Wooden hut has long been the most common dwelling of the Russian peasant. Despite the fact that at present only huts no older than the 19th century remain, they have preserved all the traditions of construction and arrangement.
The design of the hut is a square or rectangular log house. The walls consist of horizontal log crowns - rows connected at the corners by notches. The Russian hut is simple and laconic, and the picturesque symmetry of the buildings conveys true Russian comfort and hospitality.
The components of a peasant hut were: a cage, a canopy, a hut, a basement, a closet and an upper room. The main building was a living room with a stove. Inside there were such integral attributes of a master's life as: wide benches, shelves, a cradle, a cupboard, etc. attached to the walls. The absence of unnecessary elements and the strict attachment of one thing to a place are the main features of the interior of the hut.
Particular attention in the hut is concentrated on the stove, which symbolizes the idea of comfort and home. That’s why craftsmen devoted so much time and effort to making stoves. The oven consisted of the extended ends of thick bars. In front it supported the heavy hearth of the stove, and on the side - a bench-bed. The stove bunk fenced off the hearth near the stove pillar. All these elements were carefully hewn out with an ax.
There was often a corner for cooking near the stove. It was separated by a wooden paneled brightly painted partition. The septum was usually painted geometric shapes in the form of the sun or flowers.
Fixed benches were located along the entire perimeter of the room. On one side they were tightly adjacent to the wall, on the other they were supported by stands made of thick boards or carved dotted posts-legs. Typically, such columns narrowed towards the middle and had an apple-shaped pattern applied on them. Flat stands, cut from a thick board, usually had a pattern of turned legs.
In the huts there were also portable benches with four legs or supports on the sides (benches). The back of the bench could be thrown from one end to the other (saddlebacks). Through or blind backs were often decorated with carvings. In the upper rooms, the benches were covered with a special fabric. There were also benches with one side, on which carvings or paintings were applied. This sidewall served as a spinning wheel, or a support for a pillow.
Chairs in huts began to appear a little later - in the 19th century. They were made in a symmetrical shape, had a square plank seat, a through square back and slightly elongated legs. The chairs were decorated with a wooden fringe or a patterned back. Often the chairs were painted in two colors - blue and crimson.
The dining table was quite large. The table cover was made of high-quality processed boards without knots. The underframe could be of several types: plank sides with a recess at the bottom, connected by a leg; legs connected by two legs or a circle; base with drawers. The edges of the table edge and the edges of the legs were sometimes covered with carvings.
Tables for cooking (suppliers) were placed next to the stove. Such tables were higher than dining tables, and below were drawers or shelves with doors. Small decorative tables were often found in huts.
An integral attribute of the Russian hut was a chest in which clothes and other household items were stored. The chests had different sizes and minor external differences. The lid of the chest could be either straight or convex. The supporting part was made in the form of a supporting plinth, or in the form of small legs. The chests were upholstered with short-pile animal skin and reinforced with metal components. The chests were also decorated with all kinds of designs and patterns.
The shelves in the hut were tightly fastened. The hanging shelves were adjacent to the wall along the entire length, and the Voronsky shelves were supported only by the ends. Shelves could divide the room into several parts. Leaning with one end on a beam near the stove, the other end could extend between the logs of the wall. The suspended flooring (floor) was attached above the entrance door.
Over time, cabinets began to appear in the huts. They had different kinds and sizes. A through thread was applied to them to ventilate the products.
Peasants usually slept on built-in and mobile beds. Such beds were tightly attached to the walls on both sides and had one back, and were placed in the corner. For children, cradles and cradles were hung, decorated with turning parts, carvings or paintings.
Thus, the interior elements in a Russian hut were located horizontally and were made of wood. As the main color range golden ocher was used, with the addition of red and white flowers. Furniture, walls, dishes, painted in golden ocher tones, were successfully complemented by white towels, red flowers and clothes, as well as beautiful paintings.
The interior of Russian huts is for the most part very similar and includes a number of elements that can be found in any home. If we talk about the structure of the hut, it consists of:
- 1-2 living spaces
- upper room
- lumber room
- terrace
The first thing a guest encountered when entering the house was the canopy. This is a kind of zone between the heated room and the street. All the cold was retained in the hallway and did not enter the main room. The canopy was used by the Slavs for economic purposes. The rocker and other things were kept in this room. Located in the entryway lumber room. This is a room that was separated from the entryway by a partition. It contained a chest with flour, eggs and other products.
The heated room and the canopy were separated by a door and a high threshold. This threshold was made to make it more difficult for cold air to penetrate into a warm room. In addition, there was a tradition according to which the guest, entering the room, had to bow, I greet the owners and the brownie. The high threshold “forced” the guests to bow down when entering the main part of the house. Since entry without bowing was ensured by hitting the head on the doorframe. With the advent of Christianity in Rus', bowing to the brownie and the owners was supplemented by making the sign of the cross and bowing to the icons in the red corner.
