The Patriotic War of 1812 and the Tomsk Merchants

The article tells about the processes at the beginning of the 19 century that adversely effected social climate of the society, that were deprived it of necessary energy or conditions for energy implementation. Applied to feudal-serf system this is reflected in the change of the structure of society in the direction of increasing the military class and of reducing the manufacturing classes. The last one was merchants, in the absence of the national bourgeoisie. At this time merchants had great difficulties. On the one hand the government pressed on them with disproportionate tax, on the other hand it enlist top merchants by external attributes of nobility which most of them were not going to use. For the Siberian merchants early 19th century was a time of severe crisis. The main causes of the crisis were the reasons generated by the All-Russian economic and political situation. The Patriotic War of 1812 foreign campaigns of the Russian army required the country of all forces. The necessary means for the war came from the merchants too, who were forced to pay up to 5% of the stated capital and also had to bear the burden of additional local taxes. After the war there had been deepening crisis of the feudal system of economy and socio-economic development of Russia needed to change conditions. Among the local problems we could refer merchants' reorientation from government contracts, supplies and farming to domestic and foreign trade, to fisheries and Industry. The process was very painful and led to bankruptcy of old merchant dynasties of Western Siberia, because their business base was narrow and unreliable. Nevertheless foreign trade rights and other caste privileges forced businessmen of the first half of the 19th century to great expense to be numbered with the first guild. As a result the number of merchants strongly decreased. The patriotic war brought the patriotic enthusiasm and large donations were made, which concerned only the Moscow merchants, and Tomsk merchants had made only fixed extra tax on stated capital.

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