“AGAINST THE STENCH, STINK AND AIR POLLUTION”: THE GOVERNMENT ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY TOWARDS MOSCOW’S INDUSTRY, 1840s – 1850s

In the history of Russian industry, the decades of the 1840s and 1850s are considered as the initial stage of the Industrial Revolution. In this epoch, Moscow held a leading position in terms of the number of enterprises and the volume of production. During this period, the issue of regulating sanitary issues and reducing the negative impact of industrial activity, particularly the pollution of rivers by industrial wastewater, becomes a priority. The article examines the history of the Act adopted on June 28, 1849, and titled “On limits on the number of factories and plants newly established in Moscow and its district”. The debates on the draft law revealed different approaches shared by the Governor General of Moscow A. Zakrevsky, Minister of Finance F. Vronchenko and Minister of Interior Affairs L. Perovski, which were reflected in their correspondence. The discussion revealed the contradiction between the desire to develop industrial entrepreneurship, which was insisted on by both ministers, especially the Minister of Finance responsible for the economy, and the need to improve the environmental situation in the capital, which was advocated by the Governor General. The study demonstrated that Zakrevsky’s initial tough position softened after communication with the ministers and the law already included compromise provisions. For this research, it was possible to discover and use new archival materials on industrial wastewater in the form of reports for all 17 urban areas of Moscow. This information provided understanding of environmental situation in the capital, as it contains data on factories and plants polluted the air and water with their waste, the cleaning facilities of these enterprises and the behavior of manufacturers when modernizing their equipment in accordance with new sanitary requirements