Large agribusiness of the Ufa Province (the second half of XIX—early XX century)[Крупный Агробизнес Уфимской Губернии (Вторая Половина Xix—Начало Xx Века)]

In the second half of XIX—early XX century in the Ufa Province there already was (as part of the mixed regional economy) large agribusiness, at first only in the form of nobles’ lat‑ ifundia. Later merchants (urban entrepreneurs) started active investments in the agricul‑ tural production, although until the end of the empire the merchants’ agricultural enter‑ prises had not surpassed in scale those of the nobles. At the same time, both peasant farms and large enterprises of rural entrepreneurs developed rapidly. The article con‑ siders the general statistical information on landlord, merchant and large peasant (vir‑ tually farmers) enterprises of American type, and presents some examples of the most outstanding agricultural enterprises of landlords, merchants and peasants. The author be‑ lieves that after the abolition of serfdom there were two obvious tendencies in rural Rus‑ sia—on the one hand, the collapsing landlord economy, on the other hand, quite success‑ ful integration of a number of large landed estates into capitalist agricultural production together with even more impressive growth of merchant and large peasant capitalist agri‑ cultural enterprises. All this indicates a significant potential for the development of large capitalist agricultural enterprises in post-reform Russia, which the author considers on the example of the Ufa Province to re-evaluate the prospects of the large agricultural pro‑ duction in the Russian history.