GENESIS OF BESSARABIAN BOURGEOISIE OR HOW THE POSSIBILITIES TO ESTABLISH A NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL-COMMERCIAL BOURGEOISIE IN BESSARABIA WERE MISSED (1812 – 1868)

In the given article based on novel archival sources, the author ascertains that the genesis and evolution in Bessarabia of bourgeois in general, and of the commercial-industrial one, in particular, was influenced by multiple factors, both economic and political, both internal and external. Documents show that the commercial bourgeoisie in Bessarabia was not established as an objective economic category, but rather as a fiscal and legal one. Therefore it will be an element of the Tsarist fiscal classification. Decisions taken by tsarism in the trade policy in the 1820s and 1830s demonstrates that the bessarabian commercial bourgeoisie was created by state and depended on it, without having, as Western European bourgeoisie, certain constitutional rights; it also did not formed a coherent entity, defined ethnically and socially, aware of its rights and obligations. Establishment of commercial bourgeoisie in Bessarabia as a social category is due not to internal processes – economic and social, not to its birth – genesis and evolution, but rather to the decisions of imperial and regional administration