ABSTRACT
From about the year 1900 the co-operative movement, especially in the field of consumers' co-operation, had achieved great success in Russia. During 1917 the Bank lent to co-operative societies three and a half times more than in all the preceding years taken together. Between 1915 and 1917 the deposits in all the Russian joint-stock banks increased two and a half times, and in the Moscow People's Bank twelve times. The Consumers' Co-operative Society, which was established by various groups of Moscow people with great effort, is not going to be destroyed so quickly as it may seem at the first glance. When, however, the New Economic Policy came into being, the attitude of the Soviet authorities towards the co-operative movement changed. Not only were the co-operative societies, which had been brought under control to a certain extent, released, but the burdens upon these societies were from time to time reduced by the modification of income taxes and licence fees.
