The emergence of agrarian machine-building in the Kyiv province (1840s–1860s)

Abstract

The article highlights the main points of the process of the emergence of agricultural engineering in the Kyiv lands in the 1840s – 1860s. It has been established that the main driving force of this process was the accelerated development of the local sugar industry, which prompted the owners of either the largest sugar factories in the region or regionally located networks of such factories to create enterprises capable of repairing and manufacturing the production equipment they needed. The further intensive spread of industrial sugar refining in the Kyiv province increased the demand for the products of such machine-building plants, which led to an increase in their number, as well as to an increase in the number of employees at each of them. It was found that in the period from 1840 to 1871, five such machine-building plants were established in the Kyiv region, in: Smila, Mliiv, Bila Tserkva, Shpola and Uman', as well as another plant specializing in the production and repair of agricultural machinery – Trypillia. This imbalance in regional agrarian engineering in favor of factories producing equipment for the sugar industry was due to the fact that the process of mechanization of agricultural labor in the Kyiv lands had just begun at that time and was proceeding very slowly. That’s why, the increase in the production of the main types of traditional agricultural products here was insignificant, which made it possible to cope with its processing using outdated technical means, the production of which was established in the village in an artisanal manner. Therefore, the need for the latest means of mechanization of the processing industry during the considered chronological period concerned only its sugar branch. Meanwhile, all five of these enterprises, which specialized in the production of equipment for sugar factories, manufactured and repaired agricultural machinery on an individual basis – as an additional type of activity, which indicates an increase in the use of technics in the fields of Kyiv region, the manufacture and repair of which was no longer possible in an artisanal manner. At the same time, the emergence in the region during the selected chronological boundaries of only one plant specializing in agricultural engineering, which, in addition, produced equipment for sugar factories as an additional product, shows that the pace of agricultural mechanization at that time in the Kyiv province was low.