Energy statistics of pre-revolutionary Russia

The article is devoted to the problem of creation and development of the energy statistics of the Russian Empire of the initial stage of electrification and the formation of the energy economy, which is related to: 1) the economic upsurge of the 1890s; 2) the new economic recovery of 1907–1913 and 3) the militarization of industry in 1914–1916. The real technical and economic indicators and complex statistical data of the pre-revolutionary electric power industry were either hushed up or deliberately distorted during the Soviet era. Even in the encyclopaedic literature it was considered that pre-revolutionaryRussia“was on one of the last places in the world” for the production of electricity. The author analyzes statistical surveys (censuses) of the manufacturing industry for 1900 and 1908 (the “varzar censuses”), which gave the first material on the state of its energy sector, namely: the composition, quantity and power of primary engines and electric motors. For the first time in historiography, the data of the “energy censuses” of the Ministry of Finance for 1905 and 1913 on the number and capacity of central public power stations and private power stations (block stations) of industrial enterprises, organizations and institutions are cited. The data of the census were conducted with the participation of the apparatus of factory and factory inspections in 1906 and in1916 inall provinces of the Russian Empire, with the exception of six provinces of the frontline zone. A lot of work was done to record electricity production / consumption, which was conducted by the Russian electrotechnical community. According to incomplete data published in 1917 by the Secretariat of the Standing Committee of the VII All-Russia Electrotechnical Congress, from 1905 to 1913 (that is, for 8 years) the total number of power stations in the Russian Empire increased by 1.7 times, and the amount of electricity produced by them Has grown in 3,8 times. The last objective study of the state of the pre-revolutionary electric power industry in 1920 was carried out by the developers of the GOELRO plan from the 6th (Petrograd) group (engineers T.F. Makariev, A.I. Firsov, Y.A. Samoilovich and professor N.N. Georgievsky). With the help of expert assessments, they established that in 1916 all public power stations and block stations of the census industry produced approximately 4,730 million kWh of electric power-twice as much as in 1913. Based on the revealed range of historical statistical sources, it is proved that in 1913–1916, The Russian Empire in terms of electricity production was one of the top five industrialized countries. The dynamic development of the electric power industry in the Russian Empire was interrupted by the succession of social and political cataclysms that shook the very foundations of Russian statehood. This period, which lasted until the end of 1921, was characterized by a complete degradation of the electric power industry. The fuel hunger, separation from the RSFSR of Baku and the Donbass, paralyzed the work of many power plants, both factory and general use. 

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