Burlak is a hired worker in Russia of the 16th - early 20th centuries, who, walking along the shore (along the so-called towpath), pulled a river vessel against the current with the help of a towline. In the 18th-19th centuries, the main type of vessel driven by barge haulers was the bark. Burlatsky labor was seasonal. The boats were pulled along the “big water”: in spring and autumn. To fulfill the order, barge haulers united in artels. The work of a barge hauler was extremely hard and monotonous. The speed of movement depended on the strength of the tailwind or headwind. When there was a fair wind, a sail was raised on the ship (bark), which significantly accelerated movement. Songs helped the barge haulers maintain the pace of movement. One of the well-known barge haulers’ songs is “Eh, dubinushka, whoosh,” which was usually sung to coordinate the forces of the artel at one of the most difficult moments: moving the bark from its place after raising the anchor.
When Dostoevsky saw this painting by Ilya Repin, familiar to us from childhood, “Barge Haulers on the Volga,” he was very happy that the artist did not put any social protest into it. In “The Diary of a Writer” Fyodor Mikhailovich noted: “... barge haulers, real barge haulers and nothing more. Not one of them shouts from the picture to the viewer: “Look how unhappy I am and to what extent you are in debt to the people!”
Dostoevsky could not even imagine how many banalities would still be said about this picture and what an invaluable document it would now be for those who want to understand the organization of labor of barge haulers.
1. Towpath
A trampled coastal strip along which barge haulers walked. Emperor Paul forbade the construction of fences and buildings here, but that was all. Neither bushes, nor stones, nor swampy places were removed from the barge haulers’ path, so the place written by Repin can be considered an ideal section of the road.
2. Shishka - barge hauler foreman
He became a dexterous, strong and experienced person who knew many songs. In the artel that Repin captured, the big shot was the pop figure Kanin (sketches have been preserved, where the artist indicated the names of some of the characters). The foreman stood, that is, fastened his strap, in front of everyone and set the rhythm of the movement. The barge haulers took each step synchronously with their right leg, then pulling up with their left. This caused the whole artel to sway as it moved. If someone lost their step, people collided with their shoulders, and the cone gave the command “hay - straw,” resuming movement in step. Maintaining rhythm on the narrow paths over the cliffs required great skill from the foreman.
Podshishelnye- the closest assistants were bigwigs, hanging to the right and left of him. On Kanin’s left hand is Ilka the Sailor, the artel foreman who purchased provisions and gave the barge haulers their salaries. In Repin’s time it was small - 30 kopecks a day. For example, this is how much it cost to cross the whole of Moscow in a cab, driving from Znamenka to Lefortovo. Behind the backs of the underdogs were those in need of special control.
"Enslaved", like a man with a pipe, even at the beginning of the journey they managed to squander their salary for the entire voyage. Being indebted to the artel, they worked for grub and did not try very hard.
Cook and falcon elder(that is, responsible for the cleanliness of the latrine on the ship) was the youngest of the barge haulers - the village boy Larka, who experienced real hazing. Considering his duties to be more than sufficient, Larka sometimes made trouble and defiantly refused to pull the burden.
"Hack workers"
In every artel there were simply careless people, like this man with a tobacco pouch. On occasion, they were not averse to shifting part of the burden onto the shoulders of others.
7. "Overseer"
The most conscientious barge haulers walked behind, urging the hacks on.
8. Inert or inflexible
Inert or inert - this was the name of the barge hauler, who brought up the rear. He made sure that the line did not catch on the rocks and bushes on the shore. The inert one usually looked at his feet and rested to himself so that he could walk at his own rhythm. Those who were experienced but sick or weak were chosen for the inert ones.
9-10. Bark and flag
Type of barge. These were used to transport Elton salt, Caspian fish and seal oil, Ural iron and Persian goods (cotton, silk, rice, dried fruits) up the Volga. The artel was based on the weight of the loaded ship at the rate of approximately 250 poods per person. The cargo pulled up the river by 11 barge haulers weighs at least 40 tons.
The order of the stripes on the flag was not paid much attention to, and was often raised upside down, as here.
11 and 13. Pilot and water tanker
Pilot- the man at the helm, in fact the captain of the ship. He earns more than the entire artel combined, gives instructions to the barge haulers and maneuvers both the steering wheel and the blocks that regulate the length of the towline. Now the bark is making a turn, going around the shoal.
Aquarius - carpenter who caulks and repairs the ship, monitors the safety of the goods, and bears financial responsibility for them during loading and unloading. According to the contract, he does not have the right to leave the bark during the voyage and replaces the owner, leading on his behalf.
