LOGGING CRAFTS OF UDMURT PEASANTS IN VYATKA PROVINCE DURING THE MODERNIZATION PERIOD (SECOND HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY)

Abstract

The article considers logging crafts of Udmurt peasants of Vyatka province as an independent type of craft activity in interaction with other elements of the peasant economy in the second half of the 19th century. Logging and wood-chopping trades were the most attractive for Udmurt peasants, because of their proximity to the familiar world, sacred ideas about spatial differentiation, ethnic and linguistic comfort. Therefore, they were the most traditional and massive for the peasantry of Udmurtia. The analysis of their development in the Russian modernization dynamics of the second half of the 19 century allows us to answer the questions of the coexistence of traditions and innovations in the Russian province. The dominant influence of the natural factor on the territorial division of labor, the choice of one or another type of non-agricultural occupations of the population is shown. The unique combination of huge woodlands and a dense network of floating rivers with access to the Kama and Vyatka determined not only the preservation of logging and wood-cutting industries in the second half of the 19 century, but also the growth of wood production. The constant growth of the market demand for wood, combined with the preserved methods of logging and timber transportation, showed the high adaptive capabilities of these traditional crafts during the studied period. The abolition of serfdom, the elimination of the institution of indispensable workers, the active penetration of market mechanisms into traditional foundations laid the grounds for the process of gradual transformation of logging into one of the elements of the emerging capitalist economy.