Not many of our contemporaries know the personality of Lieutenant-General and Count Egor Frantsevich Kankrin (1774-1845), but this man undoubtedly deserves close attention even in our time, if only because he held the post of Minister of Finance for 21 years, from 1823 to 1844, i.e. longer than any other finance minister in the history of Russia in the 18-20 centuries. It was he who brought the Russian financial system out of the state of a long-term chronic crisis and left it in a position of reliable and stable equilibrium.
General Kankrin was born in 1774 in Hanau and came from a family of Hessian Germans. His father was a renowned mining engineer, and for a long time was involved in construction and worked in the mining and salt industry in a number of German lands. In 1783, he accepted an extremely tempting offer from the Russian berg collegium and moved to work in the Russian Empire with a very substantial salary of 2,000 rubles. per year as a valuable foreign specialist. His son Georg-Ludwig Kankrinius at this time remained in Germany, where he graduated from the Hesse and Marburg universities and only in 1797 joined his father in Russia. However, despite the prominent rank received under the patronage of his father, Georg-Ludwig, who became Yegor Frantsevich Kankrin, could not get any position, despite his serious rank and brilliant education, and for several years suffered great hardship, teaching, commissioning and working as an accountant.
The life circumstances of the young man improved only in 1803, when (after the death of Paul I and the accession of Alexander I) he entered the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the "expedition of state property through the salt production department." The young man, although he still spoke German better than Russian, was distinguished by his great intelligence and rare curiosity; being constantly on business trips for the revisions of the salt industry, E. F. Kankrin became more closely acquainted with various regions of Russia, as he himself later said -. In 1809, the almighty General A. A. Arakcheev and later, in 1811, Minister of War M. B. Barclay de Tolly.
The fact is that it was Kankrin, in his essay “Excerpts Concerning the Art of War from t.zr. Military Philosophy "was one of the first to propose the concept of" Scythian war ", which would have to be used in the event of an invasion of superior enemy forces into Russia, based on the idea of a strategic retreat in order to weaken the enemy. This point of view, built on cold calculation, was characteristic precisely for the conventionally called "German military party" in St. Petersburg, while the conditionally "Russian" party (since one of its main leaders was the Georgian prince Bagrationi) among the Russian officers was set up for an immediate counterstrike in the event of an invasion of enemy forces. And the realities of the Patriotic War of 1812 showed that it was precisely the strategic idea of the "German military party" that was more correct, and Napoleon waited and hoped for the actions of the Russian army in the spirit of the "Russian military party" - for decisive battles near the borders that he would have won with the highest probability).
It was the Minister of War and, perhaps, the best military leader-strategist of Russia at that time, M. B. Barclay de Tolly nominated E. F. Kankrin as an assistant to the general-food master with the assignment in 1811 of the rank of a full state councilor, and in the summer of 1812 he was appointed quartermaster-general of the 1st Western Army, and from the fall of 1812 - the chief quartermaster of the entire army in the field. In these positions, he showed his versatile mind, economic and organizational skills, and most importantly (which was not found in people in such positions and with such financial capabilities) - he was impeccably honest financially.
It is largely thanks to the talents of General Kankrin that the Russian army even in the crisis year of 1812, and especially in 1813-1815. during the Foreign Campaigns, almost for the first time in its history, it had an excellent organization of logistic supplies and was relieved of the need to get provisions with requisitions, which was typical, for example, of Napoleonic troops. This was largely due to Kankrin's excellent command of German, his native language, knowledge of both Russian and German psychology, and his father's old contacts in German lands.
It was the future Russian Minister of Finance who put the art of supplying Russian troops at the final stage of the Napoleonic Wars to an unprecedented level, allowing him to meet the needs of an army of 100-200,000 soldiers in the absence of railways or automobile supplies. At the same time, by the way, an interesting pattern emerged: organizing the supply of an army of 200,000 soldiers in Europe was easier than organizing the supply of an army of 100,000 soldiers in Russia - for reasons of the better quality of the road network (cobblestone highways in Europe against, at best, dirt roads in Russia); due to the significantly shorter distance of logistics lines; due to a much higher concentration of the population, greater intensification and greater marketability of agriculture.
