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Industrial reforms - a set of laws and reforms in the industry, made by Peter I the Great in order to develop manufacturing production.

In order to fill the treasury, the state declared the production and sale of a particular product a state monopoly. In foreign policy, the patronage of domestic industry was carried out - the encouragement of exports and the restriction of imports, since the quality of domestic goods could not withstand competition.

Industry reforms

The essence and content of the industrial reform of Peter I

Reasons and goals:

• The backwardness of the economy of the Russian kingdom was caused by a serious lag in the development of industry
• The modernization of the armament of the army, and ensuring the construction of a modernly equipped navy was impossible without the appropriate production within the country
• New administrative institutions were required for the organization and development of industry.

Peter I was personally convinced of the technological and personnel lag of Russian industry in front of European countries. His first step towards the development of industrial production was to attract foreign engineers. In 1698, when during his return from the Grand Embassy, ​​thousands of various masters. In 1702, Peter I issued a decree inviting foreign specialists to serve in Russia, and Russian ambassadors who were in European countries were ordered to hire the best possible designers.

Adopting Western industrial traditions and economic principles, the king focused on two main points

Mercantilism

Active state intervention in economic life with the aim of accumulating capital within the country to improve its welfare, as well as ensuring the maximum amount of goods produced for domestic needs with a reduction in primary resources sold to other countries.

Protectionism

Support for the national economy, carried out mainly with the help of trade and political barriers - the introduction of prohibitive (excessively high) duties on competing goods, the monopolization of mining or production by the state.

The king had to solve the following tasks:

• Eliminate the lack of engineers and skilled craftsmen,
• Organize the search, extraction and processing of primary ores, as well as the production of end products,
• Provide factories and plants with labor
• Protect nascent domestic production from competition with high-tech foreign products

Even before the first trip abroad, Peter ordered to explore all sorts of ores in the Urals. Returning with hired mining engineers and craftsmen, he, encouraged by favorable searches and experiments that showed that iron ore gave pure good iron almost half of its weight, built in 1699 on the Nevye River, in the Verkhotursk district, iron factories, on which the treasury spent 1,541 rubles, and 10,347 rubles were collected from the peasants for hiring workers.

Invited foreign experts not only organized production and designed factories, but also took apprentices among people selected from all free classes, as well as serfs who received vacation papers from the landowners. There were not enough volunteers for training (work in factories and factories was too hard), so from the 1720s they began to train fugitive peasants, but not soldiers. In addition, Peter I himself recruited students by decrees, and also sent noble children abroad for education.

Ascribed peasants

In 1703 the tsar signed a decree on assigned peasants- a new type of serfs, instead of paying a poll tax, was obliged to work in factories and factories. Usually, assigned peasants were attached to manufactories without a specific time frame, that is, forever. Formally, these peasants remained the property of the state, but in practice, the factory owners used and punished them as their serfs. The economy of the mining and metallurgical industries, in particular, the Altai mining district, was based on the exploitation of bonded peasants. The difficult situation caused escapes, unrest and uprisings of bonded peasants.

State subsidies

The practice of building production facilities at public expense with their subsequent transfer to private hands has become widespread. At the same time, the tsar and the people appointed by him followed the development of enterprises, and in case of unsatisfactory results, the guilty manufacturer could be deprived of his property, exiled to hard labor, or even executed.

There are two stages in industrial policy:

• 1700-1717 - the main founder of manufactories - the treasury;
• since 1717, private individuals began to establish manufactories.

In the Olonets region, on the shores of Lake Onega, in 1703 an iron foundry and an ironworks were built, which became the foundation of the city of Petrozavodsk. Following this, several iron and copper factories, state-owned and private, arose in Povenets and other places in the region. Mining has developed especially widely in the current Perm province; in this respect, the Urals can be called the discovery of Peter.

Realizing the need to organize the supply of new equipment and weapons to the army as soon as possible, Peter I gave various privileges to the manufacturers - their families were exempted from public service, were subject only to the court of the Manufactory Collegium, did not pay personal taxes, were exempted from the obligation to house troops and received the right to bring from abroad any goods needed for production.

Berg privilege

By decree of 1712, Peter the Great founded an arms production in the city of Tula. But in the next few years, the shortage of primary metalworking products, which the industry badly needed, became apparent. Therefore, the “Berg Privilege” published in 1719 gave any free person the right to seek, mine and process metals and minerals, with the obligatory payment of a “mining tax” of 10% of the cost of extraction and 32 shares to the owner of the land on which mining and processing was carried out. resources.

Introduction of the category of possessive peasants

In 1721, Peter I allowed the factory owners, who complained about the mass flight of peasants from factories and the lack of workers, to buy out entire villages to service the factories, on the condition that later these peasants could only be sold together with production. Thus, another category of peasants was formed - sessional. This free labor power was, in fact, the living inventory of the manufacture to which it was assigned.

Serf factory workers received only food and clothing instead of payment. Free people were paid money, usually on a monthly basis in state-owned factories, and on a piece-rate basis in private ones.

Until 1724, Peter I pursued a policy of protectionism in relation to industry, prohibiting or restricting the import of foreign goods, analogues of which began to be produced in the Russian Empire. Even within the country, monopolies were introduced in the production and sale of certain products in order to accelerate the development of a single newly opened factory.

By the end of the reign of Peter I, iron smelting reached 7 million pounds, copper - 200 thousand pounds. The development of silver and gold began.

New administrative bodies for the development of industry

Established by Peter I, among other collegiums, the Berg-, Manufaktura-, Commerce Collegia and the Chief Magistrate were institutions of state regulation of the national economy, bodies for the implementation of the commercial and industrial policy of the autocracy.

• Berg College - Development of the Mining Industry
• Manufactory College - the development of textile, woodworking and other visible light industries
• Commerce Collegium - responsible for organizing trade relations
• Chief Magistrate - combined the functions of industrial and commercial administration at the city level

By decree of 1722, city artisans were united in workshops, but unlike Western Europe they were organized by the state, not by the artisans themselves. Each workshop was headed by a master approved by the magistrate, who evaluated the products manufactured by artisans and could destroy the goods if they were of insufficient quality. It was also forbidden to sell goods that did not have the personal brand of a particular artisan.

Product quality

However, with the exception of products intended for equipping the army and navy (for the poor quality of which the manufacturer who supplied them was deprived of production and could be exiled to hard labor or executed), most of the goods produced in the country were Bad quality and significantly inferior to foreign counterparts.

Outcomes and results of reforms in the field of industry

It is possible that the industrial reform of Peter the Great did not create production facilities that were qualitatively superior to Western counterparts, but it definitely laid the foundation for the subsequent development of the country and made it possible to provide the troops with modern weapons.

Peter left behind 233 factories and plants in the most diverse industries. Most of all, he was concerned about the production related to the supply of the army, linen, canvas, cloth: in 1712, he set the main task of the light industry to meet the needs of the army in order to “not buy overseas uniforms,” but they did not manage to do this until the end of his life. Also, new industries emerged in Russia: shipbuilding, silk spinning, glass and faience business, and paper production.

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At the same time, the desire to reduce the cost of maintaining the army and navy naturally led to the idea that it would be cheaper to produce everything that was needed to equip and arm the army and navy. And since there were no factories and plants that could fulfill this task, then the thought arose that they should be built by inviting knowledgeable foreigners for this and giving them to science "their subjects" as it was then expressed. These thoughts were not new and have been known since the time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible.

Having set himself the goal of arming the economy with the best Western production technologies, Peter reorganized all sectors of the national economy. During the Great Embassy, ​​the tsar studied all aspects of European life, including technical ones. Abroad, Peter learned the basics of economic thought of that time - mercantilism. Mercantilism based its economic doctrine on two propositions: first, each people, in order not to become impoverished, must produce everything that it needs, without turning to the help of other people's labor, the labor of other peoples; second, every nation, in order to grow rich, must export as much as possible the manufactured products from its country and import foreign products as little as possible.

Industrial Development Measures

Geological exploration of ore resources and those manufacturing industries that could, with support, could develop into large enterprises, was undertaken throughout Russia. By his order, connoisseurs of various crafts dispersed throughout the country. Deposits of rock crystal, carnelian, saltpeter, peat, coal were discovered, about which Peter said that “This mineral, if not for us, then for our descendants, will be very useful”. The Ryumin brothers opened a plant in the Ryazan region for the extraction of coal. The foreigner von Azmus developed peat.

Peter also strenuously attracted foreigners to the cause. In 1698, when he returned from his first trip abroad, he was followed by many artisans and craftsmen hired by him. In Amsterdam alone, he employed about 1,000 people. In 1702, Peter's decree was published throughout Europe, inviting foreigners to industrial service in Russia on very favorable terms for them. Peter ordered Russian residents at European courts to seek out and hire experts in various industries and craftsmen for the Russian service. So, for example, the French engineer Leblon - "straight curiosity", as Peter called him, he was invited to a salary of 5 thousand rubles a year with a gift apartment, with the right to go home in five years with all the acquired property, without paying any taxes.

At the same time, Peter took measures to strengthen the training of Russian young people, sending them to study abroad.

Under Peter, the number of manufactories, which became technical schools and practical schools, increased significantly. We agreed with visiting foreign masters, “so that they, from Russian students, have with them and teach their skills, setting for that the price of the award and the time, what time to learn”. People of all free classes were accepted as apprentices at factories and factories, and serfs - with a vacation pay from the landowner, but from the 1720s they began to accept runaway peasants, but not soldiers. Since there were few volunteers, Peter from time to time, by decree, recruited students for training at manufactories. In 1711 “the sovereign ordered to send 100 people from churchmen and from the servants of the monastery and from their children, who would be 15 or 20 years old, and would be able to write, so that they could go into teaching to the masters of various deeds”. Such sets were repeated in subsequent years.

For military needs and for the extraction of metals, Peter especially needed mining and ironworks. In 1719, to the Olonets factories, where iron was smelted, cannons and cannonballs were poured, Peter ordered to recruit 300 students. Mining schools also arose at the Ural factories, where they recruited literate soldiers', clerks' and priests' children as students. In these schools they wanted to teach not only the practical knowledge of mining, but also theory, arithmetic and geometry. The students were paid a salary - one and a half pounds of flour per month and a ruble per year for a dress, and for those whose fathers are prosperous or receive a salary of more than 10 rubles a year, they did not give anything from the treasury, until they start learning triple rule» , then they were given a salary.

Not content with spreading one practical teaching of technology, Peter also took care of theoretical education by translating and distributing relevant books. The "Lexicon of Commerce" by Jacques Savary ("Savarian Lexicon") was translated and printed. True, in 24 years only 112 copies of this book were sold, but this circumstance did not frighten the king-publisher. In the list of books published under Peter, you can find many guides to teaching various technical knowledge. Many of these books have been strictly edited by the Emperor himself.

After the mining factories, the weapons factories - Tula and Sestroretsky - were distinguished by their vastness. These weapons factories supplied guns, cannons and edged weapons to the entire army and freed the treasury from having to buy weapons abroad. In total, under Peter, more than 20 thousand cannons were cast. The first rapid-fire guns appeared. At Peter's factories, they even used "fiery" machines as a driving force - that was the name of the progenitors of steam engines then. 1162 workers worked at the state-owned sailing factory in Moscow. Of the private factories, Shchegolin's cloth factory with his comrades in Moscow, which had 130 mills and employed 730 workers, was distinguished by its vastness. Miklyaev's Kazan cloth factory employed 740 people.

By decree of 1712, Peter I officially started the state arms production in the city of Tula. A corresponding settlement of gunsmiths was created. The beginning of arms production in Tula is inextricably linked with the industrialists Demidovs. In Tula, there is a monument to Peter I (near the Tula arms factory and a bust of Peter I near the Tula State Museum of Weapons (the Helm building).

Workers in the Age of Peter

The factory workers of the time of Peter the Great came from a wide variety of strata of the population: runaway serfs, vagabonds, beggars, even criminals - all of them, according to strict orders, were taken and sent to “work” in factories. Peter could not stand "walking" people who were not attached to any business, he was ordered to seize them, not sparing even the monastic rank, and sent them to factories. There were very few free workers, because in general there were few free people in Russia at that time. The rural population was not free; . When a factory was established, the manufacturer was usually given the privilege of freely hiring Russian and foreign craftsmen and apprentices, "paying them a decent wage for their work". If a manufacturer received a factory arranged by the treasury, then workers were transferred to him along with the factory buildings.

There were frequent cases when, in order to supply factories, and especially factories, with working hands, villages and villages of peasants were attributed to factories and factories, as was still practiced in the 17th century. Such assigned to the factory worked for it and in it by order of the owner. But in most cases, the manufacturers themselves had to find workers for themselves by hiring. It was very difficult, and the dregs of the population usually ended up in the factories - all those who had nowhere else to go. There were not enough workers. The factory owners constantly complained about the lack of workers and, above all, that there were no workers. Workers were so rare also because the dressing was then predominantly manual, and it was not always easy to learn how to do it. A skillful worker who knew his job was highly valued for this reason; the factory owners lured such workers away from each other, and under no circumstances did they release well-trained workers. He who learned the skill in a factory undertook not to leave the factory that taught him for ten or fifteen years, depending on the agreement. Experienced workers lived in one place for a long time and rarely became unemployed. For "calling" working people from one factory to another before the expiration of the fixed period of work, a very large fine was imposed by law on the guilty manufacturer, while the enticed worker returned to the former owner and was subjected to corporal punishment.

But all this did not save the factories from desertion. Then the government of Peter decided that work in factories could be carried out in the same way as rural work on the estates of private landowners, that is, with the help of serf labor. In 1721, a decree followed, which stated that although previously "merchant people" were forbidden to buy villages, now many of them wanted to start various manufactories both in companies and one by one. “For the sake of it, it is allowed for the reproduction of such factories, both for the gentry and merchant people, to those factories of the village to buy without restriction with the permission of the Berg and Manufactory Collegium, only under such conditions, so that those villages will always be already at those factories inseparably. And in order not to sell or mortgage to anyone, to the gentry, and to the merchants of those villages especially without factories, and not to strengthen anyone for anyone by any fictions and not to give such villages to anyone at the ransom, unless someone wants those villages and take them for their necessary needs sell the factories, then sell them with the permission of the Berg Collegium. And if anyone acts against this, then it will be irrevocably deprived of all that ... " After this decree, all factories quickly acquired serf workers, and the factory owners liked it so much that they began to seek assignment to the factories and free workers who worked for them in free employment. In 1736, that is, after the death of Peter, they received this as well, and by decree, all those artisans who were at the factories at the time the decree was issued were to remain strong in the factory “forever” with their families. Even under Peter, the factory owners were already judges of their workers. From 1736, this was granted to them by law.

Serf workers did not always receive a monetary salary, but only food and clothing. Civilian workers, of course, received a salary in money, usually on a monthly basis in state-owned factories, and piecework in private ones. In addition to money, grubs also went to civilian employees. The amounts of cash salaries and grain dachas were small. The labor of workers was best paid in silk factories, worse in paper factories, even worse in cloth factories, and the least paid in linen factories. In general, in state-owned manufactories, wages were higher than in private ones.

Work in some factories was precisely and thoroughly established by company regulations. In 1741, a fourteen-hour working day was established by law.

The workers depended on the manufacturers for everything. True, the law ordered them “decently maintain artisans and students and repair them with rewards at their true worth”, but these rules were poorly enforced. The factory owners, having bought a village for the factory, often registered as workers and drove all the “full workers” to the factory, so that only the old men, women and minors remained on the land. The wages of the workers were often delayed, so that they “came into poverty and even suffered from diseases”.

