At the beginning of the 20th century, the leading oil industrialists of Baku (the Gukasovs, Mantashevs, Nobels, Kokorevs, etc.) actively financed the revolutionary parties - the RSDLP, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Armenian and Muslim socialists. The amounts were in the tens and hundreds of thousands of rubles.

On the eve of the First World War, the Russian oil industry was concentrated in the hands of three firms: Russian General Oil Company, Royal Dutch Shell and the Nobel Brothers Partnership. Moreover, these three groups were connected with each other in various ways. The connection was based on a personal union: the Mantashevs, the Gukasovs, the Nobels, the Putilovs, the Lianozovs and others owned blocks of shares in each of these groups. In 1913, these three groups mined 290 million pounds. oil out of 564, i.e. 52%, and concentrated in their hands 75% of the entire oil trade.

Almost all the Baku oil owners provided the revolutionary underground with all sorts of support, including material support.

“Of the colossal number of conflicts resolved by the Union of Oil Industrial Workers,” recalled the Social Democrat A. Rokhlin, “the overwhelming majority were accepted by the oil industrial firms almost unconditionally; unconditionally, these firms contributed fines to the union's cash desk for certain misconduct. Representatives of the largest firms more than once or twice contributed money for certain needs of the party organization (our Bolshevik organization, it’s nothing to hide, did not disdain this source of income either, I’ll point out at least the 10,000 kush received from the oil owners at the conclusion of the December (1904) year) of the contract, i.e. under circumstances that gave the pay the character of bribery.The same largest firms more than once or twice sought protection from us (I remember the case of Mancho's appeal to the Bibi-Heybat district committee in 1911) from harassment and raids - various kind of "ex").

The fact of receiving money from the oil owners was later recognized by the worker Ivan Prokofievich Vatsek, a native of Vienna, who transferred from Austro-Hungarian to Russian citizenship and for many years was the cashier of the Baku Committee of the RSDLP. Noting that the Bolsheviks used the material support of "bourgeois elements", he wrote: "We took from the managers, deputies and managers, in general from the liberal public."

Touching on this topic and emphasizing that he meant only the Mensheviks, S.Ya. Alliluyev argued that financial assistance came "from the fireproof steel cash desks of the kings of oil: Gukasov, Mantashev, Zubalov, Kokorev, Rothschild, Nobel and many other millionaires."

The memoirs of the worker I. Bokov, who wrote that when one of the Shendrikov brothers, who left a noticeable mark on the history of the Baku labor movement of 1904-1905, left Baku, partially echoed the memories of S.Ya.Alliluyev, he “received a bribe from the oilman Gukasov - 20,000 rub.".

Armenian Socialists Gukasovs

Unfortunately, when mentioning the name of Gukasov, neither S.Ya. Alliluev nor I. Bokov mentioned his name. Meanwhile, three Gukasov brothers were connected with the oil business: Pavel (b. 1858), Arshak (b. 1864) and Abram (b. 1872) Osipovichi.

Pavel and Arshak for a long time headed the "Caspian Oil Company" in Russia, Abram represented his interests in London. In addition, they were also associated with a number of oil companies, including the joint-stock company A.I. Mantashev and K and the Lianozovsky Moscow-Caucasian Oil Industrial and Commercial Partnership. The influence of the Gukasov brothers is evidenced by the fact that for a long time, first Pavel and then Arshak held the post of chairman of the Council of the Baku Oil Industrialists Congress.

In the summer of 1908, Pavel Osipovich Gukasov received a denunciation that he and several other entrepreneurs had transferred 100 thousand rubles to the Armenian Archbishop Geregin for the church and for revolutionary purposes.

Pavel Gukasov

On October 19, 1907, a search was made in the St. Petersburg apartment of Pavel Gukasov. It is possible that the reason for the search was due to the fact that in 1907 the name of the youngest son of P. Gukasov, Levon, surfaced during the “inquiry about the sons of the State Councilor Konstantin and Alexander Dokukin (military organization of the Social Revolutionaries)”.

Arshak Osipovich Gukasov was seen during one of his visits abroad to the editorial office of the central organ of the Dashnaktsutyun party to the newspaper Droshak. The Okhrana considered him involved in the creation of the Armenian Cultural Union, which was used by the Dashnaks as one of the legal covers for their illegal activities. A. Gukasov also contacted members of the illegal Muslim Social Democratic organization "Gummet" and contributed to the creation of its own legal newspaper.

All this taken together gives reason to think that the name of Gukasov appeared in the list of creditors of the revolutionary underground, which is contained in the memoirs of S. Ya. Alliluyev, not by chance.

Arshak Gukasov

Armenian nationalist Mantashev

To an even greater extent, this applies to another oilman - Alexander Ivanovich Mantashev, whose fortune was estimated at more than 20 million rubles.

On February 13, 1904, the Police Department informed the Tiflis security department that they had received intelligence information that the oilman A. Mantashev “donated a million rubles to the revolutionary movement three months ago.”

In response to this, on April 24, the head of the Tiflis security department, captain F. Zasypkin, said: “Alexander Mantashev, who lives in the city of Tiflis, is a well-known Armenian millionaire, before the emergence of an acute Armenian movement in 1903 against the Russian government, he had an undoubted connection with the movement directed against Turkey predominantly; at the present time he would not have dared to cut off his connection, and in any case, he certainly supplies the revolutionaries with money; indications of donating a million rubles to him are still doubtful.

Alexander Mantashev

The Department itself had a different opinion on this matter. This is evidenced by the “Historical Essay on the Armenian Federative Party Dashnaktsutyun”, prepared for official use by gendarmerie Lieutenant Colonel L. Ivanov. “Oil industrialist Mantashev, for example, paid one million. He also founded an Armenian bank in London, where the church's "Armenian money" is now located, and he is also in alliance with Rothschild.

Armenian socialist Zubalov

As for the participation in the financing of the revolutionary movement of the Zubalov family, so far only one fact has been discovered, relating to 1910 and indicating that at that time the leader of the Georgian Mensheviks N. Zhordania received a monthly allowance of 100 rubles. from the "owner of the People's House" in Tiflis Zubalov.

In the 1920s, a diagram of the connections of the Caucasian Social Democrats was published, referring to the years 1901-1902. It included about 60 people from Baku, Batum and Tiflis. The surname Zubalov also appeared in this scheme. It has not yet been possible to establish which of the Zubalovs was in the field of view of the Okhrana. But it can be noted that in 1904 the Tiflis security department conducted external surveillance of David Antonovich Zubalov, who was a cousin of the owners of the People's House.

Office of the Zubalovs in Baku

Old Believers Kokorev

By the beginning of the 20th century, one of the pioneers of the oil business in Russia, Vasily Aleksandrovich Kokorev, had long since died (in 1889). Therefore, S.Ya. Alliluyev could have had in mind not him personally, but one of the leaders of the Baku Oil Industrial Society he created. The fact that there could be people associated with the revolutionary underground in Kokorev’s entourage is evidenced by information about one of the managers of the Baku Oil Industrial Society, Andrei Vasilyevich Kamensky, who was related to the former Narodnaya Volya, later a Socialist-Revolutionary, Lev Karlovich Chermak and one of the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party , Boris Viktorovich Savinkov.

The same, apparently, is the case with Rothschild, who, although he was the owner of the Caspian-Black Sea Oil Industrial Partnership, never lived in Russia. Mentioning his last name, S.Ya. Alliluyev could only have in mind the leadership of this partnership, among which, as will be shown later, there were both persons who had family ties in the revolutionary underground, and persons who provided him with material support.

Vasily Kokorev

Nobel family

The Nobel Brothers firm was created by the descendants of the Swedish entrepreneur Immanuel Nobel (1801-1872), who had four sons. Russian Nobels are mainly descendants of Ludwig Immanuilovich and his son Emanuil Ludwigovich (1852-1932), who headed the family business after the death of his father. He had seven children.

No information was found that E.L. Nobel or any of his descendants personally donated funds to the revolutionary movement. But there is evidence that in December 1904 a large sum of money to finance the strike movement was offered to the representative of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, who was in Baku, by the leadership of the Nobel Brothers company.

But E. L. Nobel's cousin Dmitry Klassovich Nyberg was a member of the Free People's Party, created in Siberia by the former Shlisselburger V. Karaulov, and in early 1906 he was brought to the inquiry on charges of assisting the revolutionary movement on the Siberian railway.

Professor of the Institute of Communications Alfred Nyberg (standing on the left), Dmitry Nyberg (standing on the right), Major General Robert Nyberg (sitting)

Alexander (Senteri) Nuorteva was a cousin of E. L. Nobel, whose father, Alfred, was the brother of Klass Nyberg. A.Nourteva belonged to the number of prominent figures of the Finnish social democracy, in 1907 he took part in the organization of V.Lenin's move from Finland to Sweden.

The son-in-law of E. L. Nobel, the husband of his daughter Martha, military doctor Georgy Pavlovich Oleinikov, also had revolutionary connections. From 1883 to 1887 he studied at St. Petersburg University. G.P. Oleinikov was not only a classmate of A.I. Ulyanov (Lenin's executed brother), but was also one of his friends. And although he, apparently, had nothing to do with the case of March 1, 1887, it is significant that three years later he was noticed in contacts with Karl Kocharovsky's circle. This circle arose in St. Petersburg by the beginning of 1888. He not only began to gather around him elements of the Narodnaya Volya all over Russia, but also established (through Y. Yudelevsky) contacts with the Narodnaya Volya emigration.

The political positions held by G.P. Oleinikov are evidenced by the fact that on December 18, 1904, he put his signature under the petition of doctors demanding the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and in 190 he took part in the creation of the Radical Party.

Alexander (Centeri) Nuorteva

The main provisions of her program were as follows: a) the transition from a monarchy to a republican form of government based on universal, direct, equal and secret elections; b) the transformation of Russia into a federation of self-governing regions like the United States of America; c) the elimination of national, class and religious restrictions; d) separation of church and state; e) granting political freedoms to the population; f) redemption of all privately owned lands; g) gratuitous alienation of state, appanage, office and church lands; h) allocating land to peasants according to labor standards; i) transfer to urban and rural communities of all enterprises serving the needs of the local population: water supply, gas and electricity supply, local means of communication, warehouses of food and medical supplies; j) the concentration in the hands of the state of those branches of production and enterprises that actually constitute a monopoly of private individuals or institutions, such as: the exploitation of communication lines and the bowels of the earth, the production of sugar, insurance operations, etc.; k) the introduction of an 8-hour working day, as well as granting workers the right to strike and join trade unions; l) replacement of direct taxes with progressive income and property taxation; m) reform of the army on the basis of the militia.

In December 1905, G.P. Oleinikov was arrested at a meeting of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies. It is possible that it was he (“a certain Oleinikov”), together with N.V. Meshkov, who appeared on December 5, 1911 in the report of the head of the St. Petersburg security department as a person involved in the material support of the Bolshevik newspaper Zvezda.

Georgy Oleinikov

Muslim socialist Tagiyev

If the Armenian movement received material support from A.I. Mantashev, then the Muslim movement received material support from Haji Zeynal Abdin Tagiev. G. Tagiev was not only an oilman, he was also a member of the Council of the St. Petersburg International Commercial Bank. “Among the Baku pan-Islamists,” Mustafa, a secret officer of the Baku security department, reported on May 30, 1911, “a prominent role is played by the barrister Topchibashev, the former editor of the Kaspiy newspaper, he is in great friendship with Haji Zeynal Abdin Tagiev, who provides extensive material assistance to the pan-Islamists” .

Having become a barrister, "in Baku, Topchibashev married the daughter of the Social Democrat Hasan-bek Melikov, with whom he was in great friendship." In 1906, Topchibashev became a deputy of the First State Duma and took part in the drafting of the Vyborg Appeal.

According to the information of the Okhrana, referring to October 1911, “in very close relations with Tagiev” was the oilman Isa-bek Ashurbekov: “Ashurbekov, according to intelligence information from the head of the Baku security post, referring to 1906, was a member of the Muslim Social Democratic organization “Gummet ”, In the same 1906, he traveled around the Shusha district under the guise of collecting donations in favor of starving Muslims, but in reality he was conducting criminal anti-government agitation. For some time, I.-b. Ashurbekov was a member of the Financial Commission of the Baku Committee of the RSDLP.

Gadzhi Tagiyev with his family

Old Believer Shibaev

Some oil owners not only provided material assistance to the revolutionary movement, but also participated in it themselves. Gleb Sidorovich Shibaev can be mentioned as an example.

His father Sidor Martynovich came from a peasant Old Believer family in the Bogorodsk district of the Moscow province. In 1865, S.M. Shibaev became a Moscow merchant of the 1st guild, in which he remained until his death in 1888. Shortly before that, he established the oil company "S.M. Shibaev and K".

The inheritance passed to the children. Having reached the age of twenty, the youngest son Gleb received a millionth fortune. In 1902, he entered Moscow University, already in his first year he joined the revolutionary movement, was arrested, and in March 1903 he was sent under special police supervision to the Penza province. After serving his term, he returned home, but did not break his connection with the revolutionary underground. A thread stretches from him to the Caucasian squad, who fought in December 1905 on the barricades of Moscow.

Populist Tishchenko

If G.S. Shibaev was a revolutionary entrepreneur, then some revolutionaries themselves made entrepreneurial careers. An example is the former populist Georgy (Yuri) Makarovich Tishchenko (1856-1922), who in 1879 presided over the last Voronezh congress of Land and Freedom, and then became one of the members of the Black Redistribution. In 1887 he settled in the Caucasus, first in Tiflis, then in Baku.

Georgy Tishchenko

Here Yu.M.Tishchenko got a place in the office of the Council of the Congress of Oil Industrialists, became close friends with P.O. Gukasov, after some time became the secretary of the Congress of Oil Industrialists. In 1900, Tishchenko became the head of the office of the Caspian Oil Industrial Association, by the beginning of the First World War he was a member of the leadership of 22 joint-stock companies and was a co-owner of the partnership P.O. Gukasov and K.

In one of the denunciations against Yu.M. Tishchenko, we read: “He spent tens of thousands to support the revolutionary newspaper Tovarishch, generously supported the Union of Unions and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, he also supported his party in tens of thousands (meaning the Socialist-Revolutionary Party ) through his friends Tyutchev, Natanson and others, there is even reason to think that a terrible assassination attempt on Aptekarsky Island was organized with his money.

So, it can be stated that some of the most influential oil owners were in extreme opposition to the existing government and were ready to support the most radical, including revolutionary, forces in the fight against it.

(via: Alexander Ostrovsky, "Who stood behind Stalin's back", 2004, "Centrpoligraph")

Armenian Baku

“The Tatars of the Baku province come from various Turkic tribes who moved to this region during the invasions and administration of the region by the Seljuk, Mongolian, Black and White Sheep, Turkmen and Safavid rulers. These various tribes, when mixed with the former inhabitants of the region, both in eastern Transcaucasia and in the northern part of Persia, made one common dialect of the Turkic language, the middle between Turkish (Ottoman Turks), Kumyk, Nogai and Jagatai. "N. Seidlitz, Russian caucasian (“Lists of settlements of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus region. Baku province”, Tiflis, 1870, p. 85,87.)

“In Baku, as well as in the Baku province in general, Aderbeidzhan Tatars live most of all. They belong to the Mongolian race and the Turkic generation, they speak a dialect influenced by the Persian language. Supported by the Persian shahs, in the last century they moved from Aderbeidzhan to the southeastern part of Transcaucasia and to the coastal part from Baku to Derbent.
Caucasian calendar for 1908,Tiflis, 1907, p. 71.

So, until 1918. the concept of "Azerbaijani" did not exist, everyone called them Tatars or Muslims. Azerbaijan in Persian means: azer - fire and baidzhan - country, that is, the country of fire. Baku - (from the Armenian word bagin - temple, altar). The connection with fire is again evident.

In the VI century. BC there was a cult of fire. The temples of fire worshipers existed until 624, when the Georgian king Heraclius went on a campaign against the Persians through the Mugan steppes and destroyed them, but 12 years later these altars were restored after the conquest of Persia by the Arabs.
According to the Arab historian Istarkhie, in the 8th century, local residents used oil-soaked land instead of firewood (Review of the Baku oil industry for two years of nationalization 1920-1922, p. 11.).
An Arabic inscription engraved on a stone was found in one of the oil wells, according to which this well was discovered by Allah-Yar, the son of Muhammad-Nur, in 1594 and given to the seids for use (Collection of information about the Caucasus, vol. II, Tiflis, 1872, p. 23.).
Anania Shirakatsi (7th century) in her famous “Ashkharatsuyts” (“Geographical Atlas of the World”) indicates the minerals and natural resources of Big Hayk: iron, coal, oil, salak, dzikhk, coke, smoky quartz, arsenic, salts, hot mineral sources.
Since the 18th century, Russia began to pursue an expansionist policy in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia. In 1801 Georgia was conquered, and according to the Gulistan Treaty concluded on October 12, 1813, Karabakh, Baku, Sheki (Nukhin), Shirvan (Shemakhi), Derbent, Cuban and Talysh khanates were transferred from Persia to Russia (Ganja Khanate came under the protectorate of Russia since 1804) . Russia's conquest of Transcaucasia (including the Erivan Khanate in 1827) was not only a huge military and political event, but also opened up broad opportunities for economic development. Absolutely new economic relations arose in the region... Transcaucasia entered into direct relations with Russia, a vast country with a relatively higher cultural level. Here, a large contingent was established, consisting of Russian officials and the military, who, as consumers, put forward new requirements for the trade of the region.
The Russian contingent - officials and the military did not act as an economic entity, and economic activity in the region took place through the three main peoples of Transcaucasia: Armenians, Georgians and Tatars (ie Azerbaijanis). The main form of economic management of the Russian authorities was a contract, and it was the Armenians who became contractors, thereby entering the stage of formation of the initial capital of the Eastern Armenians.

Immediately after the conclusion of the Gulistan Treaty, the Russian authorities paid close attention to Baku oil. In 1813-1825. oil and salt production was farmed out, bringing the treasury an annual income of 130 thousand rubles (77% of oil, 23% of salt). It should be noted that at that time oil did not have any industrial value, it was used for lighting purposes, lubricating skin, wheels, and for treating livestock from skin diseases. The first attempt to refine oil dates back to 1823: the serf Countess Panina, the Dubinin brothers from the Vladimir region, founded a production facility in Mozdok “to turn black oil into white oil”. The resulting "photogen" - kerosene, began to be exported to Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, but no attention was paid to it (Review of the Baku oil industry for two years of nationalization 1920-1922, p. 9).

