Agrarian Business of Merchant Women of the Central Chernozem Region in Post-reform Period

Abstract

The article analyses the forms of the presence of merchant women in the agricultural business of the Central Chernozem region. After the emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, land became a commodity for all classes. At the time, merchant women showed increased entrepreneurial interest in the land market of the region. Merchant women invested in a variety of
types of land: arable land, vegetable gardens, forests, meadows, pastures, swamps, gardens, as well as land in the city that belonged to private individuals or the municipality. On the land outside the city merchants placed their industrial enterprises (brick, iron foundries, salt-melting plants), which carried an unfavorable environmental burden to the city. Many merchant
women owned large landed property. This allowed them to be large landowners of the Central Chernozem provinces. Land was an asset whose value was increasing every year. Merchant women performed numerous operations with the land: they bought (mainly from nobles and peasants), sold, took, leased and subleased, carried out numerous collateral operations. Representatives of all estate groups of provincial society became business partners for merchants in the agricultural business. It was a common phenomenon for merchants to build business relations in the agricultural business between members of the same merchant family (often between a wife and husband). Merchant women operated in the agricultural sector of the region,
relying on their own and borrowed funds of individuals and banking institutions (Moscow land banks, Kharkov land banks, Oryol land banks, Yelets City Public Bank, Oryol branch of the State Bank).

Keywords:

merchant women, post-reform period, the Russian Empire, Central Chernozem region, agricultural business, land market, land ownership, lease, pledge