Product quality

Goods produced by Russian factories did not differ in high quality and processing. Only rough soldier's cloths were relatively good, and everything that was needed for military supplies, up to and including cannons, but purely industrial goods that were looking for sales among the people were bad.

Thus, the majority of Russian factories produced, according to merchants, goods of poor quality, which could not count on a quick sale, especially in the presence of foreign competition. Then Peter, in order to encourage his manufacturers and give their goods at least some kind of sale, began to impose heavy duties on foreign manufacturers. In accordance with the teachings of mercantilism he had learned, Peter was convinced that his manufacturers were tolerating “from goods brought from abroad; for example, one peasant discovered the paint of cormorants, I ordered the painters to try it, and they said that it would yield to one Venetian, and equal to the German one, and another better: they put it on from abroad; other manufacturers also complain…” Until 1724, Peter issued orders from time to time prohibiting the import of either individual foreign goods that began to be produced in Russia, or entire groups of both “manufacturing” and “metal products”. From time to time it was forbidden even inside Russia to produce any kind of linen or silk fabric for anyone, except for one factory that had just opened, of course, with the direct goal of giving it the opportunity to get on its feet and accustom the consumer to its production.

Simultaneously with the efforts to connect the Baltic and Caspian rivers with a network of canals, Peter took decisive measures to ensure that the movement of foreign trade left its former habitual path to the White Sea and Arkhangelsk and took a new direction to St. Petersburg. Government measures in this direction began in 1712, but the protests of foreign merchants, who complained about the inconvenience of living in a new city like Petersburg, the considerable danger of sailing in wartime on the Baltic Sea, the high cost of the route itself, because the Danes took a fee for the passage of ships , - all this made Peter postpone the abrupt transfer of trade with Europe from Arkhangelsk to St. Petersburg: but already in 1718 he issued a decree allowing only hemp trade in Arkhangelsk, all the grain trade was ordered to move to St. Petersburg. Thanks to these and other measures of the same nature, St. Petersburg became a significant place for holiday and import trade. Concerned about raising the commercial importance of his new capital, Peter is negotiating with his future son-in-law, the Duke of Holstein, regarding the possibility of digging a canal from Kiel to the North Sea in order to be independent from the Danes, and, taking advantage of the confusion in Mecklenburg and wartime in general, he thinks to establish himself more firmly near the possible entrance to the projected channel. But this project was carried out much later, after the death of Peter.

The subject of export from Russian ports were mainly raw products: fur goods, honey, wax. Since the 17th century, Russian timber, tar, tar, sailcloth, hemp, and ropes have been especially valued in the West. At the same time, livestock products - leather, lard, bristles - went intensively for export; from the time of Peter the Great, mining products went abroad, mainly iron and copper. Flax and hemp were in particular demand; trade in bread was weak due to lack of roads and government bans on selling bread abroad.

Instead of Russian raw materials, Europe could supply us with the products of its manufacturing industry. But, patronizing his factories and plants, Peter, with almost prohibitive duties, greatly reduced the import of foreign manufactured goods into Russia, allowing only those that were not produced in Russia at all, or only those that Russian factories and plants needed (this was a policy of protectionism)

Peter also paid tribute to the enthusiasm characteristic of his time to trade with the countries of the far south, with India. He dreamed of an expedition to Madagascar, and he thought of directing Indian trade through Khiva and Bukhara to Russia. A.P. Volynsky was sent to Persia as an ambassador, and Peter instructed him to find out if there was any river in Persia that would flow from India through Persia and flow into the Caspian Sea. Volynsky had to work so that the Shah would direct all of Persia's trade in raw silk not through the cities Turkish Sultan- Smyrna and Aleppo, and through Astrakhan. In 1715, a trade agreement was concluded with Persia, and Astrakhan trade became very active. Realizing the importance of the Caspian Sea for his broad plans, Peter took advantage of the intervention in Persia, when the rebels killed Russian merchants there, and occupied the coast of the Caspian Sea from Baku and Derbent inclusive. In Central Asia, on the Amu Darya, Peter sent a military expedition under the command of Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky. In order to establish themselves there, it was supposed to find the old channel of the Amu Darya River and direct its course to the Caspian Sea, but this attempt failed: exhausted by the difficulty of the path through the desert scorched by the sun, the Russian detachment fell into an ambush set up by the Khivans, and was all exterminated.

Transformation results

Thus, under Peter the foundation of Russian industry was laid. Many new industries entered the circulation of people's labor, that is, the sources of people's well-being increased quantitatively and improved qualitatively. This improvement was achieved by a terrible strain on the people's forces, but only thanks to this strain was the country able to endure the burden of the twenty-year uninterrupted war. In the future, the intensified exploitation of national wealth, which began under Peter, led to enrichment and economic development Russia.

Domestic trade under Peter also revived significantly, but, in general, continued to have the same caravan and fair character. But even this side of the economic life of Russia was stirred up by Peter and brought out of that calmness of inertia and lack of enterprise, which was different in the 17th century and earlier. The spread of commercial knowledge, the emergence of factories and plants, communication with foreigners - all this gave new meaning and the direction of Russian trade, forcing it to revive inside and, thereby, becoming an increasingly active participant in world trade, to assimilate its principles and rules.

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Notes

Literature

• Solovyov S. M. "History of Russia". Volume XIII-XVIII.
• Afanasiev A. N. State economy under Peter the Great // Sovremennik part III and IV 1847
• Tugan-Baranovsky M. I. "Russian factory in the past and present"
• Klyuchevsky V. O. "Course of Russian history", part IV
• Milyukov P. N. "The state economy of Russia in the first quarter XVIII century"
• Lappo-Danilevsky A. S. "Russian commercial and industrial companies in the first half of the 18th century"

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An excerpt characterizing Industry and trade under Peter I

Suddenly, cannon shots were heard from the embankment (these were fired in commemoration of peace with the Turks), and the crowd quickly rushed to the embankment - to watch how they were shooting. Petya also wanted to run there, but the deacon, who took the barchon under his protection, did not let him go. Shots were still going on when officers, generals, chamberlains ran out of the Assumption Cathedral, then others came out more slowly, their hats were again taken off their heads, and those who had run away to look at the guns ran back. Finally, four more men in uniforms and ribbons came out of the doors of the cathedral. "Hooray! Hooray! the crowd shouted again.
- Which? Which? Petya asked around him in a weeping voice, but no one answered him; everyone was too carried away, and Petya, choosing one of these four faces, whom he could not clearly see because of the tears that came out of his eyes with joy, focused all his delight on him, although it was not the sovereign, shouted “Hurrah! in a frantic voice and decided that tomorrow, no matter what it cost him, he would be a military man.
The crowd ran after the sovereign, escorted him to the palace and began to disperse. It was already late, and Petya hadn't eaten anything, and the sweat was pouring down from him; but he did not go home, and together with a smaller, but still rather large crowd, stood in front of the palace, during the emperor’s dinner, looking into the windows of the palace, expecting something else and envying the dignitaries who drove up to the porch - for the emperor’s dinner, and the lackeys of the chambers who served at the table and flashed through the windows.
At dinner, the sovereign Valuev said, looking out the window:
“The people still hope to see Your Majesty.
Dinner was already over, the emperor got up and, finishing his biscuit, went out onto the balcony. The people, with Petya in the middle, rushed to the balcony.
"Angel, father!" Hurray, father! .. - the people and Petya shouted, and again the women and some weaker men, including Petya, wept with happiness. A rather large piece of biscuit, which the sovereign held in his hand, broke off and fell on the railing of the balcony, from the railing to the ground. The coachman in the coat, who was standing nearest, rushed to this piece of biscuit and grabbed it. Some of the crowd rushed to the coachman. Noticing this, the sovereign ordered a plate of biscuits to be served to him and began to throw biscuits from the balcony. Petya's eyes were filled with blood, the danger of being crushed excited him even more, he threw himself on the biscuits. He did not know why, but he had to take one biscuit from the hands of the king, and he had to not give in. He rushed and knocked down an old woman who was catching a biscuit. But the old woman did not consider herself defeated, although she lay on the ground (the old woman caught biscuits and did not hit with her hands). Petya knocked her hand away with his knee, grabbed the biscuit and, as if afraid of being late, again shouted "Hurrah!", in a hoarse voice.
The sovereign left, and after that most of the people began to disperse.
- So I said that you still have to wait - and it happened, - with different parties people spoke happily.
Happy as Petya was, he was still sad to go home and know that all the enjoyment of that day was over. From the Kremlin, Petya did not go home, but to his comrade Obolensky, who was fifteen years old and who also entered the regiment. Returning home, he resolutely and firmly announced that if they did not let him in, he would run away. And the next day, although not yet completely surrendered, Count Ilya Andreich went to find out how to put Petya somewhere safer.

On the morning of the 15th, on the third day after that, an innumerable number of carriages stood at the Sloboda Palace.
The halls were full. In the first there were nobles in uniforms, in the second, merchants with medals, in beards and blue caftans. There was a buzz and movement in the hall of the Nobility Assembly. At one large table, under the portrait of the sovereign, the most important nobles were sitting on chairs with high backs; but most of the nobles walked about the hall.
All the nobles, the same ones that Pierre saw every day either in the club or in their houses, were all in uniforms, some in Catherine’s, some in Pavlov’s, some in new Alexander’s, some in a general noble one, and this general character of the uniform gave something strange and fantastic to these old and young, the most diverse and familiar faces. Especially striking were the old people, blind, toothless, bald, swollen with yellow fat or shriveled, thin. For the most part they sat in their places and were silent, and if they walked and talked, they would attach themselves to someone younger. Just as on the faces of the crowd that Petya saw on the square, on all these faces there was a striking feature of the opposite: a common expectation of something solemn and ordinary, yesterday - the Boston party, Petrushka the cook, the health of Zinaida Dmitrievna, etc.
Pierre, from early morning pulled together in an awkward, narrow noble uniform that had become him, was in the halls. He was in a state of agitation: the extraordinary assembly not only of the nobility, but also of the merchants - the estates, etats generaux - evoked in him a whole series of thoughts long abandoned, but deeply embedded in his soul, about the Contrat social [Social contract] and the French revolution. The words he noticed in the appeal, that the sovereign would arrive in the capital for a conference with his people, confirmed him in this look. And he, believing that in this sense something important was approaching, something that he had been waiting for a long time, he walked, looked closely, listened to the conversation, but nowhere did he find an expression of those thoughts that occupied him.
The sovereign's manifesto was read, which caused delight, and then everyone dispersed, talking. In addition to the usual interests, Pierre heard rumors about where the leaders should stand at the time the sovereign entered, when to give the sovereign a ball, whether to be divided into districts or the entire province ... etc.; but as soon as the matter concerned the war and what the nobility was gathered for, the rumors were indecisive and indefinite. They were more willing to listen than to speak.
One middle-aged man, courageous, handsome, in a retired naval uniform, was talking in one of the halls, and people crowded around him. Pierre went up to the circle formed near the talker and began to listen. Count Ilya Andreevich, in his Catherine’s voivodship caftan, walking with a pleasant smile among the crowd, familiar with everyone, also approached this group and began to listen with his kind smile, as he always listened, nodding his head approvingly in agreement with the speaker. The retired sailor spoke very boldly; this was evident from the expressions of the faces listening to him, and from the fact that Pierre, known for being the most submissive and quiet people, disapprovingly departed from him or contradicted him. Pierre pushed his way into the middle of the circle, listened, and became convinced that the speaker was really a liberal, but in a completely different sense than Pierre thought. The sailor spoke in that especially sonorous, melodious, noble baritone, with pleasant grazing and contraction of consonants, in that voice with which they shout: “Cheak, pipe!”, And the like. He spoke with a habit of revelry and power in his voice.
- Well, that the Smolensk people offered the militias to the gosuai. Is it a decree for us Smolensk? If the bourgeois nobility of the Moscow province finds it necessary, they can show their devotion to the Emperor by other means. Have we forgotten the militia in the seventh year! Caterers and robber thieves have just made a profit ...
Count Ilya Andreich, smiling sweetly, nodded his head approvingly.
- And what, did our militias make a benefit to the state? No! only ruined our farms. Better still a set ... otherwise neither a soldier nor a peasant will return to you, and only one debauchery. The nobles do not spare their lives, we ourselves will go without exception, we will take another recruit, and all of us just call the goose (he pronounced the sovereign so), we will all die for him, - the orator added, animated.
Ilya Andreich swallowed his saliva with pleasure and pushed Pierre, but Pierre also wanted to speak. He moved forward, feeling animated, not knowing what else and not knowing what he would say. He had just opened his mouth to speak, when one senator, completely without teeth, with an intelligent and angry face, standing close to the speaker, interrupted Pierre. With a visible habit of debating and holding questions, he spoke quietly, but audibly:
“I believe, my dear sir,” said the senator, mumbling his toothless mouth, “that we are not called here to discuss what is more convenient for the state at the present moment - recruitment or militia. We are called to respond to the proclamation with which the Sovereign Emperor honored us. And to judge what is more convenient - a recruitment or a militia, we will leave to judge the highest authority ...
Pierre suddenly found an outlet for his animation. He became hardened against the senator, who introduced this correctness and narrowness of views into the upcoming classes of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and stopped him. He himself did not know what he was going to say, but he began animatedly, occasionally breaking through in French and expressing himself bookishly in Russian.
“Excuse me, Your Excellency,” he began (Pierre was well acquainted with this senator, but considered it necessary to address him officially here), “although I do not agree with the lord ... (Pierre faltered. He wanted to say mon tres honorable preopinant), [my esteemed opponent,] - with the lord ... que je n "ai pas L" honneur de connaitre; [whom I do not have the honor to know] but I believe that the estate of the nobility, in addition to expressing their sympathy and delight, is also called upon to discuss and discuss those measures by which we can help the fatherland. I believe, - he said, enthusiastically, - that the sovereign himself would be dissatisfied if he found in us only the owners of the peasants whom we give him, and ... chair a canon [meat for cannons], which we make of ourselves, but would not have found co-co-counsel in us.
Many moved away from the circle, noticing the contemptuous smile of the senator and the fact that Pierre speaks freely; only Ilya Andreich was pleased with Pierre's speech, as he was pleased with the speech of the sailor, the senator, and in general always with the speech that he had last heard.
“I believe that before discussing these issues,” Pierre continued, “we should ask the sovereign, most respectfully ask His Majesty to communicate to us how many troops we have, what is the position of our troops and armies, and then ...
But Pierre did not have time to finish these words, when they suddenly attacked him from three sides. The Boston player Stepan Stepanovich Apraksin, who had long been known to him and was always well disposed towards him, attacked him most strongly. Stepan Stepanovich was in a uniform, and, whether from a uniform or from other reasons, Pierre saw a completely different person in front of him. Stepan Stepanovich, with suddenly manifested senile anger on his face, shouted at Pierre:
- Firstly, I will tell you that we have no right to ask the sovereign about this, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had such a right, then the sovereign cannot answer us. The troops move in accordance with the movements of the enemy - the troops decrease and arrive ...
Another voice of a man of medium height, about forty years old, whom Pierre had seen in former times among the gypsies and knew for a bad card player and who, also changed in uniform, moved closer to Pierre, interrupted Apraksin.
“Yes, and this is not the time to argue,” said the voice of this nobleman, “but you need to act: there is a war in Russia. Our enemy is coming to destroy Russia, to scold the graves of our fathers, to take away our wives and children. The nobleman thumped his chest. - We will all get up, all of us will go, all for the king, father! he shouted, rolling his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were heard from the crowd. - We are Russians and will not spare our blood to defend the faith, the throne and the fatherland. And nonsense must be left, if we are sons of the fatherland. We will show Europe how Russia rises for Russia, the nobleman shouted.
Pierre wanted to object, but could not say a word. He felt that the sound of his words, no matter what thought they conveyed, was less audible than the sound of an animated nobleman's words.
Ilya Andreich approved from behind the circle; some briskly turned their shoulders to the speaker at the end of a sentence and said:
- That's it, that's it! This is true!
Pierre wanted to say that he was not averse to donations either in money, or peasants, or himself, but that one would have to know the state of affairs in order to help him, but he could not speak. Many voices shouted and spoke together, so that Ilya Andreevich did not have time to nod to everyone; and the group grew larger, disintegrated, again converged and moved all, humming in conversation, into the large hall, to the large table. Pierre not only failed to speak, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed away, turned away from him, as from a common enemy. This did not happen because they were dissatisfied with the meaning of his speech - it was forgotten after a large number speeches that followed it - but to inspire the crowd, it was necessary to have a tangible object of love and a tangible object of hatred. Pierre became the last. Many speakers spoke after the animated nobleman, and all spoke in the same tone. Many spoke beautifully and originally.
The publisher of the Russian messenger Glinka, who was recognized (“writer, writer!” was heard in the crowd), said that hell should reflect hell, that he saw a child smiling at the flash of lightning and thunder, but that we will not be this child.
- Yes, yes, with thunder! - repeated approvingly in the back rows.
The crowd approached a large table, at which, in uniforms, in ribbons, gray-haired, bald, seventy-year-old nobles were sitting old men, whom Pierre had seen almost all of them, at home with jesters and in clubs outside of Boston. The crowd approached the table without ceasing to buzz. One after the other, and sometimes two together, pressed from behind to the high backs of chairs by the leaning crowd, spoke the orators. Those standing behind noticed what the speaker did not finish, and they hurried to say what they missed. Others, in this heat and tightness, fumbled in their heads to see if there was any thought, and hurried to speak it. The old nobles familiar to Pierre sat and looked back at one or the other, and the expression of most of them only said that they were very hot. Pierre, however, felt excited, and the general feeling of a desire to show that we didn’t care about anything, expressed more in sounds and facial expressions than in the sense of speeches, was also communicated to him. He did not renounce his thoughts, but he felt guilty about something and wanted to justify himself.
“I only said that it would be more convenient for us to make donations when we know what we need,” he said, trying to outshout other voices.
One nearby old man looked back at him, but was immediately distracted by a shout that began on the other side of the table.
Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be a redeemer! one shouted.
He is the enemy of humanity! shouted another. “Let me speak… Gentlemen, you are crushing me…”

