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What is bast shoes in Ancient Rus'? Bastards - all you need to know.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia was still often called a “bast-bast” country, putting a shade of primitiveness and backwardness into this concept. Bast shoes, which have become a kind of symbol that has become part of many proverbs and sayings, have traditionally been considered the shoes of the poorest part of the population. And it is no coincidence.

The entire Russian village, with the exception of Siberia and the Cossack regions, wore bast shoes all year round. It would seem that the theme of the history of bast shoes carries a complex theme? Meanwhile, even the exact time of the appearance of bast shoes in the life of our distant ancestors is unknown to this day.

Bast shoes are considered to be one of the most ancient types of shoes. In any case, bone kochedyks - hooks for weaving bast shoes - are found by archaeologists even at Neolithic sites. Doesn't this give grounds to assume that already in the Stone Age, people may have been weaving shoes from plant fibers?

The wide distribution of wicker shoes has given rise to an incredible variety of its varieties and styles, depending primarily on the raw materials used in the work. And they wove bast shoes from the bark and underbark of many deciduous trees: linden, birch, elm, oak, willow, etc. Depending on the material, wicker shoes were also called differently: birch bark, elm, oak, broom ... Bast bast shoes made from linden bast were considered the strongest and softest in this series, and the worst were willow twigs and bast shoes, which were made from bast.

Often, bast shoes were named according to the number of bast strips used in weaving: five, six, seven. In seven basts, winter bast shoes were usually woven, although there were instances where the number of basts reached twelve. For strength, warmth and beauty, bast shoes were woven a second time, for which, as a rule, hemp ropes were used. For the same purpose, a leather outsole (podkovyrka) was sometimes sewn on. For a festive exit, painted elm bast shoes made of thin bast with black woolen (and not hemp) frills (that is, a braid that fastens bast shoes on the feet) or elm reddish sevens were intended. For autumn and spring work in the yard, high wicker feet, which did not have a fur, were considered more convenient.

Shoes were woven not only from tree bark, thin roots were also used, and therefore the bast shoes woven from them were called roots. Models made from strips of fabric and cloth edges were called braids. Bast shoes were also made from hemp rope - kurpy, or krutsy, and even from horsehair - haircloths. Such shoes were more often worn at home or walked in it in hot weather.

The technique of weaving bast shoes was also very diverse. For example, Great Russian bast shoes, unlike Belarusian and Ukrainian ones, had oblique weaving - “oblique lattice”, while in the western regions there was a more conservative type - direct weaving, or “straight lattice”. If in Ukraine and Belarus bast shoes began to weave from the toe, then the Russian peasants made the braid from the back. So the place of appearance of a particular wicker shoe can be judged by the shape and material from which it is made. For example, Moscow models, woven from bast, are characterized by high sides and rounded heads (that is, socks). The northern, or Novgorod, type was more often made of birch bark with triangular toes and relatively low sides. Mordovian bast shoes, common in the Nizhny Novgorod and Penza provinces, were woven from elm bast. The heads of these models were usually trapezoidal in shape.

Few people in the peasant environment did not know how to weave bast shoes. A description of this craft has been preserved in the Simbirsk province, where lycoders went to the forest in whole artels. For a tithe of linden forest, rented from the landowner, they paid up to a hundred rubles. They removed the bast with a special wooden prick, leaving a completely bare trunk. The best was considered the bast, obtained in the spring, when the first leaves began to bloom on the linden, so most often such an operation ruined the tree (hence, apparently, the well-known expression “peel like sticky”).

Carefully removed basts were then tied in bundles in hundreds and stored in the hallway or in the attic. Before weaving bast shoes, the bast was soaked in warm water for a day. The bark was then scraped off, leaving the bast. From 40 to 60 bundles of 50 tubules each, approximately 300 pairs of bast shoes were obtained from the bast shoes. Various sources say differently about the speed of weaving bast shoes: from two to ten pairs a day.

