WORK BY D.I. LESHCHENKO “CHEMISTRY IN INDUSTRY” AS A SOURCE ON THE HISTORY OF THE PRE-REVOLUTIONARY DOMESTIC CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

Fan-Yung German Yurievich

Considering the significant errors that abound in pre-revolutionary domestic statistical collections and/or reference books, as well as the general imperfection of statistical methods of that time, in our opinion, highly professional published sources written by chemical technologists are of particular importance for the researcher. In this article, we have attempted to apply the work of chemist-technologist and professional Bolshevik revolutionary D.I. Leshchenko “Chemistry in Industry”, published in 1909, as a significant methodological basis for identifying a particular enterprise as a chemical production. The importance of this work is clearly demonstrated not only for understanding the chemical technology of that time, which would seem to be of interest only to narrow specialists, but also for the most objective assessment of the state of the chemical industry of pre-revolutionary Russian industry. The importance of both this and similar works was especially noted, which set out in accessible language the fundamentals of chemical technology, allowing the researcher, in turn, to correctly attribute the industry affiliation of the industries under study.

Keywords:industrial revolution, pre-revolutionary domestic chemical industry, chemical control over production, knowledge-intensive production of pre-revolutionary Russia, chemist-technologist D.I. Leshchenko, organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry, the importance of sulfuric acid production, shortcomings of pre-revolutionary statistical collections, economic “backwardness” pre-revolutionary Russia.