Baku oil

In 1825, the government began to independently manage the oil fields, but failed - revenues fell to 76 thousand rubles. The following year, the state abandoned its monopoly and leased the oil lands to the Azerbaijanis. In 1826-1832. the income received by the local residents was so meager that the government again took up oil production on its own. But again, unsuccessfully: the annual income from oil wells and salt mines averaged 100 thousand rubles, and this forced the state from 1850 to completely abandon production and switch to a system of contracts.In 1850-1854. Tiflis merchants Kukudzhanyan, Babanasyan and General Ter-Ghukasyan became the largest contractors, paying 110,000 rubles a year in rent. In 1854-1863. the largest contractor was Ter-Ghukasyan with 117 thousand rubles, in 1863-1867. - Hov. Mirzoyan with 162 thousand, and in 1867-1873. - the same Mirzoyan, but already with 136 thousand rubles of payment (St. Gulishambarov, "Essay on the development and current state of the oil industry of the Baku region" - Collection of information about the Caucasus, vol. VII, Tiflis, 1880, p. 333).

According to official data, in 1846 the entire trade of Transcaucasia with Russia was in the hands of the Armenians, and its turnover was 5,534,600 rubles. The lease of Baku oil lands since 1850 testified that the representatives of the Armenian merchant capital enriched by various contracts, seeking to find new areas for investment and showing foresight, reoriented and moved into the oil industry, which is still in its infancy, which they themselves must have been developed.
... Oil was obtained from wells - funnel-shaped pits 25-30 meters deep, which began to deepen. Oil came out with water, but, being lighter, floated to the surface. It was collected, poured into wineskins and transported on ox-drawn carts, donkeys or camels.
There were not rare cases when oil mixed with gas gushed out of the ground, immediately enriching the owner of the site (in 1877, such a fountain clogged from a well owned by Hov. Mirzoyan, and, amazingly, this fountain did not dry up for 7 whole years).

The resulting so-called crude oil had a very narrow scope; this oil had to be processed, and the first attempt of this kind was made by the representative of Russian merchant capital, the entrepreneur Kokorev, who in 1857 founded a distillery in Surakhani, and in 1863. received a "light lighting product" - kerosene. In 1862 the kerosene plant was founded by A. Vermishyan, in 1863 by J. Melikyan, in 1865 by Tatosyan, in 1869 by Ter-Hakopyan and Sharabandyan, in 1870 by Kalantaryan, in 1871 by Dildaryan and Tarayan. Thus, the oil industry was founded in the truest sense of the word.
But what was Baku like then? In 1851, Spassky-Avtomonov, who visited the city, wrote: “The city consists of extremely crooked and cramped lanes, along which you can only walk or hardly ride on horseback. The squares are small and uneven, the market street is also narrow, the shops are badly arranged. All the houses in the fortress and on the suburb 1992, 505 shops, 23 streets, 3 squares and 2 bridges. There are no factories, there are no commercial establishments. There are 294 all local merchants, of which 75 are shipowners, 67 who sell factory, factory and manufactory products, 231 other goods, 28 merchants from other cities, 2 Persian subjects ”(Caucasian calendar for 1852, Tiflis, 1851, p. 304, 306).
The provincial city of the Caspian province, founded in the 6th century by the Persian Shah Nushirvan, on November 6, 1859, became the administrative center of the Baku province founded at the same time.
The oil industry has evolved...
Despite the fact that the farming system brought significant benefits to the empire (suffice it to mention that if in 1863 340 thousand were produced, then in 1872 - 1.535.981 pounds of oil), however, this system had a significant drawback - its temporary , time-limited nature. According to the established procedure, the oil field was leased for four years, and its owner, naturally, was not interested in making large investments, drilling new wells, conducting geological exploration, because after the expiration of the lease, someone else could pay a big price and own deposit. This circumstance clearly interfered with the development of the oil industry, meanwhile, the empire was on an economic upswing and needed large volumes of oil and oil products, and American oil occupied a leading position in the Russian market. It was under these conditions that the Russian government took a radical, revolutionary, economically reasonable step: it decided to sell the oil fields to private ownership. This was an extremely important event, which later played a huge role from the political, economic, and social points of view, as well as in the aspect of interethnic relations. In November 1872, the government put up for auction 68 oil-bearing sites with a total area of ​​460 acres, setting the initial price at 552,240 rubles. The results of the auction are stunning: instead of the starting price, the state treasury received 2,980,307 rubles. The owners were 12 Russians who paid 1,485,860 rubles (1,333,328 rubles for 60 acres were paid by Kokorev and Gubonin), 11 Armenians (Hov. Hakobyan, Sargsyan brothers) and one Armenian company - “Partners” (founders Bogdan Dolukhanyan, Minas Kachkachyan, S. Kvitko) who paid 1,459,182 rubles. Hov. Mirzoyan alone - 1 million 220 thousand for 40 acres.

Hovhannes Minasovich Mirzoyan (Ivan Minaevich Mirzoev) was a typical representative of the Armenian commercial capital. He was the first in the entire Caucasus to see the prospects of the oil industry, he became the first oil industrialist and one of the "fathers" of the Baku oil business. Initially, he was engaged in activities that have centuries-old traditions among the Armenian merchants - the trade in raw silk. In 1853 he had a cotton shop. Then he founded a silk factory in the city of Nukha and earned a lot of capital. In 1855, having paid the highest price - 312 thousand rubles a year, until 1863 he rented the Salyan fishery located at the mouth of the Kura, which flows into the Caspian Sea, where 2500 people worked. In addition to Baku, since 1867 he rented the Kaitago-Tabasaran oil field. In 1865-188, paying annually 13,250 rubles, he rented only two oil wells discovered in Grozny, increased productivity to 66,500 poods, founded a kerosene plant, which employed mainly Armenians. In addition, in 1878-1886. for an annual fee of 7,850 rubles, he rented and operated the Zagliki alum plant in the Elizavetpol province (Caucasian calendar for 1878, Tiflis, 1877, p. 210).
The activities of Hov. Mirzoyan in the Baku oil industry can be characterized by the word "first". He was the first to establish two kerosene factories in Surakhani in 1868 and received 160,000 poods of kerosene worth 260,000 rubles. He also became the first exporter of kerosene. This was an unthinkable amount: suffice it to note that in that year all the other refineries together produced only 60,000 poods of kerosene worth 64,000 rubles. In 1867, Ov. Mirzoyan produced 665 thousand poods of oil, in 1868 - 716 thousand, in 1872 - 1 million 365 thousand poods, in 1871 he installed the first drilling rig in Balakhany, and in 1872 - the second (St. Gulishambarov , Essay on development ..., p. 345). It was after this that the oil owners switched to oil drilling, and in 1879 not a single oil well remained.

After the death of Hov. Mirzoyan (1885), his widow Daria and sons - temporary merchants of the Moscow 1st guild, the nobles Grigor and Melkon, as well as their daughter, Princess Maria Argutinskaya-Dolgorukaya, in 1886 founded the oil industrial and commercial partnership "Brothers Mirzoev and Co. with a fixed capital of 2.1 million rubles. As representatives of the aristocratic elite of Tiflis, the Mirzoyans prudently handed over the affairs of their firm to oil professionals. B. Korganyan was the chairman of the board of the partnership, the directors were D. Kharazyan, M. Dolukhanyan, Hov. Garsoyan, T. Enfiadzhyants, thanks to which the Mirzoev Brothers and Co. 15 million poods of oil per year (Yearbook "Baku and its regions" - 1912, Baku, p.140).

The company owned oil fields in Balakhani and Sabunchi, factory buildings in Surakhani, an oil pipeline in Balakhani, a kerosene and lubricating oil plant in Baku, as well as various workshops and a chemical laboratory, a pier on the coast of the Caspian Sea, 4 sailboats ("Moscow", "Arseny" , "Prussia", "San-Dadash"), production facilities in Batumi, oil product warehouses in Moscow, Tsaritsyn and Nizhny Novgorod (Charter of the oil industrial and commercial partnership "Brothers Mirzoevgh and Co", Tiflis, 1901). The Mirzoev Brothers & Co. firm remained one of the best Armenian-owned companies until the tragedy of 1918.

Let's go back to 1872 and ask ourselves: did Azerbaijanis participate in the auction? Yes, two. The first, Selimkhanov, paid 3,000 rubles for a plot with a starting price of 1 ruble and did not play any role in the oil industry. It is worth talking about the second of them, Haji Zeynal-Abdin Tagiyev, in more detail. During the entire pre-revolutionary period, there were three relatively large Azerbaijani oilmen (the other two were Musa Nagiyev and Shamsi Asadullayev), but Tagiev was the only one who, having learned from Armenians, became a trustee of a number of Muslim educational institutions and built the building of the Baku theater.

Tagiyev's appearance in business was a curiosity. He was a craftsman, a bricklayer and, for unknown reasons, became a companion of the brothers Baghdasar and Poghos Sargsyans; they paid 14,961 rubles and became co-owners of 20 plots. In 1882, the brothers took part in the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition held in Moscow and were awarded a bronze medal for the produced kerosene. After that, the names of the Sargsyan brothers were almost never mentioned in the oil business, it is only known that P. Sarsisyan was a member of the Baku City Duma and was a member of the board of trustees of the male Armenian two-year school in Baku. His wife Elizaveta, being an ardent supporter of the ideas of one of the best periodicals in the history of the Armenian press - "Mshaka", named their ship after the founding editor of this publication: "Grigor Artsruni". Ironically, the Bolsheviks expropriated this ship and in 1921 handed it over to the state oil company Azneft.
So, from January 1, 1873, the first owners appeared in the Baku oil industry, who could dispose of their oil at their own discretion, sell plots, lease them, conclude various transactions, establish joint-stock companies, etc. This privatization caused not only an "oil fever", but also served as an impetus for large financial investments, a sharp increase in population, and the rapid development of the city.
If in 1813-1873. were the period of origin, the formation of the oil industry, then 1873-1899. became an era of gigantic progress, which outlined the trends in the development of geopolitical interests and interethnic relations. Trends that intensified with every pound of extracted, processed and exported oil.
If in 1850 260 thousand pounds were mined, in 1863. - 340 thousand, then in 1872 - 1.535.981 pounds, and in 1896 - 386 million. If in 1862 there were 13.392 inhabitants in Baku, in 1873 - 15.604, then in 1886 in the city 83 thousand people lived, and in 1897 - 104 thousand.

Privatization created a situation that gave economic freedom and guaranteed stable high returns on investment. This was the reason not only for the influx of financial investments into the oil industry from all over the Transcaucasus and Russia, but also for the fact that Baku became the residence of representatives of various peoples, as a result of which the city became multinational.
The prospects for the oil industry were noticed by the largest representatives of Russian capital of that time, especially the Russian subjects of the Swedes, the Nobel brothers, who created more than 30 industrial enterprises in Russia. In 1875, they bought a small kerosene plant in Baku, oil fields, and carried out preparatory work with European thoroughness for 4 years. Since 1879, the Nobel Brothers company has founded a huge modern complex for the extraction, processing and export of oil, with many auxiliary infrastructures, which, in terms of its economic indicators, occupied a leading place in the oil industry of Baku ... Until Stepan Lianosyan appeared.

In 1877, the Russian government took a new radical, economically justified step: the excise tax was removed from the oil industry, as a result of which the price of oil decreased by about three times, and in 1883 American oil was completely ousted from the Russian market. The world is "divided" between two oil-producing countries - the United States and Russia (that is, Baku).
As rightly noted in one of the sources, “none of the branches of Russian industry played such a significant role in the world capitalist economy as the oil industry: until the beginning of the 20th century. the Baku region was one of the two main centers of world oil production (along with the oil regions of the USA) ”(Monopolistic capital in the oil industry of Russia (1883-1914). Documents and materials, M.-L., 1961, p. 8- nine). This division later had the most serious military-political and economic consequences.
In 1885, the first steps in the oil industry were taken by one of the largest banking firms in Europe - the Rothschild Brothers Paris banking house, which is engaged in providing a state loan to the Russian Empire in France. Thanks to their powerful capital, the Rothschilds acquired numerous oil fields, built processing plants, warehouses in Baku and became leaders in exports. And their "Caspian-Black Sea Society" consistently ranked second in terms of economic indicators.
The fourth place in the oil industry hierarchy was occupied by the "Caspian Partnership" company, founded by Karabakh residents Poghos, Arshak, Hakob and Abram Ghukasyans.
In 1878, Samvel Bagiryan and Harutyun (Artem) Madatyan from Shushi, united with Bruno de Boer, founded the Caspian Partnership, an oil-industrial and trading company. In the same 1878, 20-year-old Poghos Ghukasyan, who received a secondary education, arrived in Baku from Karabakh. He quickly orients himself in the oil business, thanks to his innate sharpness he foresees the prospects of the oil industry and for 27 thousand rubles he buys out first the share of S. Bagiryan, and then A. Madatyan, and he himself becomes a partner of Bruno de Boer. Their business flourishes and develops in such a way that after 9 years it begins to occupy a leading position in the oil industry. In 1886, the firm was transformed into a joint-stock company with a fixed capital of 2 million rubles. During this time, after graduating from school, the Pogos brothers Arshak, Hakob and Abram come to Baku. In 1888, after the death of Bruno de Boer, the brothers, together with their relative Ov. Ter-Markosyan become the full owners of the Caspian Partnership.
On January 24, 1884, a significant event took place: the organ "Congress of Baku Oil Industrialists" (SBN) was created - the first branch, corporate organization in all of Russia. In 1890, P. Gukasyan (Pavel Osipovich Gukasov) was elected chairman of the council of the RLS, and in 1896 he “ceded” this position to Arshak, who led this organization with great professionalism until the end of 1918.

***

P. Ghukasyan together with S. Yakovlev in 1897. founded the Caspian Pipeline with a fixed capital of 1 million rubles. This company, located on Staro-Policeyskaya Street in Baku, was one of the first to sell various imported machine tools, pipes, rolled metal, motors, and power plants for the oil industry. Poghos Ghukasyan was appointed one of the directors of the Maykop oil industrial and trading company "Colchis" and, in fact, was the first Armenian who, in the late XIX - early XX centuries. became a global industrialist. When the State Council of Russia was formed in 1906, 12 seats were given to the industrial and commercial curia of the country. The authority of P. Ghukasyan, his indisputable contribution were so great that he was elected a member of this supreme body and moved to the capital.
When in 1902 P. Ghukasyan and Al. Mantashyants founded the Homelight Oil Co company in England, Abram Ghukasyan settled in London as a permanent representative of the company.
Summarizing the period of formation of the Baku oil industry in 1873-1899, one circumstance should be noted: in 1889, 69 oil companies were registered in Baku, of which 12 (including 9 Armenian and 1 Azerbaijani) were not engaged in oil production. The remaining 57 companies in the aggregate produced 192,247,663 poods of oil. Of these companies, 34 were Armenian, which produced 93.891.585 poods of oil. There were only 3 Azerbaijanis, who received 14.472.370 pounds, and only Tagiev extracted 13.981.105 pounds.

And now let's turn to the figure of a man, without whom it is impossible to get an idea of ​​either the Baku or the world oil industry. A person without whom it is impossible to get an idea of ​​the essence of an Armenian, his enterprise and diligence. Without which the history of the Armenian people would be incomplete.
It's about Alexander Ovanesovich Mantashyants (1842-1911).
One of the closest associates of the Armenian "oil king" Arakel Sarukhan, who in 1921 managed to escape from Bolshevik Baku and ended up in Vienna, among the Mkhitarists, took up Armenian studies and created a number of valuable works. In 1931, he published a book in which he expressed his boundless love and respect for Mantashyants. A.Sarukhan begins his memoirs with the following lines: “I am writing Mantashyants (with a “c” at the end), because the deceased signed in Armenian “Mantashyants”, and in Russian, according to the custom, Mantashev, also in foreign languages ​​- Mantacheff.
The life and work of one of the greatest figures of Armenian business - Al. Mantashyants, worthy of a serious, thorough, thorough monograph, cannot be perceived without Baku oil.
At the beginning of 1889, Mikael Aramyants, a resident of Shushi, who, together with his compatriots - Karabakh residents A. Tsaturyan, G. Arafelyan and G. Tumayan, was a co-owner of the oil company "A. Tsaturov and others", arrived in Tiflis and asked the vice-chairman (with 1890 - life chairman) and the largest shareholder of the best Commercial Bank in the Caucasus Al. Mantashyants loan for the purchase of tank cars. This request was not accidental: Aramyants and Mantashyants knew each other from a young age, when they were engaged in manufacturing trade in Tabriz - the first was an assistant to the merchant Tarumyan, the second - to his father.
Al. Mantashyants, who had long noticed the prospects of oil, offered M. Aramyants his own funds (50 thousand rubles), but on the condition that he would become a partner in their company. So it was decided, and Al. Mantashyants entered the Baku oil industry under the banner of the firm "Trading House A.I. Mantashev."
Already on November 27 of the same year, on behalf of the 5th Congress of Oil Producers, he submitted a memorandum to the Department of Taxes of the Ministry of Finance, in which, having subjected the most serious economic analysis and comparing the Russian and American oil industries, he proposed a number of measures thanks to which Baku oil could dominate the world market. . Mantashyants himself exported more than 2 million pounds. kerosene a year to England and owned two sea tankers that sailed between Batum and London and even to America.
This memorandum was a kind of “visiting card”: a large-scale personality appeared in the Baku oil industry, rallying all small and large Armenian oil industrialists around him, becoming their leader, partner, assistant, stronghold and forming the concept that we define as “Armenian oil”. A new player appeared on the scene, who was supposed to nullify all the attempts of the Nobels and the Rothschilds to monopolize the oil industry, and he had to achieve this solely through economic competition. He appeared, without taking into account the opinion of which it was impossible to solve a single issue.
According to data for September 1889, the "Caspian-Black Sea Society" of the Rothschilds had a monopoly on exports from Batumi. On a contractual basis, it received 2280 tanks of kerosene (there were 4195 tanks in total) from 50 oil companies and sold it on foreign markets. Al.Mantashyants built a plant for the production of metal boxes in Batumi and only in 1898 exported 3.2 million poods of oil to them (in 1896, 13 companies exported oil and oil products from Batumi, 4 of which belonged to Armenians. Al. Mantashyants was second only to the Rothschilds and Nobels). In November-March 1892, negotiations were held in Rostov-on-Don, in which 7 largest companies producing kerosene took part: Nobel Brothers, P. Gukasyan's Caspian Partnership, S.M. Shibaev and Co., as well as members of the "Baku Standard" association created a year before - Mantashyants, G. Lianosyan, Budagyan and Tagiyev. Together, these firms annually produced approximately 44 million poods of kerosene, of which 17 million were produced by the Nobel Brothers. The purpose of the negotiations was the creation of the Union of Baku Kerosene Planters, the actual owner of which would be the Nobel Brothers firm. Realizing that the monopoly of the export of kerosene would pass to the Nobels and Rothschilds acting hand in hand, Al. Mantashyants refused to join this alliance. Moreover, together with other Armenian breeders, he created an independent association, whose members on November 27, 1893 came to a separate agreement and concluded the “Agreement of the second group of the Union of Baku Kerosene Manufacturers”. This was a serious blow to the monopolistic aspirations of the Nobels and the Rothschilds, which is why in February 1894 an agreement was reached between the first and second groups on joint activities in the foreign market, on the condition that each group would have sufficient independence. At the same time, an agreement was signed between the Armenian group of Al. Mantashyants and the Union of Baku Kerosene Planters, according to which foreign markets were divided among Russian exporters. That is, it is obvious that thanks to Al. Mantashyants, Armenian breeders got the opportunity to freely enter the world market. Only after that, on March 2, 1895, E. Nobel and the representative of Standard Oil, W. Libby, concluded a preliminary agreement on the division of the world oil market. According to this agreement, the United States got 75% of the supply of petroleum products, Russia - 25%. One more important circumstance should not be overlooked: energy resources - specifically oil and oil products, have not yet been levers of influence in international politics, since agreements were concluded not by countries, but by firms. And in this sphere the Armenian oilmen played a huge role.
The deafening appearance of Al. Mantashyants in the oil industry was due to several main factors: firstly, as the chairman of the board of the largest financial institution in the Caucasus - the Tiflis Commercial Bank, he disposed of significant financial resources, and the oil industry constantly needed more and more new investments. Secondly, being in constant communication and contacts with Europe (in particular, in Manchester and Paris), Al. Mantashyants in practice mastered modern methods and mechanisms of business management. The third factor was his purely human dignity, manifested in deep patriotism and kind, warm, tolerant attitude towards representatives of other nationalities, as well as towards competitors.
Al. Mantashyants' business required new development, and having paid a large sum to his partners, he became practically the sole owner of the company, leaving only M. Aramyants as a partner.Al. Mantashyants owns 75% of the shares of the future company, M. Aramyants - 25%, and the latter could not interfere in the business and did not receive profit from foreign transactions. This allowed M. Aramyants not to delve into the most difficult ups and downs of the oil business, to live a secure and carefree life. In the future, he will sell his luxurious mansion in Baku, and with 10 million rubles he will move to Tiflis - becoming one of the city's famous benefactors. Years will pass, and he will take part in the funeral of his close friend Al. Mantashyants, and he himself will die in 1922 in the capital of Bolshevik Georgia, ironically deprived of all his fortune and elementary living conditions, in utter poverty...