15. Carving on bark
Since the 16th century, it was customary to decorate Volga barks with intricate carvings. It was believed that it helps the ship rise against the current. The country's best specialists in ax work were engaged in barking. When steamships displaced wooden barges from the river in the 1870s, craftsmen scattered in search of work, and a thirty-year era of magnificent carved frames began in the wooden architecture of Central Russia. Later, carving, which required high skill, gave way to more primitive stencil cutting.
Barge haulers on the Volga. View from the ship.
There were also women's artels:
Women barge haulers were not only in Russia
In Western Europe (for example, in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, as well as in Italy), the movement of river vessels with the help of manpower and draft animals continued until the thirties of the 20th century. But in Germany, the use of manpower ceased in the second half of the 19th century.
Was it hard for the barge haulers?
Not a single river in the world knew such a scale of barge haulage as the Volga. The main reason for this is purely physical: in almost the entire navigable part of the river, the flow speed is not too high. Below we will show the direct connection between the speed of the current and the physical load per each barge hauler.
Barge haulers worked most actively on the 2,645 km section from Rybinsk to Astrakhan.
Repin shows a gang of barge haulers (11 people) walking like a whip along a sandbank on a windless sunny day. The course of the “scourge” usually began above the mouth of the Kama. A strong rope 3 inches thick (~ 7.5 cm) and about 100 fathoms (~ 214 m) long was called a beach rope. The length of the string was chosen so that it was possible to guide the ship through a sufficiently deep place. At the same time, the value of the angle ahor (Fig. 1) should not lead to large losses of work performed.
I.E. Repin accurately indicated the place where the strings were attached (the upper part of the mast) and how it sagged. It would seem that the string should be tensioned, and it should be fastened so that the angle avert (Fig. 2) is as close as possible to 90°. Everything would be so if the whip were weightless. In fact, the weight of such a rope was at least 2500-3000 N, and by attaching the rope to the top of a mast ~30 m high, the barge haulers “hung” the bulk of the weight onto the mast. It is no coincidence that barge haulers did not like it when the whip began to “blow”, i.e. when it was necessary to walk along a high bank, and the place where the scourge was attached turned out to be below the burlatsky path - the “scourge”. However, this rarely happened, because... The dimensions of the vessel, its carrying capacity and the height of the mast were chosen experimentally, taking into account the height of the banks and the depth of the Volga bed.
The type of ship in the picture is easy to determine - this is the famous Volga bark. The length of the most common beams with a carrying capacity of 20,000 poods was equal to L"25m, width B"7.5m, draft T"1.8m, mast height H"30m, length of the beam (attached to the mast of the crossbar) necessary for the movement of the vessel under sail, was also ~ 30 m.
The loaded barks covered the distance from Astrakhan to Nizhny Novgorod (2172 km) in 2.5-3 months, trying mainly to move under sail. On windless days in the lower reaches of the Volga with fast flood waters, ships moved in a forward motion (Fig. 3). In this case, anchors were brought forward of the ship, and the bark was pulled to them using a rope pulled by barge haulers walking along the deck. In this case, a rope was taken that was 4-5 times longer and 1.5 times thicker than the rope, but its weight did not complicate the work too much. During the feed stroke, there is practically no loss in the work performed due to the different geometry of the application of forces. Nevertheless, it is well known that barge haulers preferred the whip method. Obviously, the additional work associated with the delivery of anchors was very burdensome.
We are trying to give a quantitative assessment of the severity of barge labor. Since the ship is moving at a constant speed, the projection of the traction force on the direction of movement is equal to the resistance force of the water flow:
Fthrust = Fresistance.
In Bernoulli's Vade Mecum, first translated and published in Russia in 1864, the following statement can be found: “The resistance to the motion of a ship is proportional to the immersed part of the largest cross-section of the ship, as well as to the square of the speed of the ship.” Let us derive the corresponding formula in modern notation. Qualitatively, it is obtained if we remember that according to Newton’s 2nd law, force is equal to the change in momentum per unit time. Let us write the momentum of a water flow transmitted over time Dt, falling orthogonally onto a plate of area S immersed in water, in the form:
P = mv = rVv = rSЧDtЧvЧv = rSv2Dt.
Here r is the density of water, v is the speed of water flow. Hence the resistance force is equal to:
F = (Cx/2)rSv2.
The dimensionless coefficient Cx is determined experimentally for each specific vessel and depends on the streamlining. In modern real calculations, using several dimensionless parameters, the friction of water on the entire wetted surface is also taken into account. However, the given formula is sufficient for estimation.
When moving the bark against the current, it should be remembered that the speed of the water flow, which provides resistance to movement, is equal to the sum of the speed of the river flow v1 and the speed of movement of the barge haulers v2.
