The report is devoted to the coverage of some issues of the development of the oil industry in Turkestan, based on the activities of the Central Asian Oil and Industrial Society (SANTO) and to the presence of various representatives of Russian merchant capital in it. The personal composition of the company's participants, the nature and origin of their capital, as well as the shares in the shares of each shareholder are considered. The author comes to a reasonable conclusion that Moscow capitalists had fewer shares than representatives of the Urals, the Volga region and Ivanovo-Voznesensk (excluding St. Petersburg shareholders), and the modernization of Turkestan depended on the union of these “layers” of the Russian bourgeoisie.