Monopolistic Trends in the Crimea and Donbas Salt Industries in the Late XIXth to Early XXth Centuries

Author

Zabudkova Olha – an assistant lecturer at History Subdepartment of the Taras Shevchenko Luhansk National University (Starobilsk)

Monopolistic Trends in the Crimea and Donbas Salt Industries in the Late XIXth to Early XXth Centuries

Abstract

The article considers separate aspects of salt industry history in Ukraine at the turn of the XIXth and XXth centuries, particularly the trends toward making monopoly agreements in the Crimea and Donbas salt industries.

The progress of the industry took place under conditions of market economy formation, which permits drawing parallels with the phenomena typical of modern Ukraine’s industry.

In the early XXth century, saltworks located in Ukrainian governorates yielded more than half of salt output in the Russian empire. Every existing kind of common salt (lake salt, evaporated salt, rock salt) was mined there. From 1904 to 1913, yearly output of lake salt (salt that is normally accumulated in salt lakes) in the Black Sea – Azov Sea region accounted for 19.8 % of total common salt production. In the same period, salt evaporation on slat lakes near to Slovyansk in Kharkiv Governorate was carried out at 36 salterns (24.4 % of all-imperial output). The yield of rock salt in mines of Bakhmut District (Katerynoslav Governorate) in 1913 constituted 90 % of total salt production of the empire.

Rivalry in the industry has conduced to the merging of various groups of enterprisers and syndicates. In the mid-1910s, there were three monopoly agreements on every salt variety in the Crimea and Donbas salt industries. In 1906, the Southern Salt Syndicate was initiated; it was an interdistrict association and consolidated local unions of Crimean and Donbas salt industrialists. In 1908, periodicals notified about salt industry associations of Astrakhan, Perm, Crimean, and Donbas areas. With the lapse of time, representatives of the Crimean and Donbas salt industries succeeded, by dint of setting the maximum lowest prices for inflicting losses to a competitor, in achieving almost absolute exclusion of Astrakhan salt from the empire’s north-western and central governorates, as well as considerable reduction of its influence even in the Volga Region governorates.

In April 1912, a 1906 agreement on salt distribution by Crimean and Donbas salt industrialists expired. The decrease of the Crimean-Donbas syndicate significance has led to consolidation of local associations. It concerned mostly to the Donets Basin, which prior to World War I has become the empire’s leader of salt-mining. Salterns of the Crimea have been progressively influenced by the Bakhmut syndicate. This entailed swift drop in prices at the point of their unprofitability. Under conditions of contemporary standing of salt industry and market demands for salt, monopolistic associations in the field, on the eve of World War I, were unsteady and short-lived.

Keywords

monopoly, syndicate, salt industry, Crimea, Donbas.

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