At that moment, Count Rostopchin, in a general's uniform, with a ribbon over his shoulder, with his protruding chin and quick eyes, entered with quick steps in front of the parting crowd of nobles.
- Sovereign Emperor will be here now, - said Rostopchin, - I have just come from there. I believe that in the position we are in, there is not much to judge. The sovereign deigned to gather us and the merchants, - said Count Rostopchin. “Millions will pour out from there (he pointed to the merchants’ hall), and our business is to set up a militia and not spare ourselves ... This is the least we can do!
Meetings began between some nobles who were sitting at the table. The entire meeting passed more than quietly. It even seemed sad when, after all the previous noise, old voices were heard one by one, saying one: “I agree”, another for a change: “I am of the same opinion”, etc.
The secretary was ordered to write a decree of the Moscow nobility that Muscovites, like the Smolensk people, donate ten people out of a thousand and full uniforms. The gentlemen in the meeting got up, as if relieved, rattled their chairs and went around the hall to stretch their legs, taking some by the arm and talking.
- Sovereign! Sovereign! - suddenly spread through the halls, and the whole crowd rushed to the exit.
On a wide course, between the wall of the nobles, the sovereign passed into the hall. All faces showed respectful and frightened curiosity. Pierre stood quite far away and could not quite hear the sovereign's speech. He only understood, from what he heard, that the sovereign was talking about the danger in which the state was, and about the hopes that he placed on the Moscow nobility. The sovereign was answered by another voice, announcing the decision of the nobility that had just taken place.
- Lord! - said the trembling voice of the sovereign; the crowd rustled and again fell silent, and Pierre clearly heard the so pleasantly human and touched voice of the sovereign, who said: - I never doubted the zeal of the Russian nobility. But on this day, it exceeded my expectations. I thank you on behalf of the fatherland. Gentlemen, let's act - time is more precious than anything ...
The sovereign fell silent, the crowd began to crowd around him, and enthusiastic exclamations were heard from all sides.
“Yes, the most precious thing is ... the royal word,” the voice of Ilya Andreevich spoke from behind, sobbing, who did not hear anything, but understood everything in his own way.
From the hall of the nobility the sovereign passed into the hall of the merchants. He stayed there for about ten minutes. Pierre, among others, saw the sovereign leaving the hall of the merchants with tears of tenderness in his eyes. As they later found out, the sovereign had just begun a speech to the merchants, as tears splashed from his eyes, and he finished it in a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the sovereign, he went out, accompanied by two merchants. One was familiar to Pierre, a fat farmer, the other was a head, with a thin, narrow-bearded, yellow face. Both of them were crying. The thin one was in tears, but the fat farmer sobbed like a child, and kept repeating:
- And take life and property, your majesty!
At that moment, Pierre felt nothing but a desire to show that everything was nothing to him and that he was ready to sacrifice everything. His speech with a constitutional direction seemed to him like a reproach; he was looking for an opportunity to make amends. Upon learning that Count Mamonov was donating the regiment, Bezukhov immediately announced to Count Rostopchin that he was giving away a thousand people and their maintenance.
Old man Rostov could not tell his wife what had happened without tears, and immediately agreed to Petya's request and went himself to record it.
The next day the sovereign left. All the assembled nobles took off their uniforms, again settled in their houses and clubs and, groaning, gave orders to the managers about the militia, and were surprised at what they had done.

Napoleon started the war with Russia because he could not help coming to Dresden, he could not help being misled by honors, he could not help but put on a Polish uniform, he could not help but succumb to the enterprising impression of a June morning, he could not refrain from a flash of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then Balashev.
Alexander refused all negotiations because he personally felt offended. Barclay de Tolly tried the best way manage the army in order to fulfill your duty and earn the glory of the great commander. Rostov rode to attack the French because he could not resist the desire to ride on a level field. And so precisely, due to their personal characteristics, habits, conditions and goals, all those innumerable persons who participated in this war acted. They were afraid, conceited, rejoiced, indignant, reasoned, believing that they knew what they were doing and what they were doing for themselves, and all were involuntary tools of history and carried out work hidden from them, but understandable to us. Such is the unchanging fate of all practical workers, and the more they are placed in the human hierarchy, it is not freer.
Now the figures of 1812 have long since left their places, their personal interests have vanished without a trace, and only the historical results of that time are before us.
But suppose that the people of Europe, under the leadership of Napoleon, were supposed to go into the depths of Russia and die there, and all contradicting itself, meaningless, violent activity people - participants in this war, becomes clear to us.
Providence forced all these people, striving to achieve their personal goals, to contribute to the fulfillment of one huge result, about which not a single person (neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor even less any of the participants in the war) had the slightest expectation.
Now it is clear to us what was the cause of the death of the French army in 1812. No one will argue that the cause of the death of Napoleon's French troops was, on the one hand, their entry at a later time without preparation for a winter campaign deep into Russia, and on the other hand, the character that the war assumed from the burning of Russian cities and inciting hatred for the enemy in the Russian people. But then, not only did no one foresee the fact (which now seems obvious) that only in this way could the eight hundred thousandth, the best in the world and led by the best commander, die in a collision with twice as weak, inexperienced and led by inexperienced commanders - the Russian army; Not only did no one foresee this, but all efforts on the part of the Russians were constantly directed towards preventing that which alone could save Russia, and on the part of the French, despite the experience and so-called military genius of Napoleon, all efforts were directed towards this. to stretch out to Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to do the very thing that was supposed to destroy them.
In historical writings about 1812, French authors are very fond of talking about how Napoleon felt the danger of stretching his line, how he was looking for battles, how his marshals advised him to stop in Smolensk, and give other similar arguments proving that then they already seemed to understand there was the danger of the campaign; and Russian authors are even more fond of talking about how, from the beginning of the campaign, there was a plan for the Scythian war to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and they attribute this plan to some Pful, some to some Frenchman, some to Tolya, some to Emperor Alexander himself, pointing to notes, projects and letters that actually contain hints of this course of action. But all these allusions to the foresight of what happened, both on the part of the French and on the part of the Russians, are now put forward only because the event justified them. If the event had not taken place, then these hints would have been forgotten, just as thousands and millions of opposite hints and assumptions are now forgotten, which were in use then, but turned out to be unjust and therefore forgotten. There are always so many assumptions about the outcome of each occurring event that, no matter how it ends, there will always be people who will say: “I then said that it would be so,” completely forgetting that among the countless assumptions there were made and completely opposite.
Assumptions about Napoleon's consciousness of the danger of stretching the line on the part of the Russians - about luring the enemy into the depths of Russia - obviously belong to this category, and historians can only at a great stretch attribute such considerations to Napoleon and his marshals and such plans to Russian military leaders. All facts completely contradict such assumptions. Not only during the entire war, the Russians had no desire to lure the French into the depths of Russia, but everything was done to stop them from their first entry into Russia, and not only Napoleon was not afraid of stretching his line, but he was glad how triumph, every step forward and very lazily, not like in his previous campaigns, he looked for battles.
At the very beginning of the campaign, our armies are slashed, and our only aim is to link them up, although there is no advantage in linking up armies in order to retreat and draw the enemy inland. The emperor is with the army to inspire it in defending every step of the Russian land, and not to retreat. A huge Drissa camp is being set up according to the plan of Pfuel and it is not supposed to retreat further. The sovereign reproaches the commander-in-chief for every step of retreat. Not only the burning of Moscow, but the admission of the enemy to Smolensk cannot even be imagined by the emperor’s imagination, and when the armies unite, the sovereign is indignant that Smolensk was taken and burned and not given before the walls of his general battle.
So the sovereign thinks, but Russian military leaders and all Russian people are even more indignant at the thought that ours are retreating into the interior of the country.
Napoleon, having cut the armies, moves inland and misses several cases of battle. In the month of August he is in Smolensk and thinks only about how he can go further, although, as we now see, this movement forward is obviously fatal for him.
The facts clearly show that neither Napoleon foresaw the danger in moving towards Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian military leaders then think about luring Napoleon, but thought about the opposite. The lure of Napoleon into the interior of the country did not happen according to anyone's plan (no one believed in the possibility of this), but came from a complex game of intrigues, goals, desires of people - participants in the war, who did not guess what should be, and what was the only salvation of Russia. Everything happens by accident. The armies are cut at the start of the campaign. We try to combine them with the obvious goal of giving battle and holding the enemy's advance, but even in this desire to unite, avoiding battles with the strongest enemy and involuntarily retreating at an acute angle, we lead the French to Smolensk. But it’s not enough to say that we are withdrawing at an acute angle because the French are moving between both armies - this angle is becoming even sharper, and we are moving even further because Barclay de Tolly, an unpopular German, is hated by Bagration (who has to become under his command ), and Bagration, commanding the 2nd Army, tries not to join Barclay for as long as possible, so as not to become under his command. Bagration does not join for a long time (although in this the main objective all commanding persons) because it seems to him that on this march he puts his army in danger and that it is most advantageous for him to retreat to the left and south, harassing the enemy from the flank and rear and manning his army in Ukraine. And it seems that he invented it because he does not want to obey the hated and junior rank German Barclay.
The emperor is with the army to inspire it, and his presence and ignorance of what to decide on, and a huge number of advisers and plans destroy the energy of the actions of the 1st army, and the army retreats.
It is supposed to stop in the Dris camp; but unexpectedly Pauluchi, aiming for the commander-in-chief, with his energy acts on Alexander, and the whole plan of Pfuel is abandoned, and the whole thing is entrusted to Barclay. But since Barclay does not inspire confidence, his power is limited.
The armies are fragmented, there is no unity of the authorities, Barclay is not popular; but from this confusion, fragmentation and unpopularity of the German commander-in-chief, on the one hand, indecisiveness and avoidance of battle (which could not be resisted if the armies were together and Barclay were not the head), on the other hand, more and more resentment against the Germans and arousal of the patriotic spirit.
Finally, the sovereign leaves the army, and as the only and most convenient pretext for his departure, the idea is chosen that he needs to inspire the people in the capitals to initiate a people's war. And this trip of the sovereign and Moscow triples the strength of the Russian army.
The sovereign leaves the army in order not to hamper the unity of power of the commander in chief, and hopes that more decisive measures will be taken; but the position of the commanders of the armies is still more confused and weakened. Bennigsen, the Grand Duke and a swarm of adjutant generals remain with the army in order to monitor the actions of the commander in chief and excite him to energy, and Barclay, feeling even less free under the eyes of all these sovereign eyes, becomes even more cautious for decisive action and avoids battles.
Barclay stands for caution. The Tsarevich hints at treason and demands a general battle. Lubomirsky, Branitsky, Vlotsky and the like stir up all this noise so much that Barclay, under the pretext of delivering papers to the sovereign, sends the Poles to the adjutant generals in Petersburg and enters into an open struggle with Bennigsen and the Grand Duke.
In Smolensk, finally, no matter how Bagration did not want it, the armies unite.
Bagration in a carriage drives up to the house occupied by Barclay. Barclay puts on a scarf, goes out to meet v reports to the senior rank of Bagration. Bagration, in the struggle of generosity, despite the seniority of the rank, submits to Barclay; but, having obeyed, agrees with him even less. Bagration personally, by order of the sovereign, informs him. He writes to Arakcheev: “The will of my sovereign, I can’t do it together with the minister (Barclay). For God's sake, send me somewhere to command a regiment, but I can't be here; and the whole main apartment is filled with Germans, so that it is impossible for a Russian to live, and there is no sense. I thought I truly served the sovereign and the fatherland, but in reality it turns out that I serve Barclay. I confess I don't want to." A swarm of Branicki, Winzingerode and the like poisons the relations of the commanders-in-chief even more, and even less unity comes out. They are going to attack the French in front of Smolensk. A general is sent to inspect the position. This general, hating Barclay, goes to his friend, the corps commander, and after spending a day with him, returns to Barclay and condemns on all counts the future battlefield, which he has not seen.
While there are disputes and intrigues about the future battlefield, while we are looking for the French, having made a mistake in their location, the French stumble upon Neverovsky's division and approach the very walls of Smolensk.
We must accept an unexpected battle in Smolensk in order to save our messages. The battle is given. Thousands are killed on both sides.
Smolensk is abandoned against the will of the sovereign and the whole people. But Smolensk was burned down by the inhabitants themselves, deceived by their governor, and the devastated inhabitants, setting an example for other Russians, go to Moscow, thinking only of their losses and inciting hatred for the enemy. Napoleon goes further, we retreat, and the very thing that was supposed to defeat Napoleon is achieved.

