The Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers and the Problems of Industrial Progress in Tsarist Russia

In 1874 a handful of men met in the Ukrainian town of Khar'kov to establish what eventually became the Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers. The organization's birth corresponded with that of the great Donbas coal and steel industry, and its story illuminates the exhilaration and the frustration of those who aspired to create an industrial Russia with a liberal face. The association grew prominent over the next forty years, guided by a unique group of men who advocated speedy economic modernization for their country and who embraced such imported liberal visions as private enterprise and individual liberty.