'The Radical Changes' Essay in the Tsarist Government Financial Policy and the Attempt to Create a Central Bank in Russia During the First World War

The paper, in the context of the Stolypin agrarian reform, examines the issue of appointing P.L. Bark Minister of Finance. The most important reason for the influential statesman, president of land management and agriculture A.V. Krivoshein, who was directly responsible for the implementation of agrarian policy, to promote P.L. Bark in every possible way was his desire to expand lending to the agricultural sector of the economy. At the same time, it is seen that the relationship between these state dignitaries could have hidden personal selfish motives. It is shown that the leaders of the world banking community of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, represented primarily by the Rothschild clan, paid commissions to representatives of the tsarist government when issuing loans to Russia. The authors do not exclude that similar practices took place during the First World War. The country's debt dependence on world bankers increased significantly, thanks to the “radical changes” of financial policy undertaken by P.L. Bark as Minister of Finance and supported by Nicholas II. Prohibition, which was implemented by P.L. Bark became one of the reasons for the emergence and significant increase in the state budget deficit. At the beginning of the 20th century Russia was the only one of the most developed countries in the world where there was no full-fledged Central Bank, as a formally national institution, but actually acting as a “bank of banks”, a conductor of the interests of bankers in monetary policy. This was one of the reasons for the emergence of the P.L. Bark’s project to transform the State Bank into the Central Bank. The revolution of 1917 prevented the implementation of this plan and the inclusion of Russia in the system of central banks of the world.