The need to provide the immigrant peasants of the Far East with food and industrial goods in the 19th century pushed the Russian government to establish regular trade contacts with other countries: China, Korea, Japan, the United States and European countries. Gradually, the populated areas of the region were drawn into an exchange relationship with each other.

The borderline position of the regions of the Far East caused the growing influence of foreign entrepreneurs on the local market. The position of German and Chinese merchants was especially strong. The first commercial voyages of private and state-owned steamships along the Amur River began. Foreign merchant ships from the USA, Norway, and Japan started to arrive at the city berths of the port of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur.

At the same time, a group of Far Eastern trade entrepreneurs was forming. Among them were merchants of the first and second guilds, owners of large capitals, often accumulated in the first years of their activity in the region, as well as small traders from peasants, burghers and retired military. The former owned trading companies and conducted mainly wholesale and large retail trade through a network of branches. The latter were engaged in retail trade from numerous shops in towns and villages. These were entrepreneurs from Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk, and Vladivostok.

Foreign goods were kept by families from the villages of Nizhneamursk: Singer sewing machines, gramophones from America, meat grinders from Germany, clothes from China. Trade in the Far East continued to develop even after the Russian Revolution.

The Alexanderwerk meat grinder from the museum’s collection was made in the 1930s in Germany. It consists of a cast iron body with a housing cone, a spiral scroll that pushed the meat to the blades, a cruciform knife, a grinding plate, a locking ring resembling a large screw nut in shape. The handle with a wooden insert is fixed at the back on the protruding part of the shaft using gaskets and a screw.

The meat grinder was manufactured under an American license, as evidenced by the inscription “Americ System” on the body. The Alexanderwerk company achieved success precisely thanks to the production of manual meat grinders. A German entrepreneur discovered such a meat grinder in America and began to produce an analog in Germany.