Specific values for the speed of the Volga flow during the time of Repin can be found in the dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron. In the spring, in May, the current speed varied from 2.5 ft/s in the upper reaches to 7.7 ft/s below Saratov. In the summer, these numbers decreased to 1.5 ft/s and 3 ft/s, respectively. On reaches, flat sections of the river that are convenient for navigation, a current speed of 2.3 ft/s can be assumed. From the descriptions of the work of the barge haulers it follows that “without wind or whips” they covered from 5 to 10 miles a day along the coast. Thus, their speed was 0.3-0.6 ft/s. If we take a larger value, then calculations using Bernoulli’s formula, which we do not present, show that the resistance force to the movement of bark on the Volga reaches was approximately 2400 N.
To this figure it is necessary to add the resistance created by the rudder, which must always be kept at a certain angle to the direction of the current, otherwise the bark would stick into the bank. For a flat plate, the dimensionless coefficient Cx = 1.1, the area of the rudderSrudder = 6 m2, and, taking arudder = 10°, we find it using the formula:
Fresistance rudder = (Cx/2)rХSЧsin arulya Хv2,
so the additional steering resistance is approximately 400 N.
The traction force of barge haulers (in accordance with Fig. 1 and 2) is calculated by the formula:
Fthrust = Fresistance/(cos ahortsin avert).
It is impossible to establish the exact value of these angles from I.E. Repin’s painting, but approximately, knowing the length of the rope, the distance from the barge path to the navigable channel (~ 100 m) and the height of the mast, we can calculate the product
cos ahort sin avert = 0.7-0.8.
Consequently, the traction force of the barge haulers is equal to 3500-4000 N. With a gang of 10-11 people, the load on each barge hauler is 320-380 N.
Anyone who wants to feel “in the shoes” of a barge hauler must make a barge hauler strap - a leather belt 3 arshins (213.36 cm) long and 4 arshins (17.78 cm) wide with the ends sewn together, throw it over a block, rigidly fixed on a support at chest level, and attach a load weighing 40 kg (weight 400 N) at the other end. If you throw the rope over the block, put the strap on your chest and start moving so as to lift the load, you will feel approximately the same load that the barge hauler experienced. Considering that the working day of barge haulers lasted from dawn to sunset (with a short break), it turns out that working as a barge hauler was really difficult! Note that the main contribution to resistance is made by the river flow, so that a decrease in current speed by 25% reduces the load by 44%, and an increase by the same amount leads to an increase in load by 56%.
Ancient measures of length and weight
1 fathom = 3 arshins = 12 quarters = 7 feet = 2.1336 m;
1 arshin = 4 quarters = 16 vershoks = 0.7112 m;
1 verst = 500 fathoms = 1066.8 m;
1 m = 2.38 ft;
1 kg of weight = 2.4419 Russian pounds;
1 pood = 16 kg of weight.
Barge haulers were the name given to hired workers who used tow lines to pull river boats against the current. The work was hard, but it gave a huge number of people the opportunity to earn money during the season. The city of Rybinsk was called the capital of the barge haulers. It is not surprising that it was here in 1977 that the first barge hauler monument in our country was erected. For a long time he was also the only one. In 2014, the sculptural composition “Barge Haulers on the Volga” appeared in Samara.
The most experienced and powerful person in the barge hauler artel was called “bump”. It was he who kept order and set the pace of movement. This is where the expression “big shot” came from - that is, a noble, respected person.
Barge haulers were also called “bastards,” and there was nothing offensive in that. The word "bastard" comes from "drag." Suffice it to remember that in Russia there are ancient cities - Vyshny Volochek and Volok-on-Lama (Volokolamsk). During the summer shallow waters, ships could not navigate the local rivers; goods had to be transported several miles by “drag.” Artels of barge haulers were hired for this purpose.
But this word could become offensive due to the fact that people who did not know any other craft were hired to do the dragging. But they were famous for their enormous physical strength and often carried out pogroms in drinking establishments. Therefore, the attitude of the local population was corresponding.
Legends circulated throughout Russia about the strength of some barge haulers. Nikitushka Lomov, a native of the Penza province, was especially famous. Once on the Volga he saw a gang of men who were trying to pull a 25-pound anchor out of the coastal sand. They were hired by a local merchant, promising 3 rubles for their work. Nikitushka easily did what the whole company could not do - he swung the anchor and turned it out of the sand. But the merchant stated that he did not hire Lomov, and paid only a ruble for the work. The strong man decided to teach the miser a lesson: he took the anchor to the merchant’s house and hung it on the gate. To return the anchor to the pier, the merchant again hired a team. I just had to pay a lot more.
One of the most popular songs among barge haulers was the famous: “Eh, club, let’s whoop.” Moreover, the barge haulers sang it not for entertainment, it helped the artel maintain the pace of movement.