Stepping over the threshold, the guest found himself in the main room of the hut. The first thing that caught my eye was the stove. It was located immediately to the left or right of the door. The Russian stove is the main element of the hut. The absence of a stove indicates that the building is non-residential. And the Russian hut got its name precisely because of the stove, which allows you to heat the room. Another important feature of this device - cooking food. Still no more useful way cooking than in an oven. Currently, there are various steamers that allow you to preserve the maximum of useful elements in food. But all this is not comparable to food cooked from the stove. There are many beliefs associated with the stove. For example, it was believed that it was a favorite vacation spot for the brownie. Or, when a child lost a baby tooth, he was taught to throw the tooth under the stove and say:
“Mouse, mouse, you have a turnip tooth, and you give me a bone tooth.”
It was also believed that garbage from the house should be burned in a stove so that the energy does not go outside, but remains indoors.
Red corner in a Russian hut
The red corner is an integral component interior decoration Russian hut. It was located diagonally from the stove (most often this place fell on the eastern part of the house - a note to those who do not know where to install the red corner in modern home). It was sacred place, where towels, icons, faces of ancestors and divine books were located. Necessary part the red corner was a table. It was in this corner that our ancestors ate food. The table was considered a kind of altar on which there was always bread:
“Bread on the table, so the table is a throne, but not a piece of bread, so the table is a board.”
Therefore, even today tradition does not allow sitting on the table. Leaving knives and spoons behind is considered a bad omen. To this day, another belief associated with the table has survived: young people were forbidden to sit on the corner of the table in order to avoid the fate of celibacy.
Shop with a chest in a hut
Everyday objects in a Russian hut played their own role. A hiding place or chest for clothes was important elements Houses. Skrynya was inherited from mother to daughter. It included the girl’s dowry, which she received after marriage. This element of the interior of a Russian hut was most often located next to the stove.
Benches were also an important element of the interior of a Russian hut. Conventionally, they were divided into several types:
- long - different from the others in length. It was considered a women's place where they did embroidery, knitting, etc.
- short - men sat on it during meals.
- kutnaya - installed near the stove. Buckets of water, shelves for dishes, and pots were placed on it.
- threshold - walked along the wall where the door is located. Used as kitchen table.
- ship - the bench is higher than others. Intended for storing shelves with dishes and pots.
- konik - men's shop square shape with a carved horse's head on the side. It was located near the door. Men were engaged in small crafts there, so tools were stored under the bench.
- The "beggar" was also located at the door. Any guest who entered the hut without the permission of the owners could sit on it. This is due to the fact that the guest cannot go into the hut further than the matitsa (log, underlying for the ceiling). Visually, the matica looks like a protruding log across the main laid boards on the ceiling.
The upper room is another living space in the hut. Wealthy peasants had it, because not everyone could afford such a room. The upper room was most often located on the second floor.Hence its name, the upper room - “mountain”. It contained another oven called a Dutch oven. This is a round oven. In many village houses they still stand today as decoration. Although even today you can find huts that are heated by these ancient appliances.
Enough has already been said about the stove. But we cannot fail to mention those tools that were used in working with Russian stoves. Poker- the most famous item. It is an iron rod with a curved end. A poker was used to stir and rake coals. The pomelo was used to clean the stove from coals..
With the help of a grabber it was possible to drag or move pots and cast iron pots. It was a metal arc that made it possible to grab the pot and move it from place to place. The grip made it possible to place the cast iron in the oven without fear of getting burned.
Another item used when working with the stove is bread shovel. With its help, bread is placed in the oven and taken out after cooking. And here is the word " Chaplya“Not many people know. This tool is also called a frying pan. It was used to grab a frying pan.
The cradle in Rus' had various shapes. There were hollowed out ones, wicker ones, hanging ones, and “vanka-standers”. Their names were surprisingly varied: cradle, shaky, coli, rocking chair, cradle. But a number of traditions are associated with the cradle, which remained unchanged. For example, it was considered necessary to install the cradle in a place where the baby could watch the dawn. Rocking an empty cradle was considered a bad omen. We still believe in these and many other beliefs to this day. After all, all the traditions of our ancestors were based on their personal experience, which the new generation adopted from their ancestors.
Word "hut"(as well as its synonyms "yzba", "isba", "izba", "source", "heating") has been used in Russian chronicles since ancient times. The connection of this term with the verbs “to drown”, “to heat” is obvious. In fact, it always designates a heated structure (as opposed to, for example, a cage).
In addition, all three East Slavic peoples - Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians - retained the term "heating" and again denoted a heated building, be it a storage room for winter storage vegetables (Belarus, Pskov region, Northern Ukraine) or a tiny living hut (Novogorodskaya, Vologda region), but certainly with a stove.
