Series: Law
Vladislav V. Nevlev
Belgorod University of
Cooperation, Economics and Law
Belgorod, Russian Federation
HISTORICAL NATURE OF THE LEGAL
FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN CREDIT COOPERATION
Abstract.
The article considers historical conditions and legal features of the
formation and development of the Russian credit cooperation in the
pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. The causes and consequences
of its liquidation, features of the revival of consumer credit cooperation in
modern Russia are described. The constitutional-legal nature and peculiarities
of conducting the credit legislative policy are investigated.
Key
words: credit cooperation, socialist ideals, consumer cooperatives, legal
regulation, cooperative legislation.
I.
Introduction. Separate problems of legal
regulation of credit consumer cooperation in Russian history were touched upon
in the works of K.I. Vakhitova, O.A. Lipich, A.P. Makarenko, A.S. Merkulova,
I.A. Ryapukhina, L.E. Teplova, L.V. Ukolova, L.E. Faina and others. There are
publications of the author in this direction [1, 2]. Nevertheless, it should be
noted the absence of complex legal works dedicated to the study of legislative
regulation of the institutions of credit consumer cooperation at various stages
of Russia's historical development.
In the modern legal and cooperative theory there
are several definitions of credit cooperation (O.A. Lipich, A.P. Makarenko,
I.A. Ryapukhin, L.E. Teplova and others). Here you can find how this activities
are interpreted in modern conditions L.V. Ukolova. "Credit cooperatives
can be seen as a form of credit institutions with the active participation of
the population, as the necessary financial basis of cooperatives, small
enterprises, fishing cooperatives, peasant (farmer) and other entrepreneurs as
a means of cheap and effective loan for the development of productive forces
and commodity-money relations "[3. P. 111].
II. Problem statement. You can agree or not with the
contents of the definition, but since the inception of credit cooperation in
Russia and currently its purpose to help the poor has not changed. Let us trace
the evolution of the social and legal development of credit cooperation on the
historical path of our country. To this end, we distinguish three conditional
periods of development of Russian credit cooperation: pre-revolutionary,
pre-war, modern.
III. Results. The first Russian credit partnership was
organized in 1865 by the type of German credit cooperatives. It appeared in the
village Rozhdestvenskoe, Vetluzhsky province Kostroma region on the initiative
Luginin brothers - Vladimir and Svyatoslav, when the economic participation of
their father - the landlord F.N. Luginin. The charter of the first credit
cooperative was drawn up on the model of the Schulze-Delicheskogo savings and
savings partnership. October 22, 1865, the charter was approved and entered
into force, and from August 1, 1866, the Rozhdestvenskoe Partnership began
work.
Since the establishment of the Rozhdestvenskoe
Partnership and until the end of 1870, only 12 credit cooperatives operated in
Russia. Conditions for the normal development of credit cooperation in Russia
was in these years, and once zemstvoes loans began to decline, respectively,
began to decline and the number of newly opened savings and loan associations.
Setbacks in the development of credit cooperation in this period,
representatives of the intelligentsia and the Zemstvos explains the
difficulties of a new business, the attitude of the peasants who are not
accustomed to self-employment as a consequence of a long bondage. Incompetent
leadership of partnerships and the lack of legal control over their activities
led to the decline of the cooperative movement in the late 70's - early 90's of
the XIX century. Work on the creation of savings and savings cooperatives has
practically ceased.
In the mid-90's of the XIX century. In the
economic life of Russia, profound changes have taken place. The country was
covered by a network of railways that involved the peasantry in the all-Russian trade turnover, industrial
production intensively developed. New forms of economic relations required the
availability of working capital for the needs of small peasants, and therefore,
the need for a village in loans was enormous.
The period of revival in the sphere of credit cooperation, which began
in 1895, was largely due to the emergence of credit partnerships - a new legal
form providing short-term small loans through loans from various institutions
and donations. For several years the cooperation not only survived the rise and
was enriched by a new form - credit partnerships, but also united all those
interested in its further development.
Credit cooperation gained legal regulation only in 1872, when the
Ministry of Finance of the Russian Empire developed the Model Statute of the
Savings and Loan Association, subsequently approved by the Cabinet of
Ministers. On June 1, 1895, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted the Regulations on
Small Credit Institutions, supplemented in 1896 with the Model Charter of the
Credit Partnership [4]. This provision was the first in Russia special
regulatory legal act regulating the activities of credit institutions.
