Merchants' public activity in Tomsk province from 1880 to February 1917

The present article considers the need to study the history of public life based on aggregated, rather than individual, statistical data. The authors analyzed non-political activities of the merchants of Tomsk province drawing on the piece of work, titled "Chronicles of the public and political life in Tomsk Province from 1880 to February 1917" composed by Vasiliy P. Zinovyev in collaboration with Olga A. Kharus. Public activity of the province's, mainly, urban population, manifested itself mostly in the establishment of non-political associations for philanthropic, economic, professional, cultural and educational, as well as sobering and leisure purposes. An analysis of information about Siberian merchants in Chronicles and encyclopedic dictionaries showed that the main driving force behind organizational and financial activities of Tomsk province non-political organizations were entrepreneurs and, primarily, merchants. They often collaborated with philanthropic, cultural and educational, leisure organizations, and to a lesser extent, with economic and sobering-up movements, whereas they did not participate in professional associations almost at all. The number of non- political organizations established in Tomsk province cities was rising on the eve of the First World War. In the city of Tomsk it was these organizations that defined cities' public life.

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