A typical Russian house consisted of a warm, heated room and a hallway. Seni First of all, they separated heat from cold. The door from the warm hut did not open directly onto the street, but into the hallway. But back in the 14th century, the word “canopy” was used more often to designate a covered gallery top floor in rich chambers. And only later did the hallway begin to be called that. On the farm, the canopy was used as utility rooms. In the summer it was comfortable to sleep “in the cool” in the hallway. And in the large entryway, girls' get-togethers and winter meetings of young people were held.
Canopy in the Yesenins' house in the village. Konstantinovo, Ryazan province(house-museum of Sergei Yesenin).
A low, single-leaf door led into the hut itself. door, hewn from two or three wide plates of hard wood (mostly oak). The door was inserted into a door deck made up of two thick hewn oak blocks (jambs), a vershnyak (top log) and a high threshold.
Threshold in everyday life it was perceived not only as an obstacle to the penetration of cold air into the hut, but also as a border between worlds. And as with any border, there are many signs associated with the threshold. When entering someone else's house, one was supposed to stop at the threshold and read a short prayer - to strengthen oneself for the transition to someone else's territory. When setting off on a long journey, one should sit silently for a while on a bench at the threshold - to say goodbye to home. There is a universal ban on greeting and saying goodbye, and talking to each other across the threshold.
The hut door always opened into the vestibule. This increased the space of the warm hut. The shape of the door itself was close to a square (140-150 cm X 100-120 cm). The doors in the villages were not locked. Moreover, village etiquette allowed anyone to enter the hut without knocking, but with the obligatory knock on the side window or the jingling of the latch on the porch.
The main space of the hut was occupied by bake. In some huts with a Russian stove, it seems that the hut itself was built around the stove. In most huts, the stove was located immediately to the right at the entrance with its mouth towards the front wall, towards the light (windows). Russian peasant women disparagingly called huts with a stove to the left of the entrance “non-spinners”. The spinners usually sat on the “long” or “woman’s bench”, stretching along the opposite long wall Houses. And if the woman’s shop was on the right (with the stove located on the left), then spinning had to be done with your back to the front wall of the house, that is, with your back to the light.
The Russian oven gradually evolved from the open hearth known among the ancient Slavs and Finno-Ugric people. Having appeared very early (already in the 9th century, widespread and adobe ovens and stone stoves), the Russian stove retained its unchanged form for more than a millennium. It was used for heating, cooking food for people and animals, and for ventilation. They slept on the stove, stored things, dried grain, onions, and garlic. In winter, poultry and young animals were kept under guard. They steamed in the ovens. Moreover, it was believed that the steam and air of the furnace were healthier and more healing than the air of the bathhouse.
Stove in the house of peasant Shchepin(Kizhi Museum-Reserve).
Despite a number of improvements, until the middle of the 19th century, the Russian stove was heated “black,” that is, it did not have a chimney. And in some areas, chicken stoves were preserved until the beginning of the 20th century. The smoke from the stove in such huts goes straight into the room and, spreading across the ceiling, is pulled out through a glass window with a latch and goes into a wooden chimney - a chimney.
The name itself "chicken hut" evokes in us the usual - and, it must be said, superficial, incorrect - idea of the dark and dirty hut of the last poor man, where smoke eats the eyes and soot and soot are everywhere. Nothing like this!
The floors, smoothly hewn log walls, benches, stove - all of this sparkles with the cleanliness and neatness inherent in the huts of northern peasants. There is a white tablecloth on the table, embroidered towels on the walls, in the “red corner” there are icons in highly polished mirror shine frames, And only a little higher than human height is the border, which reigns the blackness of the smoky upper crowns of the log house and the ceiling - shiny, shimmering blue, like a raven's wing.
Russian peasant hut. At the exhibition in Paris on the Champ de Mars, Engraving 1867.
The entire ventilation and chimney system was thought out very carefully here, verified by the centuries-old everyday and construction experience of the people. The smoke, collecting under the ceiling - not flat, as in ordinary huts, but in the shape of a trapezoid - descends to a certain and always constant level, lying within one or two crowns. Just below this border, wide shelves stretch along the walls - “Voronets” - which very clearly and, one might say, architecturally separate the clean interior of the hut from its black top.
The location of the stove in the hut was strictly regulated. In most of European Russia and Siberia, the stove was located near the entrance, to the right or left of the door. The mouth of the furnace, depending on the terrain, could be turned towards the front façade wall home or to the side.
There are many ideas, beliefs, rituals, and magical techniques associated with the stove. In the traditional mind, the stove was an integral part of the home; if a house did not have a stove, it was considered uninhabited. The stove was the second most important “center of holiness” in the house - after the red, God's corner - and maybe even the first.
