Development of handicraft industry in the period of the new economic policy according to the governorate newspaper “Tambovskaya Pravda”

We give the historiographic criticism of the governorate party newspaper “Tambovskaya Pravda”. We analyze the reflected in its pages relation of the party management to handicraft industry. We provide examples of a newspaper’s propaganda role in engaging handicraftsmen for country needs. We consider the publications devoted to government measures of handicraft industry stimulation at the state and local levels. Among the main areas of state activities we highlight cooperation, holding handicraft exhibitions, the allocation of loans to industrial cooperatives through the bank for consumer cooperation, the involvement of small producers in the political life of the country, as well as the increase of their professional and general cultural level. We pay special attention to the All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition in 1923 and its accompanying events. We give characteristic of the changes in policy that followed the 14th All-Union Conference of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the 3rd All-Union Congress of Soviets. Based on the articles in the 1927 issues, we conclude that many party undertakings did not have adequate success. We also analyze data on the peculiarities of the handicraft industry restoration in the governorate. We consider the specificity of the county distribution of crafts, as well as their ratio in urban and rural environments.

new economic policy, handicraft industry, producers’ cooperative society, Tambov Governorate, “Tambovskaya Pravda”