FROM UNITY TO COMPETITION: HISTORY OF RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNION OF SIBERIAN COOPERATIVE UNIONS (ZAKUPSBYT) AND TSENTROSOYUZ IN 1916 - 1919
The article is aimed at studying the history of relations between the two largest Russian cooperative unions - the Moscow Union of Consumer Societies (since 1917 - Tsentrosoyz), that was an All-Russian cooperative association, and the Union of Siberian Cooperative Unions (Zakupsbyt) comprised of the Siberian consumer cooperatives. Based primarily on archival documents and materials from periodicals the author concludes that the Moscow Union of Consumer Societies, founded in 1898, became the ﬁrst Russian cooperative union with centralized organizational structure consisting of consumer societies and cooperative unions. However criticism of the Moscow Union’s internal structure along with dissatisfaction of local authorities with its trade and distribution policies led to the fact that in 1916 the leaders of Siberian cooperative unions decided to organize their own Siberian center of consumer cooperatives - Zakupsbyt. It was an organization alternative to the Moscow Union as it had a decentralized (“federated”) organizational structure, leaving a large amount of authority for shareholders. However, due to exacerbation of the socioeconomic crisis, management of the Union of Siberian cooperative unions was forced to make transition from a federated to a centralized system of control. In 1916 - 1919 contacts between Zakupsbyt and Tsentrosoyuz encompassed a wide range of activities - from mutually beneﬁcial agreements to direct competition for the markets and procurement of goods. The keynote of relations between the two cooperative unions was competition for consumers, which was hidden behind the ofﬁcial slogans stating the two supposedly alternative ways of the Russian cooperative movement development