionary Committee. The article presents the interconnection between the financial and economic activities of partisans and Soviet power with the policies pursued by them as a whole. By comparing the forms of financial measures of the insurgents and the Soviet power, the comparative and historical method allows the author to track the dynamics in the economic sphere. The study shows the relationship between the issue considered in the article with the general historiography of the situation in the circulation of money in Siberia during the Civil War. The basis for the article is office sources published in the Soviet period, as well as unpublished sources introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time (found by the author in the State Archive of Altai Krai and the State Archive of Novosibirsk Region). Having considered the attempts of money-issue measures of the partisans and the Altai Provincial Revolutionary Committee, the author comes to the conclusion that the “partisan vision” of the functioning of the financial sphere and its management in the region continued to exist until the spring of 1920. The experience of the pro-Soviet and Soviet powers of the Steppe Altai once again confirmed that, regardless of the degree of legitimacy of the government and its political bias for solving financial problems, the key solution was always one way, i.e. the implementation of money emission.