Novgorod, Pskov, and St. Petersburg provinces were part of the Northwestern (in, pp. some sources, Priozerny) region of the Russian Empire. It was characterized by underdeveloped grain production and the predominance of flax growing and meat and dairy farming. The three northwestern provinces were located in the most forested region of European Russia and they were characterized by a heterogeneity of natural and geographical conditions, which determined the possibilities for the development of agriculture. The climate was characterized by moderately warm summers and long, unstable winters with frequent thaws. The warm period began from the first ten days of April and continued until the end of October, i.e., an average of 205 to 220 days. The frosts at the end of May and even in the first ten days of June, early autumn frosts, snowless winters with severe frosts, etc., were frequent natural anomalies. They had an extremely negative impact on the agriculture of the peasants of the northwestern region of the country.

The soils were diverse, which was due to the peculiarities of the relief, and the most widely represented soils were podzolic, clayey, loamy, and marshy soils.Footnote 1 Due to the low yield of grain crops, agriculture could not provide the peasants with bread. As zemstvo researchers noted, “the wide development of the fishing activity of the population is an inevitable consequence of this state of affairs.”Footnote 2 The well-known publicist and researcher of peasant life, Ya.V. Abramov, in his work on the situation of the peasant economy in the Shlisselburg district, stated that “earnings from crafts make up more than two-fifths of the total budget of the average peasant family.”Footnote 3 In 1898, one of the zemstvo correspondents wrote from the Domozhirovskaya volost of Novoladozhsky district of St. Petersburg province that the peasants of the village of Fomino live mainly on the nonagricultural earnings of men and “only women and male adolescents are engaged in agriculture.”Footnote 4

The scarcity of land and harsh natural conditions have long forced the peasants to resort to nonagricultural activities, and contributed to the development of the commercial activities of farmers. Some of the crafts were distributed throughout the province (forestry, ship building, and fishing), while others (ironwork, pottery, stove-making, etc.) had a pronounced cluster character. All of them, to a greater or lesser extent, were connected with other fisheries.

The presence of large tracts of forest, deposits of clay, limestone, and numerous rivers and lakes led to the widespread use of forestry, shipbuilding, pottery, fishing, and other crafts. Engagement in various crafts, dictated by the living conditions of the peasants of the northwestern countryside, was accompanied by an increasing separation of the peasants from agriculture. In fact, there was a gap between the agricultural labor of the peasants and fishing activities.

The craft life of the peasants consisted of work in the places of permanent residence of farmers and also on the side, in seasonal work outside the farms. Therefore, in the sources and literature, all nonagricultural occupations of the peasants were considered either as local or as seasonal crafts. Of course, such a division is rather arbitrary. As the well-known zemstvo statistician V.I. Yakovenko wrote in relation to this, the division of crafts into local and seasonal ones “has a very arbitrary meaning: in relation to the volost, any more or less long-term work in another neighboring volost should be considered seasonal; in relation to the district, work in another district; etc.”Footnote 5 There are various definitions in the literature that characterize the nonagricultural activities of peasants: craft, small rural industry, local crafts, seasonal crafts, and handicraft industry. The most commonly used terms are local and seasonal crafts and handicraft industry.

The terminological uncertainty of the object of study by zemstvo statisticians in the study of crafts was noted by the famous historian P.G. Ryndzyunsky.Footnote 6 For the historian himself, the definition of the handicraft industry was synonymous with the term peasant industry.Footnote 7 K.N. Tarnovsky believed that a small-scale handicraft industry “is understood as the work of a commodity producer on the market, directly or through a buyer.”Footnote 8 In the article by E.G. Istomina, a definition of a small-scale handicraft industry is given that is close in content and form “… rural (handicraft) crafts are understood as the work of a commodity producer on the market, directly or through a buyer ….”Footnote 9 The definition of handicraft industry formulated in one of the latest reference publications on the socioeconomic history of prerevolutionary Russia is close to this definition. According to G.R. Naumova, the cottage industry is “small peasant commodity production oriented on the market.”Footnote 10 The Big Encyclopedia contains its own wording of the term, where crafts are defined as follows: “handicrafts, small manual production of industrial products, which dominated before the advent of large-scale machine industry.”Footnote 11

Highlighting the main point, it can be argued that two main features characterize the peasant small-scale production. First of all, the production of an independent manufacturer related to the market directly or indirectly through a buyer. Further, it is mainly the manufacturing industry, in contrast to the mining industry. In this article, the terms crafts, small peasant industry, and handicraft industry will be used as synonyms to refer to the occupations of the peasants, which included the procurement of various raw materials (wood, clay, stone slabs, etc.), the processing of various materials, and manufacture of products for sale on the market independently or with the help of a buyer.