The part of the hut from the mouth to the opposite wall, the space in which all women’s work related to cooking was carried out, was called stove corner. Here, near the window, opposite the mouth of the stove, in every house there were hand millstones, which is why the corner is also called millstone. In the corner of the stove there was a bench or counter with shelves inside, used as a kitchen table. On the walls there were observers - shelves for tableware, cabinets. Above, at the level of the shelf holders, there was a stove beam, on which kitchen utensils were placed and a variety of household utensils were stacked.
Stove corner ( exposition of the exhibition "Russian Northern House",
Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk region).
The stove corner was considered a dirty place, in contrast to the rest of the clean space of the hut. Therefore, the peasants always sought to separate it from the rest of the room with a curtain made of variegated chintz, colored homespun, or a wooden partition. The corner of the stove, covered by a board partition, formed a small room called a “closet” or “prilub.”
It was an exclusively female space in the hut: here women prepared food and rested after work. During holidays, when many guests came to the house, a second table was placed near the stove for women, where they feasted separately from the men who sat at the table in the red corner. Men, even their own families, could not enter the women’s quarters unless absolutely necessary. The appearance of a stranger there was considered completely unacceptable.
Red corner, like the stove, was an important landmark internal space huts In most of European Russia, in the Urals, in Siberia, the red corner represented the space between the side and façade wall in the depths of the hut, limited by a corner that is located diagonally from the stove.
Red corner ( architectural and ethnographic museum Taltsy,
Irkutsk region).
The main decoration of the red corner is goddess with icons and a lamp, which is why it is also called "saints". As a rule, everywhere in Russia in the red corner, in addition to the shrine, there is table. All significant events family life marked in the red corner. Here, both everyday meals and festive feasts took place at the table, and many calendar rituals took place. During harvesting, the first and last spikelets were placed in the red corner. Preservation of the first and last ears of the harvest, endowed, according to folk legends, magical power, promised well-being for the family, home, and entire household. In the red corner, daily prayers were performed, from which any important undertaking began. It is the most honorable place in the house. According to traditional etiquette, a person who came to a hut could only go there at the special invitation of the owners. They tried to keep the red corner clean and elegantly decorated. The name “red” itself means “beautiful”, “good”, “light”. It was decorated with embroidered towels, popular prints, and postcards. The most beautiful household utensils were placed on the shelves near the red corner, the most valuable papers and objects were stored. Everywhere among Russians, when laying the foundation of a house, it was a common custom to place money under the lower crown in all corners, and a larger coin was placed under the red corner.
"Military Council in Fili", Kivshenko A., 1880(the painting depicts a red corner of the hut of the peasant Frolov in the village of Fili, Moscow region, where a military council is being held at the table with the participation of M. Kutuzov and the generals of the Russian army).
Some authors associate the religious understanding of the red corner exclusively with Christianity. In their opinion, the only sacred center of the house in pagan times was the stove. God's corner and the oven are even interpreted by them as Christian and pagan centers.
The lower boundary of the living space of the hut was floor. In the south and west of Rus', floors were often made of earthen floors. Such a floor was raised 20-30 cm above ground level, carefully compacted and covered with a thick layer of clay mixed with finely chopped straw. Such floors have been known since the 9th century. Wooden floors are also ancient, but are found in the north and east of Rus', where the climate is harsher and the soil is wetter.
Pine, spruce, and larch were used for floorboards. The floorboards were always laid along the hut, from the entrance to the front wall. They were laid on thick logs cut into lower crowns log house - crossbars. In the North, the floor was often arranged as double: under the upper “clean” floor there was a lower one – “black”. The floors in the villages were not painted, preserving the natural color of the wood. Only in the 20th century did painted floors appear. But they washed the floor every Saturday and before the holidays, then covering it with rugs.
The upper boundary of the hut served ceiling. The basis of the ceiling was a matitsa - a thick tetrahedral beam on which the ceilings were laid. Various objects were hung from the motherboard. A hook or ring was nailed here for hanging the cradle. It was not customary to go behind the mother strangers. Ideas about the father's house, happiness, and good luck were associated with the mother. It is no coincidence that when setting off on the road, it was necessary to hold on to the mat.
The ceilings on the motherboard were always laid parallel to the floorboards. Sawdust and fallen leaves were thrown on top of the ceiling. It was impossible to just sprinkle earth on the ceiling - such a house was associated with a coffin. The ceiling appeared in city houses already in the 13th-15th centuries, and in village houses - at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th century. But even until the middle of the 19th century, when firing “in black”, in many places they preferred not to install ceilings.
It was important hut lighting. During the day the hut was illuminated with the help of windows. In a hut, consisting of one living space and a vestibule, four windows were traditionally cut: three on the facade and one on the side. The height of the windows was equal to the diameter of four or five crowns of the frame. The windows were cut down by carpenters already in the erected frame. It was inserted into the opening wooden box, to which a thin frame was attached - a window.
