The establishment of rural agricultural credit brotherhoods in the concerns of Bessarabia zemstvo in the 1870s

The establishment of rural mutual agricultural credit brotherhoods in Bessarabia in the 1870s was a complex and contradictory process, which faced a series of challenges and difficulties, due to both the general imperial and the regional specific context. First of all, the Russian government provided insufficient assistance to the agricultural societies, which led to a shortage of financial and material resources. At the same time, the predominance of the landowner element among the zemstvo deputies, namely the noble class᾿ vision of socio-economic processes, had a significant impact on the way the entire process was conceived and organized. On the other hand, many peasants were reluctant to pool their resources, fearing the loss of control over their land, which made the process of establishing the societies difficult. Moreover, the lack of education and experience of the peasants reduced the use of taken loans on purchase of modern agricultural equipment - the primary goal of the brotherhoods, as they borrowed mainly to cover their subsistence.