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The article describes the main conditions and trends in the development of periodicals of the turn of the 1850–1860s, in particular the newspapers and magazines of business. Special attention is paid to the position of I. V. Vernadsky’s magazine Economicheskiy Ukazatel’ (Economic Guide) in relation to the peasant question.

The image of P. A. Stolypin, who was burdened by the task of agrarian changes in the country, still remains the object of the “arguments of the parties”. As a rule, one of the arguments ‘for’ or ‘against’ Stolypin’s agrarian policy is drawn from the content of L. Tolstoy’s letters of 1907-1909 to the reformer and his only reply. All these letters date to the most intense period of the land “revolution” in the sovereign state, which only started half a century after serfdom had been abolished.