Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2016 number

The article is devoted to one of the key challenges facing the Russian government from the very beginning of the development of Siberia - the food supply of hard-to-reach Northern territories of the region. It is shown how the state tried to solve this problem drawing on administrative resources and mobilizing private capital. While in the first half of the XVII century the bulk of the grain was delivered to Siberia from behind the Urals, later, with the increasing number of population, Siberia experienced progressively the shortage of bread. For its elimination the local agricultural areas were established whose products were supplied to the local population including the inhabitants of the North with its non-arable marginal lands. At the same time, the authorities made numerous but unsuccessful attempts to spread agriculture in such harsh places as Kamchatka, Yakutia, Turukhansk region and Berezov uyezd. Along with the state some private traders also took part in supplying bread to the Northern areas. However, their activities sometimes provoked dissatisfaction of the local authorities. At the end of the XVIII - first quarter of the XIX century a number of resolutions introduced the principle of freedom of grain trade in the North, but the state continued to control the supply of the Northern regions. Special attention is paid to such an important though understudied institution as reserve state-owned grain stores. Their widespread network was intended under any circumstances to prevent famine among the northerners. By the example of Turukhansk region the author considers the activities of the reserve state-owned grain stores that helped the local people over lean periods due to the declining fishery yields and hunting. It has been revealed that the reserve stores did not bring income, so the local authorities tried to decrease the maintenance costs, transferring part of its responsibilities to merchants and traders from other social strata on a free-of-charge basis.