Customs and Tariff Protection in Russia in the XVII - Early XVIII Century

Abstract

The article reveals an important issues of the economic history of Russia in the 17th - early 18th centuries. The authors analyze the government’s trade policy to limit the economic activity of foreign merchants in the Russian market. They also focus on the causes, circumstances and peculiarities of the overgrowth of trade protectionism into the policy of industrial protectionism, clarify the importance of customs regulation as the main tool for suppressing the activity of foreigners in the Russian domestic market. Believing that such a policy was in the interests of the treasury, the leaders of the Russian merchant class and the Russian Orthodox Church, the authors emphasize its differences from Western European mercantilism, which attached special importance to the development of export industries of manufacturing industry and the export of finished products to other countries. In their view, the customs reform of the mid-17th century did not actually pursue any patronizing goals for the development of domestic production. Defending the thesis about the establishment of large-scale industry in Russia in the first quarter of the 18th century, they assign the main role to the customs and tariff policy in updating the country’s production apparatus. The authors assert that in its content the elements of industrial protectionism, which, in the final analysis, determined the content of the tariff of 1724, became more and more confident.