Ukrainian Peasants - Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. The Ukrainian peasant economy depends primarily on agriculture, supplemented by fishing, hunting, beekeeping, and the gathering of berries, mushrooms, and other wild foodstuffs. Although most households kept cows for milk and oxen for use as draft animals and may also have kept sheep and pigs, animal husbandry was an important market activity only in the western and the steppe regions. (It is currently important in the west only.) The principal crops are wheat, rye, millet, barley, oats, and, more recently, potatoes, buckwheat, maize, beans, lentils, peas, poppy seeds, turnips, hemp, and flax. Garden vegetables include garlic, onions, beets, cabbages, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, watermelons, and radishes. Hops, tobacco, and grapes are also cultivated, as are fruit and nut trees. The normal eating routine is to have four meals a day: breakfast, dinner at noon, a small afternoon meal at 4 P.M., and supper. The diet consists of dark rye bread, various porridges, soups, and fish and fruit when these are available. Meat is holiday fare; the usual pattern is to slaughter an animal before a holiday, eat some of the meat during the festival, and preserve the rest by curing and making sausages. The fire in the hearth is considered extremely important. Once lit, it is not permitted to be extinguished. The embers are fired up each morning for the baking of bread. When this is complete, the other foods to be eaten that day are cooked.

Industrial Arts and Trade. A variety of crafts and trades were practiced. These include carpentry, coppering, tanning and harness making, pottery, weaving, and embroidery. Ukraine is widely known for its embroidery and is nearly as esteemed for its weaving, pottery, and carved and inlaid woodwork. Embroidery has long been emblematic of Ukraine. There are indications that professionalization in this field occurred early, with certain women specializing in embroidery and selling their work to their fellow villagers or letting them copy designs. Actual commercialization was begun at the end of the nineteenth century by the Poltava County self-government. After World War I, embroidery was taken on by worker cooperatives. State folk-art workshops opened in 1934. Currently, the chief centers for production are Kaimianets-Podolskyi, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Kiev, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Lwiw, Kosiv, and Chernivitsi.

Pottery has been characteristic of Ukraine since prehistory, as evidenced by the earthenware found in Trypillian excavations. Contemporary folk pottery is found in the areas of the best clays: Polilia, Poltava, Polisia, Podlachia, Chernihiv, Kiev, Kharkiv, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia. Glass painting, the production of a picture on the reverse of a sheet of glass, is experiencing a revival in western Ukraine. Ukrainian wax-resist dyed Easter eggs, pysanky , are also famous. These are decorated with geometric, floral, and animal motifs. The tradition of decorating eggs experienced a decline owing to the atheist policies of the Soviet system but is being rapidly revived now and is drawing on the Ukrainian diaspora for information on design and technique.

Division of Labor. The usual Slavic division of labor—inside (female)/outside (male)—was less characteristic of Ukrainians than of neighboring Slavic peoples. In Cossack families, this is probably because the male household head was absent for extended periods of time, leaving his wife and children to run the farmstead alone. Thus, women participated in the cultivation of field crops much more extensively than elsewhere, with the harvest especially being considered women's work. Collectivization was effective in the Ukraine: initial bitter resistance was counteracted by force and dissipated by the ensuing famine. Division of labor on the collective farm follows Russian patterns. Both contemporary anecdotes and statistics indicate that a new division of labor has arisen: jobs are assigned by gender, not according to degree of heavy physical labor involved, but by degree of technical expertise believed necessary, the technologically advanced jobs going to the men.