Ilya Repin worked on his famous painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga” for three years - from 1870 to 1873. Moreover, for the first time Repin saw barge haulers not on the Volga, but on the Neva.
Having become interested in this topic, the artist went to the village of Shiryaevo on the Volga, where he met the barge haulers personally. True, the picture did not delight all admirers of Repin’s talent. For example, the Minister of Transport Zelenoy reproached the painter for depicting an antediluvian method of transporting ships, which had almost completely disappeared.
But the famous Russian writer and journalist Vladimir Gilyarovsky had a chance to personally pull the burden. In his youth, with one of the artels, he walked the path from Kostroma to Rybinsk. He was a physically very strong man, but one day an embarrassment occurred to him: Gilyarovsky visited his elderly father, and, deciding to show off his strength, bent an iron poker in an arc. The father, who was already over 70 years old, scolded his son for ruining things in the house and bent the poker back.
In 1929, the People's Commissariat of Railways of the USSR officially banned barge labor. But by that time there were practically no barge haulers left; with the advent of steamships, this profession became a thing of the past.
The topic has disappeared, I am restoring it from the cache
Burlak is a hired worker in Russia of the 16th - late 19th centuries, who, walking along the shore, pulled a river boat against the current with the help of a tow. In the 18th-19th centuries, the main type of vessel driven by barge haulers was the bark - Rashiva - Wikipedia.
Burlatsky labor was seasonal. The boats were pulled along the “big water”: in spring and autumn. To fulfill the order, barge haulers united in artels. The work of a barge hauler was extremely hard and monotonous. Songs helped the barge haulers maintain the pace of movement. One of the well-known barge haulers’ songs is “Eh, dubinushka, whoosh,” which was usually sung to coordinate the forces of the artel at one of the most difficult moments: moving the bark from its place after raising the anchor.
Library of A. Sosnin: The emergence and decline of the ship fishery
By the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries. the process of social division of labor, the development of commodity-money relations and the emergence of a single all-Russian market made significant changes in the organization of navigation on inland waterways // library.riverships.ru...Burkering was a unique phenomenon in the economy of feudal Russia. The work of barge haulers was seasonal, which at best continued during navigation, and most often was limited to one flight, or, as they said then, putina, and could not, therefore, serve as a permanent object of labor application and source of livelihood. Some of the barge haulers even in the winter found some work in the ship industry (building and repairing ships, preparing ship equipment, equipment, etc.) or other occupation, but the vast majority of them went home to the village, from which they could not break away connection.
The peasantry was the main base from where barge haulers went to all waterways. But in general, the composition of the barge haulers was quite motley. Despite the heterogeneity of the barge hauler mass, it was clearly divided into professionals and random people. The first, who had been barge haulers all their lives and knew the river very well, were always hired as “indigenous” and were the most reliable element of the barge haulers environment.
The poor peasants, the urban and town poor, or the “extra hands” who could not find use for their labor in the countryside went to random barge haulers out of extreme need. A significant part of the casual barge haulers were (before the abolition of serfdom in 1861) landowner peasants, rented out for arrears or as a form of punishment, as well as fugitive people without a passport, who could be hired for a pittance or simply “for grub.” An irresistible lure was the deposit that could be obtained by hiring a barge hauler, precisely at the time of year when the peasant was in most dire need.
The hiring of barge haulers was usually carried out in winter during the period between the holidays of Maslenitsa and Easter (from late February to early April). Barge haulers gathered at traditionally designated points for “burlak” bazaars. The Big Bazaar on the Volga was held annually in Puchezh. Large points for hiring barge haulers were also Kostroma, Kineshma, Yuryevets, Gorodets, Balakhna, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saratov, and on the Kama - Perm, Chistopol, Laishev.
Burlatsky bazaars presented a very picturesque picture.
Early in the morning on market day, barge haulers gathered in an artel on the market square and chose a contractor from among themselves, who negotiated with the shipowners in full view of the entire artel. The artel usually set a maximum price, which the contractor could, as a last resort, agree to. Sometimes unscrupulous contractors, for a good bribe, informed the shipbuilders in advance of the maximum price for hiring an artel, but if the barge haulers somehow found out about this, they brutally dealt with the contractor.
