Trade in forest materials of Kyiv province in the first half of the XIX century

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the reasons for the deterioration of the environmental situation in Ukraine related to trade in forest materials. Periodic floods occur due to disregard for the need to preserve forests. In the first half of the 19th century, the Russian Empire offered raw materials for import and export, including timber and products of primary wood processing from state forests. Executive institutions monitored the increase in sources of tax revenues to the treasury. Taxes were levied on both business activities related to timber trade, and primary and secondary processing. At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, the development of the Black Sea Fleet remained a matter of national importance, for the needs of which huge areas of oak and pine forests were allocated in the Kyiv province. Local governments immediately complied with imperial instructions regarding the army, provincial and county administrations, providing their needs. The priority for the authorities was to provide the military with weapons, transport, and heating. There were cases of neglect of the local populations’ interests, whose needs were opposed by the military and the administration. Private initiative concerning forests as a source of income often led to mass felling of heating, energy raw materials for distilleries and sugar factories. The newest industries at that time brought superprofits, which resulted not only in the emergence of new social classes and industrial relations, the foundations of the Ukrainian national consciousness, but also a change in attitudes toward Mother Nature. The formation of industrial society was due to the slow growth of welfare of employees, and the accelerated disappearance of age-old forests.