Commerce at the Nizhnii Novgorod Fair

Although permanent trade was becoming by the mid-nineteenth century an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in the industrialising regions of central Russia,1 the Nizhnii Novgorod Fair retained its importance as a major centre of Russian commerce. The fair’s crucial geographical position and the tremendous diversity of its trade seemed to ensure, at least temporarily, that it would prosper. During the years following the transfer to Nizhnii and, indeed, through the 1880s, the fair’s already enormous turnover continued to grow. However, it was during this very period of expansion that the stage was being set for the fair’s ultimate decline. As economic modernisation continued on the national level, as the railway network spread, as communications penetrated the provinces, as commercial credit became more readily available and as permanent commercial centres sprang up, the Nizhnii Novgorod Fair began to lose its relative significance as a national market. The fair’s decline, however, was not a simple, clear-cut occurrence, but a long, complicated and sometimes ambiguous process.