The hiring of barge haulers was formalized by an agreement, which stipulated the responsibilities of the parties and, in particular detail, the responsibilities of the barge haulers. Thus, in the agreement concluded on April 24, 1847 in the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Rybinsk shipping reprisal by an artel of shipworkers with the Balakhna merchant Nesterov, the former assumed the following obligations: upon arrival at the bark, “to remove it properly to the float, float it down the Volga River to the Baronsky colony to the barns shown, from which, after we have made the bridges, we can load them with wheat, as the owner wishes, and according to the load and having really removed them, lift the bark up, along the Volga River to Nizh. Novgorod with haste, without waking up the morning and evening dawns, to assign us three and a half people for every thousand pounds of cargo, except for the pilot, while during the journey we try in every possible way so that the ship is not subject to the slightest delay. We must all remain with the owner and his messenger and pilot in all obedience and obedience... If we encounter shallow water, then reload the luggage into pauzki, for which we have to walk up and down 30 miles without paying. If misfortune occurs with the ship and there is no way to save it, then we are obliged to immediately bring it to the shore, drain the water from it, unload the luggage onto the shore, dry it out and load it back into one or another vessel and proceed as before. At the same time, we are obliged to have extreme caution against fire on board and for this purpose not to smoke tobacco on board, to protect ourselves from attacks by thieves and not allow robbery, to protect the vessel and the owner day and night. Upon arrival in the mountains. Place the lower vessel, dry up the supplies, remove it wherever ordered, then, having received passports and settled the settlement, be free. If, during the calculation, we end up with too much money, then we are obligated to pay it in full without question. Each person gets 16 silver rubles for poutine. Each person receives a deposit of 10 rubles. 29 k. silver.”
Burgomasters and clerks usually dressed up as landowner peasants. Often the shipmaster, wanting to hire a crew of barge haulers cheaper, came to the village headman or foreman. They called in the poor peasants and forced them to become barge haulers. In these cases, the deposit was usually taken away by the headman “for arrears,” and the barge haulers, after the end of the poutine, often practically did not receive a penny: all the remaining money was spent “on grub.” Hired barge haulers came to the places where ships were built or wintered two weeks before the ice drift, prepared the ships for sailing, brought them to places safe from ice drift, and loaded them. Ships usually set off on their voyages immediately after the ice broke up.
A group of barge haulers pulling a towline was called a “sada”. At its head stood and walked in the lead strap the most experienced and healthy barge hauler, who was called “big shot” or “uncle,” who chose the path and set the rhythm in the overall work, which required clear coordination. Behind the “bigwig” were placed the most lazy or enslaved barge haulers, who, having already squandered their earnings, served for nothing but grub and were not interested in work. They were followed by conscientious workers, who, if necessary, urged the lazy ones on. Behind everyone walked the “inert” one, who watched the line and “sorted” it, that is, took it off if it touched something.
The movement of barge haulers with a towline was so difficult that normal walking, even with small and slow steps, was impossible, so they first put their right foot forward, rested it on the ground and slowly pulled the left one towards it, or took a very small step with their left foot. The step was even and always simultaneous, so the “seda” was constantly swaying smoothly and slightly to the sides.
Almost all barge haulers' work, including moving the towline, was accompanied by the singing of songs, which not only set the required rhythm, but also, to some extent, set up the barge haulers to do hard work. These songs were the work of the barge haulers themselves, primitive in form and content, they reflected the conditions of hard work and joyless existence.
Hard labor with virtually no rest, unsanitary conditions, and lack of medical care took their toll and barge haulers, after several years of work, turned into exhausted disabled people, primarily those who died in the then frequent epidemics.
Hundreds of thousands of people were engaged in heavy barge labor. According to the calculations of F.N. Rodin, in the last quarter of the 18th century. in the Volga basin and on the Vyshnevolotsk system, at least 340 thousand shipworkers were employed. In the early 30s of the XIX century. on the Volga and Oka there were 412 thousand people, on the Kama 50 thousand people. And during the heyday of the ship trade, in 1854, 704.8 thousand barge haulers worked on the rivers and canals of European Russia alone. Their social composition was extremely heterogeneous. Among the barge haulers in 1854 there were (in thousands of people):
Peasants (state, landowner, appanage) - 580.8
Freed and free cultivators – 4.4
Soldiers (retired, arable, indefinitely released) and Cossacks - 14.1
Bourgeois, merchants, odnodvortsev – 85.9
Nobles – 2.8
Upon arrival at the agreed destination, the barge haulers received payment for their work. In order not to pay for downtime, they did not delay the calculation and generally tried to send the barge haulers home as quickly as possible, considering the accumulation of a large mass of these restless people undesirable.
