The Legal Nature of Concession Agreements in the Electric Power Industry of the Russian Empire

The article examines the legal nature of concession agreements concluded between municipal public administrations and private (mainly foreign) joint-stock companies for the construction and operation of power stations and electric power networks in cities of the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The relevance of the topic is due to both the growing interest of modern legal science in historical forms of public-private partnership and the need to understand the origins of domestic energy law in the absence of specific sectoral legislation. The purpose of this study is to identify and classify the complex legal structure of these agreements, which combined elements of private and public law. The author concludes that, because of the lack of specific legislation, the concession emerged as an institution with a mixed public-private nature, entailing a combination of contractual obligations and elements of administrative regulation.