So, June 11, 1899. The charter of the joint-stock oil industrial and trading company "A.I. Mantashev and K" was approved, according to which the founders of the company were the Tiflis 1st guild merchant Al.Mantashyants, the Baku 1st guild merchant M.Aramyants, and the fixed capital was 22 million rubles. rubles (88,000 shares of 250 rubles each). According to paragraph 22 of the charter, the company was managed by a board of directors consisting of 5 people, elected by the general meeting of shareholders (Charter of the oil industrial and trading company "A.I. Mantashev and Co", St. Petersburg, 1899).

The firm had 173 acres of oil-bearing lands in Balakhany, Sabunchi, Romany, Zabrat, Bibi-Heybat and other places of the Absheron Peninsula. Moreover, 147.7 acres of these lands were the property of the company, and it rented the remaining plots.
The company also owned: in the Black City - a kerosene plant with storage facilities for oil and fuel oil, in the White City - a lubricating oil plant, which had a 100-sazhen pier and an elevator for pumping oil, in Zabrat - a special mechanical workshop and a 50-verst oil pipeline, in Batumi - a plant for the production of metal and wooden boxes, as well as storage of kerosene and lubricating oils and a pumping station. There was also an oil-exporting station in Odessa, with 100 tank cars that circulated along Russia's southwestern railways. Finally, the firm also had offices, agencies and warehouses in Smyrna, Thessaloniki, Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo, Port Said, Damiet, Marseilles, London, Bombay and Shanghai.
The company's oil production was displayed in the following figures: in 1895 - 30 million poods, in 1896 - 31.5 million, in 1897 - 48 million, in 1898 - 52 million. A.I. Mantashev and Co. for 10 years (1899-1909) continued to be the largest in the Russian oil industry.
This is how an industrial giant appeared, which ranked third in terms of its economic indicators, but if we take into account that A.I. position and played a decisive role.
A new difficult period began in the Baku oil industry, which was supposed to mark unimaginable geopolitical developments, predetermine the future of Transcaucasia, and influence the fate of the eastern Armenians.
This period had four characteristic features: a) the rapid development of the oil industry, due to the introduction of foreign capital, b) the revolutionary proletarian movement, c) the First World War, d) ethnic conflicts.
With each new pound of oil produced, the oil industry looked more and more like Kronos devouring his own children.
As we have already noted, the world was "divided" between two oil superpowers: the US and Russia. Moreover, the latter, except for Baku, had no other oil deposits and at the beginning of the 20th century. received an annual income of 100 million rubles from oil production. However, the increase in fuel and energy demand, due to both civilian and military factors, forced the European countries represented by England, France and Germany to pay close attention to Baku. The most active were the British.
British capital entered the Baku oil industry from the end of the 1890s, when prices for oil and oil products, especially kerosene, jumped on the world market. To seize the Caucasian oil fields in 1897-1901. in the City of London, 10 companies were created with a fixed capital of 53 million rubles. Six of them founded a group headed by one of the directors of the Bank of England - E. Hubbard, which included G. Gladstone, D. Kitson, C. Moore, W. Johnson, K. and W. Werner.
Let us recall the Azerbaijani Tagiev mentioned above. At the end of 1897, the British offered him to sell his business. Tagiyev demanded 5 million rubles for his oil-bearing lands in Bibi-Heybat, a kerosene-lubricating and carbon dioxide plant, an oil pipeline, an oil-loading flotilla and a train of railway tanks, although he spent 200 thousand rubles on all this and had long ago received several times more profit. The British agreed, but on the condition that they would first pay 500 thousand rubles at a time, and the remaining amount would be paid in installments over several years. The deal went through, resulting in the creation of the "Society for the Extraction of Russian Oil and Liquid Fuels" (abbreviated as "Oleum") with a fixed capital of 1.2 million pounds, and Tagiev was out of active business. However, the curiosity was that one of the wells went “furious” and began to gush 15 tons of oil daily: it was from the sale of oil from this drilling rig that the British paid the remaining 4.5 million rubles to the Azerbaijani ... E. Hubbard's group in 1898 For 7 million rubles, she bought up the firms of G. Arafelyan, the Budagyan brothers and the Adamyan brothers and created the Baku Russian Oil Society with a fixed capital of 1.5 million pounds sterling. Then, for 2.3 million rubles, she acquired the enterprises of A. Tsaturyan and B. de Boer, on the basis of which in 1899 she created the European Oil Company, the fixed capital of which amounted to 1.1 million pounds sterling. The same group simultaneously founded the "United Russian Oil Company" with a fixed capital of 200 thousand pounds sterling, the "Baku (Zabrat) Kerosene Society" with 50 thousand pounds sterling of fixed capital and the "Kalantarovsk (Baku) Oil Company" with a fixed capital of 50 thousand pounds sterling.
Another group of British capitalists acted under the leadership of F. Lane, the managing director of the large English kerosene export company Lane and Macandrew. In February 1898, this group bought a controlling stake in S.M. Shibaev and Co. from two Dutch banks and founded the Shebaev Oil Company Limited in London with a fixed capital of 750 thousand pounds sterling. Thus, only for 1898-1901. the British invested 4.1 million pounds sterling in the Baku oil industry.
The interests of France were indirectly represented by the Rothschild company. Even Belgian capital has infiltrated the Russian oil industry, controlling the Grozny firm A.I. Akhverdov & Co.
All this testified to one thing: the introduction of foreign capital, on the one hand, opened up wide opportunities for international cooperation and effective management, and on the other hand, turned Baku oil into an instrument of a great geopolitical game.
The influx of financial resources became the basis for rapid development, and in 1901. a record amount of oil was produced - more than 706 million poods. As the source notes: “By 1901, when the oil industry of Russia reached the climax of its development, more than a quarter of the entire production of the Baku region and about 40% of the kerosene produced here were concentrated in the hands of Nobel, Rothschild and Mantashev. The share of three firms in export was even higher: they owned about half of all oil products sent inside Russia (including over a third - to Nobel alone), and almost 70% of export from Batum abroad.
It was this “triad” that, jointly and separately, acted on the international market. But Al. Mantashyants did not forget his compatriots. In 1902, together with P. Ghukasyan, he founded the Homlight Oil company in London, and in the same year, together with the same P. Ghukasyan, the Nobels, the Rothschilds and the Tokam-Oleum company, he created the Deutsche-Russiche company in Germany Naphta Import Gasellschaft.However, difficult times have come for the Baku oil industry, due to unregulated fluctuations in prices on the world oil market and the strike movement of workers in Baku itself, which gradually brought the situation to a crisis. In 1902, 136 enterprises produced 636,528,852 poods of oil, and 24 leading firms - 521 million poods. Of these 24 firms, 13 were Armenian and extracted 203 million poods, or 39% of the total, with 51,946,779 poods mined by Al. Mantashyants.

In 1903, when workers' strikes began in Baku, the volume of production dropped to 597 million poods. In 1904 production increased slightly: 143 firms received 614,810,930 poods of oil, with 34 firms accounting for 279,467 thousand poods and 9 firms for 335,345 thousand poods. The share of four of these 9 firms was 34.5% of the total production. These were the “Nobel Brothers” (74.892 thousand), the “Caspian-Black Sea Society” of the Rothschilds (53.351 thousand), “A.I. oil industry for 1904, vol. I, Baku, 1905, p. 82).
After that, production steadily fell, and in the year of Russia's economic upsurge, 1913, it amounted to only 560 million poods. As a result, Russia lost its leadership in the world oil industry: if in 1901 its share was 51.6%, then in 1913 it was only 18.1%. And, conversely, the share of the United States increased: from 39.8% in 1901 to 62.2% in 1913.A qualitatively, fundamentally new stage in the oil industry of Baku began ... with the death of two people: in 1906, a merchant of the Moscow 1st guild, the owner of one of the oldest oil companies - the Russian Oil Industrial Society (RUNO), Gevork Lianosyan, died, and in 1911 - Alexander Mantashyants. They were replaced by their sons - Levon Mantashyants and Stepan Lianosyan (Stepan Georgievich Lianozov, 1872-1951). The latter was to surpass everyone, to become the "king" of the world oil industry. However, a deep tragedy fell to his lot, and a regrettable, unjustified oblivion.

It all started in 1872 when the oil fields were put up for auction. A native of Persia, Astrakhan 1st guild merchant Stepan Martynovich Lianosyan paid 26.220 rubles instead of the starting price of 1310 rubles and became the owner of the 7th plot with 6 oil wells, with an estimated productivity of only 4599 pounds. This step of his was not so much a foresight of the prospects of the oil industry as an ordinary financial investment: he bought land, his own plot, as a result of which a company with the chic name "RUNO" was created. But S.M. Lianosyan had a wider range of interests: a year later, in 1873, he received a concession from the Shah's government, giving the monopoly right to fish in the mouths of the Persian rivers flowing into the Caspian Sea. The contract was concluded for 5 years, but was repeatedly renewed. Fishing was carried out in five regions: Astara, Anzeli, Sefidrud, Mashadiser and Astrabad, each of which specialized in the production of certain types of fish.

After the death of S. Lianosyan, the business was inherited by his brother Gevork, who turned to the tsarist government with a request to lease the coastal waters of the Caspian Sea (according to the Turkmenchay Treaty, the Caspian Sea belonged to Russia). On March 22, 1900 G. Lianosyan and the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property of Russia concluded an agreement for a period of 25 years (After 1917 this agreement will be terminated...).
Thus, G. Lianosyan became the largest industrialist of fish and seafood in the coastal waters of the Caspian Sea and the mouths of the rivers flowing into it. If in the 90s of the nineteenth century. the gross product of fishing firms annually averaged 600 thousand rubles, then in the period from the end of the century to 1906. it reached 900 thousand rubles, and in 1907-1915. - 2.25 million rubles. On the eve of the First World War, the fishing industry of the brothers Martyn, Stepan, Levon Lianosyan was a modern industrial enterprise equipped with the latest technology. It included power plants, refrigeration rooms, telephone communications, mechanical and other workshops, as well as a flotilla of 20 boats, including two large steamships, one of which was called "Pirogov", and the second was named after the grandfather of its owners - "Martyn" . 5,900 people worked in the fishery, on the eve of the war, capital investments amounted to about 3 million 380 thousand francs, and in 1916 - 9 million rubles. Thus, the fishing enterprises of the Lianosyans were the largest industrial enterprises in Persia until 1909, when the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was created.

Let's leave the "fish" topic and talk about oil. Under G. Lianosyan, RUNO was a medium-sized company. After the death of his father, Stepan Lianosyan plunged headlong into oil, as a result of which a new era began in the world oil industry.

The following observation is extremely important here: the first generation of Armenian oil producers (and merchants in general) had one characteristic feature - patriarchy, which had its own logical explanation. The preservation of property dictated the need to attract trusted persons to the business: sons, close relatives, compatriots (Shusha, Shemakha, Tiflis, etc.). That is, the business was national in the truest sense of the word. Such were dozens of companies: the Mirzoyan brothers, the Adamyan brothers, Amur, Anahit, Aramazd, Vanand, Vorotan, the Gukasyan brothers, the Tumanyants brothers, the Krasilnikov brothers and many others, the listing of which alone would take up a lot of space. .
Even the great Mantashyants, who was well aware of the need for a constant infusion of more and more new investments in the oil industry, was the banking "king" of the Caucasus, a member of the board of two large St. Petersburg banks - even he still did not allow strangers to manage his business: in 1909. the board of his company included his son Levon, relatives David Kharazyan, Gevork Shaumyan, the already mentioned Arakel Sarukhan and S. Cherkezov, whose brother at that time was the mayor of his hometown of Tiflis.
In fact, “closed business territories” were created, which caused jealousy and obvious dissatisfaction among representatives of other nationalities (primarily Russians and Azerbaijanis), on the other hand, the development of the business itself was hampered.
S. Lianosyan was the first to break this stereotype of thinking, the first to point out to his compatriots by his activity that the national nature of business leads to a dead end, and the result of business - capital - should be national.
In 1907, he created in St. Petersburg a joint-stock company "G.M. Lianozova sons" with a fixed capital of 2 million rubles, of which he himself was the managing director, and included P. Lezhdnovsky and one of the largest entrepreneurs of the Russian empire in the board - the owner of the St. Petersburg mechanical and iron foundry joint-stock company "Putilovskiy Zavod" A. Putilov.
In addition to oil-bearing lands, the partnership owned the following enterprises: in Baku, in the White City, - kerosene and oil plants, tanks for storing kerosene and fuel oil; on the shores of the Caspian Sea - an oil loading pier, a 10-verst oil pipeline, in Batumi - tanks and storage facilities. With the involvement of representatives of big Russian capital, S. Lianosyan quickly achieved success: in 1907 he produced 240.7 thousand poods of oil, in 1908 - 1.168 thousand, in 1909 - 2.173 thousand, in 1910 - 2.133 thousand. pounds.

But that was only the beginning. One more person was supposed to join the "oil game", with the direct support and cooperation with whom S. Lianosyan was to conquer the world market. That person was Levon Mantashyants (Leon Mantashev). The one who adhered to the same principles as S. Lianosyan.
We believe that between these two there was a purely Armenian gentlemen's agreement, the loyalty of which they kept to the end.
In 1912, thanks to S. Lianosyan, the world oil industry entered a completely new stage of its development: on July 28 of this year, he created in London the Russian General Oil Corporation (Russian General Oil Corporation, abbreviated as Oil) with a fixed capital of 2, £5 million. Here is the composition of this corporation: the chairman of the board of the Russian-Asian Bank A. Putilov (chairman), the chairman of the board of the firms G.M. Lianozova sons and A.I. Mantashev and Co. S. Lianosyan (managing director) , chairman of the board of the Caspian Partnership P. Gukasyan, director of the St. Petersburg International Commercial Bank A. Vyshnegradsky and director of the Paris branch of this bank I. Radin, chairman of the board of the St. Petersburg private commercial bank A. Davidov and member of the board of the same bank Viscount de Bretel, chairman of the board of the Siberian Trade Bank M. Soloveichik, Chairman of the Board of the St. Petersburg Accounting and Loan Bank Y. Utin, Chairman of the Board of the Russian Bank for Foreign Trade A. Rafalovich, Managing Director of the Russian Commercial and Industrial Bank I. Kon, Director of the London Branch of the Russian-Asian Bank Sir Nichbold, Chairman of the Board of the Neft Company N. Glasberg, Member of the Parliament of England, Viscount Carrick (V.3iv, Foreign Capitals in Russian oil industry, 1916, p. 53.).
The similar composition of "Oil" gives rise to some reflections. Firstly, it included the leading Baku oil companies - three Armenian and one Russian, the elite of Russian banking capital, representatives of the high society of English society, but there were no Nobels and Rothschilds.
As noted by the well-known economist V. Ziv: "This trust made a complete revolution in the Russian oil industry." What was the essence of this revolution, its economic characteristics? What did S. Lianosyan achieve?
S. Lianosyan's personal contribution was that he managed to do what no one before him could do: he made Baku's oil industry attractive to foreigners and laid the foundation for grandiose investments of foreign capital. In 1912, in England, he founded the British Lianosoff Wife Oil Sotrapu company, in France - La Lianosoff Frangais, and in 1913, together with German capitalists with a fixed capital of 1 million marks, he created the Deutsche Lianozoff company in Hamburg Mineralol Import Act. Ges”, the purpose of which was to import Russian (that is, Baku) oil and oil products into Germany, process them and sell them. To implement all these plans, S. Lianosyan attracted large European financial institutions: O. A. Rosenberg and Co. (Paris), L. Dreyfus and Co. (Paris), B. Margulies (Brussels) banks. That is, on the basis of the oil business, he united Russian and European financial capital. Of the 16 international financial syndicates, 10 had shares in the Russian oil industry for a huge amount - 363.56 million rubles. The production and economic support of "Oil" was the firm "A.I. Mantashev and K" - this company served as a guarantee of the creation of the corporation. After the death of Al. Mantashyants, already in July 1912, his sons signed an agreement: they sold most of their shares to St. Petersburg banks, the headquarters of the department was transferred from Baku to the capital, after which Oil was born, whose shares were quoted on the Paris stock exchanges , London, Amsterdam, Brussels and, of course, St. Petersburg.

With the creation of Oil, the global oil industry has been transformed, polarized, elicited adequate responses, and set the stage for Her Majesty Politics. And this meant new rules of the game and new players. One of them was the Royal Dutch Shell and its Lianosian, Henry Deterding.

