State regulation of trade and supply in the eastern territories of the “White” Russia during the Civil War

Many works have been written about the White Movement, but the problems of the state regulation of trade and supply remain poorly understood to date. The author aims to investigate the legislative and administrative activities of the anti-Soviet governments of the eastern regions of the former Russian Empire in the trade and distribution sphere and to determine its impact on the viability of the “White” Siberia as a state entity. In the course of the study, regulatory and legal sources, archival documents, newspaper publications, scientific articles and works of participants of the civil war were used. The research methods were: dialectical, historical, structural-functional, and other general scientific research methods. In addition, when considering legislative acts, special legal methods - formal legal and comparative legal - were used. The state of the market in the conditions of a liberal government course and the the state's non-interference in the sphere of trade and supply at the beginning of the Civil War were analyzed. The issues related to the further change in the legal policy of the authorities, who, in the conditions of inflation and shortage of food and industrial goods, had to distance themselves from the principle of “market freedom” and proceed to state regulation of the trade and distribution sphere, were investigated. Legislative regulations and administrative practices of anti-Soviet governments, as well as public administration issues related to the regulation of the activities of cooperatives, their associations, military-industrial committees and private entrepreneurs, were studied and analyzed. The initial attempt to conduct a policy in the field of trade and supply within the framework of “market freedom” did not justify itself, and the anti-Soviet governments were forced to begin state regulation of this sphere of the economy. Legislative and administrative activities in the “White” Siberia were based on the normative documents of the tsarist and provisional governments, in which minor changes were made related to the then current market conditions, but in the conditions of the crisis state of economic life, they could not be fully implemented. State regulation of the cooperative movement turned out to be ineffective. Financing of cooperative activities left much to be desired, the working capital of grassroots cooperatives did not provide the possibility of normal purchase of consumer goods. Private entrepreneurs, receiving government orders and loans from the government, used them to satisfy their speculative interests. The contribution of the military-industrial committees to the establishment of trade and supply did not meet the expectations of the government, because, despite the non-commercial nature of their activities established by law, they mainly pursued their own selfish goals. In general, state regulation of trade and supply did not meet the crisis conditions and could not ensure the viability of the “White” Siberia.

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