The windows in the peasant huts did not open. The room was ventilated through chimney or a door. Only occasionally could a small part of the frame lift up or move to the side. Sash frames that opened outward appeared in peasant huts only at the very beginning of the 20th century. But even in the 40-50s of the 20th century, many huts were built with non-opening windows. They didn’t make winter or second frames either. And in cold weather, the windows were simply covered from the outside to the top with straw, or covered with straw mats. But big windows the huts always had shutters. In the old days they were made with single doors.
A window, like any other opening in a house (door, pipe) was considered very dangerous place. Only light from the street should enter the hut through the windows. Everything else is dangerous for humans. Therefore, if a bird flies into the window - to the deceased, a night knock on the window - the return to the house of the deceased, who was recently taken to the cemetery. In general, the window was universally perceived as a place where communication with the world of the dead takes place.
However, the windows, being “blind”, provided little light. And therefore, even on the sunny day, the hut had to be illuminated artificially. The oldest lighting device is considered to be fireplace- a small recess, a niche in the very corner of the stove (10 X 10 X 15 cm). A hole was made in the upper part of the niche connected to the stove chimney. A burning splinter or smolje (small resinous chips, logs) was placed in the fireplace. Well-dried torch and tar gave a bright and even light. By the light of the fireplace one could embroider, knit and even read while sitting at the table in the red corner. A child was placed in charge of the fireplace, who changed the torch and added tar. And only much later, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, did they begin to call a small fireplace brick stove, attached to the main one and connected to its chimney. On such a stove (fireplace) they cooked food during the hot season or additionally heated it in cold weather.
A splinter fixed in the lights.
A little later the firelight appeared torch, inserted into secularists. A splinter was a thin sliver of birch, pine, aspen, oak, ash, and maple. To obtain thin (less than 1 cm) long (up to 70 cm) wood chips, the log was steamed in an oven over cast iron with boiling water and split at one end with an ax. The split log was then torn into splinters by hand. They inserted splinters into the lights. The simplest light was a wrought iron rod with a fork at one end and a point at the other. With this tip, the light was stuck into the gap between the logs of the hut. A splinter was inserted into the fork. And for falling embers, a trough or other vessel with water was placed under the light. Such ancient secularists dating back to the 10th century were found during excavations in Staraya Ladoga. Later, lights appeared in which several torches burned at the same time. They remained in peasant life until the beginning of the 20th century.
On major holidays, expensive and rare candles were lit in the hut to provide full light. With candles in the dark they walked into the hallway and went down to the underground. In winter, they threshed on the threshing floor with candles. The candles were greasy and waxy. At the same time, wax candles were used mainly in rituals. Tallow candles, which appeared only in the 17th century, were used in everyday life.
Relatively small space The hut, about 20-25 sq.m., was organized in such a way that a fairly large family of seven or eight people could comfortably live in it. This was achieved due to the fact that each family member knew his place in the common space. Men usually worked and rested during the day in the men's half of the hut, which included a front corner with icons and a bench near the entrance. Women and children were in the women's quarters near the stove during the day.
Each family member knew his place at the table. The owner of the house sat under the icons during a family meal. His eldest son was located at right hand from the father, the second son is on the left, the third is next to his older brother. Children under marriageable age were seated on a bench running from the front corner along the facade. Women ate while sitting on side benches or stools. It was not supposed to violate the established order in the house unless absolutely necessary. The person who violated them could be severely punished.
On weekdays the hut looked quite modest. There was nothing superfluous in it: the table stood without a tablecloth, the walls without decorations. Everyday utensils were placed in the stove corner and on the shelves. On a holiday, the hut was transformed: the table was moved to the middle, covered with a tablecloth, and festive utensils, previously stored in cages, were displayed on the shelves.
Construction of a hut for village peasants in Tver Province. 1830 Objects of Russian everyday life in watercolors from the work “Antiquities of the Russian State” by Fyodor Grigorievich Solntsev. Issued in Moscow during 1849-1853.
Hut or Russian room, Milan, Italy, 1826. The authors of the engraving are Luigi Giarre and Vincenzo Stanghi. Work from the publication by Giulio Ferrario "Il costume antico e moderno o storia".
Huts were made under the windows shops, which did not belong to the furniture, but formed part of the extension of the building and were fixedly attached to the walls: the board was cut into the wall of the hut at one end, and supports were made on the other: legs, headstocks, headrests. IN old huts the benches were decorated with an “edge” - a board nailed to the edge of the bench, hanging from it like a frill. Such shops were called “edged” or “with a canopy”, “with a valance”. In a traditional Russian home, benches ran along the walls in a circle, starting from the entrance, and served for sitting, sleeping, and storing various household items. Each shop in the hut had its own name, associated either with the landmarks of the internal space, or with the ideas that had developed in traditional culture about the activity of a man or woman being confined to a specific place in the house (men's, women's shops). Under the benches they stored various items that were easy to get if necessary - axes, tools, shoes, etc. In traditional rituals and in the sphere of traditional norms of behavior, the bench acts as a place in which not everyone is allowed to sit. Thus, when entering a house, especially for strangers, it was customary to stand at the threshold until the owners invited them to come in and sit down.