On the islands of Indonesia (Java, Sumatra, Borneo) - one of the largest oil-producing states of the modern world, the oil industry was founded in 1887. A number of Dutch oil companies were created, among which stood out founded in 1890. India" (subsequently - "Royal Datch C °"). It was notable for its vigorous activity: in 1897, having a fixed capital of 5 million florins, it paid shareholders a 55% dividend. In 1896 the commercial director of Royal Datch С° was G. Deterding, who in 1901 became the chairman of the board of the company and its full owner. In 1907, he merged his company with the powerful Shell Transport and Trading Company (Shell Transport and Trading C °), created the Royal Dutch Shell company, one of the world's oil monopolies, 60% of whose shares belonged to him. When in 1911 the English fleet switched to oil products, G. Deterding realized that he could become one of the most influential people in the world, and declared: “The army, navy, all the gold in the world and all peoples are powerless against the owners of oil. Who needs cars and motorcycles, ships, tanks and planes without this precious black liquid? He began to pursue an aggressive policy: to acquire all new oil fields, as well as shares of various European, Asian, African and American companies. Suffice it to say that G. Deterding bought up the oil fields in the states of Oklahoma and California and in 1915 controlled 1/9 of the US oil industry.
One of the first "victims" of Deterding was the Russian oil industry. In 1912, Royal Dutch Shell bought a 90% stake in the Caspian-Black Sea Society of the Rothschilds (for about 10 million rubles), as well as the Mazut company owned by them (fixed capital - 12 million rubles). In addition, it acquired a significant number of blocks of shares in a number of other Baku and Grozny enterprises. As a result, in 1915 Deterding owned approximately 15% of Russian oil production.

Thus, the world was "divided" between three oil giants - Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Deterding's Royal Dutch Shell and Lianosyan's Oil. Tough competition began and the struggle for oil markets intensified.
However, there was another power - Germany, which could not accept this state of affairs, to be out of the game, and it set its sights on the newly discovered oil lands of the Ottoman Empire. Those lands, in the discovery and exploitation of which the leading role belongs to Calouste Gulbenkian...

Since 1912, the world began to prepare for war, one of the main causes of which was oil. Soon the smell of oil and the smell of death will replace each other.
The insatiable jaws of the war were thirsty for oil, and in 1915 571.4 million poods were produced in Baku. The share of 17 companies included in Oil accounted for 114.4 million pounds (including the company A.I. Mantashev and Co. extracted 15.2, the Caspian Partnership - 14.6, G.M. Lianozova sons" - 12.8, "Brothers Mirzoev" - 8.1, "I.N. Ter-Akopov" - 6.0, "Aramazd" - 4.9, "I.E. Pitoev" - 2.7 , "Syunik" - 0.8 million).
The share of 8 firms included in the "Royal Dutch Shell" amounted to 91.8 million pounds. And 5 firms from the Nobel Brothers group - 79.7 million. In addition, 11 firms, mostly Armenian and not included in the mentioned groups, produced 113.3 million poods of oil. There were also firms owned by Azerbaijanis. Asadullayev's firm produced 6.6 million poods, Nagiyev's - 4.1 million. Two years later, in 1913, 187 firms were registered in Baku, of which 65 were Armenian, 62 of which (information about 3 is missing) produced 136.895 .025 pounds. There were 39 Azerbaijani firms, and they extracted only 24,011,094 pounds. It is up to the reader to compare these figures and, consequently, evaluate the share of Azerbaijanis in the Baku oil industry.

One more area connected with the activities of Armenians in the oil industry should not be ignored - navigation in the Caspian Sea. Sea transportation of oil and oil products was a serious business. In 1889, transportation across the Caspian Sea was carried out by 34 steamships with a total carrying capacity of 1 million 330 thousand poods. Of these, 7 belonged to Armenians (“Vaspurakan” and “Evelina” Avetyan, “Rescuer” brothers Kolmanyants and Buniatyan, “Grigoryan” Parsadanyan, “Serezha”, “Arshak” and “Konstantin” Tumayan) - their total carrying capacity was 249.524 pounds (18.7%).
Three Azerbaijanis had 6 vessels with a carrying capacity of 192,270 pounds (14.4%).
In the same year, 20 special steamships were used, which carried exclusively kerosene. Their total carrying capacity was 750,000 poods, and 5 of them belonged to the Armenians (Armenyak of the Armenian Shipping Company, Rafael of Arafelyan, Admiral, Lazar, Konstantin Tumayan) with a carrying capacity of 156,820 poods. The Azerbaijanis did not have such ships.
In 1912, there were 66 ship owners and shipping companies in Baku, 14 of which were Armenians, owning 24 ships. These were: Hakob and Hovhannes Avetyans (“Menastan”), A. Adamyan (“Vaan”), “Armenian Shipping Company” (“Ashot Yerkat”, “Amasia”), the Buniatyan brothers (“Benardaki”, “Buniat”, “ Nikolai"), Volga Company ("Artsiv Vaspurakani"), Eastern Company of Warehouses ("Sevan", "Van"), Avetis Ghukasyan ("Tamara"), M. Ghukasyan ("Anna"), "Trans-Caspian Commercial and Industrial Company (Vaspurakan), Elizaveta Sargsyan (Grigor Artsruni), Sarukhan-Kura Joint-Stock Company (Sarukhan, Serezha), I.N. Ter-Akopov (Gadir -Guseinov”), Ter-Stepanyan and Kolmanyants (“Arshaluys”), H. Tumayan (“Tatiana”) and the company “G.M. Lianozova sons” (“Worker”, “Martyn”, “Pirogov”, “Brave” , "Sefidrud").
The largest shipping company on the Caspian Sea was, of course, the Russian company Kavkaz and Mercury. It is noteworthy that among its many ships there were steamships with the following names: "Armenian", "Ani", "Pambak", "Zang", "Mush", "Arag", "Grigoryan".
As for oil tankers, here the undeniable leadership belonged to the Nobel Brothers company, and the best vessel on the Caspian Sea was their steamship K. Hagelin.
Having scrupulously presented the origin and course of development of the Baku oil industry as much as possible, citing numerous facts, statistics, economic indicators, we sought not only to show the huge contribution of the Armenians, but also the indisputable fact that allows us to state quite conclusively: the Baku oil industry was founded and developed by Armenians, Russians , Swedes, British, representatives of other nations, but not Azerbaijanis. They had a different national mission: to take possession of what others had created. They successfully completed this mission.Khachatur DADAYAN

-- [ Page 2 ] --

if in 1873 the price per pound of oil was 45 kopecks, then after the discovery of June 1873. in Balakhany, the famous "Vermishev" fountain, which in a short time flooded the surroundings and formed several oil lakes, the price per pood fell to 2 kopecks. The well of the oilman I.A. Vermishev spewed out a powerful fountain for 13 days, 61 meters high and threw out more than 90 million poods of oil within three months. This was many times greater than many of the oil inflows found in Pennsylvania.

March 24, 1879 The Baku branch of the Imperial Russian Technical Society was established, which promotes the enhanced development of the oil business in Azerbaijan and the Caucasus as a whole.

The famous English traveler, writer and journalist Charles Marvin (1854-1890) visited in 1882-1883. Russia (Caucasus, Absheron) was surprised by the scope of the oil business in these regions and described it in his books: "Region of eternal fire: Petroleum region of the Caspian" (1884) and "Baku is the petroleum of Europe" (1886r.) .

The famous Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun (Pedersen) also described his memories of a trip to Russia, especially to Baku, in his book “In a Fairyland” [PSS, vol. 3, publishing house of the Marx Partnership, 1910]. In Baku, he met with the public of the city, and also visited the firm “br. Nobel".

Hamsun Knut, pseudonym of Pedersen (1859-1952) - famous Norwegian writer and traveler;

Nobel Prize in Literature (1920) for the novel The Juices of the Earth. He first drew attention to himself with the novel "Hunger" (1890). In the work of Hamsun, naturalism is uniquely combined with neo-romanticism. A typical representative of literary modernism, Hamsun in his works opposes the world of logic and expediency to the world of bizarre fantasies. When Hamsun visited Baku (1899), he called the famous Baku Bibi-Heybat field "a city within a city - the most incomprehensible and strange in the world." He was especially struck by the “black, fat and crudely made oil derricks” sticking out from everywhere.

In 1885 German chemist Carl Engler comes to Baku on purpose to study the nature and origin of the Absheron oils.

Having familiarized himself with the Baku oil business and the research laboratories of the city, he noted that “... in most of the large Baku factories there are well-arranged chemical laboratories, which, due to their devices, can serve as a model for many of our technical laboratories” [K. Engler. Baku oil. "Mining Journal", 1886, v.4, p.66]. Later, in 1888. he will publish his theory of the organic origin of oil, which will become the basis for all subsequent similar theories, as opposed to the theories of the mineral formation of oil (D.I. Mendeleev and others).

Karl Oswald Victor Engler (1842-1925) - an outstanding scientist, experimental chemist. In 1887 he is head of the department of pure chemistry and director of the chemical institute in Karlsruhe. They left a significant literary legacy: up to 300 published scientific papers. Of the capital works, it should be noted the publication "Handbuch der Technishen Chemie", F. Stohmann und C.

Engler, 1872-1874;

"Neues Handuch der chemischen Technologie", C. Engler, 1912 and especially his 5-volume work on oil, written jointly with the geologist N. von Hofer et al. and H. von Hfer). Engler's name gained worldwide fame thanks to his work on the analysis of oil (distillation according to Engler, determination of its viscosity with a viscometer, etc.) and the theory of the organic origin of oil.

His experiments in the artificial preparation of oil by distillation of fats under pressure are classical. Engler was a member of many scientific institutions and societies, incl. and the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as the honorary chairman of the International Commission for the unification of methods for the analysis of petroleum products.

October 8 and 9, 1888 Russian Emperor Alexander III (1845-1894) with his family was on a two-day visit to Baku. He visited the Chernogorodsky oil plant of the company "br. Nobel” and the oil fields of the Rothschild “Caspian-Cherpomor Society” and Shamsi Asadullayev in the villages of Balakhani and Sabunchi. It is characteristic that the tsarist government actively supported the formation and development of large firms, since they were more organized in terms of production and better represented the interests of industry.

Soon, lamps appeared in Russia, adapted for Russian kerosene, which is somewhat different from American. Here it is appropriate to note the role of D.I. Mendeleev, who first proposed the use of oil residues after the extraction of kerosene to obtain lubricating oils. The scientist carefully studied the oil business in Russia;

visited Baku several times: 1863, 1880, 1884 and 1886 (twice). in order to study the economy and the state of the technical equipment of the oil fields.

The most pressing issue in the 80-90s. was the construction of oil pipelines between the fields and factories of the Black City in Baku, the solution of which came to grips with the most energetic firms of the “br. Nobel”, “G.Z. Tagiyev" and "Baku Oil Society". In 1877

The construction of the first oil pipeline in Russia between the fields of Sabunchi and the factories of the Black City was completed. By 1890 in the Baku oil region, 25 oil pipelines with a length of about 286 km were laid, through which up to 1.5 million poods of oil per day were pumped from fields to factories.

It is necessary to remember the talented engineers A.V. Bari and V.G.

Shukhov, who were the main leaders in the construction of oil pipelines in Baku and about the professor of the St. Petersburg Technical Institute N.L. Shchukin (1848-1924) - the author of the project of the Transcaucasian Baku-Batukhm pipeline. (The construction of the unique main Baku-Batum kerosene pipeline, the need for which was fiercely debated at that time, took 10 years: from 1897 to 1907).

The creation of tankers for the transportation of oil and oil products had a significant impact on the development of the Caspian Fleet, thus opening a new era in the oil business.

For the first time in the world, the Zoroaster oil tanker was built by order of Ludwig Nobel in 1877. in the Swedish city of Motala;

subsequently, by the firm "br. Nobel, a whole oil-loading flotilla was built, which included ships: Magomed, Moses, Spinoza, Darwin, Nordenskiöld, Linnaeus, Buddha, Koran, Talmud, Rescuer, etc.

Possessing a powerful oil tanker fleet and more than 2,000 tank wagons, Br. Nobel transported oil and oil products to countless tanks built by it in many Russian cities Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Tsaritsyn, Astrakhan, Yaroslavl, etc.

Later, ships belonging to other companies also sailed along the waterways of Russia. For example, the trade and transport company "Mazut", created by Alphonse Rothschild in 1898. owned 13 tankers in the Caspian Sea:

"Bibi-Heybat", "Alexander Kolesnikov", "Nikolay", etc., as well as the steamships "Venture", "Cheleken", etc.

Since 1880 tankers from the port of Batumi with Baku kerosene were sent to many countries of the world: in the 80-90s, Russian (Baku) oil competed freely with American oil and even began to force it out of European and Asian markets. Kerosene exported from Baku fully meets the needs of Russia and since 1883. the importation of American kerosene into the empire almost ceases.

A comparison of data on oil production in the United States and Russia showed that in 1859. in the USA (Pennsylvania), oil production was 82 thousand tons.

barrels;

in 1889 - 14 million barrels. And in Russia (Baku) in the same 1889. 16.7 million barrels of oil were produced. It is appropriate here to quote from an article by Pyotr Chikhachev "Oil in the United States and in Russia" (1885), which examines the state of oil production in the United States, Russia and other oil-producing countries of the world and emphasizes that the United States and Russia account for more than half of all world oil production. Chikhachev noted that "in 1881, the average daily flow rate of wells in Baku was 40 tons, and in the USA - 11.5 tons", and quotes the words of Charles Marvin, comparing "Absheron with a sponge immersed in water." Further, Chikhachev emphasizes that thanks to the method invented by engineer O.K.

Lenz, heavy residues formed during the distillation of oil and 60% consisting of mineral oils (called fuel oil by the local population) were processed in large quantities at the factories of the Black City and in Surakhany, followed by use for heating steamships.

Previously, saxaul and expensive English coal were used for this purpose. The author of the article believes that the wealth of the Absheron subsoil is confirmed by both the high flow rate of wells (they produced more than 3 times more oil than in the USA) and the height of oil fountains (in the Baku region it reached 84 m, in the USA - 19 m).

Petr Alexandrovich Chikhachev (1808-1890) - an outstanding geographer, orientalist and geologist;

known for his travels in Altai, Asia Minor, Europe and Africa. He spent most of his non-traveling life in Paris. After his death, he bequeathed his considerable capital to the Paris Academy of Sciences to encourage scientific research in Asia Minor.

In 1901 the Baku oil region provided 95% of the total imperial oil production;

in that year, oil production in Russia was distributed as follows: 667.1 million poods from the Baku province and about 34.7 million poods from the Terek region.

The number of workers employed in the oil fields of the Russian Empire increased from 7,000 in 1894 to up to 27 thousand in 1904, of which 24.5 thousand worked in Azerbaijan (in the Baku oil region). In 1904 There were oil refineries in Russia, of which 72 plants were located in Absheron.

It should be especially noted that the Russian oil industry, until 1910, was mainly represented by the Azerbaijani oil industry. The main deposits of Baku included Balakhani, Sabunchi, Romany, Bibi-Heybat and Surakhany [“Overview of Baku oil.

iromysl. for 1915”, Baku, 1916, v.2, p.235].

In 1899-1901. Baku, providing more than half of the world's oil production, brought Russia to the first place, leaving behind such countries as the USA, Argentina, Peru, etc. It was not for nothing that Winston Churchill noted at the beginning of the 20th century that “... if oil is the queen, then Baku throne". Already in 1885. to Asian countries, instead of American kerosene, 37 million coupons of domestic raw materials were delivered from Baku via Batum.

The famous geologist M. Neumeier in his book “History of the Earth” (St. Petersburg, 1898, p. 643) emphasized: “In 1873. Russia paid over 10.5 million rubles for foreign oil products, and in 1890. received more than 27.5 million rubles for the exported oil and its products. Moreover, the author notes that the Absheron oil has found great application in England, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and other European countries.

Neumeier Melchior (1845-1890) - an outstanding geologist. Studied in Munich and Heidelberg. Since 1873 professor of paleontology at the University of Vienna. Known for numerous geological travels within Austria-Hungary, the Balkan Peninsula, Italy and the islands of Asia Minor. Created a whole school of young paleontologists (including among Russian scientists). The most vivid picture of Neumeier's worldview is created by his work "Die Stamme des Tierreichs" (Vienna, 1890);

and his fundamental work "Erdgeschichte" (Leipzig, 1885-1887, in 2 volumes) was a huge success. In this work, in a public, but scientific form, he gave a presentation of modern geology in the spirit of evolutionism and, at the same time, great generalizations and relief of the modern "face of the Earth."

The work quickly sold out and was reprinted in 1895. his student - Professor V. Uhlig;

and three years later it was translated into Russian under the title "History of the Earth" (St. Petersburg, 1898).

The growth of the oil industry in Baku at the end of the 19th century. put Russia in the ranks of the advanced capitalist countries of the world: after 1901. it held second place for a long time (after the US) until it was later ousted by Mexico.

The congresses of Baku oil industrialists, established in 1884, served to organize and coordinate the activities of Russian entrepreneurs. The main purpose of the congresses was "the opportunity for the oil owners to express their needs, aspirations and desires to the government." It is characteristic that Dmitri Mendeleev, who was present at the 1st Congress of Oil Producers (Baku, 1884), was satisfied with the depth of questions and problems in the oil business considered at the congress. The scientist emphasized that "... the free cohesion of figures in one industry to discuss its interests is a major and desirable news not only for Baku, but for all of us ... An open consideration of issues and affairs of free industry cannot but be welcomed."

The congress was an association of the capitals of oil firms, in which each firm had a certain share of votes. For example;

at the 33rd Congress of Oil Industrialists in 1914. the largest firms had 111 votes: “br. Nobel - 18, Shell - 34 and General Corporation "Oil"

59 [Proceedings of the XXXV Extraordinary Congress of Oil Industrialists in Baku in June 1916, Baku, 1916].

Representatives of the oil magnates used the Council of the Congress to interact with various government agencies, to establish close ties with the state apparatus, to participate in interdepartmental meetings, commissions, i.e. to protect the interests of their firms before the government. Under the Council of Congresses of Oil Producers there was a special statistical bureau, whose duties included the collection, processing and publication of all information related to the oil business. Since its establishment, the Congress Council has been organizing a network of specialized technical libraries for employees of the oil industry;

the first in this network was organized a library for employees of the Council itself: so by 1911. in this library there were more than 10 thousand books in Russian, English and German, mainly in technical disciplines. It should be noted that the initiators of the creation of technical libraries in the oil fields were the major oil owners Nobel, G.Z. Tagiev, Sh. Asadullasv, K.Ya.

Zubalov, A.M. Benckendorff and others, which resulted in the following fact: by 1912. Baku oilfields operated specialized scientific and technical libraries. The volume of the fund of these libraries by 1915. amounted to more than 27 thousand books and periodicals.

