This article refutes the stereotype that 19th-century Russian jointstock commercial banks were primarily for merchants and industrialists. The banks did indeed serve the commercial and industrial elite in the industrial regions and in the centres of national and international capital markets like Saint Petersburg and Moscow. However, in agricultural regions, the landowners, engaged in the production and sale of agricultural products, managed the joint-stock commercial banks together with the merchants. This phenomenon is analysed via the case of the Oryol Commercial Bank (1872-1908), which was a member of the Moscow banker Lazar Polyakov’s group. The bank operated in agricultural regions; it operated originally in the Oryol province in the Central Black Earth Region, but in the 1890s it spread to the twelve provinces of central, south and west European Russia. Biographical information about the bank’s leaders was collected from fragmented published and archival sources, and their business and family ties were reconstructed. The article concludes that the bank operating in the agricultural region was controlled by a coalition of merchants, landowners, provincial officials and zemstvo figures. Deep integration into the regional elite was one of the factors of the bank’s stability, because it connected the most solid regional customers with the bank. It helped the bank to survive in the second half of the 1870s and in the 1880s during an economically unfavourable period for the Central Black Earth Region. Another factor of the bank’s stability was its interregional connections - that is, access to the Moscow financial market via the Polyakovs’ banking group. This market far exceeded any regional Russian market. From the 1870s to the 1890s, membership in the group increased the bank’s opportunities to raise additional resources, but in the 1900s it negatively affected the bank because of the Polyakovs’ bankruptcy. The influential local coalition around the Oryol commercial bank helped to retain the bank inside the United Bank, which was created from the former Polyakov banks in 1908.

Of the six Russian newspapers that appeared in Lvov, which was under Russian administration from August 1914 to June 1915, only Novyy kray and Chervonnaya Rus’ were privately owned; they were published in March– April and May–June 1915, respectively. Both papers have hitherto almost entirely escaped the attention of Russian historians, even as sources of information. The article demonstrates that, in eff ect, they constituted one and the same periodical, with identical layout, content, and publishing conditions. The closure of Novyy kray and the subsequent relaunch of the newspaper under a new title were linked to hostility on the part of the staff of the commander in chief of the armies of the Southwestern Front toward its publisher, N.I. Kapeller, who, in late 1914, had become embroiled in a high-profile controversy over the establishment of book and newspaper kiosks at railway stations in Galicia. The suppression of Novyу kraу testified to the weak position of the authorities of the Galician General-Governorate, who were compelled to revoke their own authorization of the paper and align themselves with the stance of the front headquarters. Shortly after Novyу kraу ceased to exist, the military authorities readily sanctioned the establishment of a new periodical under the title Chervonnaya Rus’. Its publisher was the former editor of Novyy kray, P.Ya. Kurnosov; everything else — from the location of the editorial office to the programme of the issues — remained unchanged. The minor diff erences in rhetoric between the two newspapers were conditioned by the deteriorating situation on the Southwestern Front: at the height of the enemy off ensive in Galicia, Chervonnaia Rus’ had to devote greater attention to criticizing panic and encouraging the population. On the whole, despite competition from other Russian newspapers in Lvov and from the Russian press reaching the city from the interior, Novyy kray and Chervonnaya Rus’ enjoyed popularity among readers thanks to their varied and original content and their balanced attention to international news and local reports — a fact noted even by the Polish press of Lvov.