Contemporaries noticed a tendency to turn crafts from simple help for peasant farms into the main source of livelihood for farmers. “Employment in agriculture alone did not always and not everywhere provide for the peasantry,” wrote the well-known researcher of peasant life N.V. Ponomarev, “therefore, in many areas of Russia, especially when land was scarce and the soil was scarce, the peasants, in their free time from field work, were engaged in various home (handicraft) crafts for industrial purposes. These occupations gave the population, in total, significant earnings, which served as a support, and sometimes even the only means for the existence of a peasant family.”Footnote 12

The difficult natural and climatic conditions of the northwestern provinces affected the agricultural occupations of the peasants. According to Academician N.M. Druzhinin “… an abundance of rivers and lakes, northern winds, and the short summers, as well as the sometimes clayey and sometimes stony soil, did not allow a good bread harvest.” As an example, he cited the situation in Pskov province, where for 20 years there were 13 crop failures and, on average, it was possible to harvest from 2.5 to 3.5 grains per sown grain. As a result, in the province “… there was always a shortage of bread and it had to be bought at fairs and bazaars.”Footnote 13

There was a reduction in the area of peasant allotments in the province. The size of the allotment per capita was 4.7 dessiatines before the abolition of serfdom, then by 1880 it had decreased to 3.5 dessiatines, and by 1900, to 2.6 dessiatines of landFootnote 14. Lack of land, the severity of taxes and arrears, and chronic crop failures led to the fact that agriculture did not cover even half of the usual annual expenses of the peasant economy.Footnote 15 To make ends meet, the peasants were forced to turn to crafts. A noticeable feature of the crafts in Pskov province was that they, as a rule, did not go beyond the agricultural way of the peasant farm. In terms of time, they were most often limited to the winter months.Footnote 16

Exploring the issue of payments as a factor influencing the peasant economy, Yu.E. Janson stated that one-third of the entire labor force in Novgorod province “earned money all-year-round outside their farms.”Footnote 17 “… a peasant of Pskov province,” wrote A.A. Pypin, “never extracts all the necessary means for his existence exclusively from agriculture … the peasant needs, in addition to cultivating the land, to have some other source of income ….”Footnote 18 A similar picture was observed in other provinces of the northwest.

In the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, peasant nonagricultural crafts were strongly influenced by the rapidly developing capitalist relations in the country, which introduced new and modified forms of small-scale production, and sometimes conserved the existing forms of small-scale production. The figures of the distributor, buyer, owner, etc., became clear evidence of the penetration of capitalist relations in peasant crafts.Footnote 19

Under capitalism, production lost its local character, and small-scale sales became increasingly difficult and unprofitable. Under these conditions, the problem of acquiring raw materials and marketing products acquired particular importance, since small producers turned out to be completely helpless in the conditions of market forces. While the process of production itself still remained in the hands of the peasants, the process of exchange passed into the hands of intermediary capitalists. They provided the peasants with the opportunity to work, supplying production with increasingly expensive raw materials. At the same time, the sale of manufactured products was concentrated in their hands. The peasants engaged in fishing often turned into hired workers at home.

“In peasant crafts,” noted D.I. Budaev, a well-known researcher of the history of the Smolensk village, close in its natural-geographical and economic conditions to the northwestern village, a process was taking place of turning artisans into small commodity producers and hired workers in large-scale capitalist industry. Based on the crafts, enterprises arose that were at the stage of simple cooperation.”Footnote 20 It can also be stated that rural industry, on the one hand, trained workers for large-scale factory production, and at the same time hindered the transition of impoverished peasants to the ranks of hired workers, by holding them back in the countryside.