During calculations, big misunderstandings arose regarding payment for downtime. According to the situation that existed at that time, downtime days not due to the fault of ship workers were paid only starting from the fourth day of downtime at 15 kopecks. for a day. For the first three days, the barge haulers, as well as the horse handlers, received nothing. To avoid paying simple money, shipowners often resorted to a trick: after standing in one place for three days, they forced the shipworkers to move the ship forward by 400-600 m, and thus received another three preferential days. Numerous complaints and indignations of ship workers forced the Senate to issue a decree on August 27, 1817, which established that the day would not be considered idle if the daily journey downstream exceeded 16 versts, and upstream - 6 versts. In addition, the limit on three preferential days, when the shipowner could not pay workers simple money, applied to the entire navigation, and not to a one-time stay. It should be noted, however, that this decree did not eliminate the arbitrariness of the owners. After deducting the deposit and food costs, the barge haulers received little, and sometimes nothing at all, in the final payment.
In some places (for example, on the canals of the Mariinsky system) barge haulage survived until the 1900s.
How do we know about the difficult fate of barge haulers who pulled ships along rivers and lakes in pre-revolutionary Russia? Well, of course, mainly thanks to the famous painting by Ilya Repin “Barge Haulers on the Volga”, reproductions of which are even in school textbooks. But to what extent everything depicted on it corresponds to historical truth is a very, very big question.
First version of the painting
Back in the old Soviet school, we, then its students, were told about the hard work of the Volga barge haulers, and we had to, looking at Repin’s painting, retell the teacher’s words in our own words. In the end, it turned out that there were no more unhappy people in the world, and it is clear that the Great October Revolution, which ended all this, was an extremely fair event.
However, then I once read a book by the American writer Bernard Schultz, “With the Indians in the Rocky Mountains,” and there, too, the work of local Cordilleran barge haulers was described, who, although they dragged the gabara upstream, sang songs in the evenings and, in general, did not are not shown as unhappy people. However, although this was deposited in my consciousness, I did not come to any conclusions then. Like, the American gabara is one thing, but our Volga barge is completely different.
But then one day I found myself on the Volga, and questions rained down one after another. It turned out that the banks of the Volga are different. The left one is low-lying, flat and sandy. And the right one is high and steep. The reason for this is that the Volga flows in the meridional direction and the “Coriolis force” acts on its flow, washing away the right bank.
Now let's look at the map and estimate how long it would take barge haulers to drag the barge up from Astrakhan to Nizhny Novgorod to the trade fair?! It is inconvenient to walk on the left bank, although it is flat, precisely because of the same “Coriolis force”, but on the right - it is simply impossible, since the cliffs there come close to the bank, which is also overgrown with bushes.
And how did they go then? Especially considering that in Repin’s painting they are walking along the right bank! But the whole point is that what is shown on the artist’s canvas is not exactly what actually happened. It’s just that its author wanted to make a single phenomenon widespread, and since he was talented, he completely succeeded. Repin was an impressionable, intelligent man, and they made a grave impression on him.
sketch for a painting
“What a horror this is,” I say bluntly. “People are harnessed instead of cattle! Savitsky, is it really not possible to transport barges with luggage in a more decent way, for example, by towing steamers?” - Ilya Efimovich recalls his impressions on the pages of the autobiographical book “Distant Close”. Another, later, review of his was as follows: “I must confess frankly that I was not at all interested in the question of the life and social structure of the barge haulers’ agreements with their owners; I asked them only to give some seriousness to my case. To tell the truth, I even absentmindedly listened to what -a story or detail about their relationship with their owners and these bloodsucking boys."
Meanwhile, if the artist had listened to all this more carefully, then... the plot of the picture could well have been completely different! The fact is that this picture really depicts the work of barge haulers in a completely different way from what it really was, and this is not difficult to verify by referring to I. A. Shubin’s monograph “The Volga and Volga Shipping,” published in the USSR in 1927. The case The fact is that real barge haulers worked completely differently. They drove barges from bottom to top along the river, and how was it possible to walk along the river, even the left bank, or the right bank - you won’t go far along the water!
Therefore, on barges, the upper deck was always level - it is clear that these were the barges that floated upstream, self-propelled, because there were also towing barges. At the stern of such a barge there was a large drum. And there was a rope wound on it, and three anchors clung to it. The movement began with people getting into a boat, taking with them a rope with an anchor and sailing upstream, and dropping the anchor. Then another, a third, until they had enough rope.
And then the barge haulers had to get to work. They approached this rope, clung to it with their jowls and walked from bow to stern, choosing a rope, and there, at the stern, they wound it on a drum. It turned out that they were walking backwards, and the deck under their feet was moving forward. Then they again ran to the bow of the barge, and all this was repeated. So the barge floated upstream until the very first anchor, which was then raised, and then the second and third. That is, they were placed and raised one by one all the time, so that the barge, as if by itself, was crawling along a rope against the current. It is clear that this was not easy work, but not such that people fell from it!
