The growth of cities, the development of commodity-money relations became an incentive for the growth of the number of merchants who were representatives of the privileged population according to the law of the Russian Empire. Their rights, duties and activities were regulated by the City Regulations of 1870, and then 1892. The sources of replenishment of the merchant class were local burghers and immigrants from other provinces of Russia. The ethnic composition of merchants was quite motley, it was made up of Tatars, Bashkirs, the process of forming a merchant class from representatives of Kazakhs began. But the main share of the merchant class in Western Kazakhstan was made up of Russian merchants.