For weaving bast shoes, a wooden block was needed and, as already mentioned, a bone or iron hook - a kochedyk. A special skill was required to weave the back, where all the basts were reduced. They tried to tie the loops so that after holding the turn, they did not twist the bast shoes and did not work their legs on one side. There is a legend that Peter I himself learned to weave bast shoes and that the sample he woven was kept among his belongings in the Hermitage at the beginning of the last (XX) century.

Boots, which differed from bast shoes in convenience, beauty and durability, were not available to most serfs. Here they managed with bast shoes. The fragility of wicker shoes is evidenced by the saying: “Go on the road, weave five bast shoes.” In winter, the peasant wore only bast shoes for no more than ten days, and in the summer during working hours he trampled them down in four days.

The life of peasant lapotniks is described by many Russian classics. In the story "Khor and Kalinich" I.S. Turgenev contrasts the Oryol muzhik with the Kaluga quitrent peasant: “The Oryol peasant is small in stature, round-shouldered, gloomy, looks frowningly, lives in wretched aspen huts, goes to corvee, does not engage in trade, eats poorly, wears bast shoes; The Kaluga quitrent peasant lives in spacious pine huts, is tall, looks bold and cheerful, sells oil and tar, and walks in boots on holidays.

As you can see, even for a wealthy peasant, boots remained a luxury, they were worn only on holidays. The peculiar symbolic meaning of leather shoes for a peasant is also emphasized by our other writer, D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak: "Boots for a man are the most seductive item ... No other part of a man's costume enjoys such sympathy as the boot." Meanwhile, leather shoes were not cheap. In 1838, at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, a pair of good bast bast shoes could be bought for three kopecks, while the roughest peasant boots at that time cost at least five or six rubles. For a peasant farmer, this is a lot of money; in order to collect them, it was necessary to sell a quarter of rye, and in other places even more (one quarter was equal to almost 210 liters of bulk solids).

Even during the Civil War (1918-1920), most of the Red Army wore bast shoes. Their procurement was carried out by an emergency commission (CHEKVALAP), which supplied the soldiers with felted shoes and bast shoes.

In written sources, the word "bast shoe", or rather, its derivative - "bast shoe" is first found in The Tale of Bygone Years (in the Laurentian Chronicle): “In the summer of 6493 (985), Volodimer went to the Bolgars with Dobrynya with his own in the boats, and brought Torquay to the shore on the horses, and defeated the Bulgarians. Dobrynya’s speech to Volodimer: the convict looked like he’s all in boots, don’t give us tribute, let’s go look for bast shoes. And make Volodimer from Bolgar the world ... ". In another written source of the era of Ancient Rus', "The Word of Daniel the Sharpener", the term "lychenitsa" as the name of a type of wicker shoes is opposed to the boot: "It would be better to see my own foot in the lychnitsy in your house, rather than in the scarlet sapoz in the boyar yard."

Historians, however, know that the names of things known from written sources do not always coincide with those objects that correspond to these terms today. For example, in the 16th century, men's outerwear in the form of a caftan was called a "sarafan", and a richly embroidered neckerchief was called a "fly".

An interesting article on the history of bast shoes was published by the modern St. Petersburg archaeologist A.V. Kurbatov, who proposes to consider the history of bast shoes not from the point of view of a philologist, but from the standpoint of a historian of material culture. Referring to the recently accumulated archaeological materials and the expanded linguistic base, he revises the conclusions made by the Finnish researcher of the last century I.S. Vakhros in a very interesting monograph "The name of footwear in Russian".

In particular, Kurbatov is trying to prove that wicker shoes began to spread in Russia no earlier than the 16th century. Moreover, he attributes the opinion about the initial predominance of bast shoes among rural residents to the mythologization of history, as well as the social explanation of this phenomenon as a consequence of the extreme poverty of the peasantry. These ideas developed, according to the author of the article, among the educated part of Russian society only in the 18th century.