The crafts stimulated the growth of commodity-money relations and erased the features of patriarchy in the countryside and in the peasant family. Contemporaries noted that in the process of switching the attention and labor efforts of peasants from work in agriculture to crafts, a change took place in their way of life.Footnote 21 In fact, there was a process of erosion of the social status of the peasants and a change in the social identification of rural residents, characterized in the prerevolutionary literature by the term depeasantization. The peasants themselves understood the ambiguity of their social status; this was why the Novgorod villagers said: “What kind of peasantry is ours: one word is a peasant, and buy flour from Pokrov; you’ll spend the winter rolling the hemp, and you will be well fed.”Footnote 22 Moreover, such ambiguity in the social identification of rural residents was not limited just to the provinces of the capital region. The influence of crafts (especially seasonal crafts) on the demographic situation in the Russian countryside was noticeable. The process of the formation of the industrial proletariat in the country was directly related to the nonagricultural occupations of the peasants.Footnote 23

A prominent place in the formation and dynamics of crafts was occupied by the level of concentration of the labor force, the presence or absence of a raw material base, and the state of the transport system and infrastructure in general, as well as the historically established household and production skills of the population. Thus, according to P.G. Ryndzyunsky in the northwestern provinces of Russia “along with the industrial outskirts of St. Petersburg” there were significant areas of the Novgorod, Pskov and partly St. Petersburg provinces “with a very backward economic appearance.”Footnote 24

The crafts of the peasants of different regions were distinguished by local diversity, which was based mainly on the peculiarities of natural and climatic conditions, as well as the life and labor traditions of the rural population. An important circumstance that influenced the state of peasant crafts was the presence or absence of a developed network of land and water routes.

Large tracts of forest, deposits of clay and flagstone, and numerous rivers and lakes have led to the wide distribution of forestry, shipbuilding, pottery, fishing, and other industries in the northwestern provinces. Occupation in various crafts, dictated by the living conditions of the peasants, was accompanied by the increasing separation of the peasants from agriculture. In fact, there was a gap between the agricultural occupations of the peasants and crafts.

The farther the handicraftsmen were from the place of sale of their products the more intermediaries there were through whose hands the handicrafts passed, and the greater the monetary losses suffered by the peasants. Therefore, the owners of wealthy peasant households sought to establish a direct relationship with the buyers. Using horse-drawn transport, railroad, or ships, they exported large quantities of goods to more distant markets. Thus, some Tikhvin potters preferred to deliver their ceramics to St. Petersburg on their own boats. It was more profitable this way, since the figure of an intermediary did not arise between the artisanal peasants and the buyers of their products.

However, many peasants were forced to turn to an intermediary and, as a result, found themselves dependent on him. By adding credit operations to his trading activities, the buyer became an indispensable element of the production and trade chain, without whose mediation the sale of peasant products became impossible. The more significant the place occupied by fishing in the economy of the peasant economy the stronger the influence of the buyer. Very often, the peasants received small amounts of money from the buyer for their products, and they had to take the rest in the form of a barter of materials and consumer goods from the shop at inflated prices. In order to bind the peasants more firmly to themselves, the intermediaries often paid taxes for them.

Merchants-buyers, who played a prominent role in peasant crafts, in the postreform years often ceased to represent an isolated commercial capital. Many of them turned into representatives of large-scale capitalist production and exploited rural industrialists, who actually acquired a new social status. Thus, on the one hand, there was a steady process of gradual subordination of the small commodity producer to commercial capital, and on the other hand, the transformation of the buyer from an agent trading commodities into an industrialist-manufacturer.

According to the reforms of 1861, 1863, and 1866, peasants of various categories of the northwestern provinces received much larger land plots than the peasants of the Central Black Earth Region.Footnote 25 However, in comparison with the average area of the prereform allotment, the average size of the prereform allotment of the peasants of the northwestern village during the reform of 1861 decreased by 27.7%, or 2 dessiatines of land. The peasants lost the best arable land, hayfields, and pastures for livestock, as well as forests.Footnote 26 According to S.G. Kashchenko in the first 20 postreform years, there was a significant reduction in the size of the peasant allotment: in the Novgorod province by 15.2%, in Pskov by 17.6%, and in St. Petersburg by 11.3%.Footnote 27

In Novgorod province, the former state peasants were in the most advantageous position, the average size of their allotment was 7.2 dessiatines per capita, followed by former feudal peasants with 6.1 dessiatines, and former landlord peasants with the least allotment land of 5.7 dessiatines.Footnote 28 According to Yu.E. Janson, in order to provide the peasant population with food alone, not counting other expenses, in the non-Chernozem belt of Russia, it was necessary that the per capita allotment was at least 8 dessiatines of medium quality land.Footnote 29 It can be seen from these figures that even the state peasants, who were provided with the most land, on average received plots that were not sufficiently large. Peasants annually experienced a shortage of bread grown on their land.Footnote 30 According to Yu.E. Janson, from 8 900 000 rubles of the annual income of Novgorod farmers more than 3 000 000 were spent on purchasing bread that they lacked.Footnote 31 The farmers had to buy the bread necessary for a normal life with money earned in local or seasonal crafts.