Felitsyn Rostislav (1830-1904). On the porch of the hut. 1855
IZBA- peasant log house, living space with a Russian stove. The word “izba” was used only in relation to a house made of wood and located in rural areas. It had several meanings:
- firstly, a hut is a peasant house in general, with all outbuildings and utility rooms;
- secondly, this is only the residential part of the house;
- thirdly, one of the rooms of the house, heated by a Russian oven.
The word “izba” and its dialect variants “ystba”, “istba”, “istoba”, “istok”, “istebka” were known back in Ancient Rus' and were used to designate a room. The huts were chopped with an ax from pine, spruce, and larch. These trees with straight trunks fit well into the frame, tightly adjacent to each other, retained heat, and did not rot for a long time. The floor and ceiling were made from the same material. Window and door frames and doors were usually made of oak. Other deciduous trees used in the construction of huts quite rarely - both for practical reasons (crooked trunks, soft, quickly rotting wood) and for mythological ones.
For example, it was impossible to use aspen for a log house, because, according to legend, Judas, who betrayed Jesus Christ, hanged himself on it. Construction equipment in the vast expanses of Russia, with the exception of its southern regions, was completely the same. The house was based on a rectangular or square frame measuring 25-30 square meters. m, composed of round, bark-free, but unhewn logs laid horizontally one on top of the other. The ends of the logs were connected without the help of nails different ways: “in the corner”, “in the paw”, “in the hook”, “in the husk”, etc.
Moss was laid between the logs for warmth. The roof of a log house was usually made with a gable, three-slope or four-slope roof, and as a roofing materials They used planks, shingles, straw, and sometimes reeds with straw. Russian huts varied in overall height living space. High buildings were typical for the Russian northern and northeastern provinces of European Russia and Siberia. Due to the harsh climate and high soil moisture, the wooden floor of the hut was raised to a considerable height here. The height of the basement, i.e., the non-residential space under the floor, varied from 1.5 to 3 m.
There were also two-story houses, the owners of which were rich peasants and merchants. Two-story houses and houses on high basements were also built by rich Don Cossacks, who had the opportunity to buy timber. The huts in the central part of Russia, in the Middle and Lower Volga region were significantly lower and smaller in size. The floor beams were cut into the second - fourth crown. In the relatively warm southern provinces of European Russia, underground huts were erected, that is, the floorboards were laid directly on the ground. The hut usually consisted of two or three parts: the hut itself, the hallway and the cage, connected to each other into a single whole common roof.
The main part of the residential building was the hut (called in the villages Southern Russia hut) - a heated living space of a rectangular or square shape. The cage was a small cold room, used mainly for household purposes. The canopy was a kind of unheated hallway, a corridor separating the living space from the street. In Russian villages of the 18th - early 20th centuries. houses that consisted of a hut, a cage and a vestibule predominated, but there were also often houses that included only a hut and a cage. In the first half - mid-19th century. In the villages, buildings began to appear that consisted of a canopy and two residential premises, one of which was a hut, and the other was an upper room, used as a non-residential, front part of the house.
The traditional farmhouse had many variations. Residents of the northern provinces of European Russia, rich in timber and fuel, built several heated rooms for themselves under one roof. There already in the 18th century. Five-walled buildings were common, and twin huts, cross-shaped huts, and huts with trusses were often erected. Rural houses the northern and central provinces of European Russia and the Upper Volga region included many architectural details that, while having a utilitarian purpose, simultaneously served as decorative decoration for the house. Balconies, galleries, mezzanines, and porches smoothed out the harshness of the external appearance of the hut, built from thick logs that had become gray with time, turning peasant huts into beautiful architectural structures.
Such necessary details roof structures, such as ohlupen, valances, cornices, piers, as well as window frames and shutters, were decorated with carvings and paintings, sculpturally processed, giving the hut additional beauty and originality. In the mythological ideas of the Russian people, a house, a hut, is the focus of a person’s basic life values: happiness, prosperity, peace, well-being. The hut protected a person from external dangerous world. In Russian fairy tales and epic stories, a person always takes refuge from evil spirits in a house whose threshold they are unable to cross. At the same time, the hut seemed to the Russian peasant to be a rather miserable dwelling.
A good house required not only a hut, but also several upper rooms and cages. That is why in Russian poetry, which idealized peasant life, the word “izba” is used to describe a poor house in which poor people live, deprived of fate: peasants and peasants, widows, unfortunate orphans. The hero of the fairy tale, entering the hut, sees that a “blind old man”, a “back-door grandmother”, or even Baba Yaga - Bone Leg - is sitting in it.