Indeed, in the published materials devoted to large-scale archaeological research in Novgorod, Staraya Ladoga, Polotsk and other Russian cities, where a cultural layer synchronous with The Tale of Bygone Years was recorded, no traces of wicker shoes were found. But what about the bone kochedyks found during excavations? They could, according to the author of the article, be used for other purposes - for weaving birch bark boxes or fishing nets. In the urban layers, the researcher emphasizes, bast shoes appear no earlier than the turn of the 15th-16th centuries.

The author's next argument is that there are no images of people shod in bast shoes either on the icons, or on the frescoes, or in the miniatures of the front vault. The earliest miniature showing a peasant shod in bast shoes is a plowing scene from The Life of Sergius of Radonezh, but it dates from the beginning of the 16th century. By the same time, information from cadastral books refers, where for the first time “bast shoes” are mentioned, that is, artisans engaged in the manufacture of bast shoes for sale. In the works of foreign authors who visited Russia, A. Kurbatov finds the first mention of bast shoes, dating back to the middle of the 17th century, from a certain Nikolaas Witsen.

It is impossible not to mention the original, in my opinion, interpretation that Kurbatov gives to early medieval written sources, where for the first time we are talking about bast shoes. This, for example, is the above passage from The Tale of Bygone Years, where Dobrynya gives Vladimir advice to “look for lapotniks”. A.V. Kurbatov explains it not by the poverty of the lapotniks, opposed to the rich captive Bulgarians, shod in boots, but sees in this a hint of nomads. After all, it is easier to collect tribute from settled inhabitants (bast shoes) than chasing hordes of nomadic tribes across the steppe (boots - the shoes most adapted for riding, were actively used by nomads). In this case, the word “bast shoes”, that is, shod in “bast shoes”, mentioned by Dobrynya, possibly means some special type of low footwear, but not woven from plant fibers, but leather. Therefore, the statement about the poverty of the ancient bast shoes, who actually walked in leather shoes, according to Kurbatov, is groundless.

All of the above again and again confirms the complexity and ambiguity of assessing medieval material culture from the standpoint of our time. I repeat: often we do not know what the terms found in written sources mean, and at the same time we do not know the purpose and name of many objects found during excavations. However, in my opinion, one can argue with the conclusions presented by the archaeologist Kurbatov, defending the point of view that the bast shoe is a much more ancient invention of man.

So, archaeologists traditionally explain single finds of wicker shoes during excavations of ancient Russian cities by the fact that bast shoes are, first of all, an attribute of village life, while the townspeople preferred to wear leather shoes, the remains of which are found in huge quantities in the cultural layer during excavations. Nevertheless, the analysis of several archaeological reports and publications, in my opinion, does not give reason to believe that wicker shoes did not exist before the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century. Why? But the fact is that publications (and even reports) do not always reflect the entire spectrum of mass material discovered by archaeologists. It is possible that the publications did not say anything about the poorly preserved fragments of bast shoes, or they were presented in some other way.

For an unambiguous answer to the question of whether bast shoes were worn in Russia before the 15th century, it is necessary to carefully review the inventories of the finds, check the dating of the layer, etc. After all, it is known that there are publications that have gone unnoticed, which mention the remains of wicker shoes from the early medieval strata of the Lyadinsky burial ground (Mordovia) and the Vyatichesky burial mounds (Moscow region). Bast shoes were also found in the pre-Mongol strata of Smolensk. Information about this may be found in other reports.
If bast shoes really became widespread only in the late Middle Ages, then in the 16th-17th centuries they would be found everywhere. However, in the cities, fragments of wicker shoes of this time are very rarely found during excavations, while details of leather shoes number in the tens of thousands.
Now let's talk about the information content that mediaeval illustrative material carries - icons, frescoes, miniatures. It must be taken into account that it is greatly reduced by the conventionality of images that are far from real life. And long-sleeved clothes often hide the legs of the depicted characters. It is no coincidence that the historian A.V. Artsikhovsky, who studied more than ten thousand miniatures of the Facial Vault and summarized the results of his research in a solid monograph "Old Russian Miniatures as a Historical Source", does not touch shoes at all.
Why is there no necessary information in written documents? First of all, because of the scarcity and fragmentation of the sources themselves, in which the least attention is paid to the description of the costume, especially the clothes of a commoner. The appearance on the pages of scribe books of the 16th century of references to artisans who were specially engaged in weaving shoes does not at all exclude the fact that the peasants themselves wove bast shoes even earlier.