Since 1905, there has been a rapid growth of credit partnerships, and in
the period between the two revolutions, their number has grown almost 12 times,
and the number of members, almost 35 times. On October 1, 1917. in Russia there
were 12,114 credit partnerships with 8,162 thousand members and 4,363 savings
and savings companies with 2,315,000 households. The growth and strengthening
of primary credit partnerships, the expansion of their independence and
self-reliance led to the union in unions that provided organizational and
instructional and financial support to cooperatives and their management.
Credit unions were allowed to engage in banking operations, unions
received the right to receive deposits and issue loans. To conduct intermediary
operations, they were allowed to form special capitals. By the end of 1914,
there were 10 unions operating in Russia, and by October 1917 the number of
credit unions had already reached 136.
The merger of credit cooperation did not end with the creation of a
union form, but led to the establishment of a single financial center. They
became the Moscow People's Bank (MNB), which opened operations on May 9, 1912
with a fixed capital of 1 million gold rubles. The balance of credit
cooperation by the beginning of 1917 reached almost 1 billion gold rubles,
which amounted to about 20% of the amount of deposits in savings banks. And in
40 out of 85 provinces, deposit operations in credit cooperatives were more
successful than in state savings banks.
According to the requirements of the times, from 1915 the Special
Commission under the Government began the drafting of the General Cooperative
Law, which was adopted by the State Duma on March 20, 1916. However, it came
into force with minor amendments only after the February Revolution of March
20, 1917 [5].
Being a market-type organization, credit cooperation then accumulated
the most able-bodied, economically initiative part of the peasantry. The
functioning of credit cooperation significantly increased the efficiency of
farming in the countryside, largely neutralized usurious credit, restrained the
process of stratification. On the eve of the October Revolution, credit
cooperation, which united about half of the peasant farms in Russia, and
developed, in addition to loan, a wide range of commodity and production
activities, turned into a powerful lever for the development of market
relations in the countryside.
After making the revolution and becoming the ruling party, the
Bolsheviks did not have a clear program of action in relation to credit
cooperation. In the framework of the policy of transforming capitalist
financial institutions into a single state banking apparatus, at the beginning
of 1918 the nationalization of the Moscow People's Bank was carried out, and
the Office for Small Credit was liquidated. From the first days of Soviet
power, its supporters everywhere began resorting to the closure and nationalization
of credit partnerships, the requisition of their property, the closure of the
printed bodies of credit unions. Credit cooperation has increasingly deviated
from its primary function of providing credit services to the population. The
liquidation of the Moscow People's Bank actually meant "decapitation"
of credit cooperation. The development of credit cooperation was not helped by the economic situation in the
country. The agricultural market was completely destabilized.
Since in the conduct of the new economic policy
(1921-1925), the Bolsheviks were not able to offer a real alternative to credit
cooperation, then the old pre-revolutionary principles for building credit
cooperation in the country were adopted. The development of credit cooperation
in the country at the same time was very slow, in the RSFSR on January 1, 1924
there were no more than 200 credit cooperatives. This was not facilitated by
the legal acts adopted by the Soviet government. The Decree of the Council of
People's Commissars of the RSFSR of January 27, 1920 "On the Unification
of All Types of Cooperative Organizations" [6] was the final stage in the
liquidation of credit cooperation. This Decree prescribes the transformation of
credit and savings-saving partnerships into consumer societies and their
unions, so that the latter had to fulfill the functions of credit institutions.
Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of December 13, 1920
"On the financing of cooperation" [7] introduced a system of state
targeted lending to the co-operation, which fully placed it under state
control.
At the beginning of the 1920s, a serious social
and economic crisis broke out, engendered by the policy of "military
communism", which could only be overcome by fundamental changes in the
principles of management. The country was weakened by civil war and military
intervention by foreign powers. The RCP (B.) Was forced to make concessions:
commodity-money relations were renewed, private trade and small business were
allowed, and a partial decentralization of the economy was introduced. The
Tenth Congress of the RCP (B.) In March 1921 proclaimed a transition to a new
economic policy.
In such conditions of managing an important
role, according to V.I. Lenin, the cooperation should play as "the
greatest cultural heritage that should be cherished and used" [8. T. 37.
P.168]. A sharp change in party ideology in the field of cooperation was due to
the gravity of the situation, although several decades ago, VI. Lenin in his
work "Toward a Rural Poor" (1903) called cooperative associations an
appendage of the bourgeoisie [9. T. 7. P. 159].
The time of the New Economic Policy became for
credit cooperation the most favorable period of existence under Soviet power.