IZBA WHITE- living quarters of a peasant house, heated by a Russian stove with a chimney - white. Huts with a stove, the smoke from which came out through a chimney when burning, became widespread in the Russian village quite late. In European Russia they began to be actively built from the second half of the 19th century century, especially in the 80-90s. In Siberia, the transition to white huts occurred earlier than in the European part of the country. They became widespread there at the end of the 18th century, and by the middle of the 19th century. in fact, all huts were heated by a stove with a chimney. However, the absence of white huts in the village until the first half of the 19th century. did not mean that stoves with a chimney were not known in Rus'.
During archaeological excavations in Veliky Novgorod in the layers of the 13th century. in the ruins of the stoves of rich houses there are chimneys made of baked clay. In the XV-XVII centuries. in the grand-ducal palaces, mansions of boyars, and rich townspeople there were rooms that were heated in white. Until this time, only rich peasants in suburban villages who were engaged in trade, carting, and crafts had white huts. And already at the beginning of the 20th century. only very poor people heated their huts the black way.
IZBA-TWINS - wooden house, consisting of two independent log houses, tightly pressed against each other by their sides. The log houses were placed under one gable roof, on a high or medium basement. The living quarters were located in the front part of the house; a common vestibule was attached to them at the back, from which there were doors to the covered courtyard and to each of the rooms of the house. The log houses were, as a rule, same sizes- three windows on the facade, but they could be of different sizes: one room had three windows on the facade, the other two.
The installation of two log cabins under a single roof was explained both by the owner’s concern for the comfort of the family and by the need to have a backup room. One of the rooms was the actual hut, that is, a warm room heated by a Russian stove, intended for family living in winter. The second room, called the summer hut, was cold and was used in summer time, when the stuffiness in the hut, heated even in the hot season, forced the owners to move to a cooler place. In rich houses, the second hut sometimes served as a ceremonial room for receiving guests, that is, an upper room or a living room.
In this case, a city-type stove was installed here, which was not used for cooking, but only for heat. In addition, the upper room often became a bedroom for young married couples. And when the family grew, the summer hut, after installing a Russian stove in it, easily turned into a hut for the youngest son, who remained under his father’s roof even after marriage. It is curious that the presence of two log cabins placed side by side made the twin hut quite durable.
Two log walls, one of which was the wall of a cold room, and the other of a warm one, placed at a certain interval, had their own natural and rapid ventilation. If there was one between the cold and warm rooms common wall, then it would condense moisture in itself, contributing to its rapid decay. Twin huts were usually built in places rich in forests: in the northern provinces of European Russia, in the Urals, and in Siberia. However, they were also found in some villages of Central Russia among wealthy peasants engaged in trade or industrial activities.
IZBA KURNAYA or IZBA BLACK- living quarters of a peasant log house, heated by a stove without a chimney, in a black way. In such huts, when the stove was fired, smoke from the mouth rose upward and went out into the street through a smoke hole in the ceiling. It was closed after heating with a board or plugged with rags. In addition, smoke could come out through a small fiberglass window cut into the pediment of the hut, if it did not have a ceiling, and also through open door. While the stove was firing, it was smoky and cold in the hut. People who were here at that time were forced to sit on the floor or go outside, as the smoke ate their eyes and climbed into their larynx and nose. The smoke rose up and hung there in a dense blue layer.
As a result, all the upper crowns of the logs were covered with black resinous soot. The shelf guards that surrounded the hut above the windows served in the smoke hut to settle soot and were not used for arranging utensils, as was the case in the white hut. To maintain heat and ensure a quick exit of smoke from the hut, Russian peasants came up with a series of special devices. For example, many northern huts had double doors, coming out into the vestibule. The outer doors, which completely covered the doorway, opened wide. The internal ones, which had a fairly wide opening at the top, were tightly closed. The smoke came out through the top of these doors, and the cold air coming from below met an obstacle on its way and could not penetrate the hut.
In addition, a chimney was installed above the smoke hole in the ceiling - a long exhaust wooden pipe, the upper end of which was decorated with through carvings. To make the living space of the hut free from the smoke layer, clean from soot and soot, in some regions of the Russian North, huts were made with high vaulted ceilings. In other places in Russia, many huts even in early XIX V. had no ceiling at all. The desire to remove smoke from the hut as quickly as possible explains the usual lack of a roof in the entryway.
Kurnaya peasant hut described in rather gloomy colors at the end of the 18th century. A. N. Radishchev in his “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”: “Four walls, half covered, as well as the entire ceiling, with soot; the floor is full of cracks, at least an inch covered with mud; stove without a chimney, but best protection from the cold, and the smoke that fills the hut every morning in winter and summer; endings, in which a tense bubble, darkening at noon, let in light; two or three pots... A wooden cup and crumbs, called plates; table, cut down with an ax, which is scraped with a scraper on holidays. A trough to feed pigs or calves, when they eat, they sleep with them, swallowing air, in which a burning candle seems to be in fog or behind a curtain.”
