The thesis is the first complex research in which on the basis of comprehensive elaboration of scientific literature, study of normative-legal acts, previously unknown to historical-legal science archival documents and materials and other sources, historical-legal research of crediting of agricultural producers in the Ukrainian lands of Russian Empire in 1861-1917 years is analyzed.
The peculiarities of legal regulation of state crediting of agricultural producers, organizational and legal bases of their crediting by zemstvo self-government bodies of Dnieper Ukraine of the second half of the XIX - the beginning of the XX centuries are investigated in the thesis. Attention is paid to the organizational arrangement and legal support of joint-stock land banks, savings and loan companies as forms of lending to agricultural producers on the basis of private capital. The legal bases of activity of such establishments of small crediting of peasantry in the Russian empire as volost on rural public cash desks which fixed capital was formed at the expense of means of the corresponding community and rural banks are considered.
The evolution of scientific ideas on the impact on socio-economic relations and the legal status of agricultural producers in the Ukrainian lands in the Russian Empire of various types of credit is analyzed, periodization of these ideas and their significance for the development of conceptual components, substantive characteristics of the functional model of Ukraine is done.
The information potential of the source base for studying the legal regulation of agricultural credit in the Ukrainian lands of the Russian Empire in the second half of the XIX - early XX century is described, which testify to the various content and form, methods and ways of implementing legislation jurists; banking and other statistics, which were published on the initiative of members of the Committee of Congresses of representatives of long-term credit institutions, participants of congresses of representatives of land and other banks, employees of local zemstvos; a significant number of unpublished documents and materials from domestic and foreign archives.
The influence of the Peasant Land Bank on the growth of market prices for agricultural land in view of the results of lending to agricultural producers in the provinces of Dnieper Ukraine was confirmed, the differences in the practical application of the basic principles of their lending by the Peasant Land Bank to such producers are singled out.
It is proved that among the loans provided by the Statute of the State Bank of the Russian Empire, such as loans secured by goods that "are not easily damaged", as well as secured by securities, on special current accounts (e.g, state and joint-stock mortgage banks), credit zemstvos, credit through intermediaries, loans for collateral were of exceptional importance for agricultural producers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The dissertation introduces archival documents and materials, statistical and analytical data, thanks to which it was possible to form an empirical basis for reproducing the legal basis of lending to Ukrainian peasants-migrants from the Caucasus, Volga region, Southern Urals, Central Asia, Siberia and the Far East according to all kinds of restraint of resettlement movements; adoption of certain legislation on lending to migrants; attitude to resettlement as an important means of resolving the agrarian issue in the central regions of the country and a significant factor in settlement and economic development of vast virgin and taiga lands of the Urals).
The functional model of the Zemsky Bank of the Kherson Province as a peculiar, not typical for its time credit society was reproduced, which issued long-term (up to 36 years) loans only on the security of land, while the then credit and savings and loan companies provided loans for no more than 5 years on bail, including equipment (plows, drills, mowers, threshers, etc.); certain minimum amounts of land tenure were established, which provided for the right to borrow, while ordinary land (public or private) banks provided loans for land of any area.
The interest in improving the system of agricultural credit, which was expressed during the discussion at meetings of "Local Committees on the needs of the agricultural industry of Dnieper Ukraine", taken into account in current legislation and implemented in 1903-1904, as well as during the Stolypin agrarian reform.