There followed the adoption of a number of cooperative laws, including that
entered into force on January 24, 1922. Decree SNK of the RSFSR "On Credit
Cooperatives" [10]. A legal basis for a new economic form of management
was created, in which cooperation was given a special role. An important stage
in the process of the formation of the new legislation was the enactment on
January 1, 1923 of the Civil Code of the RSFSR, which determined three types of
property: state, cooperative and private. Art. 56 of the Civil Code of the
RSFSR for cooperative organizations established separate privileges, which were
deprived of private enterprises. At the same time, the People's Commissariat of
the RSFSR on September 14, 1922 approved the Model Charter of Credit and
Savings Partnerships.
The decree on credit cooperation of 1922
represented a progressive legislative act for that time. However, he did not
entail a fundamental improvement in the state of credit cooperation. Only a
credit available to the peasantry could save the collapsing agriculture. The
situation dramatically changed in 1928 with the rejection of the ideas of the
NEP and the intensification of the processes of industrialization and
collectivization. Credit cooperatives lost their supply and trade functions.
The credit reform of 1930 for many years
destroyed the credit consumer cooperation. Cooperative credit systems were
reorganized into banking structures. A year later the All-Union Agricultural
Cooperative and Collective Farm Bank was liquidated, its functions were
transferred to the State Bank of the RSFSR. Thus, the constitutional rights and
freedoms of citizens were violated, the protected legitimate interests of a
person were limited. The formation of socialist production relations in the
countryside by replacing the small-commodity single-source production by the
collective leveled the role of cooperative lending.
With the adoption of the resolution of the CEC
and the Council of People's Commissars on February 13, 1929, "On the
Agricultural Credit System," credit cooperatives finally lost their
independence. The continuous collectivization of agriculture has led to the
fact that credit cooperatives, with a relatively small amount of money, have
been unable to service
collective and state farms. In this regard, in
1931, credit cooperation in the USSR was liquidated, and lending to
agricultural producers was entrusted to the state banking system.
Liquidation in the early 30-ies of the twentieth
century. agricultural credit cooperation and its basis - peasant farms was one
of the reasons for the low efficiency of the country's agricultural production.
The creation of collective farms through the unification of individual peasant
farms deprived them of their personal economic interest. The efficiency of
agricultural production in the USSR was several times lower than in developed
foreign countries.
During the war and the post-war period, credit
cooperation as such did not exist in the USSR. Starting to analyze the
organizational and legal activities of consumer credit cooperation in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. the following should be noted. In
the country there were constant interruptions in trade in many goods. In the
80's. XX century. the leadership of the USSR officially recognized the existence
of a food problem in the country. The second half of the 80's. was marked by a
course on the transformation of all aspects of society.
In Russia, the conduct of individual private
agricultural production was legislated. For the development of farms needed
money, which the newly-born farmers did not have, and take a loan from the bank
was difficult. The economic situation in the country objectively tightened the
small business to credit cooperation, united efforts to realize their common
goals in the sphere of lending. In Russia, the legal framework for the activity
of credit cooperatives is being created: in 1992, the RF Law "On Consumer
Cooperation" was adopted; in 1995 - the Law of the Russian Federation
"On Agricultural Cooperation"; in 2001 the Federal Law "On
Credit Consumer Cooperatives of Citizens" was adopted, on August 4 In
2009, the Federal Law "On Credit Cooperation" came into force.
In the early 1990s. against the background of
worsening socio-economic conditions, the first credit cooperatives began to
appear in the country. They represented self-regulating and self-governing
organizations aimed at providing financial assistance at the expense of the
citizens' own resources. The growth of credit cooperation at this time occurs
in two main forms: one - consumer credit cooperatives of citizens, the other -
rural credit consumer cooperatives. As of January 1, 2012, 1,200 consumer
credit cooperatives of citizens and about 1,750 agricultural credit
cooperatives already operated in Russia. The development of credit cooperation
goes along the path of forming a multi-level system, which is the most
effective and adequate to the needs of the country's population. In Russia, two
systems of credit cooperation were formed:
- The system of credit consumer cooperatives
(League of Credit Unions);
- The system of agricultural consumer credit
cooperatives (Union of Rural Credit Cooperatives) [11].
Interest in credit cooperation in the Russian
society increases year by year. On the part of state authorities and local
self-government bodies, credit cooperation is provided with the necessary
assistance and support. The value of credit cooperatives is not only that they
serve their members - strong credit cooperation is one of the conditions for
the development of the entire cooperative sector.
IV. Conclusion. The generalization of the
historical path of development of credit cooperation in Russia allows us to
draw conclusions:
- The economic and social consequences of the
transition to capitalism were the common cause of the creation of credit
cooperation in Russia;
- Credit cooperation as a financial institution
should be formed "from below", be a conscious result of the
activities of the shareholders themselves;
- Russian credit cooperation by 1917 was a
serious financial and economic force, turned into a powerful lever for the
development of market relations in the countryside and a stimulus for the
economic recovery of rural workers;
- The liquidation of credit cooperation and its
basis - small individual peasant farming, caused low efficiency of agricultural
production of the Soviet period of Russia;
- Political and economic transformations in the
90s of the 20th century. allowed to form the legal basis for the revival of
credit cooperation in modern Russia [12].
