The Practice of Fulfilling the State Order by Private Industrial Enterprises at the Beginning of the XX Century (On the Example of the “Trade and Industrial Society of Alafuzov’s Factories and Plants”)

Introduction. One of the priorities of economic policy in imperial Russia has traditionally been to ensure the effective performance of functions and the satisfaction of the military-strategic needs of the state. At the same time, the most important instrument for the implementation of this kind of policy was the system of state orders. At the beginning of the XX century it was a key component of the state’s life support system. Methods. The study was carried out on the basis of the principles of historicism, objectivity and consistency, the use of which in aggregate made it possible to interpret the available information on the topic as fully and deeply as possible, to consider the object of research, taking into account the peculiarities of the historical environment in conjunction with a wide range of external factors. To solve the set tasks, elements of the methods of historical and legal analysis were used, which made it possible to consider the object of research in the context of the development of Russian legislation. Results. On the basis of materials from archival files, regulatory legal acts, as well as data from published sources, the process of making state supplies to the military department was analyzed on the example of a separate industrial enterprise – “Trade and Industrial Society of Alafuzov’s Factories and Plants”. In the context of studying the practice of interaction between the management of Alafuzov’s company and government agencies, the authors consider the key features of the organization of the system for fulfilling a government order for the supply of industrial products, and also identifies the main difficulties that arose in the course of its implementation. Discussion and Conclusion. The study showed that the execution of state supplies by Alafuzov’s factories was fraught with a number of difficulties. The urgency of fulfilling orders required the mobilization of additional material and labor resources, complicating the process of managing a rather extensive and diversified industrial complex, requiring additional efforts, knowledge and abilities from representatives of the management level. The main part of the difficulties in the execution of contracts was associated not so much with the organization of the production and labor process, but with the interaction with the departments responsible for the acceptance of the supplied products. On the example of Alafuzov’s factories, it is possible to see inconsistency in the activities of individual structural links of this system, which gave rise to a number of difficulties for the executors of the state order. The reasons for this kind of difficulties were, on the one hand, failures in the operation of the mechanism for accepting goods when organizing state supplies, on the other hand, factors of a subjective nature, generated primarily by insufficient competence of responsible persons.