Since January 10, 1899 The Council of the Congress began to publish in Baku once every two weeks the newspaper-magazine "Oil Business", which is published to this day (since May 1920, the magazine has been called "Azerbaijan Oil Industry").

Also, the Council of the Congress published the “Reviews of the Baku Oil Industry”: both of these publications were an invaluable statistical database for researchers and historians. So, according to many foreign experts who studied the history of the oil business, it was in the image and likeness of these publications that the principles for the preparation and processing of oil statistics were later built in many other countries of the world.

One of the indicators of the success of the Azerbaijani oil business in the 2nd half of the 19th century. was the participation of Baku oilmen in various all-Russian and international exhibitions. For example, at the All-Russian Manufactory Exhibition of 1870. in St. Petersburg, the plant of V. Kokorev and P. Gubonin in Surakhani was noted - “for the preparation of lighting oils of very high quality from Caucasian oil, with their extensive production at the plant” [Notes of the Caucasian Society of Agriculture, 1870, No. 5, p. . fifteen].

Further, at the "Caucasian Exhibition of Agriculture and Industry" in Tiflis, in 1889. products and products of the oil industry of Azerbaijan were also a huge success. In particular, the gold medals of this exhibition were awarded to the following Baku oil companies: “Br. Nobel" - for merits in the oil industry and putting on a practical basis the regeneration of alkaline waste;

"CM. Shibaev" - for the variety and high quality of oil processing products and "Caspian Partnership" - for the excellent quality of oil products and the correct organization of the factory business [Caucasian calendar, 1890, p.71].

Large oil producers, in search of new world markets, actively participated in the world's largest exhibitions. Ludwig Nobel and Viktor Ragozin were especially successful in this. Their exhibits of oil products from Baku refineries, shown at world exhibitions in Paris (1878), Brussels (1880) and London (1881), received the highest marks from experts.

In 1882 Ludwig Nobel emphasized in one of his speeches:

“The Russian market is already too small for Baku kerosene and it will have to look for a way out abroad at all costs.” And Viktor Ragozin at the 1st Congress of Baku oil owners in 1884.

noted: “The European market, correctly, persistently and systematically conquered, will open up sales for us ... from another 12 to 15 million pounds, taking the smallest figure ... Only by penetrating into Europe does Baku industry become large, not only national, but also international rational. Without export to Europe, it will never be able to become a serious industry” [Proceedings of the First Congress of Oil Industrialists in Baku. Baku, 1885, p.25-26].

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the Nobel Prizes to them. Ludwig Nobel (in 1889, in St. Petersburg) and his son - Emmanuel Nobel (in 1904, in Baku).

In 1875, for the first time in the history of the world oil industry, V.I.

Ragozin researched lubricating oils and built the first factories for this purpose in Balakhna (Nizhny Novgorod province) and in Konstantinov (near Yaroslavl). In 1878 Lubricating oils from Baku oil exported by him abroad are firmly conquering the world market.

Thus, Azerbaijani oil as a raw material for the production of lubricating oils has played an important role in the Russian economy.

Oil factories of Ragozin on the Volga;

Nobel, Tagiev, Shibaev, Nagiyev, Rothschild, Asadullayev, Ashurbekov and others in Baku;

Frolova, Ropsa and Petukhova in St. Petersburg received lubricating oils from Baku oils, which successfully replaced American lubricating oils in England, France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Denmark and other European countries.

It is appropriate to note here that of the Russian oils, the Bakuin brand was the most famous in England. Moreover, there were only two companies selling lubricating oils from Russia in the UK: “br. Nobel” and “Partnership of kerosene-oil production”.

Already by the beginning of the 90s of the nineteenth century. the capacity of Russian oil refineries made it possible to fully satisfy the empire's need for high-quality lubricating oils [“Review of the Baku Isft. industrial for 1892, Baku, 1893, p. 105]. Oil products obtained at Baku refineries, as well as the bulk of crude unrefined oil, were exported from Baku in four ways: along the Caspian Sea, along the Transcaucasian and Vladikavkaz (Baku-Petrovsk) railways, and a very small amount by horse-drawn cart. So, in 1904. the entire export of oil and oil products amounted to about 492.1 million poods.

It is characteristic that already in 1897. of the total amount of oil produced within Russia in the amount of 478 million poods, 458 million poods were obtained in the Baku oil region. And the largest consumers of Baku kerosene after Russia were England, Turkey and Greece.

Because in the 1990s, Baku oil became the main cargo for the Volga fleet, then its development accelerated: a large number of barges were built on the Volga to transport oil products. In 1881 by order of the company "br. Nobel" in Sweden, the first river wheeled tankers "Kalmyk" and "Tatarin" with a carrying capacity of 40 and 50 thousand pounds and two metal tanker barges "Nadezhda" and "Vera" were built. All of them were intended exclusively for the transport of kerosene. Large iron barges (150 m long and 20 m wide) practically did not leak kerosene and were twice as durable as wooden ones, but they were very expensive, so by the end of the 19th century. they were available only to large firms - “br.

Nobel”, “Caucasus and Mercury”, “Caspian-Black Sea Society”, “S.M.

Shibaev, M. Nagiev", "Sh. Asadullayev" and others.

Formation and development of the Caspian and Volga fleets by the end of the nineteenth century. was of great importance for the delivery of oil fuel from Baku to large Russian cities, and also contributed to the growth of the shipbuilding and ship repair industry of the Volga region. Creation of the Caspian and Volga fleets in the 80-90s. 19th century made it possible to export Baku oil in significant quantities to various industrial centers of Russia. During this period, oil fuel from Baku made a journey of 2900 miles along the Volga-Caspian waterway and was the most important cargo on the inland waterways of Russia.

By 1914 oil transportation along the Volga became dominant in the structure of cargo flows, which meant the emergence of a powerful oil-loading fleet on the Volga. So the cartel "Nobmazut" (association of the company "br.

Nobel "with the Rothschild trade and transport enterprise" Mazut ") reigned supreme in the markets of the Russian Empire: in 1913. of the iron tanker barges on the Volga, 72 belonged to Nobmazut (46 to Nobel Brothers and 26 to the Mazut enterprise).

The accelerated development of the Azerbaijani oil business was mainly due to a significant influx of foreign capital into it (Nobels, Rothschilds, Vishau, etc.), which since the beginning of the 20th century.

rapidly penetrated into the Russian oil industry. Moreover, the penetration occurred with the simultaneous ousting of Russian and Baku entrepreneurs not only from the oil industry, but also from the trade in petroleum products. Suffice it to note that by the end of the nineteenth century. firm "br. Nobel" and "Caspian-Black Sea Society" of Rothschild concentrated in their hands up to 70% of all oil trade in Russia.

Foreign capital contributes to a noticeable jump in oil production, as well as the rapid growth of industries serving the oil field and oil refining production (port berths and power plants are being built). In terms of the capacity of power plants, Baku takes the third place, after St. Petersburg and Moscow. To service the oil fields, large joint-stock companies are created: the Caspian Machine-Building and Boiler Plant, mechanical workshops of the firms br. Nobel”, “S.M. Shibaev”, “Caucasus and Mercury”, “Caspian”, workshops of the “Nadezhda” society, “Eastern Society of Warehouses”, G. Bartdorf’s mechanical and iron foundry, A. Dadashev’s ship repair dock, etc. At the same time, more than half of the mechanical industries are mainly used for the repair of ships, tk. the sea route was dominant in the transportation of produced oil.

The wealth of oil deposits, cheap labor and, of course, the huge profits that the oil business brought to industrialists accelerated the influx of foreign currency into the Russian (Azerbaijani) oil industry. This was facilitated, dated May 1, 1880, by the resolution of the Special Conference on the issue of the admissibility of foreigners to the oil field within the Baku region.

Later, on July 6, 1898, a special decree of the Russian government was issued, according to which foreigners were given the opportunity to carry out free oil exploration on state lands along with Russian subjects, receive allotments for its production, and also participate in the upcoming regular auctions for the lease of oil-bearing areas.

Ardent supporters of attracting foreign capital to the Russian oil business were: Prince M. Golitsyn, the head of the civil part in the Caucasus, and Russian finance ministers S.Yu.

Witte and V.N. Kokovtsov.

So, Prince M. Golitsyn wrote: “The Caucasus is in a different situation, and so far it is difficult to do without foreign capital, especially without a little entrepreneurial spirit on the part of Russian capitalists.

The lack of free capital, the embryonic state of factory and factory industry, the low level of agriculture, the lack of technical knowledge and the weak entrepreneurial spirit of the local population will hinder the economic growth of the region for a long time to come. Under such conditions, it is not necessary to refuse the participation of foreigners in the economic life of the Caucasus, and meanwhile, an unconditional prohibition on them from acquiring real estate would entail an end to the influx of foreign capital to the region, to the obvious damage to its economic interests .... Any unconditional restriction on the activities of foreign enterprises on Caucasus would be tantamount to a serious delay in the country's industrial prosperity."

Count S.Yu. Witte (Minister of Finance from 1892-1906) always pointed out at special meetings on oil matters: "... The competition of our oil products on the world market is completely unthinkable without the involvement of foreign and especially English entrepreneurs and their capital."

And Count V.N. Kokovtsov (Minister of Finance from 1906-1914, and since 1911 Chairman of the Council of Ministers) in a conversation with an employee of the Times newspaper

stated that “... considers it necessary to support the British capitalists who have invested in Russian oil enterprises, because Russian capital for these affairs is not enough. The question of the legalization of joint-stock companies, due to the different views of some members of the cabinet, will be decided in the Council of Ministers, where he will vote in favor of the British.

Since 1901 foreign capital strove for complete monopolization of the oil industry. British firms were especially active in this regard: from 1898 to 1903. British entrepreneurs invested 60 million rubles in oil production and expansion of their fields. However, their interest in the Baku oil business arose much earlier.

Already in the 18th century, the director of the Anglo-Russian trading company I.

Ganwei (1741) and the traveler G. Foster (1784), while in Baku in these years, noted that Baku residents had long used gas for boiling water, cooking food, burning lime, and oil for covering the roofs of their dwellings as a protection against atmospheric precipitation. In 1754 I. Ganvey published in London the book "Historical Essay on English Trade on the Caspian Sea", where he not only described in detail the problems of trade, but also described in detail the state of the oil business in Baku.

In 1884 Absheron was visited by the secretary of the London Petroleum Association, Boverton Redwood, who later at a meeting of the Society of the Chemical Industry made a detailed report on the state of the oil business in Russia and concluded that “... Baku oil sources are so rich in oil that the Russians are able to supply kerosene and lubricate the whole world with oils” [Mining magazine, 1885, v.1, p. 349].

An extensive article was published in the English scientific journal Engineering (1885) about the successes of the Baku oil business, in which its state was analyzed from 1864 to 1864. and it has even been suggested that within 2-3 years Russia will be able to establish control over the markets of Northern Europe, and in the near future will become a strong competitor for Americans in the countries adjacent to the Black and Mediterranean Seas, not to mention the Far East and India [ Sales slip, February 22, 1886].

The journalist Charles Marvin, already known to us, came to a similar conclusion about the results of the competitive struggle between the two powers. wrote: "Sooner or later, America must give way to Russia." Further, he noted that "... the Russian oil business is too tempting for England to let it pass between her fingers," and for deeper penetration into the Baku oil business, Ch. Marvin advised using the construction of the Baku-Batum pipeline (as is already known, the construction of the pipeline will begin 1897 and will end exactly in 10 years).

As a patriot of his country, Marvin hoped that "... the Russian oil pipeline, together with all the necessary devices, machines, pumps, tanks, and so on, would not fall into German or Belgian hands" [Gorny zhurnal, 1887, v.1].

In 1886 the English firm John Russel & Co twice sent its representatives to the Caucasus;

at the III Congress of Baku oil owners (March-April, 1886) was attended by the representative of the London Chamber of Commerce Stuart and the British vice-consul in Batum Peacock. In his report, Stewart spoke out against the acquisition of kerosene plants by the British, believing that the main interest for Great Britain should be the trade in petroleum products.

In 1897 the British buy for 5 million rubles the crafts of G.Z. Tagiyev, and in two and a half years they receive more than 7.5 million rubles of net profit from the oil produced at these fields. It should be noted that Tagiyev sold his oil enterprises in order to penetrate into other sectors of the Azerbaijani economy. At the same time, he retained in his hands shares worth 1.6 million rubles in the Oleum company, created on the basis of these enterprises, which allowed him, as a major shareholder, to continue capital accumulation at the expense of the oil industry. Tagiev's stake was equal to 13.7% of the fixed capital, which gave him the opportunity to become one of the directors of the board of the Oleum company

along with the director of the English bike Z. Hubbard. It was during this period that Tagiyev invested significant capital in the textile, food, construction industries, shipbuilding and fishing. So, in 1890. Tagiyev buys the Caspian shipping company for 1 million 136 thousand rubles.

rubles, creating a company with 10 ships, i.e. he will create his own independent merchant fleet. And founded by him in 1897. The Caucasian Joint-Stock Company for the Processing of Fibrous Substances, with a fixed capital of 2 million rubles, was the largest textile industry enterprise on the outskirts of the empire.

Oil trading company “G.Z. Tagiyev” (1872-1897) in the 80-90s had a diversified economy and large enterprises in the oil industry. She took the 4th place (after the firms “br.

Nobel, the Rothschild Caspian-Black Sea Society and the Caspian Partnership) in terms of the productivity of their refineries. In 1885 the company produced 7 million poods of oil and produced 2 million poods of kerosene.

The largest after the company "br. Nobel" was a joint-stock company "A.I. Mantashev", founded in 1889. Its oil production ranged from 25 to 49 million pounds, and the total capital in 1909. reached 27 million rubles. In 1907

5.6 million pounds of kerosene were produced at the Mantashev plant.

During this period, the firms of Baku oil industrialists - Musa Nagiyev and Shamsi Asadullayev (founded in 1887 and 1893, respectively) were also among the large ones. The annual oil production in these firms was 7-12 million pounds. They owned oil fields, oil refineries and oil tankers. The fixed capital of the firm "Nagiyev Musa" in 1907. amounted to 10 million rubles;

in 1904-1910 it occupied the 6th-7th place among Russian oil firms. To present the significance of the Nagiyev Musa company, we note that it had 10 votes at the Council of the Congress of Baku Oil Industrialists (the largest oil company in Russia, Nobel Brothers, had 18 votes).

Bought by the British (James Wishaw et al., 1890) oilfields of the company "S.M. Shibaev" in Romany a year later gave 1 million rubles of net profit. In St. Petersburg on April 10, 1902. firm br.

Nobel acquires oil fields in Romany from the oil refiner I. Gadzhinsky;

and later, on October 17, 1905. it, with the consent of the Committee of Ministers, buys up oil fields from the industrialist A. Adamov.

In 1904 At the expense of Baku kerosene, England covered its needs by 47%, and France - by 71%. However, the unequal agreement concluded between the Baku oil owners and the American Standard Oil syndicate of John Rockefeller had negative consequences for the export of Baku kerosene.

John Rockefeller Davison (1839-1937) - the largest industrialist, one of the most prominent figures in the American financial business. He, thanks to his intelligence, resourcefulness, and through a series of successful combinations with railway tariffs, became not only the largest king of oil in the world, but also brought under his control a number of banks, railway lines and a wide variety of mining and manufacturing enterprises. Starting at the age of 26 with the purchase of a small oil refinery in Cleveland (Ohio), J. Rockefeller by the end of the 60s controlled about 10% of the US oil business. Created in 1870. his firm (together with his brother William) Standard Oil Company, he led the business in such a way that by 1879. the firm became fully integrated. In 1882 Rockefeller transforms the Standard Oil Company into the Standard Oil Trust and dominates the US oil industry. In 1911 Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust is divided by the US Supreme Court into several oil companies: Standard Oil New-Jersy (now Exxon), Standard Oil New-York (Mobil), Standard Oil California (Chevron), Standard Oil Indiana (Amoco) and Standard Oil Ohio (BP America). In 1913

capital controlled by Rockefeller was estimated at $17.5 billion.

By the beginning of the First World War (1914), 4 largest associations dominated the Baku oil industry: the firm “Br.

Nobel", the Anglo-Dutch transnational trust "Royal Dutch Shell", the Russian general oil corporation "Oil" and the financial oil partnership "Neft" ["Overview of the Baku oil industry for 1915", Baku, 1916, v.2, p.235 -331].

The Russian General Oil Corporation "Oil", created in London (1912) by the largest Russian and foreign banks, united about 20 companies ("Mantashev A.I.", "Lianozova G.M. sons", the Moscow-Caucasian Trading Society, " Caspian Partnership”, Russian Oil Industry Society, Absheron Oil Society, etc.). The fixed capital of "Oil" in 1914. amounted to 23 million rubles, and by 1917.

the capital of the combined firms reached 125 million rubles and was controlled by the Russian-Asian Bank.

62% of the oil produced in the empire, as well as 2/3 of the production of kerosene and fuel oil, belonged in 1914. Oil, Shell, and Nobel firms.

The largest British oil firm in Baku was Shell. It was founded in 1892. (led by Marcus Samuel Jr.) and owned more than 340 oil terminals from Baku to Shanghai and 30 ocean-going vessels. This allowed it to continuously supply Baku oil to vast areas from Aden to Vladivostok. In total, by the beginning of the 20th century, English industrialists controlled 11% of the Baku oil fields. And if in the Russian oil industry the main rivals of Shell were the company Bro. Nobel, then on a global scale their main competitor remained the American Standard Oil syndicate, with which Shell waged a sharp and uncompromising struggle for monopoly dominance in the world market.

Marcus Samuel Jr. (1853-1927) was born in London to an immigrant Jewish family. In a relatively short time, he succeeded in the oil business and founded a powerful transport and trading company, Shell Transport and Trading Co., which he managed with his brother Samuel and Freud Lane. The Murex tanker, owned by the company, with a cargo of gasoline from Baku, went through the Suez Canal to Singapore and Bangkok, thus violating the undivided dominance of the Standard Oil Trust and Royal Dutch. The company was named in memory of the enterprise of Marcus Samuel Sr., who traded in products from sea shells (translated from English “shell” - “shell”). Since then, the emblem of the Shell company has become a sea shell. Among the goods sold by this company, the dominant place was occupied by oil products produced and developed in Baku.

Marcus Samuel Jr. first visited Baku in 1890;

by then, Azerbaijan was producing over 60,000 barrels (8,000 tons) of oil per day, thanks mainly to the efforts of entrepreneurs like the Nobel brothers and the Rothschilds. The first Shell tanker passed through the Suez Canal on August 23, 1892, laying the foundation for the future development of Shell and, later, the current Royal Dutch Shell.