The next day after the departure of his son, Prince Nikolai Andreevich called Princess Marya to him.
- Well, are you satisfied now? - he said to her, - quarreled with her son! Satisfied? All you needed was! Satisfied?.. It hurts me, it hurts. I'm old and weak, and you wanted it. Well, rejoice, rejoice ... - And after that, Princess Marya did not see her father for a week. He was sick and did not leave the office.
To her surprise, Princess Mary noticed that during this time of illness, the old prince also did not allow m lle Bourienne to see him. One Tikhon followed him.
A week later, the prince came out and began again former life, with special activities engaged in buildings and gardens and ending all previous relations with m lle Bourienne. His appearance and cold tone with Princess Mary seemed to say to her: “You see, you invented a lie to Prince Andrei about my relationship with this Frenchwoman and quarreled with me; and you see that I don't need you or the Frenchwoman."
Princess Mary spent one half of the day at Nikolushka's, following his lessons, herself giving him lessons in Russian and music, and talking with Desalle; the other part of the day she spent in her half with books, with the old nurse, and with God's people, who sometimes came to her from the back porch.
Princess Mary thought about the war the way women think about war. She was afraid for her brother who was there, she was horrified, not understanding her, before the human cruelty that forced them to kill each other; but she did not understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her the same as all previous wars. She did not understand the significance of this war, despite the fact that Dessalles, her constant interlocutor, who was passionately interested in the course of the war, tried to explain his considerations to her, and despite the fact that the people of God who came to her all spoke with horror in their own way about popular rumors about the invasion of the Antichrist, and despite the fact that Julie, now Princess Drubetskaya, who again entered into correspondence with her, wrote patriotic letters to her from Moscow.
“I am writing to you in Russian, my good friend,” Julie wrote, “because I have hatred for all the French, as well as for their language, which I cannot hear speak ... We are all enthusiastic in Moscow through enthusiasm for our adored emperor.
My poor husband endures labor and hunger in Jewish taverns; but the news I have makes me even more excited.
You heard right, oh heroic deed Raevsky, who hugged his two sons and said: “I will die with them, but we will not hesitate! And indeed, although the enemy was twice as strong as us, we did not hesitate. We spend our time as best we can; but in war, as in war. Princess Alina and Sophie sit with me all day long, and we, the unfortunate widows of living husbands, have wonderful conversations over lint; only you, my friend, are missing ... etc.
Mostly, Princess Mary did not understand the full significance of this war because the old prince never spoke about it, did not recognize it, and laughed at dinner at Desalles, who spoke about this war. The prince's tone was so calm and sure that Princess Mary, without reasoning, believed him.
Throughout the month of July, the old prince was extremely active and even lively. He also laid a new garden and a new building, a building for courtyards. One thing that bothered Princess Marya was that he slept little and, having changed his habit of sleeping in the study, every day he changed the place of his lodging for the night. Either he ordered his camp bed to be made up in the gallery, or he remained on the sofa or in the Voltaire chair in the living room and dozed without undressing, while not m lle Bourienne, but the boy Petrusha read to him; then he spent the night in the dining room.
On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrei. In the first letter, received shortly after his departure, Prince Andrei humbly asked for forgiveness from his father for what he allowed himself to tell him, and asked him to return his favor to him. The old prince answered this letter with an affectionate letter, and after this letter he alienated the Frenchwoman from himself. The second letter of Prince Andrei, written from near Vitebsk, after the French occupied it, consisted of short description the whole campaign with the plan drawn in the letter, and from considerations about the further course of the campaign. In this letter, Prince Andrei presented to his father the inconvenience of his position close to the theater of war, on the very line of movement of troops, and advised him to go to Moscow.
At dinner that day, in response to the words of Dessalles, who said that, as he heard, the French had already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered Prince Andrei's letter.
“I received it from Prince Andrei today,” he said to Princess Marya, “didn’t you read it?”

The legacy of Peter the Great from the Muscovite state inherited the underdeveloped rudiments of industry, planted and supported by the government, poorly developed trade associated with the poor organization of the state economy. Were inherited from the Muscovite state and its tasks - to win access to the sea and return the state to its natural borders. Peter quickly set about solving these problems, starting a war with Sweden and deciding to wage it in a new way and with new means. There is a new regular army, a fleet is being built. All this, of course, required huge financial outlays. The Muscovite state, with the growth of state needs, covered them with new taxes. Peter also did not shy away from this old technique, but next to it he put one innovation that Muscovite Rus' did not know: Peter cared not only about taking from the people everything that could be taken, but he also thought about the payer himself - the people, about where he can get the money to pay heavy taxes.

Peter saw the path to raising the people's well-being in the development of trade and industry. It is difficult to say how and when the tsar had this idea, but it probably happened during the Great Embassy, ​​when Peter clearly saw the technical backlog of Russia from the leading European states.

At the same time, the desire to reduce the cost of maintaining the army and navy naturally led to the idea that it would be cheaper to produce everything that was needed to equip and arm the army and navy. And since there were no factories and plants that could fulfill this task, the idea arose that they should be built, inviting knowledgeable foreigners for this and giving them to science. "their subjects" as it was then expressed. These thoughts were not new and have been known since the time of Tsar Michael, but only a person with an iron will and indestructible energy, such as Tsar Peter, could carry it out.

Having set himself the goal of arming people's labor with the best folk methods of production and directing it to new, more profitable industries in the area of ​​​​the country's wealth not yet touched by the development of the country's wealth, Peter "went over" all branches of national labor. During the Great Embassy, ​​the tsar studied all aspects of European life, including technical ones. Abroad, Peter learned the basics of the economic thought of that time - mercantilism. Mercantilism based its economic doctrine on two propositions: first, each people, in order not to become impoverished, must produce everything it needs, without resorting to the help of other people's labor, the labor of other peoples; second, every nation, in order to grow rich, must export as much as possible the manufactured products from its own country and import foreign products as little as possible.

Realizing that Russia was not only not inferior, but also superior to other countries in the abundance of natural resources, Peter decided that the state should take over the development of the country's industry and trade. "Our Russian state, Peter said, before other lands it abounds and the necessary metals and minerals are most blessedly, which until now have been searched for without any diligence ".

Thus, realizing the importance of trade and industry and having assimilated the ideas of mercantilism in the West, Peter set about reforming these areas, forcing his subjects to do so, even if by force.

Industrial Development Measures

Geological exploration of ore resources and those manufacturing industries that could, with support, could develop into large enterprises, was undertaken throughout Russia. By his order, connoisseurs of various crafts dispersed throughout the country. Deposits of rock crystal, carnelian, saltpeter, peat, coal were discovered, about which Peter said that “This mineral, if not for us, then for our descendants, will be very useful”. The Ryumin brothers opened a plant in the Ryazan region for the extraction of coal. The foreigner von Azmus developed peat.

Peter also strenuously attracted foreigners to the cause. In 1698, when he returned from his first trip abroad, he was followed by many artisans and craftsmen hired by him. In Amsterdam alone, he employed about 1,000 people. In 1702, Peter's decree was published throughout Europe, inviting foreigners to industrial service in Russia on very favorable terms for them. Peter ordered Russian residents at European courts to seek out and hire experts in various industries and craftsmen for the Russian service. So, for example, the French engineer Leblon - "straight curiosity", as Peter called him, he was invited to a salary of 45 thousand rubles a year with a gift apartment, with the right to go home in five years with all the acquired property, without paying any taxes.

At the same time, Peter took measures to strengthen the training of Russian young people, sending them to study abroad.

Under Peter, the number of manufactories, which became technical schools and practical schools, increased significantly. We agreed with visiting foreign masters, “so that they, from Russian students, would have with them and teach their skills, setting for that the price of the award and the time, what time to learn”. People of all free classes were accepted as apprentices at factories and factories, and serfs - with a vacation pay from the landowner, but from the 1720s they began to accept fugitive peasants, but not soldiers. Since there were few volunteers, Peter from time to time, by decree, recruited students for training at manufactories. In 1711 “The sovereign ordered to send 100 people from the clergy and from the servants of the monastery and from their children, who would be 15 or 20 years old, and would be able to write, so that they could go into teaching to the masters of various deeds”. Such sets were repeated in subsequent years.

For military needs and for the extraction of metals, Peter especially needed mining and ironworks. In 1719, to the Olonets factories, where iron was smelted, cannons and cannonballs were poured, Peter ordered to recruit 300 students. Mining schools also arose at the Ural factories, where they recruited literate soldiers', clerks' and priests' children as students. In these schools they wanted to teach not only the practical knowledge of mining, but also theory, arithmetic and geometry. The students were paid a salary - one and a half pounds of flour per month and a ruble per year for a dress, and those who had wealthy fathers or received a salary of more than 10 rubles a year were not given anything from the treasury, "until they begin to teach the triple rule", then they were given a salary.

At the factory founded in St. Petersburg, where braids, braid, cords were made, Peter appointed young people from Novgorod townsmen and poor nobles as training for French masters. He often visited this factory and was interested in the success of the students. The older ones had to come to the palace every Saturday afternoon with samples of their work.

In 1714, a silk factory was founded under the leadership of a certain Milyutin, a self-taught man who studied silk weaving. In need of good wool for cloth factories, Peter thought about introducing the right methods of sheep breeding and for this he ordered rules to be drawn up - "Regulations on how to keep sheep according to the Slesian (Silesian) custom". Then in 1724 Major Kologrivov, two nobles and several Russian sheepdogs were sent to Silesia to study sheep breeding.

Leather production has long been developed in Russia, but the methods of processing were rather imperfect. In 1715, Peter issued a decree on this subject: “Because the yuft, which is used for shoes, is very unprofitable to wear, because it is made with tar and when there is enough sputum, it spreads, and the water passes; for the sake of it, it is necessary to do it with torn bacon and a different order, for the sake of which masters were sent from Reval to Moscow to teach that business, for which it is commanded to all industrialists (tanners) throughout the state, so that from each city several people would go to Moscow and study; this training is given a period of two years". Several young men were sent to England to work in tanneries.

The government not only entered into the industrial needs of the population and took care of educating the people in crafts, it generally took production and consumption under its supervision. His Majesty's decrees prescribed not only what goods to produce, but also in what quantity, what size, what material, what tools and techniques, and for non-fulfillment, severe fines were always threatened, up to the death penalty.

Peter greatly appreciated the forests he needed for the needs of the fleet, and issued the strictest forest protection laws: it was forbidden to cut forests suitable for shipbuilding under pain of death.

Not content with spreading one practical teaching of technology, Peter also took care of theoretical education by translating and distributing relevant books. The "Lexicon of Commerce" by Jacques Savary ("Savarian Lexicon") was translated and printed. True, in 24 years only 112 copies of this book were sold, but this circumstance did not frighten the king-publisher. In the list of books published under Peter, you can find many guides to teaching various technical knowledge. Many of these books have been strictly edited by the Emperor himself.

On August 30, 1723, Peter was at Mass at the Trinity Cathedral and gave an order here to the vice-president of the Synod, His Grace Theodosius, that “translate three economic books in the German dialect into Slovenian and, having first translated the table of contents, offer them for consideration by His Imperial Majesty”.

Usually those factories that were especially needed, i.e. mining and weapons, as well as cloth, linen and sailing factories were arranged by the treasury and then transferred to private entrepreneurs. For the establishment of manufactories of secondary importance to the treasury, Peter willingly loaned quite significant capital without interest and ordered that private individuals who set up factories at their own peril and risk be provided with tools and workers. Masters were discharged from abroad, the manufacturers themselves received great privileges: they were exempted from service with their children and craftsmen, they were subject only to the court of the Manufactory Collegium, they got rid of taxes and internal duties, they could bring duty-free the tools and materials they needed from abroad, houses they were exempted from military posting.

Creation of company enterprises

Concerned about the most stable setting of industrial enterprises in the sense of providing them with sufficient fixed and circulating capital, Peter greatly encouraged the company organization of factories along the lines of the structure of Western European companies. In Holland, company enterprises then brought huge income participants, the successes of the East India Company in England and the French for trade with America were then on everyone's lips. In Holland, Peter became well acquainted with the companies of those times and vividly arranged all the benefits of such a device for industry and trade. Back in the year, he was submitted projects on the organization of companies in Russia. At the core, the company organization was not alien to Russian life. Even the Moscow government, giving at the mercy of its various income items, always gave them to several persons so that each would vouch for the other. Artels of Russian industrialists of the north have long been companies of people who have combined means and forces for a common goal. individual people and dividing the profits according to the calculation of the shares, or shares, contributed by each participant to the artel. In 1699, Peter issued a decree to trade people in the same way as they trade in other states.

No matter how the war distracted Peter, from time to time he continued to insist on the establishment of companies, reminding him of this at every opportunity, forcing him to do so by force.

In a decree of 1724, Peter prescribes the pattern that companies should follow in their organization, commanding "make certain shares of shareholders with the example of the East India Company". Following the example of Western European governments, Peter proposes to involve wealthy, “capital” people in company enterprises, regardless of their origin and position. The government was always ready to help with money and materials, and many companies received rather large sums of help. By lending large sums of money to the companies, often by transferring ready-made manufacturing facilities to their use, the treasury became the banker of large-scale industry and thus acquired the right to strictly monitor the activities of the companies. This intervention in private enterprise, the government not only "forced" its subjects to "build companies," but strictly supervised their "decent maintenance." Not a single reorganization, even the smallest one, in the company's economy could be done without a corresponding "report" to the Manufactory and the Berg Collegium. Manufacturers were required to annually deliver samples of their products to the Manufacture College. The government established the type, form, prices for those goods that were supplied to the treasury, and forbade selling them at retail. The government rewarded good factory owners and severely punished negligent ones. This is how it was written in the decrees when a plant was transferred to private hands: “If they (companion workers) multiply this plant with their zeal and make profit in it, and for that they will receive mercy from him, the great sovereign, but if they do not multiply and diminish by negligence, and for that they will be fined 1000 rubles per human". Unsuccessful factory owners were even simply "deprived" of factories by the government.

Only fragmentary information has been preserved about how the companies arranged their activities. The companies included not only people who could participate in the business by personal labor, but also "interested parties", i.e. those who gave only money in order to receive a certain income from them. In the projects of those times (back in 1698), there was already talk of such a structure of companies, in which every “particular” person who contributed a certain capital to it, by purchasing a certain amount "portion, or shares", could be a member of the company. But before 1757-1758, not a single joint-stock company was formed in Russia. Business in the companies was conducted “according to the merchant’s habit, according to his own invention, with general advice, the elder of the jury and several elected ones - whom it would be prudent to choose for what business”.

Creation of new manufactories

Some manufactories that arose under Peter were quite large. Wide business setting, excellent equipment, large staff workers and the production of the technical part were distinguished by the Petrovsky factories in the Olonets region, founded by Menshikov and led by Genning.

Especially large sizes and the state-owned mining plants were also distinguished by crowding. 25 thousand peasants were assigned to nine Perm factories. To manage the Perm and Ural factories, a whole city arose, named after the queen Yekaterinburg. Here, in the Urals, back in the 17th century, they tried to dig something, to mine something, but copper, iron, silver did not go further than finding various "curiosities" - they bought everything, mainly from the Swedes. It is only from the time of Peter that the real work begins here. In 1719, the “Berg Privilege” was issued, according to which everyone was given the right to search, melt, boil and clean metals and minerals everywhere, subject to the payment of a “mountain tax” of 1/10 of the cost of production and 32 shares in favor of the owner of that land where ore deposits are found. For concealment of ore and an attempt to prevent the finder from arranging the development of the perpetrators, land confiscation, corporal punishment and even the death penalty “through the fault of looking” threatened. In 1702, the Verkhoturye factories, built by the sovereign's money treasury and city county people, were given for ransom to Nikita Demidov. But the Urals at first could not yet compete with the Olonets factories, which were closer to St. Petersburg and the place of hostilities. Only after peace was established, Peter paid more attention to the Urals and sent Colonel Genning there, who put the entire production of the Olonets factories on their feet. By the end of Peter's reign, about 7 million poods of cast iron and over 200,000 poods of copper were smelted annually at all his factories. The development of gold and silver deposits also began.

