Rogatko S.A. The Cooperative Movement in Russian Bread-Making during the Second Half of the 19th – Beginning of the 20th Centuries

Abstract: The subject of this research is the detection of the historical regularity in the origin and development of the cooperative movement in Russia during the second half of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. The author investigates the secondary aspects and factors that in one way or another influenced the appearance and development of cooperative bread-making in the structures of the cooperative organizations in Russia during the studied period. The research object can be considered to be, above all, the legal and social aspects, the interaction between authorities, cooperative organizations, their direction, members, as well as the statistics of bread-making. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the financial and social mechanisms of the internal cooperative interaction, and the competitive struggle of cooperative bread-making with private entrepreneurs. A comparative analysis is presented between bread-making in various forms and types of cooperations. The aim of this study is to reveal the main historical preconditions in the origin and the main development tendencies of cooperative bread-making. The study’s methodological base consists of general scientific principles and also main historical research methods. Within the framework of the former the use of the systematic and dialectical approaches is particularly important. Along with the indicated methods, the author also uses the problematic, chronological, analytical, historical-statistical and comparative methods applied to the cooperative movement in post-reform Russia. The main conclusions of the conducted research are the author’s assertions that cooperative bread-making in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century clearly yielded to that of the private producers. It was a peculiar response to the consumer cooperation of industrial workers, philistines, clerks, pensioners and the poor strata of the population on their social position and desire under all circumstances to have cheap and quality bread in their regular diet. Cooperative bread-making did not have a particular influence on the economic and technological aspects of the bread-making industry’s development in Russia. The author’s particular contribution to the study of this topic is based on the fact that for the first time in historiography a complete historical analysis of the named topic is given for the indicated period. The work’s novelty consists in the formulation by the author of a new methodological approach to the examined topic: from elucidating the first attempts at organizing cooperative bread-making in the 1860s to the elaboration of a regular system for bread-making in the cooperative organization at the beginning of the 20th century.  

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