The budget of a significant part of the peasant farms of the northwestern provinces of Russia relied to some extent on earnings from crafts, which for many farmers turned into the main part of the peasant budget having originally been a source of occasional extra income. The dominant role of crafts in the economic life of peasant farms was recorded by many contemporaries and confirmed by the material of the zemstvo surveys conducted at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The income from crafts for many peasant farms was crucial, since the work of peasant craftsmen brought more money to the family budget than farming, where not only men but also women were employed. Therefore, an increasing number of peasants preferred to engage in a craft (often, seasonal work), leaving the farming to women, teenagers, and the elderly. In relation to this, two trends became noticeable in the countryside. On the one hand, there was a gradual degradation of the agricultural economy, which was impossible to maintain in a stable state using only the weak labor force that remained in the countryside. On the other hand, the social status of a peasant woman, who became the de facto head of the economy, changed significantly. This process was confirmed by the increasing participation of women in secular gatherings.

At the same time, the preservation of the agricultural peasant economy with the simultaneous occupation of some kind of craft guaranteed the peasants a more stable family budget. Its income became less dependent on fluctuations in market prices for bread, since it was produced to directly meet the needs of the peasant household for food and fodder, and not for sale. As for taxes and other monetary expenses, they were covered mainly by the income from the craft activities of the peasants. All this preserved and conserved the consumptive nature of the peasant economy.

In 1910, the zemstvo of Novgorod district recorded that the former specific peasants of the villages of Dolgovo, Bolshoye Zamoshye, etc., of Podberezskaya volost had an allotment of “incomplete 5 dessiatines per capita,” were “provided with their bread on average until Christmas,” and the rest of the time they lived on “income from crafts and from hauling firewood.”Footnote 32 Similar facts are confirmed by numerous testimonies of contemporaries.Footnote 33 Crafts, both local and seasonal, were the main source of cash income for many peasant farms, while farming provided the peasants mainly with food.Footnote 34 Due to the lack of land, thousands of people could not find employment for their labor in the field of agricultural production.Footnote 35 Therefore, the peasants of the northwestern provinces were forced to look for other sources of income. They concentrated their efforts on local and seasonal crafts, where more than half of the entire peasant population of the region was engaged in processing wood materials.Footnote 36

The scale and intensity of the craft activities of the peasants were not the same for individual regions. In those districts of Novgorod and Pskov provinces, where a significant part of the peasant households was occupied with the cultivation and processing of flax, the crafts, both local and seasonal, were less developed. This was due to the extreme laboriousness of obtaining flax fiber.Footnote 37 The cultivation and subsequent processing of flax took a long time, including autumn and winter. Not only women but also men were involved in production. These circumstances formed a special economic way of peasant life, in which crafts did not play such a prominent role as in other places.

At the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, many crafts of the peasants of the northwestern provinces took the form of a small-scale domestic industry. The industries that supplied high quality products to the market maintained their positions, improved, and developed. The rapid growth of the population’s needs for individual products of the small-scale industry stimulated the development of crafts, as well as their material and technical base, and contributed to the emergence of new and better goods. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, about 62 400 peasants were engaged in the region’s crafts: woodworking, blacksmithing, shipbuilding, netting, pottery and brick-making: 24 500 in Novgorod province, 12 300 in Pskov province; and 25 500 in St. Petersburg province.Footnote 38

In the postreform period, a significant role in the socioeconomic life of Russia was played by peasant seasonal crafts. Due to the seasonal withdrawal of peasants to work, industrial enterprises and agricultural regions, which experienced a shortage of labor, were largely provided with working hands. From the otkhodnik-peasants, a cadre of permanent professional hired workers for industry and agriculture was formed.