After the mining factories, the weapons factories - Tula and Sestroretsky - were distinguished by their vastness. These weapons factories supplied guns, cannons and edged weapons to the entire army and freed the treasury from having to buy weapons abroad. In total, under Peter, more than 20 thousand cannons were cast. The first rapid-fire guns appeared. At Petrovsky factories, they even used “fiery” machines as a driving force - that was the name of the progenitors of steam engines at that time. 1162 workers worked at the state-owned sailing factory in Moscow. Of the private factories, Shchegolin's cloth factory with his comrades in Moscow, which had 130 mills and employed 730 workers, was distinguished by its vastness. Miklyaev's Kazan cloth factory employed 740 people.

Workers in the Age of Peter

The factory workers of the time of Peter the Great came from a wide variety of strata of the population: runaway serfs, vagabonds, beggars, even criminals - all of them, according to strict orders, were taken and sent to “work” in factories. Peter could not stand "walking" people who were not attached to any business, he was ordered to seize them, not sparing even the monastic rank, and sent them to factories. There were very few free workers, because in general there were few free people in Russia at that time. The rural population was not free; . When a factory was established, the manufacturer was usually given the privilege of freely hiring Russian and foreign craftsmen and apprentices, "paying them a decent wage for their work". If a manufacturer received a factory arranged by the treasury, then workers were transferred to him along with the factory buildings.

There were frequent cases when, in order to supply factories, and especially factories, with working hands, villages and villages of peasants were attributed to factories and factories, as was still practiced in the 17th century. Such assigned to the factory worked for it and in it by order of the owner. But in most cases, the manufacturers themselves had to find workers for themselves by hiring. It was very difficult, and the dregs of the population usually ended up in the factories - all those who had nowhere else to go. There were not enough workers. The factory owners constantly complained about the lack of workers and, above all, that there were no workers. Workers were so rare also because the dressing was then predominantly manual, and it was not always easy to learn how to do it. A skillful worker who knew his job was highly valued for this reason; the factory owners lured such workers away from each other, and under no circumstances did they release well-trained workers. He who learned the skill in a factory undertook not to leave the factory that taught him for ten or fifteen years, depending on the agreement. Experienced workers lived in one place for a long time and rarely became unemployed. For "calling" working people from one factory to another before the expiration of the fixed period of work, a very large fine was imposed by law on the guilty manufacturer, while the enticed worker returned to the former owner and was subjected to corporal punishment.

But all this did not save the factories from desertion. Then the government of Peter decided that work in factories could be carried out in the same way as rural work on the estates of private landowners, i.e. through hard labor. In 1721, a decree followed, which stated that although previously "merchant people" were forbidden to buy villages, now many of them wanted to start various manufactories both in companies and one by one. “For this reason, it is allowed for the reproduction of such factories, both for the nobility and merchant people, to those factories of the village to buy without restriction with the permission of the Berg and Manufacture Collegium, only under such a condition, so that those villages were always already at those factories inseparably. And in order not to sell or mortgage to anyone, to the gentry, and to the merchants of those villages especially without factories, and not to secure anyone for anyone by any fiction, and not to give such villages to anyone at the ransom, unless someone wants for their necessary needs those villages and with those sell the factories, then sell them with the permission of the Berg Collegium. And if anyone acts against this, then it will be irrevocably deprived of all that ... " After this decree, all factories quickly acquired serf workers, and the factory owners liked it so much that they began to seek assignment to the factories and free workers who worked for them in free employment. In 1736, i.e. already after the death of Peter, they received this, and according to the decree, all those artisans who were at the factories at the time the decree was issued had to “forever” with their families remain strong in the factory. Even under Peter, the factory owners were already judges of their workers. From 1736, this was granted to them by law.

Serf workers did not always receive a monetary salary, but only food and clothing. Civilian workers, of course, received a salary in money, usually on a monthly basis in state-owned factories, and piecework in private ones. In addition to money, grubs also went to civilian employees. The amounts of cash salaries and grain dachas were small. The labor of workers was best paid in silk factories, worse in paper factories, even worse in cloth factories, and the least paid in linen factories. In general, in state-owned manufactories, wages were higher than in private ones.

Work in some factories was precisely and thoroughly established by company regulations. In 1741, a fourteen-hour working day was established by law.

The workers depended on the manufacturers for everything. True, the law ordered them “decently maintain artisans and students and repair them with rewards at their true worth”, but these rules were poorly enforced. The factory owners, having bought a village for the factory, often registered as workers and drove all the “full workers” to the factory, so that only the old men, women and minors remained on the land. The wages of the workers were often delayed, so that they “came into poverty and even suffered from diseases”.

Product quality

Goods produced by Russian factories did not differ in high quality and processing. Only rough soldier's cloths were relatively good, and everything that was needed for military supplies, up to and including cannons, but purely industrial goods that were looking for sales among the people were bad.

Thus, the majority of Russian factories produced, according to merchants, goods of poor quality, which could not count on a quick sale, especially in the presence of foreign competition. Then Peter, in order to encourage his manufacturers and give their goods at least some kind of sale, began to impose heavy duties on foreign manufacturers. In accordance with the teachings of mercantilism he had learned, Peter was convinced that his manufacturers were tolerating “from goods brought from abroad; for example, one peasant discovered the paint of bakan, I ordered the painters to try it, and they said that it would yield to one Venetian, and equal to German, and another better: they made it from abroad; other manufacturers also complain…” Until 1724, Peter issued orders from time to time prohibiting the import of either individual foreign goods that began to be produced in Russia, or entire groups of both “manufacturing” and “metal products”. From time to time it was forbidden even inside Russia to produce any kind of linen or silk fabric for anyone, except for one factory that had just opened, of course, with the direct goal of giving it the opportunity to get on its feet and accustom the consumer to its production.

In 1724, a general tariff was issued, strictly protective of its industry, in part even directly prohibitive in relation to foreign goods.

With industry and trade, the same thing happened as with all the reforms of Peter, begun by him from 1715-1719: conceived broadly and boldly, they were brought to life by the performers sluggishly and tediously. Peter himself, not having developed a general definite plan for himself, but for his life full of wartime anxieties and not accustomed to working systematically and consistently, hurried a lot and sometimes started from the end and middle of a business that should have been carried out carefully from the very foundation, and therefore certain aspects of his reforms withered like early ripening flowers, and when he died, the reforms stopped.

Development of trade

For trade, for best production and the facilitation of commercial affairs on the part of the state, Peter also paid attention a very long time ago. Back in the 1690s, he was busy talking about commerce with knowledgeable foreigners and, of course, became interested in trading European companies no less than industrial ones.

By decree of the College of Commerce in 1723, Peter ordered “Send the children of merchants to foreign lands, so that there will never be less than 15 people in foreign lands, and when they are trained, take back and in their place new ones, and order those trained to teach here, it’s impossible to send everyone; why take from all the noble cities, so that this could be done everywhere; and send 20 people to Riga and Revel and distribute them to the capitalists; these are both numbers from the townspeople; besides, the collegium of labor has to teach commerce certain of the noble children ".

The conquest of the sea coast, the founding of St. Petersburg with the direct appointment of it as a port, the teaching of mercantilism, adopted by Peter - all this made him think about commerce, about its development in Russia. In the first 10 years of the 18th century, the development of trade with the West was hampered by the fact that many goods were declared a state monopoly and were sold only through government agents. But Peter did not consider this measure, caused by the extreme need for money, to be useful, and therefore, when the military alarm calmed down somewhat, he again turned to the thought of companies. trading people. In July 1712, he ordered the Senate - “Immediately rush in the merchant’s business, the best order to do”. The Senate began to try to arrange a company of merchants for trade with China, but Moscow merchants “they refused to take on the bargain with the company”. On February 12, 1712, Peter ordered “to set up a collegium for the commercial business of correction, so that it can be brought to a better state; why do you need one or two foreigners who need to be pleased, so that they show the truth and jealousy in that with an oath, so that better the truth and they showed jealousy in that with an oath, in order to better arrange order, for without contradiction it is that their bidding is incomparably better than ours ". The collegium was formed, worked out the rules of its existence and actions. The collegium worked first in Moscow, then in St. Petersburg. With the establishment of the College of Commerce, all the affairs of this prototype of it were transferred to the new department of trade.

In 1723, Peter ordered a company of merchants to trade with Spain. It was also planned to arrange a company for trade with France. To begin with, Russian state-owned ships with goods were sent to the ports of these states, but this was the end of the matter. Trading companies were not grafted and began to appear in Russia no earlier than half of XVIII century, and even then under the condition of great privileges and patronage from the treasury. Russian merchants preferred to trade personally or through clerks alone, without entering into companies with others.

Since 1715, the first Russian consulates appeared abroad. On April 8, 1719, Peter issued a decree on the freedom of trade. For a better arrangement of river merchant ships, Peter forbade the construction of old-fashioned ships, various boards and plows.

Peter saw the basis of the commercial significance of Russia in the fact that nature judged her to be a trading intermediary between Europe and Asia.

After the capture of Azov, when the Azov fleet was created, it was supposed to direct the entire trade movement of Russia to the Black Sea. Then the connection of the waterways of Central Russia with the Black Sea by two channels was undertaken. One was supposed to connect the tributaries of the Don and the Volga, the Kamyshinka and the Ilovley, and the other would approach the small Ivan Lake in the Epifansky district, Tula province, from which the Don flows on one side, and on the other, the Shash River, a tributary of the Upa, which flows into the Oka. But the Prut failure forced them to leave Azov and give up all hopes of mastering the Black Sea coast.

Having established himself on the Baltic coast, having founded the new capital of St. Petersburg, Peter decided to connect the Baltic Sea with the Caspian Sea, using the rivers and canals that he intended to build. Already in 1706, he ordered the Tvertsa River to be connected by a canal to the Tsna, which, forming Lake Mstino with its expansion, leaves it with the name of the Msta River and flows into Lake Ilmen. This was the beginning of the famous Vyshnevolotsk system. The main obstacle to connecting the Neva and the Volga was the stormy Lake Ladoga, and Peter decided to build a bypass canal to bypass its inhospitable waters. Peter planned to connect the Volga with the Neva, breaking through the watershed between the rivers Vytegra, which flows into Lake Onega, and Kovzha, which flows into Beloozero, and thus outlined the network of the Mariinsky system already implemented in the 19th century.

Simultaneously with the efforts to connect the Baltic and Caspian rivers with a network of canals, Peter took decisive measures to ensure that the movement of foreign trade left its former habitual path to the White Sea and Arkhangelsk and took a new direction to St. Petersburg. Government measures in this direction began in 1712, but the protests of foreign merchants complained about the inconvenience of living in a new city like Petersburg, the considerable danger of sailing in wartime on the Baltic Sea, the high cost of the route itself, because the Danes took a fee for the passage of ships , - all this made Peter postpone the abrupt transfer of trade with Europe from Arkhangelsk to St. Petersburg: but already in 1718 he issued a decree allowing only hemp trade in Arkhangelsk, all the grain trade was ordered to move to St. Petersburg. Thanks to these and other measures of the same nature, St. Petersburg became a significant place for holiday and import trade. Concerned about raising the commercial importance of his new capital, Peter is negotiating with his future son-in-law, the Duke of Holstein, regarding the possibility of digging a canal from Kiel to the North Sea in order to be independent from the Danes, and, taking advantage of the confusion in Mecklenburg and wartime in general, he thinks to establish himself more firmly near the possible entrance to the projected channel. But this project was carried out much later, after the death of Peter.

The subject of export from Russian ports were mainly raw products: fur goods, honey, wax. Since the 17th century, Russian timber, tar, tar, sailcloth, hemp, and ropes have been especially valued in the West. At the same time, livestock products - leather, lard, bristles - went intensively for export; from the time of Peter the Great, mining products went abroad, mainly iron and copper. Flax and hemp were in particular demand; trade in bread was weak due to lack of roads and government bans on selling bread abroad.

Instead of Russian raw materials, Europe could supply us with the products of its manufacturing industry. But, patronizing his factories and plants, Peter, with almost prohibitive duties, greatly reduced the import of foreign manufactured goods into Russia, allowing only those that were not produced in Russia at all, or only those that Russian factories and plants needed (this was a policy of protectionism)

Peter also paid tribute to the enthusiasm characteristic of his time to trade with the countries of the far south, with India. He dreamed of an expedition to Madagascar, and he thought of directing Indian trade through Khiva and Bukhara to Russia. A.P. Volynsky was sent to Persia as an ambassador, and Peter instructed him to find out if there was any river in Persia that would flow from India through Persia and flow into the Caspian Sea. Volynsky had to work so that the Shah directed the entire trade of Persia in raw silk not through the cities of the Turkish Sultan - Smyrna and Aleppo, but through Astrakhan. In 1715, a trade agreement was concluded with Persia, and Astrakhan trade became very active. Realizing the importance of the Caspian for his broad plans, Peter took advantage of the intervention in Persia, when the rebels killed the Russian merchants there, and occupied the coast of the Caspian Sea from Baku and Derbent inclusive. In Central Asia, on the Amu Darya, Peter sent a military expedition under the command of Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky. In order to establish themselves there, it was supposed to find the old channel of the Amu Darya River and direct its course to the Caspian Sea, but this attempt failed: exhausted by the difficulty of the path through the desert scorched by the sun, the Russian detachment fell into an ambush set up by the Khivans, and was all exterminated.

Transformation results

Thus, under Peter the foundation of Russian industry was laid. Many new industries entered the circulation of people's labor, i.e. the sources of people's well-being increased quantitatively and qualitatively improved. This improvement was achieved by a terrible strain on the people's forces, but only thanks to this strain was the country able to endure the burden of the twenty-year uninterrupted war. In the future, the intensive development of national wealth, which began under Peter, led to the enrichment and economic development of Russia.

Domestic trade under Peter also revived significantly, but, in general, continued to have the same caravan and fair character. But even this side of the economic life of Russia was stirred up by Peter and brought out of that calmness of inertia and lack of enterprise, which was different in the 17th century and earlier. The spread of commercial knowledge, the emergence of factories and plants, communication with foreigners - all this gave a new meaning and direction to Russian trade, forcing it to revive inside and, thereby, becoming an increasingly active participant in world trade, to assimilate its principles and rules.

His latest project"Indigenous peoples of Siberia" is not just a series of photo portraits, but an attempt to capture and preserve at least on photo frames the life, traditions and culture of indigenous peoples, many of which are on the verge of extinction.

Journey through native Siberia Alexander Khimushin devoted the last six months. He travels alone, at his own expense, in his own car, in which he spends the night.

– Did you have to get into some extreme situations while working on the project?

“Last year I went to shoot Evenks in the cold, and on the way my car fell through the ice while crossing the river. I thought that I would drown there, but miraculously they saved me. Local residents were warned by radio that a photographer was coming. They began to worry about why I did not appear, and went to meet them. When they picked me up, we drove on in their old UAZ. They dived on it into such fords that I am afraid to describe. In the middle of one river, the engine stalled, my escorts jumped out of the car and crushed the ice with stones. All this time I was afraid that cold water would pour into the car and I would ruin all my equipment. Luckily, we managed to get out. Then I had to ford part of the river, but my boots did not fit and the locals carried me in their arms. So I managed to get to the Evenks in the camp.

