Animal husbandry as one of the leading forms of economic activity of the Czech colonists and their descendants in the second half of the 19th – throughout the 20th century (based on ethnographic research materials of the Melitopol region)

Author

Kurinna Maryna

candidate of historical sciences, research associate of the department "Ukrainian Ethnological Center" of the M. Rylskyi Institute of Art studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the NAS of Ukraine.

Animal husbandry as one of the leading forms of economic activity of the Czech colonists and their descendants in the second half of the 19th – throughout the 20th century (based on ethnographic research materials of the Melitopol region)

Abstract

Animal husbandry has always been the basis of peasant farming, as livestock products (meat, milk,

wool, and leather) were much easier and faster to obtain than, for example, grain crops. The purpose of this scientific research was to study the nature of livestock farming activities of the Melitopolshchyna Czechs, who appeared in the area in 1869 and established the resettlement colony of Chekhohrad (after 1946 – the village of Novhorodkivka). It is found that at the turn of the XIXth–XXth centuries, the colo­ nists’ animal husbandry practices included cattle breeding, horse breeding, sheep breeding, pig breeding, and poultry farming. With the introduction of the NEP system in the 1920s, two large agricultural societ­ ies were organized in Chekhohrad to breed pigs and cows. In the early 1930s, with the intensification of the process of organizing collective farms, significant miscalculations were made in the economic activity of the newly formed Czech collective farm, which has led to a vital reduction in animals on agricultural farms in Chekhohrad. Since the late 1950s, when the village of Novhorodkivka became the basis for a new agricultural association, the collective farm Ukraine, the scope of animal husbandry of peasants (Czechs along with Ukrainians) has expanded significantly and by the late 1970s has reached the highest agri­ cultural achievements, including in livestock farming activity. Upon the introduction of new economic reforms in the 1980s, the Czech animal husbandry began developing within the framework of new forms of management: team (collective) contracts at first and family contracts later. Drastic changes that took place in agriculture in the early 1990s – the replacement of the collective form of management by the private one, unfortunately, not only failed to ensure a level of economic indicators of previous years, but also led to the complete disappearance of certain forms of animal husbandry, such as sheep breeding, rabbit breeding, and silkworm breeding.

Keywords

Czech settlers, animal husbandry, peasant farming, Melitopolshchyna.

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