Trade and merchants

Trading

One of the most important occupations of the population was trade, concentrated in the hands of merchants, trading peasants and Bukharians. The basis of the Siberian market in the second half of the 19th century was fair trade. All fairs and celebrations in Siberia were divided according to the nature of trade, seasonality and trade turnover. The largest in terms of trade turnover was the Ishim Nikolskaya Fair. The major fairs also included the seasonal Tyumen Vasilyevskaya (January 1 — February 1) and two Kurgan fairs — Dmitrievskaya (November 23−29) and Rozhdestvenskaya (December 21−28).

Among the rural fairs, Obdorskaya (January 1−20) in the village of Obdorsky in the Berezovsky district (county) of Tobolsk province should be highlighted. Obdorskaya Fair was the largest foreign trade fair. The indigenous inhabitants of Siberia brought skins, mammoth bone and fish to it, while Russians brought bread, butter, tea, sugar, colored cloth, shawls, copper and iron products.

With the construction of the Yekaterinburg — Tyumen railway, the turnover of fairs in the south of the Tobolsk province increased, such as Mikhailovskaya (November 1−8) in the village of Slobodchikovsky in the Tarsky district, on the contrary, fairs in the north of the province (Surgut, Tobolsk and Obdorskaya) lost their former importance. In the villages there were wine and trading shops, their owners were the most ordinary peasants. The shops sold fabrics, tobacco, tea, sugar, sweets, sausages, bagels and sweets. Shopkeepers often bought goods from peasant commercial activities and sold them to fellow villagers.

At the beginning of the twentieth century in the cities, the retail store gave way to the store. Without disappearing altogether, the shop trade passed into the category of petty trade. The store trade is expanding. Shops with a certain specialization appeared: perfumeries, ready-made dresses, watchmakers, jewelry, etc. A certain operating mode was set. There was no trading on Sundays and holidays.

During the years of Soviet power, the main trading organization in the village was the district consumer union. Rural consumer cooperatives were established in the system of the regional consumer union. In addition, there were wholesale bases, procurement offices, school shops and transport offices — these organizations were designed to serve trade in rural areas.

Peasants' trading shops

Shops were widely used in rural areas in the old days. An ordinary retail store was a separate building or a complex of several buildings designed for retail and small wholesale trade. In the shops, you could buy everything from food to agricultural equipment. Often the shops had their own specialization. There were manufactory, grocery, haberdashery, leather, wine shops and so on.

Initially, there was no strict working regime in the shops — they opened with the arrival of the owner from home and closed with his departure. Shops were also opened with the delivery of certain goods. Then the shopkeepers began to keep clerks for themselves as sellers. By the end of the 19th century, rules for the shop trade were developed. For example, the shop opened at 8 a.m. and closed from 6−7 p.m., on Sundays the shop opened 4 hours later, on days of processions the shops opened after their completion, etc.

The owners of rural trading shops were not only merchants, but also trading peasants and Bukharians. Rural shopkeepers knew all the peasants of their village and many of the surrounding ones, so goods were often sold on credit. The practice of working off for the taken goods was common (for example, for a piece of fabric for a skirt, a peasant woman had to work for a shopkeeper on mowing for two days).

Shipping and cargo transportation

In Siberia, in addition to the overland Moscow-Siberian highway, there was also a waterway along the rivers Nice, Ture, Tobol and Irtysh further north. Before the advent of steamships, sailing ships, barges sailed along Siberian rivers.

In the 1840s, the first steamships appeared. In 1843, merchants Poklevsky and Myasnikov built the first 20-horsepower steamship. Then, from 1844 to 1868, 19 steamships were built in Tyumen alone, with a total capacity of 1,290 steam /forces, which pulled barges with a capacity of 15 to 65 pounds.

The total number of steamships increased to 105 by 1893 (1854 — 3 steamships; 1860 — 10; 1870 — 22; 1875 -32; 1880 — 37; 1885 — 57; 1889 — 64; 1892 — 90; 1893 — 105).

In 1861, the question was raised about the need to build the Tyumen-Perm railway to connect Kama and Tours. This project has been discussed more than once in the Ministry of Railways. At the end of 1879, the Ministry received three projects: 1) carrying out the N. Tagil — Irbit railway through the Saldinsky and Alapaevsky plants; 2) N. Tagil — Irbit — Tobolsk; 3) Yekaterinburg — Tyumen. In December 1882, the Yekaterinburg-Tyumen line project was approved due to lower costs. The opening of the Yekaterinburg-Tyumen railway in 1885 stimulated the development of freight transportation by river transport. If in 1865−69 2.37 million pounds of cargo were transported along the rivers Ture, Tobol, Irtysh, Ob, in 1870−85 — 2.5 million pounds, then in 1886 — 6 million pounds, in 1893 — 16 million pounds.

The Cherepanovs

Family legend says that in the XVII-XVIII centuries, the Cherepanovs moved to Shartash near Yekaterinburg from the Vyatka province. The founder of Fok Cherepanov owned a candle factory. His sons Egor Fokich and Semyon Fokich Cherepanov lived with their families in the city of Shadrinsk. It is known that in 1809 Egor Cherepanov was a merchant of the 2nd guild and owned the following property in the city: "A hut with two halls, four upper rooms, two barns with a cellar, a stable, a bathhouse, a vegetable garden with a fence." According to the revision of 1816, it was indicated that Semyon Fokich Cherepanov had serfs. In 1829, he was elected mayor of Yekaterinburg. He also received permission to mine various ores and gold in the Vyatka and Tobolsk provinces.

The family of Egor Cherepanov, together with the family of merchant Ivan Fedorovich Mamontov (the father of the future philanthropist), moved from Shadrinsk to the city of Yalutorovsk. The Mamontov family lived in Yalutorovsk for only 10 years, but the Cherepanovs settled in Siberia for a long time. After some time, the family moved to the village of Severo-Pletnevo, Yalutorovsky district, where they organized a trade in grocery and manufactured goods.

This is how the village was described at the end of the XIX century: "The volost center, located on the shore of Lake Dubrovnoye, 167 versts from the county center. There were 77 households in the village, where 230 men and 227 women lived. There was a rich church, built according to the project of Yurginskaya, only without exterior plaster. The church was visible from the surrounding 6 villages. There was a ministerial three-grade school, a National library, a bakery store, two retail shops, two creameries and a government wine shop…

In 1914, the First World War began, in which almost all European countries participated. In response to Austria-Hungary's attack on Serbia, Russian Tsar Nicholas II announced a general mobilization, which was done on the night of July 31. Perhaps this year the elders Alexei Ksenofontovich and Viktor Ksenofontovich Cherepanov were called to war. Both got into elite units, the first in the Pavlovsky Life Guards Regiment, the second in the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment. Unfortunately, no memories have been preserved, only photographs remain… After that, the eldest son died in the millstones of the Civil War, and the Cherepanov shop was abandoned in the late 1839s.