In the conditions of postreform Russia, when agriculture and local crafts developed in conditions of agrarian overpopulation, a significant part of the peasants, in search of opportunities for their labor force and earnings, left the village for different periods. “In the summer the cities,” wrote M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, “are inhabited by Dulebs, Radimichs, Vyatichs, etc., in the form of masons, plasterers, bridge builders… .”Footnote 39

Numerical indicators from the reports of the Novgorod governors A.N. Mosolov and Count O.L. Medem give the following picture of the dynamics of the peasant seasonal industries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1888, the volost boards issued 83 923 passports for peasants to leave their homes; in 1889, 91 518; in 1899, 165 971 (“almost exclusively for finding work outside the province, which are mainly found in St. Petersburg”); and in 1900, 161 682 (“the population finds work mainly in St. Petersburg, partly in factories and works in Novgorod province); in 1901, 174587; and in 1902, 182402 passports” (“the number of otkhoniki increased due to the crop failure”).Footnote 40 The figures cited testify to the constant growth in the number of otkhodniki and, consequently, to the growing role of seasonal crafts in the peasant farm. In addition, the departure of peasants from the countryside to work contributed to the formation of a market for civilian labor, strengthened the independence of the peasant economy, increased the mobility of peasants, deepened social differentiation, and had a significant impact on the demographic situation. The importance of seasonal work increased with the increase in the number of the peasant population and the resulting reduction in allotment land ownership. At the same time, the rapid growth in the departure of peasants to work led to the fact that the emerging market for civilian labor could not absorb all those who came from the countryside. The widespread participation of peasants in seasonal activities related to the sale of labor and work in industrial factory production testified to the involvement of the population of the northwestern village in the process of forming capitalist relations in the country. This was the response of the peasants to the changing conditions of their life in the postreform years.

What pushed the peasants to leave the countryside? They were influenced by various factors. The main circumstance that forced the peasants to leave the countryside was the impossibility of the existence of a peasant economy only through income from agricultural production or the destruction of traditional local crafts, which were an additional source of peasant income, under the pressure of the capitalist industry. The statement of M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky, who wrote that the peasant “has nothing to do in the countryside: the land can by no means compensate the resulting decline in the income of the handicraft-farmer. Thus, the man has to “go away.”Footnote 41

According to the data of the zemstvo worker, N. Drozdov, who examined the Luga district of the St. Petersburg province, out of 18 305 peasant families living in the district, 17 394 families (95%) worked to a greater or lesser extent either locally or on the side. About 23% of men of working age went to work, and about 12% of peasant women. Peasants strove to leave for seasonal work in autumn and winter. The most important of the seasonal industries in terms of the number of employees was work as servants in St. Petersburg. Otkhodniki worked as janitors, coachmen, floor polishers, and otkhodniks worked as cooks, maids, and nannies. The earnings of an otkhodnik woman was 60–75 rubles per year, while otkhodnik men earned 70 to 180 rubles a year. More than 28 000 peasants were engaged in local crafts. They mainly worked on felling trees and transporting logs.

“The main reasons that caused and cause the annual departure of the population to work on the side,” the Pskov zemstvo noted, “are the low development or complete absence of local earnings and the surplus of workers, constantly increasing as a result of natural population growth due to land scarcity and high rental prices. To this are added … crop failures and a fall in prices for field products… .”Footnote 42

On the one hand, the farmers were affected by low crop yields due to local poor soils and primitive agricultural techniques, and, as a result, the low profitability of the peasant economy. On the other hand, the earnings on the side were significantly higher than the income from agriculture. The most important factor that stimulated seasonal work was the growing land insecurity of the peasants due to agrarian overpopulation. The stratification of the postreform northwestern village, the appearance of a mass of impoverished peasants, and the need to pay taxes forced farmers to turn to craft activities. Seasonal crafts, in addition to the growth in the number of otkhodniks, were characterized by a process of deepening specialization, an increase in the duration of the seasonal work, and an increasingly large-scale involvement of women and adolescents in the seasonal work. When a peasant went to work on the side even for a long period of time, often turning into a hired laborer, he remained part of his class: he retained his land allotment and all the duties arising from his class status. According to P.G. Ryndzyunsky, a peasant farm often acted as insurance, making it easier for the peasant to return to the village in case of failure in the seasonal craft.Footnote 43

The craft occupations of the peasant population left a clear imprint on the entire economic system of peasant life. Men’s seasonal work was inevitably accompanied by their household chores being shifted onto the women and led to its inevitable decline. The increase in the role of women in the peasant economy was noted by the governor Count S.A. Tol in his comprehensive report for 1898: “In St. Petersburg province,” he wrote, “a woman runs the peasant economy and pays taxes almost everywhere, while the male part of the population is mainly absorbed in seasonal work.”Footnote 44 However, the money received in the crafts made it possible to cultivate allotment land and thus maintain the existence of an economically disadvantageous economy.

