Handicraft industry in the initial period of the NEP (on the materials of the Vladimir province)

The subject of the study is the formation of the handicraft industry in the Vladimir province during the reconstruction period, which replaced the policy of "war communism." The purpose of the study is to study the characteristic regional features (specialization of industries, raw materials, sale of products important to the local population, entry into the market outside the province, etc.), to identify trends in the development of industries of single artisans and united in cooperation. Using the example of the Vladimir Art Union and the Prioksky Union of Agricultural and Commercial Cooperatives, an analysis of the involvement of artisans in the cooperative movement is presented. The transition to planning in the economic relations between the state and the handicraft industry is investigated. The geographical scope of the study is limited to the territory of Vladimir Province, which was part of the Central Industrial Region in the 1920s. The methodological basis of the research is the principles of historicism, scientific approach and objectivity. A systematic approach allowed us to consider the handicraft industry as a hierarchy with the management of individual handicrafts and cooperatives united by cooperation. The method of source analysis made it possible to assess the information value and practical significance of the identified archival documents and periodicals of local lore. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that, based on the local history material of the 1920s and archival sources of the State Archive of the Vladimir region, a characteristic of the formation of the handicraft industry, its sectoral diversity is given: food, textile, metalworking, chemical, etc.. The process of functioning of both artels and cooperatives included in the cooperative at the level of the Vladimir province is presented.The research materials can be used in the educational process of teaching historical and historical-economic disciplines, in the development of teaching aids, in conducting specialized and generalizing research on the history of the handicraft industry and the formation of the cooperative movement in the Vladimir province, and on the scale of the Central Industrial region, dedicated to the initial period of the NEP.