Entrepreneurship History: An Approach That Should Become Trivial

The monograph under review is devoted to the study of issues of private entrepreneurial activity on the territory of Belarus during those periods of its history when the capitalist mode of production was of greatest importance — at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. and during the years of implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP). Essentially, the book by N.I. Poletaeva is a comparative analysis of these periods according to the criteria that can characterize private entrepreneurial activity as a form of economic activity of the population, and entrepreneurs as a social group. This determined the structure of the work: first, the author examines the conditions of entrepreneurial activity, then analyzes the social characteristics of entrepreneurs and their territorial location, and, finally, analyzes the actual entrepreneurial activity in various sectors of the economy — agriculture, industry, trade, services, financial credit sector. Techniques and methods used by N.I. Poletaeva, when studying the history of entrepreneurial activity in Belarus, allowed her to come to consistent conclusions, but the main thing is to demonstrate such a level of research culture and such an approach to historical and economic analysis, which should become guidelines for researchers dealing with similar issues.