© Alexander Khimushin / The World In Faces

In Siberia, it happens that the only transport that can get somewhere is a helicopter. Sometimes you have to drive a car 500 km through the taiga to get to some settlement. For example, to get to a small Negidal village ( small people in the Amur region. – SR), it was necessary to drive the entire Khabarovsk Territory by car. To move along the taiga, then along the river to get to the only village in the country where representatives of this indigenous people remained.

In the Irkutsk region there is a people called Tofalars. They live in only three villages that are cut off from the whole world and are located in the Sayan Mountains, they have no roads. Only two months of the year can be reached by winter road (temporary winter road. - RS). The rest of the time - only by air. And these villages are not connected with each other: they are located at a distance of 50-70 km from each other, and between them there is an impenetrable taiga. The helicopter first lands in one village, then flies to another - they get there only in this way. And the Tofalars do not have mobile communications, it still does not work for them.

​– What regions have you visited as part of the Siberia project and how many indigenous peoples have you already managed to photograph?

- In general, I have been traveling the world for 10 years with short breaks, in total I have traveled to 85 countries. Traveling around Siberia is only a part of my big project called " World in faces " (The World In Faces), which I have been working on for the last 3 years. I spent the last six months in Siberia, drove 25 thousand kilometers by car from Buryatia to Sakhalin: I visited the Republic of Sakha, the Khabarovsk Territory, Primorye and Sakhalin Island.

© Alexander Khimushin / The World In Faces

All these nations are different. For example, the Evenks are settled over a very large territory: some live in Buryatia, some live in Yakutia, the Amur Region, and the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Although now many of them have changed their lifestyle, there are still places where the Evenks have preserved traditional reindeer herding. I visited the Adygei in Primorye, who live compactly in only two villages. Until now, their main way of earning is gathering: at that time of the year, when there is no snow, they look for ginseng roots in the taiga. Then they sell this expensive plant to the Chinese and live on this money. The peoples near the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, the Orochs, for example, live off fishing. The state allocates certain quotas to them as indigenous peoples. This allows them to engage in their traditional trade - fishing.

​I would like to show people the diversity and beauty of the people living in this region

– You were born in Siberia. What new things did you understand about this region while working on the project?

– Yes, I was born in Siberia, in Yakutia, and I lived a significant part of my life in Yakutsk. I left there at a fairly mature age. I would like to show the diversity and beauty of the people living in this region. Recently, in Buryatia, I opened a booklet of a travel agency, and there are colorful pictures of Baikal, Kamchatka, but there is not a word about the people who inhabit these territories.

Once, during a trip, I saw the reference book "Encyclopedia of Indigenous and Small Peoples of Russia", specially issued by the Academy of Sciences. I drew attention to the fact that the last photographs there are dated 40-60s. Some peoples in the encyclopedia are absent altogether, in many chapters there is not a single photograph at all. I wanted to fix this.

© Alexander Khimushin / The World In Faces

​– Is this the goal of your project?

- With my project "Siberia" I would like to draw attention to the cultures of the indigenous peoples of Russia. They have always been under the threat of extinction - since the development of Siberia by Russia, many peoples have already disappeared. Those who remained went through hard times in the last century, when during the years of collectivization they were forcibly gathered into collective farms and forced to do what they never did. When the collective farms collapsed, indigenous people have already forgotten the crafts that their ancestors used to do. The situation was also influenced by active assimilation, and the fact that the study of the native language was not encouraged. As a result, today one or three grandmothers speak their native language, and no one else knows it. Some peoples are represented by the last hundred people.

For some reason, the information that rare animals - a leopard, a polar bear - may disappear, causes a greater resonance in society. Animals are important, I do not argue, but when entire nations disappear, this is also a tragedy. For some reason, it gets a lot less attention.

Only one grandfather speaks Tofalar, and that Ukrainian

- What peoples of Siberia are now on the verge of extinction?

- For example, among Tofalars ( small people in Eastern Siberia. – RS) only one grandfather speaks the Tofalar language, and even that one is Ukrainian by nationality. Such an irony of fate. I asked him why it happened. He said that in the 1930s, as a small child, he ended up in Siberia with his parents exiled here, grew up with Tofalar children and learned their language to perfection. It so happened that his peers have already passed away, and he remained one of that generation. For some reason, representatives of indigenous peoples around the world have a short life expectancy. They are more susceptible to diseases to which there is no immunity, apparently, it is not laid down at the genetic level. Now linguists come to this grandfather, create a textbook of the Tofalar language, and try to restore it.

Negidals also have national language only one woman speaks. She only waved her hand in conversation with me - she believes that this language can no longer be restored. This summer I was on Sakhalin with the Uilta people. There were about two hundred of them left. One hundred live in one part, and another hundred live 500 km to the north. Of all of them, only one woman remains today, who speaks her native language. The situation couldn't be worse.

- How do the locals accept you, how do they feel about the fact that you photograph them?

- Many respond to my requests and meet warmly. They appreciate the fact that I came to them for many thousands of kilometers on my own initiative. locals they try to help me find costumes, arrange shooting, tell me, show me. As a rule, they settle me either in some school or in the houses of local residents.

I was on Sakhalin with the Uilta people, there are about two hundred of them left

I explain to them the purpose of the project, I tell them that it is non-commercial, that I just want to tell the world about these people. There are activists who help me a lot on the ground, for example, representatives of the Association of Indigenous and Minorities. They are proud of their culture and want their culture to be known as much as possible.

- What characters of the photographs do you especially remember?

– I remember well all the characters in my photographs, and each one has a story associated with it. For example, somehow I had to meet with one grandfather in Buryatia. They told him that I would come to his village and take a picture, but they did not say when. I stopped along the way and came to this grandfather in the evening. It turned out that the 92-year-old man had been waiting for me since the morning and had been sitting at the parade all this time - in a traditional folk costume, with orders. I felt very uncomfortable in front of him. When I photographed him and we sat down to drink tea, he took out a thousand rubles from his wallet and wanted to give me a gift for filming him. Of course, I didn't take the money and apologized to him for being late.

Among the Evenks, I remember that reindeer herders keep their winter national clothes in the taiga. These are colorful fur jackets and long boots, like waders. In the spring, the Evenks take them to the taiga, because they are worse stored in the house, they can be eaten by moths. They dig branches in the forest like pillars, make a canopy and put things wrapped in bales on it so that the animals do not climb. There clothes and lies until next winter. I was also shocked that Evenks live in tents in winter. In the most severe frosts, they spend in a dwelling made of ordinary tarpaulin with holes, on the floor fir branches laid, the potbelly stove is standing. Their funerals are also unusual, they do not bury coffins in the ground, but put them in the taiga on a platform of trees.

Reindeer herders keep their winter national clothes in the taiga

– Why do you dress up people in these national vintage costumes rather than taking pictures of them as they really are in everyday life? Isn't it more interesting to shoot them in their real life?

- I try to find authentic, old costumes from "grandmother's chests". I photograph what I can find in order to preserve it for history, for posterity, because these peoples, if nothing changes, will not remain in the next ten to twenty years. There will be no traditional clothing, nothing at all. But the real ones, preserved to our times National costumes it is very difficult to find. Of course, I want to shoot all the most beautiful things. Every nation has some kind of craftswomen who sew national clothes, are engaged in crafts, but there are very few of them. It often happens that recently made costumes, for example, for some ensemble turn out to be completely uninteresting: cheap lurex, Chinese embroidery. Authentic costumes are a very valuable find. I remember once women brought me family silver - heavy, large jewelry that had been kept since the 18th century and was inherited.

(To view the gallery of photographs by Alexander Khimushin from the series "Indigenous Peoples of Siberia" click on the next photo)

"Siberia in faces"

​– What will the second stage of your trip to Siberia include?

– Now I have started moving to the west: I plan to visit the Republic of Tyva, Altai, and go around the European North. There are a lot of interesting areas that cannot be reached by car. For example, I am invited to fly by helicopter with scientists to the Taimyr Peninsula. There are four indigenous peoples living there, about whose life I would like to know more. I'm going to go there in February, when there will still be a polar winter, the temperature will be around minus 40 degrees. I don’t know yet how I will photograph in such conditions.

Alexander Khimushin

There will still be polar night. And I have a specificity: I love natural light in photography. Before the polar series, I basically did not use any flashes. Now, for the sake of these shoots, I had to purchase lighting equipment, because it will be dark all the time. It will be just a small part of a big trip. I am going to travel around Siberia until November next year.

​After that, I'm going to settle down at home in Australia for a year and start processing the footage. A huge number of photographs have already been collected, which are enough for more than one book.​

Life of Russian peasants in Siberia

The vast majority of the Russian population of Siberia was made up of the peasantry, who lived in rural areas; urban population, there were less than 10%.

The predominant occupation of the Russian peasants was agriculture. The life of the Russian peasantry in Siberia had some specific features. It also reflected, of course, the influence of class differences in the peasant environment, which was characteristic of the post-reform period. In the pre-reform period, the peasantry in Siberia was relatively homogeneous. Despite the fact that most of the Siberian Russian peasantry (with the exception of peasants assigned to state-owned factories) "did not know serfdom, they were subjected to exploitation and oppression by the ruling classes in other forms: various natural and cash taxes, duties, etc. "The peasants were also subjected to commercial and usurious exploitation. With the development of capitalist relations in the agriculture of Siberia, the Siberian peasantry differentiated. From its midst stood out, on the one hand, the kulaks, on the other, the agricultural proletariat, farm laborers. The kulak part of the peasantry conducted commercial agriculture and cattle breeding under help of hired laborers, often held in their hands the yamshchina, all rural trade, buying up agricultural products and craft products: furs, fish, nuts, etc. For example, a strong kulak stratum of exiled eunuchs in the villages of the Yakut region was a bread, which was delivered to the Yakut market. Among these kulaks were the owners of large mills, in whose large farms the labor of Yakut, Evenk and Russian laborers was used. Most of the Siberian old-timer peasantry were middle peasants. The process of capitalist stratification Siberian village at one time attracted the attention of V. I. Lenin when he wrote his famous study “The Development of Capitalism in Russia”. V. I. Lenin drew attention to the specifics of capitalist development in the Siberian countryside, which distinguished this process from a similar process in the European part of Russia. V. I. Lenin established that the relations of rent and lease of land, which arose in the process of development of capitalist relations in the Russian countryside and led to the concentration of land ownership among the kulak elite, were not characteristic of the Siberian village. “The fact is,” V. I. Lenin pointed out, “that in Siberia there are no precisely those conditions that created this rule, there is no obligatory and“ equalizing and allotment, there is no established private ownership of land. The prosperous peasant does not buy or rent land, but seizes it (this has been the case, at least until now); Lease-lease of land is more of a neighborly exchange, and therefore group data on rent and lease do not show any legality. In Siberian conditions, there was not even that lack of land, which was a scourge for the working peasantry in the European part of Russia. In Siberia, on the contrary, there was a lot of land, but this land was virgin, and it was not so easy to cultivate it. To do this, it was necessary to have enough draft power and agricultural implements. Therefore, the data on the capitalist stratification of the Siberian countryside came out most clearly depending on the provision of the peasant with working horses.

V. I. Lenin gives the following data on the class stratification of the Siberian village (in 4 districts of the former Yenisei province): and 7.1% of all livestock, while 36.4% of households with 5 or more horses, with 51.2% of the population, have 73% of plowing and 74.5% of all livestock. The last groups (5-9, 10 or more horses) at 15-36 des. plowing per yard, resort to hired labor on a large scale (30-70% of households with hired workers), while the three lower groups, at 0-0.2-3-5 dess. plowing for 1 yard, release workers (20-35-59% of farms). Here, on the one hand, there is a clear connection between the size of the plowland and the supply of working horses to the economy, and, on the other hand, the possibility of a well-to-do economy to employ hired labor. The more prosperous the economy was, the more horses it had, and in connection with this, the size of the plowing, the more it resorted to the use of hired labor from low-income peasants. It should be noted that large reserves work force for the development of a prosperous and kulak economy in Siberia, they were peasant migrants from the European part of Russia. On this occasion, V. I. Lenin noted: “It is very interesting to observe that the relationship of a wealthy Siberian to a settler (and in these relations it is unlikely that even the most ardent populist would have decided to look for the notorious community!) - in essence, it is completely identical with the relations of our wealthy community members to their horseless and one-horse "brothers". "The strengthening of the resettlement movement in Siberia in the 1880s exacerbated the capitalist stratification of the peasantry. V. I. Lenin wrote: "It is known that mainly peasants from agricultural gubernias (from industrial emigration is absolutely negligible) and, moreover, from the densely populated central gubernias, in which labor labor is most developed (which retards the decomposition of the peasantry). It's in the 1st. And in the second place, it is mainly the middle-income peasantry that comes from the areas of deportation, while it is mainly the extreme groups of the peasantry that remain in their homeland. Thus, resettlement intensifies the decomposition of the peasantry in the places of exit and transfers elements of decomposition to the places of settlement (the labor of new settlers in Siberia in the first period of their new life).

The living conditions of the peasant population of Siberia, as already noted, differed significantly from the life of the Russian peasants of the central part of Russia. In Siberia, however, the oppression of serfdom did not manifest itself with such force, and in the post-reform period, feudal-serf survivals were not as strong as in the central provinces. The community here did not restrict the activities of its members; there was not, especially initially, even that lack of land and tightness, as in the center. The way of doing business in Siberia also differed significantly from that in the central provinces, where until the middle of the 19th century. three fields dominated, and from the second half of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. there was a transition to multifield. In Siberia, with large expanses of land, a fallow system was used. The land of the borrower (peasant family - yard) was cultivated only in an insignificant part, the rest was in the fallow. After several harvests, the land was left fallow for up to 15 years.

At the end of the XIX-beginning of the XX century. with an increase in population and a decrease in free land areas, fallow-fallow farming became predominant (the terms of the fallow were increasingly reduced and reached up to 1 year). This motley field, characteristic of Siberia, was; transition to a tripartite. The ratio of deposit and fallow was very diverse. In the southern fertile part of Siberia, the soil was restored with a fallow, and the fallow value increased to the north. In forest areas, a slashing system was also used (burning the forest under arable land with periodic running it under the forest). The trend of transition to two-field and three-field, especially on old arable land, was expressed everywhere. The process of replacing fallow-fallow farming with purely fallow farming without manure or with manure fertilizer was more pronounced in the direction from west to east. In Eastern Siberia, the two-field and three-field systems prevailed, and the two-field system prevailed here in some places (on the Ilim) already in the 17th century.

Increasingly, Siberian peasants resorted to fertilizing the soil with manure. There was no stability in crop rotations, which, perhaps, was largely determined by the strong development of loan land use, because the loan farmer depended little on other fellow villagers, disposing of the farm at his own discretion.

The main crops were: wheat (winter and spring), winter rye and eggs, oats, barley; they also sowed millet, buckwheat, peas, etc. The development of wheat crops due to the reduction of rye was noted as early as early stages development of Russian agriculture in Siberia (especially in Western). In the former Tobolsk and Tomsk provinces by the beginning of the 20th century. wheat accounted for 50% of all grain crops. In Eastern Siberia, with the systematic growth of wheat crops, rye was still the predominant crop. In the more northern areas of agriculture, barley was of great importance. From industrial crops, hemp was sown, less flax, which went mainly to meet their own needs; only in places hemp was sown for sale. It was known in Siberia (Minusinsk Territory) the cultivation of sugar beet. The cultivation of this crop arose not without the influence of immigrants from the southern Russian provinces and Ukrainians.