But every burlatsk artel, when hiring for work, agreed on grub. And for such work they were usually given a day: no less than two pounds of bread, half a pound of meat, and as much fish as they could eat(!), and also some butter, sugar, salt, tea, tobacco , cereals - everything was discussed. A barrel of red caviar was placed separately on the deck - anyone who had a desire could come up, cut off a crust of bread from their share and eat it with spoons as much as they wanted. After lunch we always slept; it was a sin to work.
And only if the pilot, out of drunkenness, ran the barge aground, then the whole team had to climb into the water, and just like Repin wrote it, pull the barge off it. And then... before that, they specifically agreed on how much the burlatsk artel would do it for, and after that the merchant also gave them vodka for it! And during the summer season, a good barge hauler earned so much money that in the winter he could do nothing, and still neither he nor his family were in poverty. And if he didn’t drink in taverns, but gave money on interest to his owner, then he had a good life.
The owners valued such people and tried in every possible way to serve them and gain their favor. The strongest and most dexterous artels went to these people, so they got to the fair in Nizhny Novgorod earlier than others, and made more profit than others! This was the general thing, but what we see in Repin’s painting is isolated. And why he wrote it like that is also understandable: to arouse pity in the viewer for the working people. This was the fashion of the Russian intelligentsia at that time, and Ilya Efimovich was by no means alone in presenting his suffering as “more compassionate”!
But there were also horse-racing barges - where instead of barge haulers, horses worked, turning this very drum. But they didn’t have any special advantages over people. That is, yes, horse racing was much cheaper to operate, especially since they bought hay and oats for the horses directly at the parking lots, and did not take them with them. But what if the barge suddenly ran aground? Pull it down with horses? It was very inconvenient in all respects. And keeping barge haulers on board for this extreme case is unprofitable. That is, it was necessary to go somewhere to look for them, and time is precious, not to mention the fact that during the harvest season all the artels had long since been dismantled. That’s why they didn’t become widespread and no one painted pictures about the work of these horses!
Barge haulers are one of the brightest pages in the history of the Volga. Burlachism originated early in the 16th century. Then the famous Persian caravans began to travel along the Volga. From the lower reaches to Kazan and the upper Volga cities (Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Tver, Nizhny Novgorod), ships from Persia and Astrakhan were hauled by barge haulers. In the 18th century, the Volga became the main transport artery of Russia. Tens of thousands of barge haulers pulled thousands of ships up the river. In the 19th century, about 600 thousand barge haulers already worked on the Volga.
Burlatsky labor was seasonal. The boats were pulled along the “big water”: in spring and autumn. To fulfill the order, barge haulers united in artels. The work of a barge hauler was extremely hard and monotonous. The speed of movement depended on the strength of the tailwind or headwind. When there was a fair wind, a sail was raised on the ship (bark), which significantly accelerated movement. Songs helped the barge haulers maintain the pace of movement. One of the well-known barge haulers’ songs is “Eh, club, whoop,” which was usually sung to coordinate the forces of the artel at one of the most difficult moments: moving the bark from its place after raising the anchor
In addition to men, the artels also included women. There were also all-female artels. And the load is different: if women had five barge haulers for every 1000 poods of cargo, men only had three. The burlat strap was heavy. I had to work 19 hours a day.
In the front strap walked an experienced and strong barge hauler who knew the “sakma” (barge hauler path) - he was called “bump” or “uncle”. He established the rhythm of the movement and drew out the usual chorus: “Hay and straw” - to raise energy and move in step. After the “bump” came the “bumpy”. Further, “lazy” and so-called “bonded” workers, they pulled the line only for grub, because they squandered all their earnings along the way. And the “bonded” ones were driven to the very tail of the artel by “conscientious” or “zealous” barge haulers. The “inert” one brought up the rear. He made sure that the string did not catch on anything. When pulling the tow line, the barge haulers stepped forward only with their right foot, and the left moved closer to the right, then the right stepped again - and so on all the time. As they walked, the barge haulers sang in hoarse, always cold voices. Some were harnessed to the barge hauler out of necessity, others simply to continue the dynasty.
At short stops, barge haulers darned their worn-out shirts and changed their shoes into new bast shoes. “The artel moved on, leaving on the shore the smoldering coals of the fire, broken bast shoes and rotten onuchi, and sometimes roughly hewn grave crosses...” Having hired an artel of barge haulers, the owner of the ship took away their residence permit. The barge hauler became enslaved until the end of the route. According to the contract, he is obliged: “To be with the owner in all obedience... He must go day and night with all possible haste, without the slightest delay... To work - at first light. Do not smoke tobacco on the ship. Do not have any contact with thieves. From robbers, If they attack you, fight back without sparing your life."