Since 1907 In order to combine efforts in the fight against the American syndicate, two large firms, the English Shell and the Dutch Royal Dutch, merged into a single transnational trust Royal Dutch Shell under the leadership of Henry Deterding. 60% of the shares of the trust were held by Royal Dutch, and 40% by Shell. In Baku (1917) the trust united firms:

"Caspian-Black Sea Society", "Kavkaz", "Shibaev S.M.", "Partners", "Mazut", "Petro-Baku" and "Russian Oil Society". To the oil-industrial enterprises of the trust in 1914. accounted for a fifth of oil production in Russia;

In 1914, the production of oil by Royal Dutch Shell only in the Baku oil fields amounted to. - 57 million pounds. And in 1915, the share of the trust within the Baku oil region accounted for 13.4% of the total production [Overview of Baku oil. prom. for 1915, v.1, p.57-60 and v.2, p.2 19].

In 1890 The Royal Dutch Oil Company (Royal Dutch) was founded in The Hague. Its director was a determined businessman August Kessler, who began to develop the oil deposits of Sumatra. After the death of A. Kessler in 1900. Henry Deterding (1866-1939), a major Dutch businessman, became Managing Director and soon Chairman of the Board of Directors of Royal Dutch. He was a strong advocate of working with Shell to counter Standard Oil. The Royal Dutch Shell Trust (headed by G. Deterding from 1907 to 1937) owned its own oil pipelines, a large number of oil refineries, an oil tanker fleet with a total capacity of 1.6 million tons and an extensive trading network. The share capital of the trust amounted to more than 2.5 billion rubles at the exchange value. G. Deterding was nicknamed by his contemporaries the "oil Napoleon".

John Rockefeller did not miss an opportunity to penetrate the Baku oil industry. Syndicate "Standard Oil" in the summer of 1898.

sent oil geologists to Shamakhi uyezd (closest to Absheron), who, after examining it, decided that there were commercial oil reserves in the subsoil of the uyezd. Further, in 1902, Rockefeller, in order to obtain permission to acquire oil fields in the Caucasus and Absheron, was ready to refuse a loan that was beneficial to him in Japan.

Thus, "Standard Oil" tried in every possible way to capture the positions that Absheron entrepreneurs occupied in the Russian oil market. However, the business alliance of the Baku oil owners, primarily the Nobels and the Rothschilds, nullified all the Rockefeller efforts.

And to fight in the markets of Europe against the Standard Oil syndicate in 1906. In Berlin, the European Kerosene Union (Europeische Petroleum Uniongesellschaft) was created with an initial capital of 20 million marks. At the head of the union were - a German bank, the company "br. Nobel" and the Parisian banking house of Rothschild, who relied on the solid oil resources of Russia, Romania and Austria. Later, in 1907-1908. The Anglo-Dutch Trust Royal Dutch Shell also joined the European Union.

Having deployed extensive activities in England, Holland, Switzerland and other countries, the union became a real threat to Rockefeller. In 1913

the capital of the union reached 37 million marks, of which 20 million belonged to a German bank, and 17 million marks to the firm "br. Nobel" and Rothschild's Parisian tale ["Commercial and Industrial Newspaper", 1913, No. 61].

It should be noted that among the listed companies that are part of the Royal Dutch Shell trust, the main exporter of oil products was the Caspian-Black Sea Oil Society (founded by Alphonse Rothschild in 1883), which sold 36% of the total export and was the second largest oil producing company after “br.

Nobel". The Rothschild Society had 264 wells;

crafts and enterprises served about 1,400 workers. It is noteworthy that one of the managers of the Rothschild brothers in Baku was a well-known process engineer, a student of L.G. Gurvich, Adolf Gukhman;

and the field manager is engineer-technologist David Landau (father of the Nobel laureate in physics in 1962 - Lev Landau).

The "Review of Factories and Plants of the Transcaucasian Territory" contains the following list of foreign buyers of kerosene and lubricating oils, the supplier of which was the Rothschild "Caspian-Black Sea Society": England, France, Austria, Belgium, Turkey, Greece, Germany, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Malta, Danubian principalities, Japan, China, Algeria, Indochina, Philippine Islands. In total, the Rothschilds exported 27,600,000 poods of kerosene from Baku via Batum. Three years before the First World War, the Rothschilds sold most of their oil shares to Standard Oil's main rival, the Anglo-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell, becoming its banking institution in Paris.

Financial Oil Corporation "Neft", at the origins of which was P.I. Gubonin (established in St. Petersburg, in 1883), was a Russian partnership for the extraction, transportation, storage and trade of petroleum products. Its main capital, controlled by the Russian Asian and Petrograd accounting and loan banks, in 1916. amounted to 33 million rubles. The corporation owned oil fields, kerosene and chemical plants in Baku and united the companies "Baku Oil Society", "Oil", "Balakhano-Zabrat Society", etc.

It should be emphasized that in addition to the above-mentioned large associations, there were several smaller associations in Absheron. As an example, let's take Herbert Allen's "Petroleum Financial Corporation", founded before the war and consisting of three English firms in Baku: "Baku Society of Russian Oil" (founded in 1898), "Oil and Liquid Fuel Society" (former "Oleum", 1898) and the European Oil Company (1901). The G. Allen Corporation had a total share capital of 29.6 million rubles;

and the total oil production in 1915. amounted to 17 million pounds [Overview of the Baku oil.

prom. for 1915, v.2, p.2-19].

The total amount of foreign currency invested in the Baku oil business by 1917 amounted to 111 million rubles. By 1917 60% of oil production and 75% of trade in oil products in Russia was concentrated in the hands of foreign firms.

Documents show that 70% of investments in the oil industry belonged to foreigners: French, British, Germans, Americans and Swedes. As early as August 31, 1915. newspaper "New time"

in the article "War and the German monopoly of Russian oil" noted that "...

the efforts of Russia's enemies are aimed primarily at killing her national productive forces... It is curious that Rothschild, who took part in the agreement with the German bank, shortly before the war liquidated his participation in enterprises in the Caucasus. One might think that the Rothschild firm in Paris was dedicated to much that was hidden from others.

[SIA AR, fund 92, inventory 4, case 24, p.8].

The First World War led to complications and further to the rupture of previously established ties between Russian (in particular, Baku) monopolies with the oil monopolies of Europe and the United States, which ensured a regrouping of forces in the Russian oil industry.

Ultimately, the historical events that took place in Russia in 1917 prevented the further advance of foreign capital into the Baku oil industry. June 20, 1918 The Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR approved the "Decree on the nationalization of the oil industry", according to which the oil industry of Russia was declared the property of the people. 272 private oil companies located in the Baku region were liquidated...

In conclusion, it is necessary to note the great merit of the largest Azerbaijani oilmen - Haji Zeynalabdin Tagiyev (1838-1924), Musa Nagiyev (1842-1919), Shamsi Asadullayev (1840-1913), Azhdarbek Ashurbekov (1855-1921), Isabek Hajinsky ( 1861 1919) and Murtuza Mukhtarov (1855-1920), who played a positive role in the development of the oil business in Azerbaijan and Russia as a whole.

Moreover, if the first five were mainly engaged in oil production and processing, then M. Mukhtarov specialized in the production of equipment for oil fields. His firm provided drilling, repair and transport services. In 1895 he creates a modernized percussion rod drilling machine, for which he receives a patent. At the end of the 19th century, Mukhtarov commissioned a whole drilling equipment plant on Bibi-Heybat: it was the first industrial enterprise for the production of oil equipment in the Russian Empire.

Gadzhi Zeynalabdin Tagiev is one of the most famous and respected oil tycoons in Russia and the entire Muslim world. Born into a poor family, he went through a difficult but glorious path from a simple bricklayer to a millionaire industrialist.

Founded by him in 1872. firm "G.Z. Tagiev"

turned into a powerful oil industry association and for more than 25 years combined all branches of the oil business.

Tagiyev invested in all areas of the national economy: oil production, construction of shopping centers, flour mills, fishing, etc. His name is associated with the construction of the first textile factory (commissioned in 1900), which became the foundation of Azerbaijan's light industry, the first vocational school in Mardakan (1892), the first women's gymnasium in Baku (1895), the first gardening school in Mardakan (1899). ), the first drama theater and the Shollar fresh water pipeline. Thanks to the wide charitable activities of G.Z. Tagiyev was recognized by his contemporaries as an outstanding personality: the Muslim, Russian, Jewish and other societies operating in Baku elected Tagiev as an honorary chairman. He was awarded many orders and medals of Russia, Persia and the Emirate of Bukhara. Since 1881 he published the newspaper "Kaspiy" in Baku, around which the progressive intelligentsia of that time united: Akhmedbek Agayev, Alibek Huseynzade, Alimardanbek Topchibashev (newspaper editor) and others. he created the "Caucasian Joint-Stock Company for the Processing of Fiber Materials". In 1901 Tagiyev opened a Baku women's school, and in 1906. G.Z. Tagiyev and M. Mukhtarov contributed to the formation of the Neshri-Maarif and Nijat educational societies in Baku, which played a key role in educating the population and awakening the national consciousness. To conduct trade operations together with other local entrepreneurs, he founded in 1914. Baku Commercial Bank and was elected chairman of the board of this bank. In 1916 Tagiyev founded the Tagiev Fishing Industry Joint Stock Company, which functioned in Azerbaijan and Dagestan. That is, 113. Tagiev was generously involved in charity: he built schools, incl. and for girls;

the theater, which still functions today, founded newspapers and magazines, hundreds of young people studied in England, Germany, France and Russia with its money, incl. and such famous personalities as Mammad Emin Rasulzade and Nariman Narimanov.

Musa Nagiyev is another famous oil tycoon. Born into a very needy family, thanks to his sharp mind and enterprise, he became a millionaire. If in 1915-1916. Tagiyev’s capital was about 6 million rubles in gold, then Nagiyev’s capital was estimated many times higher. M.

Nagiyev built many houses in Baku - he was the owner of hundreds of buildings. Until now, the city has preserved many beautiful buildings erected at its expense. Among them:

two-story buildings on the street. May 28, Winter Club (now the House of Officers named after Hazi Aslanov), hotels "Astoria" and "New Europe"

(now Gok-Gel), the building of the hospital (now it bears his name), the majestic building "Ismailliya", built in honor of the eldest son Ismail (now the building of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan), etc. Musa allocated significant funds for the establishment of a partnership for draining Bibi Eibat Bay, construction work, which was drained rather quickly (before 1917, about 70% of the design work was carried out). Having built a technical primary school in Baku, he took patronage over it and paid for the maintenance of 25 Azerbaijani children in preparatory classes.

Shamsi Asadullayev is a well-known oil tycoon and an influential industrialist not only in Baku, but also far beyond its borders. Shamsi became a millionaire thanks to the oil boom, intelligence and resourcefulness. In 1893 he creates an oil company "Shamsi Asadullayev" with a capital of rubles, and in 1913. The capital of his company is already 10 million rubles.

Sea vessels belonging to Asadullayev plowed the Caspian Sea and the Volga;

in terms of tonnage of ships for transporting oil and oil products, Shamsi was second only to the Nobel company. So, soon after the appearance of the Nobel ship "Zoroaster" in the Caspian Sea, Asadullayev acquires three oil tankers - the so-called three "A" - Asia, Africa and America. According to the collection "Documents on the history of Baku for the total 1870-1917"

the length of oil pipelines at the Nobel company in 1907. was a verst, and Sh. Asadullaev's was 12.5 versts. It opened its representative offices in Russia, Turkey, Iran and some European countries. Along with the oil business, Asadullayev was also involved in charitable activities: he built houses, opened schools for children from needy families. He allocated a huge amount of money for the construction of the Baku Real School (now the Azerbaijan State Institute of Economics). At the expense of Asadullayev in 1901. Petersburg, the first Azerbaijani Ziverbek Ahmedbekov graduated from the Institute of Civil Engineers. Later, this outstanding architect became the author of the projects of Azhdarbek, Taza-Pir, Mukhtarovskaya (in the village of Amirjany) mosques. Until now, there is a building in Moscow in Maly Tatarsky Lane, built at the expense of Sh. Asadullaev and donated by him to the Tatar Cultural Society (in this building on May 1, 1917.

the All-Russian Congress of Muslims opened, at which instead of the planned 500 people, 900 representatives were present, including

Mammad Emin Rasulzade, Alimardanbek Topchibashev, Ahmed Tsalikov and others).

The geography of Sh. Asadullayev's entrepreneurial activity extended from the Persian coast of the Caspian Sea to European cities. In the jubilee edition "300th anniversary of the reign of the Romanov dynasty", in the section "Trade and Industry", 8 most famous Azerbaijanis are noted, the first of which is Shamsi Asadullayev.

An interesting fact: one of the granddaughters of Asadullayev, Umm-Banin, became a famous French writer, whose works were read by all of Europe.

Ajdarbek Ashurbekov is a famous oil tycoon, a prominent representative of the large Ashurbekov dynasty in Baku.

Thanks to his intelligence, authority and great fortune, he was a very respected person among the local and Russian nobility. Ashurbekov was among those who greeted Emperor Alexander III on the occasion of his arrival in Baku in early October 1888. By the end of the XIX century.

Ashurbekov took up the oil business: in 1893.

the oil gusher of one of his wells in Sabunchi turned Ajdarbek into a millionaire. After that, he acquires 5 more oil wells. He manages two of them himself, and rents out the remaining three on a charter basis: two - to the company “br.

Nobel”, one - to the firm “S.M. Shibaev. Like other oil tycoons, A. Ashurbekov played a significant role in the economic, social and cultural development of pre-revolutionary Baku. The famous Blue Mosque, located on the street. Samad Vurgun in Baku, built at his expense in 1912-1913. (now the townspeople call this majestic temple the mosque of Azhdarbek). Ashurbekov was a member of the "Committee for Oil Affairs", which was led by the Baku governor.

Murtuza Mukhtarov - oil tycoon;

came from the poorest family, went through a difficult path from a worker to a foreman and later - the owner of the company.

Like other Baku millionaires, he got rich on oil, but his name is associated with the development of modern technologies and equipment for oil production.

Having no special education, he was a talented self-taught inventor.

The drilling tool that he invented was known all over the world under the name "Mukhtarov" and was exported to many countries (large companies of contract drilling and mechanical workshops in Russia after the society "Murtuza Mukhtarov" can be ranked such as "Hammer", "Rapid", "Wotan" and "Robur").

An interesting fact from the life of an oilman: the Mukhtarovs adopted a young singer - the future star of the Azerbaijani (and, in general, Soviet) opera Fatma (Katya) Mukhtarov. Among the many fundamental structures that were built at the expense of Mukhtarov, one can note two mosques with two minarets in Amirjany and Vladikavkaz, the dome of the mausoleum of Akhund Abu Turab in Mardakans and a luxurious mansion (now the Wedding Palace), located on one of the central Baku streets, bearing year his name.

ESSAY IV THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE NOBEL BROTHERS TO THE AZERBAIJANI OIL BUSINESS Over the years, people whose external successes were accidental are erased from memory. As for those who, with their works and discoveries, influenced the development of science, over time their titles are completely forgotten, but their names remain in history.

Nikolai SEMENOV (Nobel Prize Laureate) The founding date of the company "Partnership of Oil Production of the Nobel Brothers" (hereinafter, simply the company "Nobel Brothers") is May 18, 1879, however, the activity of the Swedish family in Absheron began earlier (in 1879, and established by Emperor Alexander II "Joint-Stock Partnership of Oil Production of the Nobel Brothers" with the telegraphic address "Branobel").

Already in 1873. the eldest of the Nobel brothers - Robert (1829-1896) was in the Caucasus on an assignment from his middle brother - Ludwig (1831-1888), associated with the harvesting of wood for rifle butts.

Quickly assessing the "oil" situation on the Absheron Peninsula, Robert invests his capital in the oil business. It was certainly a risky business, but he already had some experience in organizing the kerosene trade in Finland. Robert believed that the oil business would have prospects, because. The Russian market was inundated with imported (American) petroleum products.

Since 1875 the activities of the Nobel brothers in the oil industry of Azerbaijan are being activated. The main capital of the company, the founders (founders) of which were Robert, Ludwig and Alfred (1833-1896) Nobels, as well as P. A. Bilderling, P. Ya. Zabelsky, F.A.

Blumberg, A.A. Bilderling, M.Ya. Belyamin, A.S. Sundgren and B.F.

Wunderlich, in the first year of its existence amounted to 3 million rubles. All processes in the company, from the definition of an oil field to the sale of final petroleum products, were controlled by the brothers.

In the autumn of 1876 Robert leaves Baku for health reasons, urgently calling Ludwig from St. Petersburg to continue the work he started. It should be emphasized here that Robert played the role of the discoverer of Absheron oil for the future company: in fact, he performed pioneering work. Laying the foundation for the company, Robert was in Baku almost without a break. Since 1876 Ludwig begins to engage in a completely new business for him, which (as time will tell) he will love until the end of his short life.

For the first time, Ludwig, together with his son Emmanuel (1859-1932), visited Absheron (Baku) in April 1876. Here is his first impression:

"The abundance of oil sources on the Absheron Peninsula is so great that they can be called inexhaustible."

We note right away that the youngest of the brothers - Alfred - (the founder of the well-known International Prize), was not directly involved in the affairs of the company, but provided significant material assistance to the brothers.

Despite repeated and persistent invitations from the brothers, he never visited Baku and the Baku oil refineries.

He well remembered his conflict with his father, which flared up about nitroglycerin, therefore, throughout his life, he avoided any cooperation with family members in every possible way.

However, Alfred, being also the owner of the largest Russian oil company "br. Nobel ", in difficult times, in every possible way provided the brothers with moral and financial support. Oil pipelines, which the company "br. Nobel" entangled the oil regions of Baku, invented by Alfred, because. it was he who suggested to his brother the idea of ​​such a delivery of crude oil from a field or refinery to its destination. He also advised Ludwig to use internal combustion engines rather than steam boilers on oil ships.

In a time of crisis for the company, Alfred comes to the city of his childhood and youth, St. Petersburg, and checks all financial accounts, makes certain orders to reduce costs and takes an active part in the meeting of the company's board. Further, together with Ludwig, he seeks a loan from the National Bank of Russia, presenting his shares as collateral.

Ludwig wrote to his brother in Paris: “I take every precaution both before the accountant and before the merchant, doing this with the heart of a man whose decision to fulfill his duty is adamant ... You provide us with invaluable support, and I hope that one day someday people will stop claiming that the "Association of the Nobel Brothers" is just Ludwig Nobel.

For example;

Knowing the value of kerosene, Ludwig decided to use fuel oil to fuel steamboats and locomotives. In order to begin this process with confidence, he consults with his brother, sending him a letter to Paris, in which he asks for exact information about fuel oil. Soon an answer comes from Alfred, in which he advises Ludwig to urgently and seriously deal with this matter, because.