Therefore, credit consumer cooperation can be viewed as an institution
of civil society due to its specific peculiarities: the existence of unique
relationships between members of credit cooperatives;
setting special goals and objectives; formed by the practice of cooperative
philosophy and ideology. The model of consumer cooperative lending is a
non-governmental public institution based on membership and allowing
individuals or their groups to meet financial needs. The duality of credit
cooperation is determined by the fact that it is both a form of management and
a form of socialization with a specific ideology.
The effectiveness of the mechanism of legal
regulation of credit cooperation depends on a combination of conditions: the
inclusion in the rule of law of structures reflecting the interests and needs
of members (shareholders) of cooperatives; creation of effective enforcement
procedures; popularization of the values of cooperative lending in the eyes of
Russian society.
In the aggregate of formal sources determining
the regulatory orientation of the state in the field of cooperative lending and
representing sources of general and special nature, today includes:
1. Common principles and norms of international
law and international treaties of the Russian Federation.
2. The Constitution of the Russian Federation
and federal constitutional laws.
3. Federal laws of the Russian Federation,
including the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, federal laws "On
Credit Cooperatives", "On Agricultural Cooperation" and other
laws.
4. Subordinate regulatory legal acts regulating
relations with the participation of credit cooperatives: decrees of the
President of the Russian Federation, resolutions of the Government of the
Russian Federation, regulatory legal acts of federal executive bodies.
5. Local regulatory legal acts, including
statutory documents.
The value potential of credit cooperation, which
is of a democratic nature, has not yet been fully realized and has great
prospects for future development.
References
1. Nevlev V.V. Evolution of consumer credit
cooperation in Russia: theoretical and legal research: Monograph. - Belgorod:
Publishing house BUKEP, 2012. -190 p.
2. Nevlev V.V. Credit cooperation of Russia:
historical and legal aspects of development: Textbook. - Belgorod: Publishing
house BUKEP, 2014. - 100 p.
3. Ukolova L.V. Cooperatives of modern Russia: a
textbook. - Belgorod: Publishing House of the BUPC, 1998. - 148 p.
4. Regulations on institutions of small loans on
July 1, 1895 // Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire. - Coll. 3. -
T. 15. - No. 11756.
5. Regulations on cooperative societies and
their unions of March 20, 1917 // Collection of legalization and government
orders issued under the government Senate. - 1917. - No. 72. - P. 414.
6. Decree of the Council of People's Commissars
of the RSFSR of January 27, 1920, "On the Unification of All Types of
Cooperative Organizations," // Collection of Legalization of the Workers
'and Peasants' Government of the RSFSR. - 1920. -
№ 6. - Art. 37.
7. Decree of the Council of People's Commissars
of the RSFSR of December 13, 1920 "On the financing of cooperation" /
/ Collection of legalization of the worker and peasant Government of the RSFSR.
- 1920. - No. 99. - Art. 187.
8. Lenin V.I. A report on the replacement of a
tax with a natural tax // V.I. Lenin.
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9. Lenin V.I. To the rural poor, V.I. Lenin.
PSS. - M., 1980. - T. 7. - P. 159.
10. Decree of the Council of People's Commissars
of the RSFSR of January 24, 1922 "On Credit Cooperatives" / /
Collection of legalization of the worker and peasant Government of the RSFSR. -
1922. - No. 4. - P.41.
11. Medvedeva N. Main directions and prospects
of development of agricultural consumer cooperation in Russia // Rural credit.
- 2011. - No. 10. 10. - P. 7-13.
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development of the Russian credit cooperative // Rural credit. - 2008. - No. 11 (134). - С. 35-40; No. 12 (135). - P. 34-39
Сведения об авторе
Nevlev Vladislav
Vladimirovich
Ph.D. in Law, Assistant
Professor, Chair of Theory and History of State and Law, Law Department,
«Belgorod University of Cooperation, Economics and Law».
Невлев Владислав
Владимирович,
кандидат
юридических наук, доцент кафедры теории и истории государства и права
юридического факультета Белгородского университета кооперации, экономики и
права (БУКЭП).
Тел.
8 (4722) 26-39-94.
Полный рабочий адрес:
Белгородский
университет кооперации, экономики и права, 308023, г. Белгород,
ул. Садовая, 116А