The formation and development of the chemical industry in the Urals provinces of the Russian Empire in the context of the modernization of Witte-Stolypin (1879-1912)

• Published in: Genesis: исторические исследования no. 8; pp. 52 - 73
• Main Author: Umanskii, Leonid Alekseevich
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.08.2025
• ISSN: 2409-868X; 2409-868X
• DOI: 10.25136/2409-868X.2025.8.71940

The object of the study is the socio-economic development of the Russian Empire in the era of modernization of Witte-Stolypin. The subject of the study is the formation and development of the chemical industry sector in four Ural provinces (according to P. Semenov's classification used by contemporaries, among others) – Vyatka, Orenburg, Perm and Ufa – in the context of modernization processes in the last third of the XIX – early XX centuries through the prism of three basic indicators – the number of factories, the amount of annual output and the number of employed workers, from which a proxy indicator of labor productivity is also derived. The corpus of sources of work is based on indexes of factories and plants of the Russian Empire and industrial censuses, supplemented by appendices to the governor's reports on the analyzed provinces and a number of other materials. The research is based on historical-genetic, comparative (synchronous and diachronic) and quantitative methods, including those using computer technology. The main conclusions of the study are the impossibility of applying the economic zoning of P. Semenov to the chemical industry and, accordingly, the impossibility of combining the four provinces under consideration into a single Ural group. In two provinces – Orenburg and Ufa – the chemical industry is poorly represented, unlike the other two – Vyatka and Perm provinces, which are proposed to be merged into the Kama group, due to the location of key enterprises on this river, with the possibility of further inclusion of the Kazan province. The dynamics of the development of the chemical industry in the Kama provinces was largely determined by the dynamics of specific institutions – Lyubimov-Solvay and Ushkov, who play a decisive role in the formation of the industry in the region; therefore, it turns out to be problematic to talk about the correspondence of the dynamics of the development of the chemical industry in the declared period to the models used, assuming less dependence on factors that can influence the activities of individual institutions.