“fuel oil has a great future... If it costs nothing or is cheap, you need to build reservoirs and fill them for future use, in 5-10 years fuel oil will bring great wealth.” And Ludwig, through nominees, began to buy fuel oil and conclude long-term deals.

In 1894 alone, the Nobel Brothers firm, under the 21st contract, bought about 10 million poods of petroleum fuel in Baku, and in 1895. -32.25 million pounds.

The company was engaged in the purchase of crude oil and oil residues throughout the last decade of the 19th century. Thanks to these actions, by the end of the XIX century. L. Nobel turned into a real "fuel oil king" of Russia. For 1893 1901 with an increase in the consumption of petroleum fuel in the country from 144.5 to 286.4 million pounds. the share of Nobel Brothers in the sale of fuel oil increased from 28 to 96 million poods, i.e. more than three times.

Following the example of the Nobel Brothers company, the purchase of crude oil and oil residues in the 90s. 19th century other large oil firms were also involved. So the firm of Sidor Shibaev during the last decade of the XIX century.

constantly bought crude oil and oil residues from small and medium-sized firms. Moreover, these operations took place according to long-term contracts and at fixed prices.

Taking the management of the company completely into his own hands (Ludwig was the first chairman of the board of the Partnership until his death in 1888), L. Nobel achieved tremendous success with his work, perseverance and great organizational skills: the company “br. Nobel" by the end of the 19th century. became the "oil leader", ousting all foreign rivals from the Russian market.

Consulting and working together with well-known petrochemical scientists (D.I.

Mendeleev, K.I. Lisenko, L.G. Gurvich, A.A.

Summer, R.A. Vishin, M.M. Tikhvinsky and others) and engineers (A.V. Bari, V.G. Shukhov, O.K. Lenz, I.N. Strizhov and others), Ludwig soon achieved notable success in all areas of the oil business.

It is appropriate to note here that it was Ludwig Nobel who sent the talented engineer A.V. Bari, who later became a well-known breeder in Moscow. So, the first oil pipeline in the vicinity of Baku (Balakhany - Black City) was built by Bari and Shukhov for the company “br.

Nobel" in 1878, 3 inches in diameter and 8.5 versts long. The second oil pipeline was built by them for G.M. Lianozova in 1879, also 3 inches in diameter and 11.5 miles long [Encyclopedic Dictionary, printing house I.A. Efron, St. Petersburg, 1897, v. XX-A, p. 937].

It was at the factories of the company "br. Nobel” for the first time, in 1882, continuous distillation of oil was carried out, proposed by D.I. Mendeleev.

The Nobel refineries will install the latest reflux condensers (invention by V.G. Shukhov, patent No. 9783, 1890), which will make it possible to obtain target oil products of a given quality.

33-year-old Lev Gurvich, who arrived in Baku in 1904. for the purpose of in-depth study of oil refining technology, from 1905 to 1910. will become the permanent head of the Baku chemical laboratory of the Nobel firm;

and from 1911 to 1917. he is the scientific director of the chemical laboratory at the company's headquarters in St. Petersburg.

Among the bright specialists working in the firm “br. Nobel”, we especially emphasize the field manager of the company Gustav Eklund (in Baku since 1893), who, by organizing enhanced drilling operations, brought the productivity of oil production in the fields of the company (in Balakhani, Sabunchi, Romany, on the islands of St. Pirallahi and Cheleken) to the maximum. Gustav Petrovich, for the first time in the oil business, used electricity in the fields indicated above (he introduced electric traction in the Baku fields), and also replaced the previous cable drilling with rod drilling. He was one of the leaders of the construction of an oil storage facility in Boyuk-Shor (not far from Baku), as well as the organizer of the oil accounting system (passing it through special measuring tanks) extracted from state-owned plots.

It is necessary to note one of the strongest directors of the board of the company - Karl Hagelin, who enjoyed the unlimited confidence of Emmanuel Nobel. Karl Vasilievich mainly worked in Baku, where the core of all the company's activities was located, and in certain years he directly headed the Baku department of the company.

Hagelin Karl Vasilyevich (1860-1954) - Swede, was born in Russia. Since 1890 works in the Baku branch of the firm "Br. Nobel" as a chief engineer;

in 1897 - was the Swedish-Norwegian consul in Baku, and in 1899. is elected as one of the directors of the company (he is responsible for the fleet and all Baku enterprises). In 1906 appointed by the Swedish general, consul in Russia;

and in 1923 elected an honorary member of the Swedish Academy of Engineering.

For a long time, the exploration work of the company was led by an outstanding specialist in the field of oil business Ivan Nikolaevich Strizhov (1872-1953). Note that in Soviet times (1923-1926) Strizhov I.N. He was the director of the Baku oil industry of the USSR.

Large Russian oilmen who cooperated, as well as competed with the firm "br. Nobel”, were Gadzhi Zeynalabdin Tagiev, Vasily Kokorev, Viktor Ragozin, Musa Nagiyev, Shamsi Asadullayev, Isabek Gadzhinsky, Alexander Benkendorf, Sidor Shibaev and Murtuza Mukhtarov. Especially warm relations between the Nobels, father and son (Ludwig and Emmanuel) developed with G.Z. Tagiev and I. Gadzhinsky:

they supported each other on many business issues.

Ultimately, the activities of the firm "br. Nobel" in the Absheron, gave a powerful impetus to the rapid development of all areas of the Russian oil industry. The Baku oil region became the foundation on which a powerful building quickly grew, later called the “oil empire” of the Nobels. It is no coincidence that one of the researchers of the activities of this family, Professor of Harvard University Robert Tolf called the Nobels "Russian Rockefellers."

Suffice it to say that in 1901. the volume of oil production in Russia amounted to 11.5 - 12.0 million tons, and in the USA - 9.1 million tons. According to the newspaper of the magazine "Oil Business", the following companies gave the maximum oil production in the Absheron in May 1901 (in million poods): “br. Nobel" - 7.80;

"Nagiyev Musa" - 4.13 and "Caspian Partnership" - 4.07.

L.E. Nobel was born on June 27, 1831. in Stockholm. Together with his father, at the age of 11, he comes to St. Petersburg. After the departure of his father in 1859. to Sweden, Ludwig remains in Russia and works at his father's factory. However, he fails to save his father's enterprise, and in 1862 he. founded in St. Petersburg his own machine-building plant "Ludwig Nobel"

(now the Russian Diesel plant).

Already in these years, working in the field of mechanical engineering, Ludwig analyzes the industrial and economic state of Russia, drawing attention to the inflexible customs policy of the Russian government, which did not stimulate the development of domestic mechanical engineering.

During the period of formation (St. Petersburg, 1866) of the Imperial Russian Technical Society (IRTS), Ludwig will become not only one of the founders of the IRTS, but also an active member of this Society, and since 1879 an active member of the Baku branch of the IRTS (BO IRTS) . Among the founders and first members of the IRTO there were only two industrialists - L.

Nobel and Macfersen. The lack of interest in the new society on the part of St. Petersburg industrialists was assessed by contemporaries as "a rather disappointing fact." However, in the future, Russian entrepreneurs considered it a high honor to be a member of the IRTS ["Swedes on the banks of the Neva".

Digest of articles. Stockholm, 1998, p.277].

The great merits of L. Nobel in the Russian oil industry were as follows.

Creation of a company unique for that time (“Partnership”), dealing with the entire cycle from exploration, production, processing to delivery and sale of finished products.

Introduction of tankers for the first time in the world to transport petroleum products by water. The first steamship "Zoroaster" was built by order of Ludwig at the plant in Motala (Sweden) in 1877;

arrived in Russia already in 1878. It had a steel hull 56m long, 8.2m wide and with a draft of 2.7m.

The steamer was heated by oil residues. "Zoroaster"

It was a twin-screw tanker with 19 iron tanks and a carrying capacity of 15,000 poods (246 tons). It was delivered to St. Petersburg under its own power, and then the tanks were delivered separately via the Mariinsky system due to the ship's draft. In Baku specially for "Zoroaster"

the pier and shore facilities were redone.

The origin of the name of the first Nobel steamship is curious.

The fascination with the teachings of Zoroaster (Zarathustra) was very popular at that time - from the middle of the 19th century. it was gradually deciphered by Europeans;

At the end of the century, Nietzsche published his famous book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. According to the French Nobel scholar Orlando de Rudder, Ludwig, being an educated person, was seriously interested in Zoroastrian philosophy, in which the idea of ​​the search for purity and holiness somehow reminded him of the procedure for refining oil. It should be noted that the unique brainchild of L. Nobel (the ship "Zoroaster") served for a long time. Only in the 50s of the XX century. the ship was scuttled (among other 7 ships) for the springboard for drilling the first wells at the offshore Oil Rocks field. Therefore, this deposit was sometimes called the "Island of the Seven Ships". Following the "Zoroaster", other tankers appeared - all under the names of the founders of religions and great figures of human progress: "Buddha", "Mohammed", "Moses", "Spinoza", "Darwin", "Linnaeus", "Nordenskiöld", etc. .

In total, the Nobel firm owned 134 steam and 212 sailing ships. With the advent of a fleet of tankers, the price of kerosene in Russia fell from 2 rubles per pound in 1877 to up to 25 kopecks in 1885

Steamboats and motor ships of the company could be seen in various places in the Volga basin, the Caspian and Black Seas. In June 1886

For the first time in the world, the Svet oil tanker delivered 1,700 tons of Baku kerosene from Batum, across the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean, to London. With the invention by Shukhov (1876, patent 1880) of a perfect nozzle design, which is still used today, it became possible to use fuel oil as a fuel for steam locomotives, river and sea steamers. Diesel engines used solarium produced at the company's refineries. Thanks to its tank fleet, the company has expanded the export of Russian oil products, supplying them not only to Europe, but also to Asian countries.

Construction of the first oil pipeline in Russia Baku-Balakhany-Black City in 1878;

tank wagons;

as well as the organization of a whole system of warehouses equipped with iron tanks (the first such tank was built in 1879) not only in Baku, but also in many cities of Russia (Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Astrakhan, Tsaritsyn, Yaroslavl, Kronstadt, etc.). In 1881 For the first time in the world, Nobels began to carry out the transportation of oil and oil products in railway tanks. And some time later, hundreds of tanks with the inscription “T-vo Br.

Nobel". The railway terminals of Warsaw, Kyiv and Dvinsk were involved in the export of oil products to Europe. With the construction of the Transcaucasian and Transcaspian railways, the company paid serious attention to the supply of kerosene to Central Asia. The initial points here were: sea - Krasnovodsk, land - Tashkent. Ultimately, the activities of the brothers led to the fact that Russian kerosene almost completely replaced American kerosene in the Russian market, becoming a powerful competitor in the world market. As contemporaries believed, L. Nobel's construction of the first oil pipelines in Russia became a "very important service" in this industry.

Financial support of the IRTS and BO IRTS, which allowed these societies to carry out a number of scientific works in the field of mechanical engineering and the oil industry [Territory "Neftegaz", 2002, No. 9, p.38].

The activities of the company "br. Nobel ”showed what an inventive mind, perseverance and hard work of people who set themselves the goal of being the first in everything, leading everywhere, bringing progress to society, can achieve.

The effectiveness of such work is obvious. When in 1881 Since the 1990s, a commission was created to develop rules for oil transportation and the construction of oil plants and warehouses in order to protect water bodies and rivers from oil pollution, then Ludwig Nobel became a member of the commission and became an active member. In essence, it was one of the first major Russian environmental protection commissions. The choice of L. Nobel was not accidental: he was the first to possess environmentally friendly (metal) ships.

L. Nobel's tankers had high-quality iron hulls, and, characteristically, some of them worked until the middle of the 20th century as part of the fleet of the Volgotanker shipping company. Looking ahead, we note that the entire Nobel fleet that survived the civil war became part of the Volgotanker fleet.

The company constantly improved the technology of oil products production. One of the brilliant scientific works of L. Nobel in the field of oil production is the “continuously operating multicube oil distillation battery” (privilege-patent No. 9206 dated 12/17/1882), which was first introduced in the world in 1883. at one of the Baku kerosene plants (designers - V.G. Shukhov and I.I. Elijah). For the first time, Nobel factories began to build and use cooling towers to cool process water during the hot summer period.

In 1888 firm "br. Nobel, more than 26 million poods of oil were produced (13.24% of the total production in the empire) and more than 12 million poods of kerosene were produced [From the minutes of the meeting of the V Congress of Oil Industrialists. Baku, 1889, p.34]. After 10 years, the company provided 17.7% of the all-Russian (or 8.6% of the world) oil production and controlled 50.1% of the all-Russian sale of kerosene.

In 1900 to the share of the company "br. Nobel” and the Rothschild “Caspian Black Sea Society” accounted for 21% of production and 40% of oil export from Baku. If at the beginning of this year, the 6 largest oil refineries produced 44% of all kerosene, then only one company "br.

Nobel” - over 22%.

Having monopolized the sales markets in Russia, the firm "br. Nobel began to export oil and oil products to Europe, India, China, Iran and other countries. So, in August 1902. For the first time, the company began to export Russian kerosene to Afghanistan through the fortification of Kerki, located 200 miles from the Chardzhuy station.

It should be noted here that it was not so easy to manage the Baku oil production, which brought fantastic profits. Competition between firms led to general distrust (rudeness and cruelty sometimes reached the limit). The fires that broke out in the fields were by no means always accidental. Often, due to the discontent of the workers, resulting in spontaneous strikes, production was stopped.

The brothers, especially Ludwig, worked purposefully and persistently.

The Swedish historian Eric Bergengren, who had access to the Nobel family archive, noted that "everyone in the Nobel family was of high moral character and was always ready to do something, hope for success and persevere to continue what they started."

A. Nobel's collaborator and biographer Ranyar Sholman (or Ragnar Sulman) recalls: “Alfred belonged to the type of hosts who seek to maintain a distance between themselves and others. He never crossed the line that separated him from the workers. This was the exact opposite of Ludwig's line of conduct, who was constantly worried about the living conditions of the workers and who can rightly be considered a pioneer of social progress both among engineers and among lower personnel.

The following words of Ludwig speak for themselves: “Without labor, life is not for me, and I do not consider myself entitled to leave the business I created earlier, until all those who entered it with me and served me and my father are financially secure for life, like myself."

Speaking at a meeting of the IRTS on October 15, 1882. with the report "On the situation of the oil industry in Russia", Ludwig emphasized: "... for more than 20 years I have been trying to apply to my enterprises that theory in order to make every person who works with me a participant in the results achieved, so that the one who shares the labors with me, would have the right to share with me and my profits.

The contribution of L. Nobel to the development of the oil industry in Russia was deservedly noted at the All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition of 1882. in Moscow, where the firm "br. Nobel" received the highest award - the right to depict the State Emblem on advertising and signboards. Later, in 1896.

at the All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, the company will be awarded this highest award for the second time.

In 1884 in Baku, a special organization of entrepreneurs "Council of Baku Oil Producers" is being created, which will be headed by Ludwig Nobel until his death in 1888. This organization played a huge role in coordinating the Russian and, in particular, the Azerbaijani oil business.

Executive secretary of the commission for the organization of the oil business at the Caucasian jubilee exhibition (09/02/1901), historian publicist Startsev G.E. noted: “One of the greatest monuments of the activity of the congresses of the Baku oil industrialists should be recognized as their solution to a complex and extremely difficult issue - the insurance of workers against accidents. At present, most of our firms insure their workers against the consequences of accidents in private insurance companies. We have about 62% of the total number of workers insured. It would be appropriate to note here that workers' insurance has been most developed in the oil industry. In other branches of Russian industry, the percentage of insured workers varies between 10 and 50%."

In the book of the famous Russian publisher I.A. Efron "The World Exhibition and Russian Exhibits" describes participation in 1885 in this way. firm "br.

Nobel” at the World Exhibition in Antwerp (Belgium): “A whole phalanx of various shapes and sizes of columns and pyramids is filled with samples of Russian mineral oils. The most prominent firms in this branch of Russian industry were here, with the so-called "queen of the oil industry" - the firm "br. Nobel at the head.

It should be noted that since its establishment (1879), the firm "br. Nobel" has taken part in the following exhibitions:

1882 - All-Russian exhibition in Moscow.

1884 - International hygiene exhibition in London (Nobel oil products were awarded the Gold Medal).

1885 - World Exhibition in Antwerp.

1888 - All-Russian exhibition of lighting and heating items in St. Petersburg.

1889 and 1900 - World Exhibitions in Paris.

1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

1894 - World Exhibitions in Antwerp and Lyon.

1896 - All-Russian exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod.

1897 - Artistic and industrial exhibition in Stockholm.

1901 - International Exhibition in Glasgow.

For outstanding achievements in technical and industrial affairs, the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology awarded Ludwig Nobel the title of process engineer.

When Ludwig died (March 31, 1888) his death was reported by the major newspapers of the world, which noted that “L. Nobel was listed as a Swedish subject, but he spent his whole life in Russia and devoted all his wonderful energy and outstanding mental abilities to it.

Professor of the Mining Institute, well-known petrochemist Konon Lisenko said about Ludwig: "I will not list everything that Nobel has done in the field of oil distillation and will only point out the main thing: he was the first to arrange continuous distillation, he was the first to put cubes and mixers in the open air, and he supervised thorough control distillates and finished products, arranged the heating of oil to be distilled with hot residues, introduced the distillation of oil for kerosene with superheated steam ... "(In memory of L.E.

Nobel. SPb., 1889, p.47).

The representative of the head of the American trust "Standard Oil" put it this way about the late L. Nobel: "... a wonderful person who possessed dexterity and understanding of Russian business, high connections and experience with the tsarist bureaucracy."

More than 25 thousand workers worked in the "oil empire" of the Nobels, whose capital by the time of the death of Ludwig Nobel in 1888. was estimated at more than 35 million rubles in gold, which amounted to one-fifth of the total capital of foreign investment in the Russian oil business.

In 1889, in St. Petersburg, the firm "br. Nobel" by establishing the prize to them.

L.E. Nobel, simultaneously proposed, and later implemented a number of measures to perpetuate the memory of Ludwig.

It was envisaged to establish at the expense of the company (more than 48 thousand rubles).

rubles) scholarships to them. L. Nobel at the Mining and Technological Institutes of St. Petersburg, at the St. Petersburg vocational school of Tsarevich Nikolai, at the St. Petersburg Commercial and First Real Schools, as well as at the Baku Real School. In the latter, three scholarships were established for the children of Nobel employees and workers - named after L. Nobel, Karl Ludwigovich Nobel and Peter Bilderling. In addition, the company “allocates separate allowances to needy students, up to 10 people, in the amount of 30 rubles a month for the duration of their course, in addition to tuition fees. There is also a special capital of 6,000 rubles (named after M.Ya. Belyamin), the interest from which is allocated in the form of allowances for the education of children. "The Petrolia steamer floating in the Baltic Sea was renamed Ludwig Nobel.

