Liberating Dairymen from the Middleman (Foreign and Domestic): The Union of Siberian Creamery Cooperatives and Global Commodity Frontiers

• In Event: Liberation through Cooperation: The Politics of Food in Early 20th-Century Russia

Abstract

This paper explores the attempt by Siberian creamery cooperators to break the hold that foreign and domestic middlemen had on the export of butter and sale of consumer goods by creating a cooperative union in 1907. The resultant Union of Siberian Creamery Cooperatives never achieved its goal, but did much to provide institutional infrastructure key to the development of the local economy beyond the export of butter, including access to credit and resources for cooperative retail shops. The Union benefitted from World War I (it held the army butter contract) such that by the time of the October Revolution, its economic influence in Siberia rivaled that of its nearest competitors.

Author

• David William Darrow, U of Dayton