Post-war analysis of the confrontation between Russia and Napoleonic France in 1812-1815. revealed that 157.5 million rubles were spent directly from the state treasury on military expenditures, which is a relatively modest amount. True, to this should be added almost 100 million voluntary donations from individuals in Russia and other countries (including from England, Germany and even, oddly enough, from the United States that fought with England at that time, but were friends with Russia (the Americans raised funds for social assistance to the poorest residents of Moscow, who lost their homes in the fire of 1812), as well as 135 million rubles. British military subsidies, which together give almost 400 million military expenditures.
However, for comparison, only in 1853-1854, i.e. only in the initial period of the Crimean War, the military expenditures of the Russian budget (including donations from citizens, but, of course, this time without British military subsidies, since Great Britain was one of the main opponents of Russia) amounted to 300 million rubles. spent with much less efficiency and with much worse results for Russia.
Moreover, during the Foreign Campaigns and in the post-war period of 1815-1816. Yegor Frantsevich Kankrin turned out to be the man who saved the Russian Empire from financial collapse and from state default. To understand how this happened, we will tell you a little background history of the state of Russian finance in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
After a very difficult, from an economic point of view, and absolutely unnecessary for the Russian geopolitical interests of the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763, the Russian economy more or less recovered, and in the initial period of the reign of Catherine II even experienced an upswing (including thanks to a number of skillfully carried out reforms) … However, this period was quite short, from about 1763 to 1769. Unfortunately, the French Kingdom and the Austrian Empire, the former allies of Russia in the Seven Years War, turned out to be bad allies not only during the war, but also unreliable partners in the post-war period - they through intrigues at the Sultan's court, and skillfully used the military incident on the Crimean border, forced the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate to declare war on Russia.
This is how the next Russo-Turkish war of 1768-1774 began, for which Russia was ready, but did not strive for, and in which Russia was supported by its former opponents in the Seven Years War - Great Britain and Prussia, and its former allies - Austria and France - supported Turkey (of course, none of them took a direct part in hostilities, rejoicing in the mutual weakening of the "two eastern barbarian empires"). Yes, from a military point of view, this war was successful for the Russians; moreover, it was England who in every possible way contributed to the "Archipelago Expedition" of the Russian Baltic Navy, which made the transition around Europe in the Mediterranean and won several victories there.
But from t.zr. the economy, this war began at the wrong time; it interrupted the successful financial and economic development of the Russian Empire and, even with a victorious current, played into the hands of the enemies of Russia, preventing it from fully recovering after the Seven Years War, had an extremely negative impact on Russian finances (since Russia already, in fact, the war with the Polish Confederation of Bars (1768-1772), by the way, also supported by France, and then the uprising of E. Pugachev (1773-1775), raised not without the help of Ottoman agents, broke out, which, in fact, became the third front for the Russian troops.
In the current crisis circumstances, in order to find money for the war, for the first time in the history of Russia, in 1769, paper notes issued by a specially formed Assignation Bank were put into circulation. Thus, Russian public finances moved away from monometallism, "addicted", as they figuratively say, to the "drug" of available, but unsecured paper money. From the very beginning, the exchange of paper notes for silver and gold was not made (due to the chronic shortage of these metals in Russia at that time), but at least the banknotes were firmly tied to the copper coin and initially (as often happened in history) the emergence of a new money supply helped to avoid a military recession, offset Russia's military spending on three fronts - Polish, Turkish and Pugachev, and even artificially stimulated economic growth.
However, the latter did not last long - in combination with the payment by the Ottoman Port of an indemnity of 4.5 million rubles in gold and silver for 3 years, economic growth in Russia continued until 1779. However, the flow of Turkish gold soon dried up and at the same time the inflationary effect on the unsecured Russian banknote ruble began to manifest itself. In 1780, the government of Catherine II even canceled the conversion of paper rubles and banned their free import and export abroad, hoping to stop inflation this way, but thereby only spurred it on, and even turned the Russian ruble from a respected currency freely convertible in Europe into a purely national payment unit.
What was worst of all was that Russia's budgetary expenditures were constantly and rapidly growing (the personal expenditures of the Empress's court grew especially monstrously), while foreign trade had to buy foreign currency instead of using rubles, but domestic industrial and agricultural production in Russia at the same time it grew very slowly. However, “addicted” to the “drug” of paper “money out of thin air,” the St. Petersburg government did not think of anything better than to continue emission, which led after 1785 to a collapse of both the external and internal exchange rates of the Russian ruble …
