The word “barge haulers” in the modern Russian is associated with the image of a gang of bearded exhausted men in ragged clothes, who are stubbornly trying to pull the strap from the barge, located somewhere in the background of Ilya Repin’s painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga”. At the same time, they had to sing “Oh, cudgel, let’s fuck us!” It’s time to find out in more detail, is a hacker a slave or a professional worker?
The history of burlachestvo
Profession “barge hauler” existed on the territory of Russia from the 16th to the 19th century. Its appearance is due to the peculiarities of river navigation, namely the fact that, unlike the sea, each river has a course. Therefore, if a sailing vessel needed to sail against the river, then it had to be towed in some way.
The best option was to use a team of barge haulers as a pulling force, who harnessed into the towline and pulled the ship through the "big water". It can be said that in tsarist Russia, with its serfdom, boilage was an entire branch of the economy. Burlak is hard work for which not everyone received money.
Demand for the barge haulers
Particularly burlatskie artels became popular, starting from the 18th century, when the so-called barks became popular - disposable wooden alloy boats with a carrying capacity of up to 480 tons and a length of almost 50 meters.
The use of burlatsky labor gradually began to be abandoned after the invention of steam traction. Only a short period when moving river transport against the river flow, the work of the barge haulers was replaced by the following method: the anchor was brought forward by the coast in the direction of movement of the vessel for some distance, after which the vessel was pulled by means of a winch. The history of barge haulers begins in the 16th century. Therefore, during the existence of the profession, many strong men died.
In a special decree, the Soviet government in 1929 banned the use of barge haulers for towing river vessels. They remembered the burlak draft during the Great Patriotic War, when the need for tugboats was sharply felt.
Features burlakskoy profession
The only assistant to these workers of the river fleet was a fair wind, which inflated the sails raised on the ship. Usually the bark, which was pulled against the tide by the burlak gang, overcame about 12 kilometers per day.
By the way, “Oh, club ...” - this is not just a song in the usual sense. In fact, in this way, the hackers seemed to coordinate their forces when the anchor was lifted from the bottom of the bark, and the ship was strained. At this moment they had a very hard time. The meaning of the word "barge hauler" is simple - it is a person working in an artel that draws ships.
Not only is the work of people in this profession monotonous, moreover, it is also very exhausting. Its specificity is that it had a seasonal character: from spring to autumn, i.e. for the navigation period. However, not all barge haulers lounged in the winter. Natives of the peasantry returned to their native villages. Among professionals or “native” barge haulers came across casual workers who were hired for only one flight.
At the expense of whom replenished burlak artels
They did not become barge haulers because of a good life. These were mainly peasants with very low incomes. Representatives of the poorest poor and townspeople from the lower class, including those without passports and those who escaped from their masters, served as another source. In general, the artels were replenished by the mass of the population, which could not realize itself in any other way. They paid for hard work in different ways, sometimes they were hired just for feeding. Burlak is not a slave, but working for a piece of bread equated this grueling work with slavery.
Before serfdom in the Russian Empire was officially abolished in 1861, landowners often turned into serfs those serfs who had debts. Burlak is an old profession, which was sometimes given as a punishment.
Having celebrated Shrovetide, the men, driven by extreme poverty, rushed to the “burlak” bazaars, where they were recorded in artels. The largest such receiving point was the city of Puchezh on the Volga (now the Ivanovo region). Smaller “bazaars” were located in Nizhny Novgorod, Kineshma, Kostroma, Saratov, Samara, and several other large cities. On the banks of the Kama River, in the Western Urals, the cities of Perm, Laishev and Chistopol were such points. The so-called capital of the barge haulers was located in the city of Rybinsk (Yaroslavl region), where even a monument to the barge haulers was erected.