The Volga barge haulers were divided into two categories: upper and lower barge haulers. The upper ones worked on water systems between Rybinsk and St. Petersburg, the lower ones between Rybinsk and Astrakhan. The main mass of barge haulers consisted of landowners, state, appanage peasants and petty bourgeois of the Volga provinces. Barge haulers united in artels of 10-45 people. In some cases, the artel reached 150 people. The conditions for hiring barge haulers were determined by the “Charter of Merchant Navigation” of 1781, drawn up in the interests of shipowners.
After celebrating Maslenitsa, men, driven by extreme poverty, flocked to the “burlatsky” bazaars, where they signed up for artels. The largest such receiving point was considered the city of Puchezh on the Volga (now Ivanovo region). Smaller “bazaars” were located in Nizhny Novgorod, Kineshma, Kostroma, Kazan, Saratov, Samara and several other large cities. On the banks of the Kama there are such cities as Perm, Laishev and Chistopol. The so-called capital of barge haulers was located in the city of Rybinsk (Yaroslavl region), where there was even a monument to a barge hauler. Rybinsk was the most important internal region of the country. The ships of that time were clumsy and heavy when moving. The main draft force was barge haulers. During navigation, up to 130 thousand barge haulers gathered in Rybinsk. If the ship covered the distance from Samara to Rybinsk in 16 days, the barge haulers needed two months to cover the same route.
Experienced people unmistakably identified newcomers by clothes, bast shoes, hats - who was from which area. Those from Saratov were nicknamed “chekhonniks”, those from Kazan were called “orphans”, those from Nizhny Novgorod were called “water-breaders”, and those from Yaroslavl were called “arshinniks”. In the North, barge haulers were also called yarygs or yaryzhki.
Peasants predominated among the barge haulers. They agreed to such exhausting work because of poverty, lack of land, and poor harvests. Homeless people and tramps also went to the barge haulers. The word “barge hauler” itself comes from the distorted Tatar word “buidak”, that is, homeless, almost “homeless”.
Anyone who wants to feel “in the shoes” of a barge hauler must make a barge hauler strap - a leather belt 3 arshins long (about 2.5 meters) and 4 arshins wide (18 cm) with the ends sewn together, throw it over a block rigidly attached to support at chest level, and strengthen it at another
at the end is a load weighing 40 kg. If you throw the rope over the block, put the strap on your chest and start moving so as to lift the load, you will feel approximately the same load that the barge hauler experienced. Considering that the working day of barge haulers lasted from dawn to sunset (with a short break), it turns out that working as a barge hauler was really difficult!
Since the beginning of the 19th century, capstans and horse guides appeared on the Volga - vessels on a winch with horse or steam traction. They became a help for fishermen.
A large drum with a rope wound around it was installed on the barges. People got into the boat, took with them the end of the cable with three anchors and sailed upstream. There they threw anchors into the water one by one. Barge haulers on the barge pulled the cable from bow to stern, winding it onto a drum. In this way, they “pulled” the barge upstream: they walked backward, and the deck under their feet moved forward. Having wound the cable, they again went to the bow of the ship and did the same. It was necessary to pull along the shore only when the ship ran aground.
By the 20s of the 19th century, the first steamships appeared on the Volga, which gradually replaced barge haulers. By 1870, barge haulers on the Volga had practically disappeared.
The famous painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga” by Ilya Repin is dedicated to barge haulers. Repin shows a gang of barge haulers (11 people) walking like a whip along a sandbank on a windless sunny day. The course of the “scourge” usually began above the mouth of the Kama. Beach rope was a strong rope 3 inches (7.5 cm) thick and about 100 fathoms (214 m) long. The length of the string was chosen so that it was possible to guide the ship through a sufficiently deep place. At the same time, the size of the angle should not lead to large losses of work performed. The picture was painted in 1870-1873, when steamships replaced sailing boats and the need for barge labor disappeared.
Kazan, like other large cities, attracted peasants going to barge haulers from a radius of 500 kilometers or more. In the famous village of pilots Verkhniy Uslon, which is opposite Kazan, in the spring several tens of thousands of barge haulers gathered every year, who were hired to pull the burden for the merchants. This event was called the “spring exchange”. A lot came from Vyatka and Kama from the forest edges. A large role in the influx was played by the city on the Kama Laishev, which is 60 km from Kazan, where the Demidov caravan, 500 barges, and all the metal of the Urals arrived annually from the beginning of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. In the initial period of the fair’s history, there was a change in gangs of barge haulers. The Vyatka and Kama barge haulers received payment here, and then the Nizhny Novgorod residents pulled the ships.
It should be said that barge hauling is not an exclusively Russian profession. Barge haulers sailed ships along the Seine, Danube, and along the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Everywhere where trade flourished and it was necessary to lift ships upstream.
