The Grain Market between the Reigns of Alexey Mikhailovich and Catherine the Great: Was there a ‘Price Revolution’?

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2021.3.618

Keywords:

Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, price revolution, monastery account books, time series, grain yield, grain prices

Abstract

The author of this article attempts to reveal and systematise archival data on grain prices in Russia between the 1650s and 1700s and analyse their dynamics by comparing them with data for the eighteenth century. The study is based on a wide range of archival sources from the funds of the RSAAA (RGADA), CSA of Moscow (TsGA of Moscow), DM NLR (OR RNB), and SFI CANNR (GKU TsANO). The data from these sources make it possible to construct time series describing rye and oat price dynamics in the northern and central non-black earth regions of Russia. The author substantiates the homogeneity and reliability of the data received and determines the real prices. The resulting numbers make the author doubt the “price revolution” in eighteenth-century Russia. Throughout the eighteenth century, the average real prices remained below the level of the 1660s and 1670s. Only in the 1790s did prices briefly exceed this level. Overall, the Russian grain market was characterised by long-term price fluctuations. The author aims to explain this dynamic by analysing supply and demand in the grain market. More particularly, for the first time in the historiography, the author examines the connection between Russian grain prices and yield in the second half of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is established that in most cases, the relationship between these indicators was direct: as grain yield increased, prices did too. The article explains this seeming paradox. The data published by the author help not only to estimate the impact of various factors on grain prices during the period in question, but also solve practical tasks regarding various price indicators in grain equivalents.

Author Biography

Arthur Mustafin

PhD (History), Junior Researcher, HSE University.

20, Myasnitskaya Str., 101000, Moscow, Russia.

ORCID 0000-0003-2053-4061

art-staf@yandex.ru

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Published

2021-09-29

How to Cite

Mustafin, A. (2021). The Grain Market between the Reigns of Alexey Mikhailovich and Catherine the Great: Was there a ‘Price Revolution’?. Quaestio Rossica, 9(3), 911–926. https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2021.3.618

Issue

Section

Modi studiorum