Plowing tools brought from the north or the central provinces of Russia in Siberia quickly gave way to tools more adapted to local soils. The usual Great Russian two-leaf plow, called in Siberia a rogamol, a horn or hand-to-hand, a roe deer and a wooden harrow, are being replaced by other tools: heavy home-made wooden plows, a wheeled wheel, a harrow with iron teeth. Kolesukha, or wheelchair - a transitional type of tool from a plow to a plow with one share, with a limber placed on wheels. Plows with one coulter, called saban, were used. The real saban was also widespread in Siberia - a wooden plow, usually called an yermyapka, similar to the Ural-Volga type of saban plow. Already in the XIX century. wealthy peasants have factory iron plows, at the beginning of the 20th century. they are spreading more and more, especially in the grain-growing places of Siberia. In a plow, a roe deer was harnessed from 2 to 4 horses, in a heavy plow - from 5 to 8, depending on the soil. The main working animal was the horse; only in places they harnessed oxen, according to Ukrainian custom. The Russian harness with an arc and shafts or tugs is the main type of harness in Siberia, but the Ukrainian harness was occasionally used with the help of a yoke and drawbar. Harvesting - harvesting bread - was carried out mainly with a sickle; some crops (oats, barley) were usually mowed with a scythe (to which a wooden “comb” was attached). Compressed bread was folded for drying in worts of 10 or more sheaves. In the literature there are references to the laying of sheaves in the sacrum. After two or three weeks, the sheaves of wort were put into luggage - stacks, from where they were transported to the threshing floor.

They threshed with a flail and horses, in some places with a thresher - a wooden shaft with wooden teeth hammered into it (the horse was harnessed with the help of a shaft), or a thresher with a single or double horse drive. They fanned with a shovel.

In the second half of the XIX century. the richest peasants had machines: winnowing machines, threshers, mower harvesters, which began to spread especially after the construction of the railway. For a fee, the owners of the cars gave them to poorer fellow villagers to use them. Threshing, winnowing were carried out on a threshing floor surrounded by a fence, sometimes it was a canopy, the so-called "clone". The sheaves were preliminarily dried in the barn. With the introduction of machines, grain was threshed for the most part without drying. In the Far East, grain was dried in Russian ovens already threshed.

Khlebosushilysh in Siberia was represented by ordinary Russian log cabins with a stove - a heater; there are indications that such barns were pit (Irkutsk province). The barn was located near the threshing floor. There were also rigs. There were also such types of bread dryers as shishi - conical structures made of poles, located above the pit where a fire was made. These simplest bread-dryers, the cheapest ones, were used by the poorest peasants. 1 During night threshing, for lighting, they set up hearths - small wooden log cabins stuffed with earth, on which they burned firewood or resin.

Flour-grinding has developed in Siberia. For grinding grain, there were mills everywhere (wind, water). In the second half 19th century steam roller mills appeared, owned by rural kulaks, big industrialists. There were crowds for skinning cereals. In a small amount, grits were torn at home, blunt and pestle. A manual millstone for grinding flour was rarely used only for small household needs.

Horticulture was a special branch of agriculture. Cucumbers, carrots, onions, radishes, turnips, beets, cabbages and rutabaga ("kalega") were bred in the gardens. The potato has been spreading in Siberia since the 1840s. Initially, it was planted in gardens, later, especially under the influence of new settlers, they begin to plant it in the field. Until now, in Siberia, the ancient name of the potato "apple", "apple" is remembered. Greenhouses were used to grow cucumbers and other vegetables. In the Far North, potatoes, turnips, and onions were also grown in some places. From the second half of the 19th century, especially under the influence of immigrants from the southern provinces of Russia and Ukrainians, melon growing developed - melons, watermelons were grown (in the southern regions of Western Siberia, in the Minusinsk Territory, and the southern regions of the Far East). Tobacco (makhorka, bakun) was bred in vegetable gardens for their own consumption and only in some places for sale. Significant tobacco crops were in the southern districts of the Yenisei province and in the west of Siberia (here Russian Cossack women became famous as good tobacco growers).

Horticulture and melon growing were everywhere of secondary importance in the economy and commercial near cities, industrial centers, gold mining regions. So, for example, near the cities of Omsk and Petropavlovsk (Western Siberia) there were entire villages engaged only in gardening, melon growing and tobacco growing. Watermelons and melons, as well as tobacco, were exported far beyond Western Siberia. Suburban villages of the Yakutsk region delivered to the market of Yakutsk, in addition to wheat, also vegetables, watermelons and other melon products.

Horticulture was developed in the southern counties b. Tobolsk province (apple, cherry). Gardening experiments were carried out in the Minusinsk Territory (Chinese apples, pears), near Krasnoyarsk. In the Far East, there were attempts to grow cherries and other horticultural crops. Best of all, it was possible to breed garden berry plants: raspberries, currants, gooseberries, strawberries, wild strawberries. Gardening, as well as melon growing, was mostly done by new settlers.

Animal husbandry among the farmers of Siberia was a necessary, important, but auxiliary branch of the economy; only in areas where agriculture was limited by climatic conditions, animal husbandry was of leading importance in economic life. The technique and methods of cattle breeding were extensive. Livestock care was much worse than in the central provinces. The number of working and dairy cattle varied among the different groups in the village. The difference in the provision of livestock was also observed among the old-timers, but it was especially pronounced between the old-timer prosperous peasantry and the new settlers. In the villages there were always horseless and cowless farms, mostly from new settlers, who sometimes accounted for 25% of all farms. There were villages in which there were no cattle at all, and sometimes horses, and most of the inhabitants worked as laborers in large old-timers' farms.

Horse breeding has long been developed in Siberia. The horse was the main draft force in agriculture and was of great transport importance.

Oxen, as mentioned above, were used relatively rarely. In some places (in Transbaikalia) from the end of the 19th century. began to use the camel as a labor force.

Russian horse breeding has played a significant role in improving local horse breeds. Improved local breeds were created by organizing a horse breeding business, cross-breeding with animals brought from the European part (beatyug, trotter, etc.). The "Tomsk" strong workhorse enjoys well-deserved fame; in a number of other places in Western and Eastern Siberia, improved breeds of transport horses were bred. Various local breeds of steppe, riding horses possessed good qualities: “Minusinka”, “Altayka”, in the most southern regions of Siberia - “Mongolian”, in the west - “Kyrgyz”, in the east - “Transbaikal” (distinguished by speed). On the Ob was created special variety"minusinki" - "narymka", although smaller, but not inferior in strength and endurance to the "minusinka". All these breeds were distinguished by endurance, adaptability to natural conditions Siberia.

Siberian cows are known for their great endurance and unpretentiousness, but for the most part they were unproductive. Local breeds of cows, such as the "Manchurian", in the Far East were used by the Manchus only for meat, and only Russian peasants began to milk them. Many unproductive local breeds of cattle were improved by crossing with various imported breeds: Yaroslavl, Kholmogory, Dutch, Simmental, etc. Good results were obtained by crossbreeding local breeds with Ukrainian cattle brought by settlers from Poltava and Kharkov provinces.

The dairy direction of animal husbandry developed especially in the west of Siberia, while the meat direction prevailed in the east. Buttermaking in the west of Siberia was in the hands of private entrepreneurs who used technical improvements to prepare oil-separators, etc., and had a commercial value. In peasant farms, butter was churned mainly with the help of home-made wooden churns.

Breeding of small ruminants everywhere was a secondary branch of animal husbandry. Only in a few steppe places is sheep breeding more important than cattle breeding. Bred mainly sheep Mongolian, Kirghiz and Russian breeds. The latter in terms of wool quality significantly exceeded local breeds, and therefore the Buryats - ancient cattle breeders - improved the productivity of their sheep by crossing the Mongolian breed with the Russian one.

In winter, cattle were kept in stalls: warm stables were usually arranged only for sheep and calves. From April (from Egoriev's Day) to October (before snow) cattle were let out for pasture. Of the 7 months of pasture feeding, 2-242 months pastures served as utugs, meadows, fallows, after harvesting bread - stubble. The rest of the time, the cattle grazed on pasture - pasture, less rich in food.

Siberian peasants improved pastures by fertilizing meadows with manure; this was also practiced by the Buryats. Fertilized meadows were called utugs. In Transbaikalia, Russians and Buryats also used irrigation of meadows. The irrigation system used to irrigate mowing and arable land also existed in Altai.

Haymaking as a trade occupation was important only in villages near large tracts. The hay was mowed with a Lithuanian scythe. Pink salmon scythe in the late 19th-early 20th century. used relatively little, only in inconvenient places (forests, swamps). The most prosperous peasants used mowers. Hay was dried, raked, thrown into long stacks - germs, which were transported for the most part already along the winter route, folding into a barn - hay. From the end of the 19th-beginning of the 20th century, grass-sowing was born, especially in the area of ​​development of dairy farming and butter-making.

A feature of Siberian animal husbandry is the widespread grazing without a shepherd. In some places, horses grazed in herds, being on pasture all year round (digging it out from under the snow in winter). This mowing or herd keeping of horses was for the most part unsupervised; cows and sheep were also kept on pasture.

In order to protect crops from damage, the peasants had to put up wooden fences from poles (poskotina) sometimes for tens of kilometers. Usually they fenced the village with pasture places adjacent to it. Entry and exit to the village went through the gates of the poskotina, which each passerby was obliged to close behind him. Sometimes the gates of the poscotina were arranged in such a way that when passing through them they closed automatically. Gorodba poskotina was carried out according to the layout between the inhabitants of the village. The length of the hedge link, which an individual owner had to block, was measured in fathoms, the number of the latter was usually determined by the number of heads of cattle that an individual owner had. There were also equalizing types of gorodby layout, for example, each farm, regardless of the number of livestock it had, was calculated per capita; they were especially favored by the rich. The shepherd was hired only in the fall for grazing on arable land or for the time of driving away. Transhumance cattle - sheep, non-working horses, bulls - were herded every summer with shepherds; the owners visited the cattle only a few times in the summer. There was also the usual for Russia hiring a shepherd for the whole season with daily grazing of cattle in the field. The shepherd was paid by all the owners, depending on the number of cattle; they fed the shepherd in turn, sometimes they gave an order - boots, a shirt, a fur coat (which were taken away at the end of grazing).

The legal status of a shepherd differed significantly from that of a shepherd in the central provinces, where the shepherd's responsibility for livestock was much greater. According to customary law in Siberia, the shepherd was not responsible for the animals slaughtered by a predator, as well as for the grassing of the hoards of bread, the floor of the cattle camp, etc.: the owner, who poorly fenced the bread or his link in the cattle fence, was responsible for this.

Pig breeding before the arrival of the Russians was not known to many peoples, although their main occupation was cattle breeding (Buryats, Yakuts, Altaians). Pigs were bred only by some groups of the population on the Amur (Nanai and others) ”borrowing pig breeding from the Chinese. Pig breeding was most developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. in Tobolsk (Kurgan district) and Tomsk (Biysk district) provinces. Pig products were exported to the European part of Russia. Pigs were kept in a peasant farm on the estate: small warm barns - “coils” were built for them.

Bred in Siberia and poultry- chickens, geese, ducks, sometimes turkeys. A major role in the development of this sector of the economy was played by new settlers (less well-to-do than old-timers), who gave it a lot of care and attention. Apparently, domestic poultry farming was not known in Siberia before the arrival of the Russians.

The Russian Siberians also developed such branches of animal husbandry that are not typical or not known at all in the European part of Russia. The main ones are dog breeding and deer breeding. Dog breeding was of great importance among the Russians, who were mainly engaged in fishing (the mouth of the Indigirka, Kolyma, Anadyr, Kamchatka, the coast of Okhotsk, etc.). Among the Russian-Ustya people, the dog was even called "cattle".

In the conditions of the Far North, the dog was often the only domestic and draft animal. Various types of Siberian huskies were widespread. The number of dogs in each household depended on its prosperity. A team of 12 dogs was considered an average sled. The farm had from 1 to 2-3 teams. The main dog food consisted of dried and dried fish. In the taiga regions, the dog was a faithful assistant to the hunter in the hunt.

The keeping and breeding of maral (a kind of red deer Segguiz Sapayepsuz) originated at the beginning of the 19th century. among Russians in the southern Altai. Later it spread in the Western Sayans, in the Usinsk Territory (Tuva), Transbaikalia. The main purpose of breeding deer was the extraction of antlers - deer horns, which were sold to China, where they were used in medicine and were especially valued. In addition to antlers, which were export goods, maral leather was used on the farm (they made suede, which was used for tailoring). Maral meat was used for food; candles were prepared from lard, in addition, lard was used as a remedy - from abscesses: an ointment was prepared from the bone marrow for lubricating gun locks, etc.

At the beginning of the XIX century. wild deer antlers were hunted everywhere. The catching of wild deer was carried out by pits and by chasing the deer along the crust. Trying to tame the deer, the Russian Siberians succeeded in turning the deer into a semi-domestic animal that bred in captivity. They were kept in "gardens" - marals (in Altai) and at courts - in "cages" (in the Sayans). Maralnyk represented extensive (from 1.5 to 120 ha) fenced areas. Large marals often belonged to kulaks, sometimes to several owners. When kept in yards, each maral had a smaller area, and the deer had feed more than in marals. This content is more close to the stall. In the yards, mainly males were kept, the number of which was replenished with wild deer caught alive. In the summer, the deer antlers were filmed in special indoor premises - strippers, then the antlers were boiled and dried. They sold antlers to buyers.

The peoples of Siberia, before the advent of the Russians, knew beekeeping, used the honey of wild bees, but did not have apiaries. The emergence of apiary beekeeping in Altai dates back to the 18th century. It arose in the Ust-Kamenogorsk district among the so-called "Poles" - a group of Russian Old Believers.

Already in the middle of the XIX century. beekeeping occupied one of the prominent places in the economy of the Kerzhaks. In the richest kulak farms, there were up to 1000 or more beehives. The largest center of beekeeping was the southern Altai, especially the Bukhtarma region.

The hives originally consisted of dugouts hollowed out from a tree trunk, or hollows made from hollow trees. From the second half of the XIX century. frame hives appear. However, in the areas of the most developed apiary beekeeping (Altai, the Minusinsk Territory, the Yenisei province, etc.), hives-decks - deck chairs and risers - made up a significant part of the apiary. Honey and wax were sold in the markets or sold to local buyers and visiting merchants. Bukhtarma mountain honey was famous for its excellent qualities and was sent to the Irbit, Nizhny Novgorod fairs and other places.

The development of Siberia and the penetration of the agricultural skills and techniques of the Russian people there played a large progressive role in the development of the local Siberian peoples. Russian peasants influenced the development of agriculture among many peoples of Siberia. So, for example, the Yakuts at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. they introduced a plow, a harrow, Russian harness, accustomed working cattle to work on arable land, i.e., they immediately switched to arable farming, bypassing the more primitive stage of hoe farming. The Yakuts borrowed Russian millstones, and later began to build mills. Under the influence of the Russians, a part of the Evenks living in the Yakutsk region and Transbaikalia switched to settled life and agriculture. The Buryat cattle breeders and fur trappers were especially susceptible to Russian agriculture and settled way of life. They quickly began to expand the plows. Agriculture of the Buryats in some areas (Irkutsk and Balagan counties) at the beginning of the 20th century. already differed little from the agriculture of the Russian peasants. Among a significant part of the Altaians, there was also a process of transition to settled life and agriculture. Russian arable tools, methods of laying grain in sheaves, threshing with a flail and horses have firmly entered the economic life of large groups of Altaians.