A.V. Kurbatov does not seem to notice the above-mentioned fragment from the “Word of Daniil the Sharpener”, where the word “lychenitsa” is encountered for the first time, as opposed to “scarlet saposem”. The annalistic evidence of 1205, which speaks of a tribute in the form of a bast, taken by the Russian princes after the victory over Lithuania and the Yatvingians, is not explained in any way. Kurbatov's commentary on the passage from The Tale of Bygone Years, where the defeated Bulgarians are represented as elusive nomads, although interesting, also raises questions. The Bulgarian state of the end of the 10th century, which united many tribes of the Middle Volga region, cannot be considered a nomadic empire. Feudal relations already dominated here, huge cities flourished - Bolgar, Suvar, Bilyar, who grew rich on transit trade. In addition, the campaign against Bolgar in 985 was not the first (the mention of the first campaign dates back to 977), so Vladimir already had an idea about the enemy and hardly needed Dobrynya's explanations.
And finally, about the notes of Western European travelers who visited Russia. They appear only at the end of the 15th century, so there is simply no earlier evidence in the sources of this category. Moreover, in the notes of foreigners, the main attention was paid to political events. Outlandish, from the point of view of a European, the clothes of Russians almost did not interest them.

Of particular interest is the book of the famous German diplomat Baron Sigismund Herberstein, who visited Moscow in 1517 as the ambassador of Emperor Maximilian I. His notes contain an engraving depicting a scene of riding in a sleigh, which clearly shows skiers wearing bast shoes accompanying the sleigh. In any case, in his notes, Herberstein notes that they went skiing in many places in Russia. A clear image of the peasants, shod in bast shoes, is also in the book "Journey to Muscovy" by A. Olearius, who visited Moscow twice in the 30s of the 17th century. True, in the text of the book, the bast shoes themselves are not mentioned.

Ethnographers also do not have an unambiguous opinion about the time of the spread of wicker shoes and its role in the life of the peasant population of the early Middle Ages. Some researchers question the antiquity of bast shoes, believing that before the peasants walked in leather shoes. Others refer to customs and beliefs that speak just about the deep antiquity of bast shoes, for example, point to their ritual significance in those places where wicker shoes have long been forgotten. In particular, the already mentioned Finnish researcher I.S. Vakhros refers to the description of the funeral among the Ural Old Believers-Kerzhaks, who did not wear wicker shoes, but buried the deceased wearing bast shoes.

Summarizing the above, we note: it is hard to believe that bast and kochedyks, widespread in the early Middle Ages, were used only for weaving boxes and nets. I am sure that shoes made from vegetable fiber were a traditional part of the East Slavic costume and are well known not only to Russians, but also to Poles, Czechs, and Germans.

It would seem that the question of the date and nature of the distribution of wicker shoes is a very private moment in our history. However, in this case, he touches on the large-scale problem of the difference between the city and the countryside. At one time, historians noted that the rather close connection between the city and the rural district, the absence of a significant legal difference between the "black" population of the urban settlement and the peasants do not allow a sharp boundary between them. Nevertheless, the results of excavations show that bast shoes are extremely rare in cities. This is understandable. Shoes woven from bast, birch bark or other plant fibers were more suitable for peasant life and work, and the city, as you know, lived mainly by craft and trade.

Redichev S. "Science and Life" No. 3, 2007

Bast shoes are the most ancient footwear in Rus'.

