In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

220 Conclusion R The creation of the Mariinskii Canal and the port of Odessa closed a chapter in Russian history that had begun with the siege of Azov in 1695 and the founding of St. Petersburg eight years later. Together they finished essential components of Peter the Great’s agenda for making Russia a major European power. The Mariinskii Canal put an end to St. Petersburg’s dependence on the single, tortuous waterway through Vyshnii Volochek and solved the problem of supplying Russia’s capital with grain and flour, while Odessa enabled Russia to export unprecedented quantities of grain at low cost. By removing the constraints that geography had imposed on Russia’s grain market in the eighteenth century, the new canal and the new port cleared the way for future growth. By 1850 St. Petersburg would become the second-largest city on the continent of Europe after Paris, and the Russian Empire would become the single greatest supplier to the European cereals market. In contrast to the many accounts of imperial Russia after 1815 that emphasize failure and incompetence, this book has covered subjects that represent significant success. Indeed, it was Russia’s success in meeting its eighteenth-century goals that magnified its later faults and shortcomings in the eyes of its foreign and domestic critics. One obvious success was the transformation of St. Peters- coNclUsioN 221 burg from a minor Swedish outpost into a flourishing seaport and the capital of the Russian Empire with a population larger than that of Berlin or Amsterdam . Less obvious but nonetheless impressive was Russia’s success in supplying St. Petersburg with goods for export and flour with which to feed its rapidly increasing population. St. Petersburg grew and thrived because it could draw on resources from as far away as the Ural Mountains, the middle Volga, and the northern Ukraine. This book has emphasized the difficulties of provisioning St. Petersburg in order to put that achievement into perspective, but it should not fail to remind readers that despite continual apprehension and one or two close calls, the imperial government managed to cope with those difficulties. Once the supply system became fully operational in the late 1720s, St. Petersburg never ran out of flour, nor did it experience food riots of the sort that were common elsewhere in Europe. The imperial government’s success in supplying St. Petersburg with flour amid the crisis of 1786–1787 stands in sharp contrast to the ineffectiveness of later regimes when they were challenged by a famine in the Volga region in the 1890s and a bread shortage in St. Petersburg in February 1917. During the period this book covers, the government’s role in provisioning St. Petersburg was crucial but limited. Government agencies improved and managed the all-important waterways between the upper Volga and the Neva. The Provisions Chancellery provided flour for military personnel and their dependents . After 1775 the St. Petersburg granary provided security against a poor harvest, a brake on prices, and a safety net for the poor. The granary purchased cereals “at first hand” in the provinces, and the Provisions Chancellery advanced capital to grain merchants. Nonetheless, government agencies did not grow the grain St. Petersburg needed or mill it or transport it with their own personnel and resources, nor did they require Russians to deliver grain to St. Petersburg as an unpaid obligation, as Peter I had initially done. Instead, the imperial government relied on the self-interested participation of landowners, peasants, merchants , and laborers and the workings of the free market. The government’s indirect role in provisioning St. Petersburg was embodied in its many measures to support and assist commerce, private enterprise, and free markets. Those measures were intended to encourage economic activity and economic growth in general, and in general they were quite successful. In particular , they created a flourishing and sustainable cereals trade that connected flour merchants in the stalls and shops of St. Petersburg with landowners and peasants one or even two thousand kilometers away through price signals and other market mechanisms as opposed to exactions and commands. By 1815 Russia’s wholesale trade in cereals constituted a free market by any standard. It was not constrained by monopolies; it was not subject to internal tariffs; it was not taxed; and despite the protests of registered merchants, it was open to all categories of Russian subjects. But an advanced free-market economy requires more than freedom; it requires a supporting framework of laws, insti- [18.118...

Share