For the first time in Moldavian and all-Union historiography, a special study of the socio-economic development of the cities of Bessarabia in the post-reform period (1861-1900) is carried out. The monograph revealed the processes of capitalist evolution of cities, revealed the dynamics of the urban population, studied the state of industry, trade, as well as social contradictions in cities. All this is shown in close relationship with the general provincial and all-Russian phenomena of capitalist development.