Authors

Discussion

The Peasants’ Land Bank was established in 1882 as a governmental institution, subordinated to the Ministry of Finance. Its main goal was to expand peasants’ land ownership by issuing them loans for the purchase of land under previously reached agreements with landowners, or directly selling them land plots from the Bank’s land fund (which was ultimately established by 1908). In general, it is claimed that the Peasants’ Land Bank had made a significant contribution to the expansion of peasants’ land ownership, by transferring them 10 million dessyatinas of land during almost four decades of its activity. However, despite the apparent success in the endowment of "all categories of the peasantry" with land, in relation to many rural actors (such as Jews, women, burghers, Bashkirs etc.), the Bank carried out extensive discriminatory practices.

My goal is to analyze what mechanisms the Peasants’ Land Bank used to discriminate those who worked on the land, but did not belong to the peasants’ soslovie, or belonged, but still could not receive banking services due to legislation restricting their rights, implemented through the Bank by the imperial government.

This will show how the state, with the help of the Peasants’ Land Bank and through extensive legislative work, increased the isolation of the state sector of land lending, reducing its effectiveness, creating an object for public criticism out of it, as well as performing scandalous and ruinous policies through it (for example, the mass purchase of Bashkir lands at a bargain price, which took place after the beginning of the Stolypin agrarian reform and "frozen" huge areas in the Bank's fund, which were never sold due to various banking errors). This study can shed light not only on another aspect of the colonial policy of the Russian Empire but also show how financial institutions, being under the control of the state, become a powerful political tool capable, in fact, of any restrictions that the state wants to impose.