Burlak is a slave or professional worker

The word "burlaki" in modern Russians is associated with the image of a group of bearded exhausted peasants in tattered clothes, who persistently try to pull the strap off the barge, which is somewhere in the background of Ilya Repin's picture "Burlaki on the Volga". In this case, they must have been humming "Eh, dubinushka, uhnem!". Is it time to find out more in detail, a burlak is a slave or a professional worker?

History of the emergence of burlacies

The profession of "burlak" existed on the territory of Russia in the period from 16th to 19th centuries. Its appearance is due to the peculiarities of river navigation, namely, the fact that, unlike the sea, each river has a current. Therefore, if a sailing vessel needed to swim against the current of the river, it had to be somehow towed.

The optimal option was the use as a draft force of battalions of burlaks, who harnessed to the tow and pulled the ship along the "big water". It can be said that in tsarist Russia, with its serf system, burlacies represented an entire branch of the economy. Burlak - it's hard work, for which not everyone received money.

The demand for barge haulers

Especially burlatskie artels have become popular, since the 18th century, when the spread of so-called barkings - disposable wooden rafting vessels with carrying capacity up to 480 tons and a length of almost 50 meters.

From the use of burlak labor gradually began to be abandoned after the invention of steam traction. Only for a short period of time when river transport moved against the current of the river, the work of barge haulers was replaced by the following method: the shore was brought anchor forward in the direction of the vessel's movement for some distance, after which the vessel was pulled by a winch. The history of burlaks begins in the 16th century. Therefore, during the existence of the profession, many strong men died.

By a special decree, the Soviet government in 1929 banned the use of barge haulers for towing river vessels. They remembered the Burlat thrust during the Great Patriotic War, when the need for tugs was acutely felt.

Features of the burlac profession

The only assistant of these workers of the river fleet was a fair wind, which inflated the sails raised on the ship. Usually bark, which was pulled against the current burlatskaya gang, per day overcame about 12 kilometers.

By the way, "Eh, a club ..." is not just a song in the usual sense. In fact, in this way barge haulers, as it were, coordinated their forces when the anchor was raised from the bottom, and the ship was afraid. At this point, they had a very hard time. The meaning of the word "burlak" is simple: it is a man who works in an artel, which draws out ships.

Not only that the work of the people of this profession is monotonous, besides it is also very debilitating. Its specificity is that it had a seasonal character: from spring to autumn, i.e. For the period of navigation. However, not all burlaks in the winter did nothing. Natives of the peasant environment returned to their native villages. Among the professionals or "indigenous" barge haulers were random workers who were hired for just one flight.

Due to whom replenished burlatskie artels

Burlacs were not at all because of a good life. They were mostly peasants with very low incomes. Another source was the representatives of the poor people of Byelorussia and the townsfolk from the lower class, including those without passport and escaped from their masters. In general, the artel was replenished with a mass of the population, which could not realize itself in any other way. Paying for hard work in different ways, sometimes hiring only for feeding. Burlak - this is not a slave, but working for a piece of bread equated this grueling work to slavery.

Before the abolition of serfdom in the Russian Empire was officially abolished in 1861, the landowners often surrendered to serfs those serfs who had debts. Burlak is an old profession, which was sometimes given as punishment.

Having celebrated Shrovetide, driven by extreme need, the peasants rushed to the "burlack" bazaars, where they were registered in artels. The largest such reception point was the city of Puchezh on the Volga (now Ivanovo region). "Bazaars" of a smaller scale were in Nizhny Novgorod, Kineshma, Kostroma, Saratov, Samara and several other large cities. On the banks of the Kama River, which is in the Western Urals, such points were the cities of Perm, Laishev and Chistopol. The so-called capital of burlaks was in Rybinsk (Yaroslavl region), where even a monument to a burlak was erected.