NEGUSTORI ALOGENI ÎN STRUCTURA ETNICĂ A BURGHEZIEI COMERCIALE DIN CHIȘINĂU (1812-1868)

Abstract

In the present article, on the basis of archival sources, the author analyses the ethnical composition of the commercial bourgeoisie from Chisinau in the first half of the 19th century. The author ascertains that the commercial bourgeoisie from Chisinau formed, as that from the whole Bessarabia, in a successive way, being enough inhomogeneous from the ethnical and social points of view. The implication of the imperial administration in the intricate and contradictious process of the genesis and constitution of the Bessarabian commercial bourgeoisie, by means of application, starting from January 1st 1831, of the guild structure and of the measures undertaken in commercial policy, deepens much more this inhomogeneity. Even though the privileges granted for a 10 year term to the merchants from Bessarabia, according to the Regulation of guilds, allowed implication in the commerce of all the social categories, without differentiation by ethnical appurtenance, the necessity to declare the commercial capitals, based upon which the traders should have been enlisted in the category of the commercial guilds, reduced mostly the possibilities of the Moldavians to enrol into the category of the guild merchants. Not being well structured and not composing an ethnical category nationally integrated, the commercial bourgeoisie from Chisinau borrowed and included, in an inevitable mode, in the course of years, allogeneic elements from within the communities of Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Russians, Ukrainians, etc., which would become the dominant commercial element. Even though the Jews held an important spot in the Bessarabian commerce, the main role among wholesale merchants of the first and the second guild accrued to the Greeks, “Christians” and Armenians. The Jews dealt, ordinarily, with petty trade, most of them being wanglers. Therefore, by promoting a colonial policy in Bessarabia, obviously protecting the dealings of its own bourgeoisie or of that invited in the region and stimulating it, by means of the granted advantages and even privileges, to assert and constitute itself as a social class, the tsarism distanced much more the incipient elements of the national commercial bourgeoisie (especially due to the commercial activity of the Jews) from the privileged and dominant allogeneic elements. Thus, by promoting such a policy, the tsarism hampered and stopped the process of formation and constitution of a national commercial bourgeoisie, superseding it from the possibility to exert economical functions, replacing it with allogeneic, mostly from within the newcomers to Bessarabia.