Fleet of the Sarapul Timber Industry Enterprise according to records of 1928–1938
Authors:   Udmurt Federal Research Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mitiukov Nikolay V. , Yuriy L. Kim ,   Udmurt State University
Published: December 2024

The USSR timber industry played a significant role in ensuring victory in the Great Patriotic War. The industry’s origin and formation in the 1920s–1930s. was very difficult, as evidenced by the numerous restructurizations and reforms of the industry during this period, with which the Party and the Government tried to correct the shortcomings discovered in the work of the industry. Researchers studying the issues of the pre-war timber industry note a lack of a source base, and, therefore, a possible solution is seen in attracting documents from regional archives and funds of organizations that collaborated with timber industry enterprises. The object of study of this work is the fleet of one of the large timber industry enterprises in Udmurtia – the Sarapul Timber Industry Enterprise (STIE). Unlike in other timber industry enterprises, rafting of timber along the Kama River played a significant role in STIE’s work. Since similar functions were performed by the Kamlesosplav trust, both enterprises quite freely exchanged ship personnel. In the first half of the 1930s, STIE was part of Kamlesosplav. Thus, an interesting research problem arises: is it possible, on the basis of the funds of STIE itself and the organizations that collaborated with it, to reconstruct the composition and dynamics of changes in the fleet in the 1930s? As the example of STIE shows, in each period of its history, the value of certain types of office documentation varied significantly, due to the fact that the document flow and office work in 1928–1938 were still just taking shape. They were finally formed only after the Great Patriotic War. However, for the period of the late 1920s, the most valuable document that allows reconstructing the biographies of the ships of the economy is the salary slips. For the mid-1930s inventory sheets come first, providing not only information about the state of the fleet, but also the technical characteristics of individual ships. Technical and financial reports of the enterprise are also of great importance. In general, these sources make it possible, with a fairly high degree of probability, to reconstruct the composition and evolution of STIE’s fleet for the specified period. As the reconstruction showed, from the moment of its formation in 1929 until its liquidation in 1938, STIE was actively involved in timber rafting, which was reflected in the presence and operation of its own fleet, which was quite large by the standards of Udmurtia. Throughout the period under review, the size of the fleet increased steadily. This can be explained by the fact that in the 1930s Sarapul was a fairly large industrial center, the operation of which required firewood as the main energy source. And since there were no large forests in the vicinity of Sarapul, firewood had to be transported along the Kama for 80–100 km, and therefore the fleet acquired strategic
importance. This would later be confirmed by the experience of the Great Patriotic War. Despite the shortage of selfpropelled watercrafts during the Battle of Stalingrad, the Navy was replenished by mobilizing ships in other regions, after which they were delivered to the Volga. During the war, the fleets of the Sarapul enterprises did not undergo mobilization, but even increased in number.