LAPTI (VERZNI, KOVERZNI, CROSS, LYCHNYK, LYCHNYTSY, CRACHKI)- They were low, light shoes used all year round and tied to the foot with long cords - OBORAM

Lapotnaya Russia remained until the 30s of the 20th century.

The material for bast shoes was always at hand: they were woven from bast of linden, elm, willow, heather, birch bark and bast. Three young (4-6 years old) stickies were peeled off for a couple of bast shoes.

We needed a lot of bast shoes - both for our everyday life and for sale. “A good man at a bad time wore out at least two pairs of bast shoes in one week,” testified the writer and ethnographer S. Maksimov, well-known before the revolution.

They tried to make bast shoes for everyday life durable so that they could be worn longer. They were woven from a rough wide bast. Soles were attached to them, which were braided with hemp ropes or thin strips of oak wood soaked in boiling water. In some villages, when it was dirty on the street, thick wooden blocks were tied to bast shoes, consisting of two parts: one part was tied to the front of the foot, the other to the back. Everyday bast shoes, without additional devices, had a shelf life of three to ten days.

To strengthen and insulate their bast shoes, the peasants “tucked” their soles with a hemp rope. Feet in such bast shoes did not freeze and did not get wet.

Going to the mowing, they put on shoes in bast shoes of rare weaving that do not hold water - crustaceans.
For housework, the feet were convenient - a kind of galoshes, only wicker.

Rope bast shoes were called chuni, they were worn at home or for work in the field in hot, dry weather. In some villages, they managed to weave bast shoes from horsehair - hairs.

Bast shoes were kept on ruffs - narrow leather straps or ropes made of hemp fiber (mochenets). The legs were wrapped in linen footcloths, and then wrapped in cloth onuchi.

Village young dandies appeared in public in hand-painted elm bast shoes made of thin bast with black woolen (not hemp) frills and onuchs.

Elm bast shoes (from elm bast) were considered the most beautiful. They were kept in hot water - then they turned pink and became hard.

The most seedy bast shoes in Rus' were reputed to be willow and, or tricks, - from willow bark; even weaving them was considered shameful. From the bark of the tala weaved sheluzhniki, and from the oak bark - oak trees.

In the Chernihiv region, bast shoes made from the bark of young oaks were called oak chars. Hemp tows and dilapidated ropes were also used; bast shoes from them - chuni - were worn mainly at home or in hot, dry weather. They must be of Finnish origin: the Finns in Russia were called “chukhna”.

Such bast shoes also had other names: kurpy, krutsy and even whisperers. In areas where there was no bast, and it was expensive to buy it, dodgy peasants wove roots from thin roots; from horse hair - hairs. In the Kursk province, they learned how to make straw bast shoes. In order for the bast shoes to be stronger and the feet in it not to get wet and not to freeze, its bottom was “picked up” with a hemp rope.

Before putting on bast shoes, the legs were wrapped in linen footcloths, and then wrapped in cloth onuchi.

They wove bast shoes on a block, using an iron (or bone) hook -
kochetyk: they also called him a pile or shvaiko

They also stripped the bark from the trees.

“The most dexterous workers managed to weave no more than five pairs of bast shoes in a day. The sole, front and collar (sides) were easily given. But the heel is not given to everyone: all the basts are reduced on it and the loops are tied - so that the frills threaded through them would not twist the bast shoes and would not work the leg in one direction. People say that Tsar Peter knew how to do everything, he came to everything himself, and thought about the heel of the bast shoes and threw it away. In St. Petersburg, that unwoven bast shoe is kept and shown,- wrote S. Maksimov.

Some bast shoes were woven into five strips of bast, or lines - those were fives; woven in six lines - sixes and in seven - sevens.

The Great Russian bast shoe was distinguished by the oblique weaving of the bast; Belarusian and Ukrainian - direct.

The front and collar of Russian bast shoes were dense and hard.

