The socio-economic structure of peasant economy in transition from the forest steppe to the boreal forest natural area of Tomsk Province at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, with the construction of the Siberian railway, the small-scale peasant economy of Western Siberia, which earlier developed within the local, regional market, was intensely included in the all-Russian agro-market relations. This process occurred in a variety of natural and economic areas of the West Siberian Region at different times. In this regard, of considerable interest is the involvement of peasant economies, located in transition from the forest steppe to the boreal forest natural area of Tomsk Province and having a local suburban value, in the All-Russian agricultural market. The research of this involvement will clarify the features of the integration of purely local agricultural area into the Russian market of the 19th and 20th centuries, and determine the internal structure and the level of commodity-money development of the local agricultural economies. Farms of the steppe zone of the south of Western Siberia and of the left bank of the Ob first entered the All-Russian agricultural capitalist market. The right bank of the Ob, i.e. lands of Mariinsk and Tomsk counties of Tomsk Province entered the all-Russian market later. The economy of the peasant agricultural farms of the subtaiga (transition) area of Tomsk and Mariinsk uezds was set for meat and dairy farming, with a predominance of extensive grain farming. Farms of the region satisfied the local market in Tomsk and No-vonikolaevsk in the 1870-1890-ies. The study is based on the sources from typical homestead materials of Tomsk Governorate Agricultural Census of 1901 in Oyashinskaya volost of Tomsk uezd. The study showed the acceleration of the process of involving farms of the transition (from the forest to the taiga) zone in the late 19th and early 20th centuries into the market capitalist relations. But the process had not yet been completed by 1901. It allows to state firmly that, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the peasant economy of the transition zone of Tomsk and the Mariinsk uezds continued to operate in the conditions of the predominance of small-scale local market. Therefore, in all social groups of peasant households, the inner economic structure was that of small commodity. At the same time, the concentration of commodity production in small-scale wealthy farms at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries initiated the formation of the business areas of farming.

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