Palekh lacquer miniature fishing in the 1980s: on the eve of the disaster

Abstract

The subject of the study is the analysis of the ways of development of the Palekh lacquer miniature fishery in the 1980s - the last decade of the Soviet period, which also became the last relatively prosperous time of the development of the fishery itself. Special attention in the article is paid to the analysis of the so–called Palekh "split" - the destruction of the unified organization of the Palekh art and production workshops, which followed in 1989 and ended the Soviet period in the history of the Palekh craft. The purpose of the article is to characterize the state in which one of the most prosperous Soviet crafts of folk art – the famous craft of the Palekh lacquer miniature – entered the tragic era of the 1990s. The scientific novelty of the study consists in an attempt to comprehensively study the late stage of the history of the Palekh lacquer craft in the 1980s, which also makes it possible to realize the problems of its modern crisis situation. Using the historical and systematic method, as well as the method of comparative analysis, the author of the study comes to the conclusion that the 1980s (before the "split" of 1989) became, like the previous decades of the history of the Palekh lacquer miniature fishery (despite some individual costs), the time of its progressive development, and the main reason for the collapse the financial disagreements of its participants became a single organization of the fishery in 1989.