Cooperage as an Occupation of Novgorod’s Peasants in the Post-reform Years

Abstract

It is common knowledge that harsh climate, the predominance of poor soils, a short growing season, and low crop yield in Novgorod Governorate did not allow peasants to provide themselves with everything they needed only through agricultural labour. Therefore, the Novgorod peasants were forced to look for additional sources of income: leaving the village to work or engaging in different occupations. In particular, cooperage was widely popular in the peasant economy, which was determined by the availability of the necessary raw materials in the form of extensive forests in all the counties of the governorate. The article examines the state of cooperage as an occupation among the peasants of Novgorod Governorate in the second half of the 19th — early 20th century based on archival and published sources and literature. Primarily, attention is given to the analysis of the role of the occupation within the peasant economy. The stable nature of production of coopers’ goods was due to the widespread nature of nail-making and fishing industries among peasants, as well as due to an increase in the number of creameries in landowners’ estates. Thus, various products of coopers were used — mainly as containers. There is no doubt that the steady demand for coopers’ products from the local rural population played a significant role in the formation and development of the cooperage industry. The paper gives a brief description of the tools used by peasant coopers and notes the emergence of an artel as a form of occupational organization. The article shows peasants’ growing dependence on raw materials from landowners and timber producers due to the sharp decrease in allotted timber because of the intensive felling of trees by peasants. With the decline in allotted timber, coopers increasingly bought wood harvested in neighboring state-owned, appanage, or landowner forests. As a result, the raw material dependence of the workers engaged in the cooperage trade on the owners of the forest and the buyers of their products grew. The paper concludes that at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries cooperage in Novgorod Governorate still held a meaningful place in the peasant household economy, acquiring an increasingly pronounced commercial character.