Woven feet were convenient for housework - a kind of high galoshes (rubber galoshes, still expensive, entered the village life only at the beginning of the 20th century and were worn only on holidays).

The feet were left at the threshold in order to quickly put on for housework, especially in spring or autumn, when there is dirt in the yard, and putting on bast shoes with footcloths, onuchs and ruffs is long and troublesome.

In not so ancient times, Russian bast shoes (unlike boots) were different for the right and left legs, and among the Volga peoples - Mordovians, Chuvashs and Tatars - they did not differ in foot. Living side by side with these peoples, the Russians adopted more practical shoes: when one bast shoe was worn out, torn or lost, the other could not be thrown away.

During the Civil War (1918-1920), most of the Red Army wore bast shoes. Their procurement was carried out by an emergency commission (CHEKVALAP), which supplied the soldiers with felted shoes and bast shoes.

Many different beliefs were associated with bast shoes in the Russian village. It was generally accepted that an old bast shoe, hung in a chicken coop, would protect chickens from diseases, and would contribute to the egg laying of birds. It was believed that a cow fumigated after calving from bast shoes would be healthy and give a lot of milk. A bast shoe with a grass-louse laid in it, thrown into the river during a severe drought, will cause rain, etc. The bast shoe played a certain role in family rituals. So, for example, according to custom, after the matchmaker, who went to make a match, they threw a bast shoe so that the matchmaking was successful. When meeting young people returning from church, the children set fire to bast shoes stuffed with straw in order to provide them with a rich and happy life, to protect them from misfortunes.

Everyone knows what bast shoes are. Still, they are part of the Russian national costume, national shoes. They are made from a special fiber - from the bark of a tree, and are very adapted to the shape of the foot. Bast shoes were woven and worn by the peasant population not only in Rus': they were shoes for the Finnish peoples, Balts and Slavs. They are believed to be easy to make.

Bast shoes have been used since prehistoric times: they were found in Neolithic excavations. In Russian and Belarusian villages, bast shoes were also worn at the beginning of the 20th century.

Western Polissya. Late XIX - early XX century. Youth clothing Residents of the Pinsk region.

Russian family weaving bast shoes

Today, bast shoes are sold as souvenirs, and are sometimes used by ethnographic musical groups as part of national costumes.

Bast weaving was considered easy work. No wonder there is a saying about a drunk person that he “does not knit a bast”. This means that a person has drunk so much that he cannot do an elementary thing.

Venetsianov (1780-1847):

Going on the road, the peasants took with them additional pairs of bast shoes:

"Go on the road - weave five bast shoes."

Bast shoes were woven not only from bast, but also from birch bark and leather straps. Bast shoes made from elm bast were considered the most beautiful, and those made from willow bark were considered the most shameful (they deteriorated very quickly). From the bark of the tala weaved sheluzhniki, and from the oak bark - duboviki or oak chars. Bast shoes made of hemp tows and shabby ropes were called chuni (kurpy, kruts) and were worn in hot, dry weather. In the Kursk province, they made bast shoes from straw, which were stronger, did not get wet and did not freeze.

Bast shoes were woven differently in different regions. Russian bast shoes were distinguished by a rounded toe, very low sides and a high back, in the upper part of which a hole was made for frills. The sole was “picked” in two or three layers, which gave the bast shoes strength. The ancient Vyatichi and Novgorod Slovenes preferred bast shoes of oblique weaving made of birch bark and with lower sides.

Some wove bast shoes in four basts (fours), five strips of bast (pyateriks), others in six (sixes) or seven (sevens).

The Great Russian bast shoe was distinguished by the oblique weaving of the bast; Belarusian and Ukrainian - direct. They wove bast shoes on a block, using a kochedyk (piling or shvaiko). Kochedyk is an iron or bone hook. When weaving, be sure to use a block. Bast shoes were woven one at a time, but with a difference between right and left, for which the block was simply turned over.