Of great positive importance for the economic life of the peoples of Siberia was the introduction of garden crops, brought for the first time by Russians, the methods of Russian animal husbandry, poultry farming, etc. At the beginning of the 20th century, V. many Buryats, Yakuts, Altaians, Khakasses and others were already planting potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables. Russian stall farming had a great positive impact on the nomadic primitive pastoralism of Siberia. All the peoples of Siberia engaged in cattle breeding also developed stall keeping of cattle with the preparation of fodder for the winter, in connection with which the productivity of livestock improved, and the quantitative composition of the herd became more stable. The Russians developed new breeds of dairy cattle, sheep and stronger breeds of working horses. Pig and poultry farming also for the first time began to penetrate into the life of local tribes and peoples. Haymaking tools were also adopted from the Russians. First, the pink salmon scythe spread, then the Lithuanian scythe, which greatly increased labor productivity; they began to dry hay according to the Russian model, folding it into shocks and stacks, and not hanging it, twisting it into bundles, on trees, as, for example, the Altaians did.

Farming and horticulture, as well as livestock farming, which penetrated into the life of former nomadic cattle breeders, hunters and fishermen, strengthened their food base and provided marketable products in some places (Buryats), contributing to the development of capitalist relations.

Hunting among the Russian population of Siberia was mostly an auxiliary occupation. In the northern taiga regions, and only where agriculture was poorly developed, hunting among the Russian population was one of the important means of subsistence (the Tobolsk north, the Angara region, the Usinsk region, northern Transbaikalia, etc.) * The mined furs were commercial products.

Of the fur-bearing animals, the greatest commercial value since the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. acquires protein. The most valuable fur-bearing animals - beaver, marten, sable, etc. - by this time had significantly decreased in number, sable fishing also mattered only in a few places in Western Siberia (in the Pelym Territory, Altai), Eastern Siberia and in Prpamurye, as well as Kamchatka . The Vitim and Kirensky sables (Eastern Siberia) were especially famous for their unusually fluffy dark fur. Elks, lynxes, wolverines, foxes, arctic foxes were important game animals (the blue fox was most highly valued). Of the small animals, in addition to sable and squirrel, they caught chipmunk, Siberian weasel, ermine, hare, etc. In some places, hunting for roe deer, musk deer, pantache deer (Altai, Primorye), and also wild deer (Far North) was of great importance.

Of the birds in the taiga, they caught capercaillie, black grouse, hazel grouse, partridge, geese, ducks, swans in the tundra. The so-called goose hunting - hunting for wild geese - was of great importance in the life of Russians in the Far North zone and provided the main food for the population in famine years.

Along the coast of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, in the mouths of the Siberian rivers, the Russian population was engaged in hunting for sea animals - seals, bearded seals, partly for walruses, polar bears.

Hunting tools and techniques were very diverse, but rifle hunting prevailed. Traps were of great importance: kulems, grazes, loops, etc. In Eastern Siberia, there was a very peculiar catching of sable with hooks. Kurkavki - hair loops - were placed on trees thrown over rivers and served as a bridge for sable in October, when the rivers were not yet covered with ice. Omet was also used - a special net for catching sable on the first snow. The hunter, having tracked down the sable in the hollow, surrounded the tree with beetles, smoked the animal out of the hollow with smoke. Nets and weights caught waterfowl. There were ways to catch moose and deer in pits.

Hunting in Siberia, especially in winter, was fraught with great difficulties. The deer was hunted during its migrations, when the herds were transported across the rivers. He was beaten with guns, iron spears, polearms, driving up to the deer on light boats-branches.

The main hunting season began in autumn and continued, intermittently, until spring. Fur-bearing animals were hunted in winter. Each hunter or artel had its own territory, on which they set up pastures, kulems, arranged burrow pits. It was called by old Russian terms - “well-groomed”, “forest paths”, “putiki”. The hunters left for distant “going places” for a long time and sometimes lived for several months in the forest.

They also hunted alone, but more often they united in artels (from 2-4 to 15-20 people). Each artel had a hut in the fishery - a place to sleep. In the hunting huts there was a stove-heater or a black adobe stove, bunks for sleeping, poles for drying clothes.

The production of the artel was divided among its members. The furs were sold to merchants, local kulaks, who kept many fur traders in bondage. "Twisting" was developed. The fist supplied the hunter with everything necessary on credit, valuing the goods at 2-3 times more expensive than the real value. Cre the styanin-pokruchnik paid with the obtained furs with the "twisted".

Fishing among Russian Siberians was known wherever there are suitable reservoirs for this. Highest value fishing received on the river. Ob and its tributaries, on the Angara, Baikal, Kolyma, Indigirka, Anadyr, in the rivers of Kamchatka, the coast of Okhotsk and along the Amur. Various breeds of sea, river and lake fish were hunted. Fishing in the fishing areas was carried out almost all year round, with only a few interruptions.

In the XIX-beginning of the XX century. fishing on the Ob took place with the help of barriers and the installation of the so-called gimgs. Gimgi - a kind of wicker tackle of huge sizes (the height of the gimgi is much larger than human height), which, apparently, were perceived by the Russians from local fishermen - Khanty and Mansi. Only large industrialists had large gimgas in quantities from 40 to 100 pieces, especially between Berezov and Obdorsk; gimgas blocked even the wide places of the river. Cheaper barriers with a trap from a 4-coal mesh bag "attic" were arranged near the coast. Small ponds were blocked by kotzes, representing a rod or shingle trap.

Merezhi, muzzles in the XIX-beginning of the XX century. widely used in fishing. Ditch fishing was used, especially in those places where the fish "deaf", suffocated from a lack of oxygen (in winter).

Everywhere there were nets and nets of various sizes and devices. The nets were brought to Siberia and distributed by the Russians.

Fish were hunted by seine nets on Baikal for the most part by large fishermen; they were called net workers, and those engaged in "network" fishing, mostly small peasant artels, were called setters. There was enmity between the non-vodchik and settists, which sometimes became very aggravated.

The seine consists of a motna - a net bag - and side parts - wings, sewn from pieces of a network ("pillars"); ropes are tied to the ends of the wings - “descents” (also called cuts, nags, lassoes). The length of the seine sometimes reached 400-600 m (Yenisei, Lena, Ob), on Baikal it was 1000 m. ). In the summer they fished with a seine for the most part on the "sands" - the sandy bottom of the river. Leaving on non-water boats, they swept the sink with a seine and pulled it with the help of a gate. Winter ice fishing was also common.

In the Far East, fixed nets were used for catching salmon - chum salmon, pink salmon, coglings, which were of great commercial importance (along the Okhotsk coast, the rivers Amur, Ussuri, etc.). Fishing was mainly carried out by Cossacks (Amur, Trans-Baikal, Kamchatka). Peasants began to fish in these places for the most part from the end of the 19th century, which was facilitated by immigrants from the largest fishing areas of the Astrakhan province and the Don region.

In addition to net devices, hook tackles were used everywhere in Siberia - ud, zherlitsa, lure and track (fishing with a hook with a tin fish as a bait). The so-called traps, samolovs were widespread. Practiced "radiation" of fish: big fish they were beaten sharply at night by the light of tar chocks burning on the metal grate of the "goat". A method of killing fish was used with the help of wooden mallets that were struck on the ice.

Peasant fishermen had to rent some of the rich fishing grounds from private owners: monasteries, large fishermen who owned the best places. Sometimes fishermen used the waters on the basis of customary law. In both cases, the poorest part of the fishing population got the worst places. In the fishing areas there were always large fish merchants who used hired workers from local fishermen and Russian peasants. They were paid in cash, given food and clothing. From the descriptions of the life of the fishermen of the Ob basin, it is clear in what difficult conditions the workers lived in cramped cold barracks, sometimes without sex.

The artel method of fishing was the most common. Artel workers often constituted only another category of workers, differing from hired workers in that they were shareholders in the industry; however, they gave 4/5 of the total catch to the fisherman for supplying them with the necessary tackle, and only 1 and 1 of the catch were divided among the artel workers. There were artels of semi-breeders working for the fisherman in full for the equipment taken from him.

There were temporary associations of fishermen, consisting of 2-3 peasant families, who combined their efforts (and gear) for joint fishing. Caught alone. The sale of fish took place through a buyer, a large fisherman. He also supplied the fishermen with the necessary goods. The dependence of the population on the buyer was especially strong in the deaf remote villages of the Far North. The industrial peasants here were always in debt to the merchant, his clerk; they repaid their debt with fish, fox, dogs, and sometimes with personal labor.

On Baikal, in the artels for summer seine fishing, from 3-4 to 30 people were included, and in winter artels up to 50-60 people. The artel sewed together the net, distributed duties. Each fisherman, entering the gang of non-drivers, had to have his own “pillar” (net cloth) and “descent” (rope), from which the net was made; for this he received a share. At the head of the artel was an experienced fisherman, who was in charge of fishing, called a bashlyk. The main assistant of the hood was called the hood. The hood, in addition to the "pillar", also brought in a motna for a seine and a boat-seine, for which he received 3 shares. Shares were also received by such persons who did not take a direct part in fishing: a cook, a clerk, a teller - a storyteller. The life of fishermen in the fishery was distinguished by its originality. Fishing was done by men, but in some places women and teenagers took a large part in it, being engaged in seine fishing. Women's labor was of great importance in the processing of fish (in particular, in the preparation of yukola), as well as in various auxiliary work.

Most of the techniques and methods of hunting and fishing among Russian peasants, petty bourgeois, Cossacks of Siberia were all-Russian. Nets, nets, ouds, ezy, nets are mentioned in early Russian written sources. All-Russian devices are also such devices as kotsy, traverses, pastures, dies, overweight and many others. There are features in common with northern fishing (nets with kibasyas, etc.), with fishing in the central regions (ditch fishing). Much of the experience of the indigenous peoples of Siberia entered the commercial life of Russians (fishing methods - gimgi, Nanai-type nets, harvesting yukola; methods of hunting wild deer, etc.). With the development of Siberia by the Russians, hunting and fishing were greatly developed here. Many Russian fishing tools, as applied to local conditions, received further development(stay nets, etc.). The Russians created new branches of the hunting economy, for example, fox hunting in the tundra zone along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. The introduction of various Russian tools for hunting and fishing (various traps, traps, guns, nets of spun threads, more advanced types of fishing vessels: karbas, senevodnik, etc.) into the life of local Siberian tribes and nationalities, which were not here before, had a positive significance. This greatly increased the prey of the beast and fish. The emergence and growth of Russian cities and industrial centers stimulated the development of a marketable economy; the demand for furs increased, which also contributed to the development of local crafts.

Forestry was of great importance for the Russians in Siberia: the harvesting of construction timber and fuel, the rafting of timber to cities, port centers, and shipyards. The wood trade has especially developed near large cities and industrial centers and at marinas. The production of tar, tar, coal was known everywhere. A kind of Siberian trade has become widespread - the collection of pine nuts, especially in those places where good cedar forests are located (in Western and Eastern Siberia), as well as the extraction and heating of chewing sulfur from larch. This sulfur was in great demand among the Russian peasant women of Siberia. Picking berries and mushrooms was practiced everywhere for their own consumption, but in some places the picking of lingonberries and cranberries was also of commercial importance. In the southern parts of Western Siberia, the collection of wild garlic, or "flask", has acquired commercial importance. Of the Siberian trades, which had some significance even at the beginning of the 20th century, it is also necessary to note the extraction of river pearls in the Far East and the extraction of walrus and mammoth bones in the Far North.

The processing of products and the manufacture of essential items were carried out to a large extent at home, especially in remote places, remote from roads and fishing centers. At the end of the XIX-beginning of the XX century. In places, fabrics were still made at home. Yarn from hemp or flax was spun with a spinning wheel and a spindle, woven on "krosny" - an ordinary Russian weaving mill with a bodice. Cloth was made from sheep's wool. In the 19th century the most prosperous peasants also had fuller machines.

There were entire villages or even districts where various handicraft industries were the predominant occupations. Some handicraftsmen were dependent on the buyer, there were small establishments with hired workers. The importance of crafts increased where agriculture did not provide subsistence. Big role in the development of crafts belonged to the new settlers. Woodworking, blacksmithing, processing of skins and bones of animals, as well as stone were widespread. Large areas of handicraft industry have formed in the southwestern part of Western Siberia. From the woodworking industries, the manufacture of sledges, carts, wheels, cooperage utensils, furniture, wooden parts of collars, etc. was known. Chemical processing of wood existed everywhere in the forest regions. Cedar oil was produced in the areas of cedar fishing (Biysk district).

Small-scale wool-beating, pimokatny, leather production was widespread everywhere, and in some places fur processing and suede dressing. The sheepskin coat business was developed near Tyumen, the sewing of sheepskin coats "barnaulok" - in the city of Barnaul; in the southern part b. Tobolsk province, where sheep breeding was developed, there was a production of woolen mittens, mittens and stockings.

Pottery and brick production was distributed mostly near the cities. The potter's wheel was used to make pottery. In the area of ​​commercial fishing, the production of clay weights - kibasya for seines (the village of Samarovo at the confluence of the Irtysh with the Ob) has developed.

Blacksmithing and plumbing was developed everywhere, but especially in the Kuznetsk district and in the Tyumen district of the Tobolsk province. Blacksmithing among Russian peasants existed even in the most remote corners of the Far North, where it was of great practical importance for the surrounding peoples - the Chukchi and others who did not know it before. The Russian and Russified population of Anadyr exchanged their products - knives, axes, boilers, etc. - with the Chukchi and Koryaks for deer, lakhtak skins, rovduga, etc.

At the beginning of the 19th century, with the discovery of gold placers, gold mining rapidly developed. The composition of the workers at the mines was distinguished by great ethnic diversity. People flocked here from various places in European Russia and Siberia, and included representatives of local non-Russian tribes and nationalities; however, Russians dominated. There was a peculiar mining life, there was an iriisk jargon. Local features were manifested in the language, life and folklore of the gold miners. Among the miners, who sometimes worked alone and in parties, there were "great masters" of this business, there were also "apprentices". The master's workers were those who were hired for a fee to large gold mining companies. In the life of artels of workers, their own customary law was developed: the members of the artel were bound by mutual responsibility (which the owners turned in their favor), there was a custom of punishing the delinquent member of the artel for misdeeds. The working and living conditions of the mine workers were sometimes unbearable. The workers lived either in the master's large barracks, dirty and dark, or in dwellings built by the workers themselves. These dwellings resembled peasant huts or were dugouts. The workers were supplied with food by the owners at a high price in the trade shops.

Russian crafts and handicrafts, which developed in cities and villages, had a positive impact on the crafts of local tribes and nationalities. Russian artisans, for example, influenced the improvement of metalworking among those tribes and nationalities who knew it (Yakuts, Buryats, etc.) * The introduction of Russian spinning and weaving techniques into the life of the Siberian peoples was of great importance. Prior to this, weaving was known only to the Mansi and Khanty, who used the fibers of wild nettle for fabric, the Northern Altaians, who wove canvas from the fibers of wild hemp - kendyr.

The cooperage craft was adopted by many nationalities, in particular the Yakuts. Woodworking among the Buryats, Yakuts and other peoples improved significantly when more advanced tools introduced by the Russian population, such as a saw, a planer, a plumb line, etc., came into use.