Publicly available information on the creditworthiness of individuals in the Russian empire (historical and legal analysis)

Due to the establishment of the legal institute of reference offices on creditworthiness in the Russian Empire, entrepreneurs had the opportunity to order a certificate of creditworthiness of a potential counterparty; however, for objective reasons, this method was quite long in time. The information reflected in the certificate was confidential. The 19th – the early 20th centuries’Russia lacked the unified state public register of information characterising the financial reliability of trade turnover participants. The author investigates publicly available sources of obtaining data on the creditworthiness of the counterparty, the pre-revolutionary period merchants and industrialists could use to make a decision on concluding a contract, including with the terms of a credit transaction. The publicly available information on the creditworthiness of clients in the Russian Empire is information collected and stored in reference offices on creditworthiness, provided by the latter in various formats to interested parties. The article examines the methods of providing entrepreneurs with information borrowed from foreign practice and used in Russian trade. An important source of acquiring information about creditworthiness was data obtained from mass media. At the same time, the risks of the reliability of this information were assumed by the person using this information. When writing the article, the author studied a large array of periodicals, used scientific works of scientists of the pre-revolutionary period, and also studied archival documents, some of which had not been studied in the legal doctrine before.