Prices for consumer products in Tomsk in 1862-1917

The article examines the prices of basic consumer products in Tomsk from 1862 to 1917. It is important part of the work to determine the level of life of citizens and to identify trends of the development of market relations in Siberia. The author presents statistics on the prices of basic consumer products in one of the largest provincial centers of Russia, Tomsk, in the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. He does so on the basis of information from Siberian newspapers, information from the Tomsk City Council and materials of the Tomsk Mining Department, and gives its preliminary analysis. The author summarizes the information in seven tables, five of which are informational and two are analytical. The information tables systematize the price reports in the official newspaper Tomskiye gubernskiye vedomosti [Tomsk Provincial Sheets] from 1862 to 1870 (Table 1), in the certificates of the Tomsk City Council from 1871 to 1894 (Table 2) and in Siberian private newspapers from 1877 to 1908 (Tables 3-4). Table 5 is a summary of prices for the main commodities in the Tomsk markets for 1880-1917. Table 6 shows the dynamics of prices in Tomsk for rye and wheat flour for 1840-1919. Table 7 shows the calculations of the price dynamics for 17 commodities for 1880-1917: rye-flour, wheat-flour, the finest wheat flour, meat, butter, vegetable oil, kitchen salt, fresh-water fish, sugar, tea pressed in form of cakes, groats (buck-wheat, peeled barley, millet), peasant overcoats, boots, soap, tallow-candle, birch-tree fire-woods, petroleum. On the analysis of the received information, the author came to a conclusion that the Tomsk market was isolated until the 1880s, then prices began to grow slowly with the strengthening of ties with the market of European Russia in connection with the development of ship navigation and railway communication. The First World War until the second half of 1915 did not have a significant impact on the Tomsk market. From the second half of 1915 prices began to rise, in 1917 they went into a galloping inflation. From 1912 to 1917 prices rose by 4.2 times. Prices for flour increased by 16 times in comparison with the pre-war times in 1918, and by more than 80 times in 1919. The author believes that in the early twentieth century Tomsk was included in the all-Russian market of consumer goods. The land of Tomsk region at this time brought forth much rye and wheat. The author concludes that the government did not make a full use of the resources of Tomsk region due to the collapse of the transport system and ineffective activities of the authorities during the First World War.

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