Zhylenkova I. Foreign Trade in Ukrainian Provinces of the Russian Empire in Context of Agro-Industrial Capital Interests (the 1890s - 1914)

The dissertation is based on a wide range of archived and published sources taken into account the existing theoretical scientific knowledge. The specificity of the foreign trade in the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire in the context of the agro-industrial capital interests during the late XIX - early XX centuries has been studied; the dynamics and tendencies in the agro-industrial capital development have been analysed; the dependence of public regulation of foreign economic activities on the local economy and the priorities of the regional commercial activities have been determined. It has been stated that Ukraine’s participation in the world economy was accompanied by domestic producers’ considerable material losses because of the technical backwardness of the Russian Empire. It has been found out that the raw materials and the products of domestic industries were not competitive on the European countries markets and were exported in limited quantities, and eventually they were used only on the domestic market of the Empire. It has been found out that the dynamics of foreign trade activities in the Ukrainian provinces went beyond the merely protectionist government’s strategy to improve profitability, because the interests of the agro-industrial capital’s export – import policy had to be more developed in the framework of the priorities of the business community. The period of 1895 – 1914 was marked by the presence of a whole range of general factors affecting foreign trade activities, which included both traditional: geographic position, rich natural resources, and public policy; and new ones: rise in entrepreneurship, current situation on the world market, emergence and expansion of new type transportation (mainly via railways), increased influence of various public organizations on both exports and imports, also agro-industrial capital modernization.