The departure of the peasant population to earn money occupied a prominent place in the structure of the the craft activities of farmers. A significant part of the peasants sought employment outside the territory of their permanent residence, since the factory industry, local peasant crafts, and agricultural work could not solve the problem of agrarian overpopulation. The zemstvo materials testify that peasants of all land groups were engaged in seasonal crafts, albeit, with different purposes and degrees of intensity.

For low-powered peasant farms, seasonal trades and the money earned in them made it possible to delay the time of inevitable ruin and the final break with agriculture. As for the otkhodnik peasants from the mid-sized peasant farms, they hoped to use the money earned on the side to preserve and strengthen their agricultural economy. Prosperous peasants, resorting to seasonal work, sought to use the labor resources of their farm more expediently. They were looking for ways to establish and subsequently expand economic ties in the raw materials market; often, they became contractors, leaders of artels, buyers, and merchants. Differences in the profitability of crafts and the features of their impact on the seasonal economy contributed to the deepening of the property differentiation of the peasantry. The money earned through the seasonal crafts determined two interconnected processes in the northwestern villages. On the one hand, they contributed to the strengthening and rapid progress of part of the peasant farms through the acquisition and use of fertilizers, more productive livestock breeds, and new agricultural implements. On the other hand, the money of otkhodniks to a large extent slowed the process of the eventual ruin of the small peasant farms.

The money earned through crafts constituted a significant part of the budget of peasant farms. In Tsarskoye Selo district in 1882, the income from agriculture was 2 950 900 rubles, while the income from crafts was 3 135 250 rubles. Therefore, out of 100 rubles of total income, 52 rubles were earned from craft activities. The average peasant family earned 226 rubles from agriculture and 240 rubles from crafts.Footnote 45 In St. Petersburg district, out of a total income of 100 rubles, peasants earned 29 rubles from farming and 71 rubles from crafts.Footnote 46 In the Yamburg district, out of a total income of 100 rubles, the income from crafts was 48 rubles.Footnote 47 Undoubtedly, the peasant economy could no longer exist without resorting to local or seasonal crafts, the income from which constituted a significant part of the family budget.

The situation with the peasants’ seasonal crafts in the northwestern provinces of the country was determined by the influence of St. Petersburg, the presence of railways, especially the Nikolaev railway, a developed system of waterways, and the widespread activities of local nonagricultural crafts. In Novgorod and Pskov provinces, the internal migration of peasants-otkhodniks within the boundaries of a separate district or territory of the province was extremely important. Most of the peasants-otkhodniks of the capital province were sent to the manufacturing enterprises of St. Petersburg. They made up a significant part of the freelance workers. The northwestern village in the postreform decades and at the beginning of the 20th century pushed out workers in numbers that significantly exceeded the demands of industry and other sectors of the economy that needed freelance labor.

It should be noted that in all the northwestern provinces in the postreform period and up to the beginning of the First World War, local crafts occupied a leading position. Of course, the war affected the situation and intensity of many crafts, which was due to the lack of workers after the departure for the war of the most able-bodied part of the peasant population. In contrast, certain industries, such as shoe-making, saddlery, and carpentry, experienced an upsurge in development, which was related to the military orders that appeared, while others, like timber, on the contrary, experienced difficulties, primarily due to a shortage of workers and the mobilization of horses required for the war.

A feature of the development of peasant crafts in the northwestern region was their dispersal, and the presence in the villages of not one or two but several industries serving the market. Large industrial centers were also formed in the northwest of the country—Ulomsky, iron works; Putilovsky, plate-making; Krestetsky, embroidery; Cherepovets district, shoe-making; etc.—with a high concentration of small producers and significant volumes of products that had access not only to local but also to distant markets.Footnote 48

The significance and influence of crafts on the life of peasants was determined, first of all, by the degree of concentration of capital in them and the impact on the economic life of the postreform northwestern villages.

In the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, individual peasants engaged in crafts moved beyond small businesses and became owners of relatively large industrial establishments, which can be regarded as a transitional link from small-scale production to large-scale industry.