L. Nobel lived in Russia for 46 years and was buried in St. Petersburg at the Smolensk Lutheran cemetery next to his son Karl.

In his report dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the company “br. Nobel” (1904) Konon Lisenko noted: “Each person at the end of his days should involuntarily cast a glance at the life path he has traveled and at the trace he leaves behind. I dare to think that Ludwig Immanuilovich died with full consciousness, that he did not work in vain in his life, and that his deeds will survive several more generations. These words of the venerable scientist can rightly be attributed to the rest of the brothers.

The beginning of industrial oil refining dates back to the middle of the 19th century, when Baku became the largest oil region in Russia. With the abolition of oil tax cuts in 1872, there was an accelerated development of the oil business, which intensified significantly from September 1877.

The beginning of industrial oil refining dates back to the middle of the 19th century, when Baku became the largest oil region in Russia. With the abolition in 1872 of the tax on oil, an accelerated development of the oil business took place, which significantly intensified from September 1877, when the excise tax on petroleum products was canceled (until 1888). The abolition of the excise tax contributed to the rapid growth of oil production in Azerbaijan. Over the next forty years (until 1917), more than 3 thousand wells were drilled in Absheron, of which about 2 thousand produced oil. However, even before the abolition of the lease, serious attempts were made to develop the oil business. Thus, the first oil refineries were built in Mozdok by the Dubinin brothers (serfs of Countess Panina) and in 1837 by mining engineer N.I. Voskoboynikov in the Baku village of Balakhany, but the work was not completed.

In 1858 - 1859. Baron N.E. Tornau, V.A. Kokorev and P.I. Gubonin are building in the Baku village of Surakhany, not far from the temple of fire worshipers, the first oil refinery according to the German model for processing kir (asphalt). The goal was to obtain lighting oils from tar shales, but the results were unsatisfactory, and kir was replaced with oil, which gave a good lighting oil. The outstanding German chemist Justus Liebig took an active part in the project of this plant, who sent his assistant K. Engler to Baku especially for this.

In December 1863, already in Baku itself, Javad Melikov built a kerosene plant and, for the first time in the world history of oil refining, used refrigerators in the distillation process. The famous Russian oilman V.I. Ragozin described D. Melikov as follows: “Like all people who were possessed by an idea, he saw in every undertaking only a means to embody the idea, and seemed to Baku people an eccentric and a strange person. Still, it would not seem strange when a person was not looking for profit, giving up to the last penny everything he had, not thinking about yesterday, just to achieve the goal. In the history of the development of technical industries, we often meet with such eccentrics who give impetus to industries, move them forward, but themselves remain out of work and die in poverty and obscurity, and the crowd, who did not trust them and laughed at them, takes possession of what was created on their basis. property."

The founder of kerosene and paraffin production in Baku and Grozny, D. Melikov, unable to withstand competition with large oil refining industrialists, died in poverty, forgotten by everyone.

The first borehole in Apsheron was drilled in 1844 by a mining engineer F. Semenov in the village of Bibi-Heybat and gave a good flow rate. However, Semenov's report on this to General A. Neidgart dated December 22, 1844 did not receive due attention. Nevertheless, the drilling of deep oil wells was started right here, on the shores of the Caspian Sea in the villages of Bibi-Heybat and Balakhani, and only a few years later (in 1859) after the first initiative of Baku residents, deep wells began to be drilled in the state of Pennsylvania (USA) .

It was from 1859, after the discovery of a large artesian spring at Vennano in Pennsylvania, that commercial oil production began. Until the end of 1860, up to 2 thousand wells were drilled in Pennsylvania with a depth of 20 to 200 m. The success of the oil business in the United States forced attention to the European (Galician), then to the Apsheron oil fields.

In 1864, the public and statesman of Russia N.A. Novoselsky (1823 - 1901) gave the first impetus to the oil business in the Caucasus, he laid the first borehole in the Kuban region.

After receiving official permission in 1868 to drill oil wells in the Apsheron in Balakhany in 1871, a second oil well was drilled mechanically, 64 m deep. the price per pood was 45 kopecks, but after the opening of the famous Vermishev fountain in Balakhany on June 13, 1873, which flooded the surroundings in a short time and formed several oil lakes, it dropped to 2 kopecks. The well of the oil industrialist I.A. Vermishev spewed an oil fountain 611 m high for 13 days and threw out more than 90 million poods of oil within 3 months. This was many times greater than many of the oil inflows received in Pennsylvania.

The abolition of the lease and the granting of the right to private individuals to lease oil-bearing lands contributed to the rapid growth of the oil industry in Russia and the emergence of many oil-industrial firms and trading companies: “G.Z. Tagiev” (1872), “Baku Oil Society” (1874). ), “Nobel Brothers” (1879), Rothschild’s “Caspian-Black Sea Society” (1883), etc.

In 1879, the Baku branch of the Imperial Russian Technical Society (BO IRTS) was established, which contributed to the enhanced development of the oil business in Azerbaijan. D.I.Mendeleev, V.V.Markovnikov, L.G.Gurvich, G.Z.Tagiev, L.E.Nobel, V.I.Ragozin, M.Nagiev and others spoke at the meetings of the society. writer Charles Marvin, visiting in 1882 - 1883. Russia (Caucasus, Baku, Caspian coast) was surprised by the scope of the oil business in these regions and described it in his books “The Russian advance towards India” (1882), “The Russians at Merv and Herat” (1883) and etc. .

The famous Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun (Pedersen), Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1920, also described his memories of a trip to Russia, especially to the Caucasus and Baku, in his book “In a Fairyland”. In Baku, he met with the public of the city and visited the firm “br. Nobel".

It is characteristic that the tsarist government actively supported the formation and development of large firms, since they were more organized in terms of production and better represented the interests of industry.

Soon, lamps appeared in Russia, adapted for Russian kerosene, which is somewhat different from American. Here it is appropriate to note the role of the outstanding chemist D.I. Mendeleev, who first proposed the use of oil residues after the extraction of kerosene to obtain lubricating oils. In his article “What to do with Baku oil?” he described in detail the method of obtaining lighting oil, which he called bakuoil. The scientist carefully studied the oil business in Russia; visited Baku several times (in 1863, 1880 and 1886 (2 times)) in order to study the economy and the state of the technical equipment of the oil fields.

D.I. Mendeleev highly appreciated the active work of the Nobel brothers and the Rothschilds in the Caucasus and Baku, noting their primary role in the formation and development of the oil business in these regions. Despite the difficult relationship that the scientist had with L. Nobel, he wrote: “... a special revival in the course of Baku oil affairs came only when, in the late 70s, the Nobel brothers, especially L.E. Nobel, who had a machine factory Petersburg, formed a large company to exploit the Baku oil reserves. Until then, everything was done with small capital, and the Nobel Society invested more than 20 million rubles in the business, started production on a large scale, a huge plant for several million pounds of kerosene a year, arranged an oil pipeline from the fields to the factory and to the pier, acquired many excellent steam tankers on the Caspian Sea and tanker barges on the Volga ... ”.

The name of Mendeleev is associated not only with the history of the development of the Russian oil business, but also with the beginning of the publication of the first books on oil and its processing. Under the editorship of D.I. Mendeleev in St. Petersburg, in the printing house of the partnership “Public Benefit”, the “Technical Encyclopedia (according to Wagner)” was published, 1862 - 1896.

The most pressing issue in the 80s - 90s was the construction of oil pipelines between the fields and factories of the Black City in Baku, which was closely tackled by the most energetic firms “br. Nobel”, “G.Z. Tagiyev” and “Baku Oil Society”. In 1877, the construction of the first oil pipeline in Russia between the fields of the village of Sabunchi and the factories of the Black City was completed. By 1890, 25 oil pipelines with a length of about 286 km were laid in the Baku oil region, through which up to 1.5 million poods of oil per day were pumped from fields to factories.

It is necessary to recall the talented engineer, honorary member of the Polytechnical Society V.G. Shukhov (1853 - 1939), who was the main manager of the construction of the Balakhani - Black City oil pipeline and about the professor of the St. Petersburg Technical Institute N.L. Shchukin (1848 - 1924), the author of the project of the Transcaucasian Baku - Batumi oil pipeline.

The construction of the main oil pipeline Baku - Batum, about the need for which there were fierce debates at that time, took 10 years. Subsequently, this unique oil pipeline provided invaluable assistance in the fight against the American oil policy, opening access for Baku oil to the world market.

The creation of tankers for the transportation of oil and oil products significantly influenced the development of the Caspian Fleet, opening a new era in the oil business. For the first time in the world, the oil tanker "Zoroaster" was built by L. Nobel in 1877 in the Swedish city of Motala; Subsequently, he built a whole oil-loading fleet, which included the ships Magomed, Moses, Spinoza, Darwin, and others. Nobel transported oil and oil products to countless tanks built by it in Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Tsaritsyn, Astrakhan, Yaroslavl, etc.

Later, ships belonging to other companies sailed along the waterways of Russia. For example, the trade and transport company "Mazut", created by A. Rothschild in 1898, owned 13 tankers in the Caspian Sea, as well as several steamships. By 1912, this society was a solid oil export and trade association.

Since 1880, tankers from the port of Batumi with Baku kerosene have been sent to many countries of the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, Baku oil competed freely with American oil and even forced it out of European and Asian markets. The kerosene exported from Baku fully meets the needs of Russia, and since 1883 the import of American kerosene into the empire has been stopped.

Comparison of data on oil production in the USA and Russia showed that in 1859 in the USA (Pennsylvania) oil production was 82 thousand barrels; in 1889 - 14 million barrels. In Russia (Baku) in 1889, 16.7 million barrels of oil were produced. In 1901, the Baku oil region produced 95% of the total imperial oil production; in that year, oil production in Russia was distributed as follows: 667.1 million poods from the Baku province and about 34.7 million poods from the Terek region. The number of workers employed in the oil fields of the Russian Empire increased from 7,000 in 1894 to 27,000 in 1904, of which 24,500 worked in the Baku oil region. In 1904, there were 150 oil refineries in Russia, 72 of them were located in Baku.

It should be especially noted that the Russian oil industry, up to 1917, was represented exclusively by the Azerbaijani (Baku) oil industry. The main deposits of Baku were Balakhani, Sabunchi, Ramany, Bibi-Heybat and Surakhani.

In 1899 - 1901. Baku, having provided more than half of all world oil production, brought Russia to the first place, leaving behind such countries as the USA, Argentina, Peru and others. Baku kerosene completely ousted American oil, first from Russian cities, then from foreign ones. For example, in 1885, instead of American kerosene, 37 million gallons of domestic raw materials were delivered to Asian countries from Baku via Batum. The growth of Baku's oil industry at the end of the 19th century put Russia among the leading capitalist countries of the world: after 1901, it kept second place (after the USA) for a long time until it was forced out by Mexico.

The congresses of Baku oil owners, established in 1884, served to organize and coordinate the activities of Russian entrepreneurs. Their main goal was considered “the opportunity for oil owners to express their needs, aspirations and desires to the government.” The congress was an association of the capitals of oil firms, in which each firm had a certain share of votes. So, at the 33rd congress of oil owners in 1914, the largest firms had 111 votes: “bro. Nobel" - 18, "Shell" - 34 and the general corporation "Oil" - 59. to protect the interests of their firms before the government. Since 1898, the Council of the Congress published in Baku the newspaper-magazine "Oil Business", which from May 1920 to this day is called "Azerbaijan Oil Industry".

Large oil producers, in search of new world markets, actively participated in the world's largest exhibitions. L. E. Nobel and V. I. Ragozin were especially successful in this. Their exhibits of oil products from Baku refineries, shown in Paris (1878), Brussels (1880) and London (1881), received the highest marks from experts.

After the death of the head of the company “br. Nobel” Ludwig (March 31, 1888) in Russia will be approved by the Nobel Prizes. L. Nobel (1891) and his son Emmanuel Nobel (1909). Archival documents collected in the Biographical International Encyclopedia "Humanistics" about Russian Nobel Prizes show the bright contribution of the father and son of the Nobels to the development of industry, science and education in the empire and, in particular, in oil Baku.

Of particular note is V.I. Ragozin, who in 1875 researched lubricating oils for the first time in the history of the world oil industry and built the first factories for this in Balakhna (Nizhny Novgorod province) and Konstantinov (near Yaroslavl). In 1878, lubricating oils from Baku oil, which he exported abroad, firmly conquered the world market.

Thus, Azerbaijani oil as a raw material for the production of lubricating oils has played an important role in the Russian economy. The oil plants of Ragozin on the Volga, Nobel, Tagiev, Shibaev, Nagiyev, Rothschild, Asadullayev and others in Baku, Frolov, Rolls and Petukhov in St. Petersburg received lubricating oils from Baku oils, which successfully replaced American lubricating oils in England, France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Denmark and other European countries. By the beginning of the 90s of the 19th century, the capacity of Russian oil refineries made it possible to fully satisfy the empire's need for high-quality lubricating oils. Oil products obtained at Baku refineries, as well as the bulk of crude unrefined oil, were exported from Baku in four ways: along the Caspian Sea, the Transcaucasian and Vladikavkaz (Baku-Petrovsk) railways, and a very small amount - by horse-drawn cart. So, in 1904, the total volume of exported oil and oil products was about 492.1 million poods.

Since in the 90s Baku oil became the main cargo for the Volga fleet, its accelerated development took place, a large number of barges were built on the Volga to transport oil products, and the fleet was based on wooden barges (about 94% in 1900), which were transported along Volga with the help of tugboats. During this period, the firm “br. Nobel” raised the issue of the mandatory replacement of wooden oil barges with iron ones, which were much more practical (did not leak oil products) and more durable. However, they were very expensive and were available only to large firms; by the end of the 19th century, they were owned by firms “br. Nobel”, A. Rothschild, G.Z. Tagiev, Sh. Asadullaeva, “Caucasus and Mercury”, etc. These firms had a significant amount of petroleum fuel transported to the domestic markets of Russia. For example, only the firm “br. Nobel supplied Russia with up to 80 million pounds. The formation and development of the Caspian and Volga fleets by the end of the 19th century were of great importance for the delivery of oil fuel from Baku to large Russian cities, and also contributed to the growth of the shipbuilding and ship repair industry of the Volga region.

The accelerated development of the Russian (Baku) oil business was mainly due to a significant influx of foreign capital into it (Nobels, Rothschilds, Vishau, etc.), which from the beginning of the 20th century rapidly penetrated into the oil industry of Russia, and with the simultaneous ousting of Russian and Baku entrepreneurs, not only from the oil industry, but also from the trade in petroleum products. By the end of the 19th century, the firms “br. Nobel” and Rothschild’s “Caspian-Black Sea Society” concentrated in their hands up to 70% of all oil trade in Russia.

The wealth of oil deposits, cheap labor and, of course, the huge profits that the oil business brought to industrialists accelerated the influx of foreign currency into the Russian oil industry. This was facilitated by the resolution dated May 1, 1880, of the Special Conference on the issue of the admissibility of foreigners to the oil field within the Baku region. Ardent supporters of attracting foreign capital to the Russian oil business were Prince M. Golitsyn, the head of the civil part in the Caucasus, and S. Witte, the Minister of Finance of Russia. Prince Golitsyn wrote: "... Any unconditional restriction of the activities of foreign enterprises in the Caucasus would be tantamount to a serious delay in the industrial prosperity of the country." Finance Minister Witte at special meetings on oil affairs always pointed out: "... The competition of our oil products on the world market is absolutely unthinkable without the involvement of foreign and especially English entrepreneurs and their capital."

Having firmly strengthened their positions in oil-filled Baku, foreign firms tried to control developments in other oil regions of the Russian Empire: in Grozny, in the North Caucasus, the Caspian islands (Cheleken), in Central Asia (Fergana), the Ural-Embe region, etc. World War II (1914), the four largest associations dominated the Baku oil industry: the firm “br. Nobel”, the Anglo-Dutch trust “Royal Dutch Shell”, the Russian general oil corporation “Oil” and the financial oil partnership “Neft”. The total foreign capital invested in the Baku oil business by 1917 was 111 million rubles.

In conclusion, it is necessary to note the great merit of chemical scientists and engineers: D.I. Mendeleev, K.I. Lisenko, V.V. Markovnikov, F.F. Belshtein, N.D. Zelinsky, L.G. .V.Kharichkova, V.G.Shukhova, N.L.Shchukin, S.K.Kvitko, A.A.Letny, N.I.Voskoboynikova, O.K.Lenz, A.I.Sorokina, P.Semyannikova (the first chairman of the BO IRTS), A.A. Gukhman (a member of the Council of the BO IRTS), V.F. Herr (the head of the chemical laboratory of the BO IRTS) and others who played an invaluable role in the development of the oil industry in Russia, and in particular, Baku.

Azerbaijani scientists (M.M.Khanlarov, M.G.Hadzhinsky, A.Mirzoev, I.Rzaev, F.Rustambekov, S.Ganbarov, I.Amirov and others), who received higher education in the universities of Russia and Europe, worked in the BO IRTS, contributing to the accelerated development of chemical and technical sciences in Azerbaijan.

Bibliography:

1. Ragozin V.I. Oil and oil industry. St. Petersburg, 1884. - 150 p.

2. Big Encyclopedia. St. Petersburg. Publishing Association "Enlightenment", ed. S.N. Yuzhakov. - 1896. - Vol. 12, 14, 22.

3. Akhundov B.Yu. Monopoly capital in the pre-revolutionary Baku oil industry. - M., 1959. - 180 p.

4. Monopoly capital in the Russian oil industry 1914 - 1917. - L.: Nauka, 1973. - 210 p.

5. Nardova V.A. The beginning of the monopolization of the Russian oil industry. L.: "Nauka", 1974. - 150 p.

6. Samedov V.A. Oil and the Russian Economy (80s - 90s of the 19th century). - Baku: Elm. - 1988. - 200 p.

7. Meshkunov V.S. Scientific publishing house of the biographical international encyclopedia "Humanistics". - St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg. book. publishing house, 1998. - 250 p.

8. Mir-Babaev M.F., Fuks I.G. The Nobel brothers and Azerbaijani oil (to the 120th anniversary of the foundation of the company)//Chemistry and technology of fuels and oils. - 1999. - No. 4. - P.51 - 53.

9. Fuks I.G., Matishev V.A., Mir-Babaev M.F. Baku period of activity of the “Nobel Brothers Oil Production Partnership” (on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of its foundation)//Science and technology of hydrocarbons. - 1999. - No. 5. - S. 86 - 94.

10. Mir-Babaev M.F., Fuks I.G., Matishev V.A. Foreign capital in the oil business of Russia (Absheron until 1917)//Science and technology of hydrocarbons. - 2000. - No. 5. - P.75 - 80.