However, it should be noted that the chicken hut also had a number of advantages, thanks to which it remained in the everyday life of the Russian people for so long. When heating with a pipeless stove, the heating of the hut occurred quite quickly as soon as the wood burned and the door was closed. external door. Such a stove gave more heat, less wood was used for it. The hut was well ventilated, there was no dampness in it, and the wood and straw on the roof were involuntarily disinfected and preserved longer. The air in the smoking hut, after it was heated, was dry and warm.
Chicken huts appeared in ancient times and existed in the Russian village until the beginning of the 20th century. They began to be actively replaced by white huts in the villages of European Russia from the middle of the 19th century, and in Siberia even earlier, from the end of the 18th century. So, for example, in the description of the Shushenskaya volost of the Minusinsk district of Siberia, made in 1848, it is indicated: “There are absolutely no black houses, the so-called huts without pipes, anywhere.” In the Odoevsky district of the Tula province, back in 1880, 66% of all huts were chicken houses.
IZBA WITH PRIRUB- a wooden house, consisting of one log house and a smaller living space attached to it under a single roof and with one common wall. The prirub could be installed immediately during the construction of the main log house or attached to it several years later, when the need arose additional room. The main log house was a warm hut with a Russian stove, the log house was a summer cold hut or a room heated by a Dutch oven - a city-style stove. Huts with trusses were built mainly in the central regions of European Russia and the Volga region.
Native penates, in which our ancestors were born, in which the life of the family took place, in which they died...
Original Russian name wooden house comes from Old Russian "isba", which means "house, bathhouse" or "source" from "The Tale of Bygone Years...". The Old Russian name for a wooden dwelling is rooted in the Proto-Slavic "jьstъba" and is considered to be borrowed from Germanic "stubа". In Old German "stubа" meant “warm room, bathhouse.” 
Also in "Tales of Bygone Years..." The chronicler Nestor writes that the Slavs lived in clans, each clan in its place. The way of life was patriarchal. The clan was the residence of several families under one roof, connected by blood ties and the authority of a single ancestor - the head of the family. As a rule, the clan consisted of older parents - father and mother and their numerous sons with their wives and grandchildren, who lived in one hut with a single hearth, all worked together and obeyed the elder brother to the younger, the son to the father, and the father to the grandfather. If the clan was too large, there was not enough space for everyone, then the hut with a warm fireplace grew with additional extensions - cages. A cage is an unheated room, a cold hut without a stove, a log house extension to the main, warm dwelling. Young families lived in the cages, but the hearth remained the same for everyone; food common to the whole family was prepared on it - lunch or dinner. The fire that was kindled in the hearth was a symbol of the clan, as a source of family warmth, as a place where the whole family, the whole clan gathered to resolve the most important issues of life. 
In ancient times huts were "black" or "chicken". Such huts were heated by stoves without a chimney. The smoke from the fire did not come out through the chimney, but through a window, door or chimney in the roof. 
The first blond huts, according to archaeological data, appeared in Rus' in the 12th century. At first, rich, wealthy peasants lived in such huts with a stove and chimney, gradually all peasant classes began to adopt the tradition of building a hut with a stove and chimney, and already in the 19th century it was rarely possible to see a black hut, except perhaps only baths. they built in Rus' in black style until the twentieth century; just remember the famous song by V. Vysotsky “Bathhouse in black style”:
"...Stomp!
Oh, today I will wash myself white!
Kropi,
The walls of the bathhouse are covered in smoke.
Swamp,
Do you hear? Give me a bathhouse in black! "....
According to the number of walls in the hut, wooden houses were divided into four-walled, five-walled, cross-walled and six-walled.
Four-wall hut- the simplest structure made of logs, a house with four walls. Such huts were sometimes built with canopies, sometimes without them. The roofs in such houses were gable. In the northern territories, canopies or cages were attached to four-walled huts so that frosty air in winter would not immediately enter the warm room and cool it. 
Five-wall hut - log house with a fifth main transverse wall inside the log house, the most common type of hut in Rus'. The fifth wall in the frame of the house divided the room into two unequal parts: the larger part was the upper room, the second served either as an entryway or as an additional living area. The upper room served as the main room common to the whole family; there was a stove - the essence of the family hearth, which warmed the hut during harsh winters. The upper room served as both a kitchen and a dining room for the whole family. 
Izba-cross- This log house with internal transverse fifth and longitudinal sixth walls. The roof in such a house most often had a hipped roof (or, in modern terms, a hip roof), without gables. Of course, they built cross huts bigger size than ordinary five-walled ones, for large families, With separate rooms separated by main walls.
Six-wall hut- this is the same as a five-wall hut, only with two transverse fifth and sixth main walls made of logs, parallel to each other.
Most often, huts in Rus' were built with a courtyard - additional wooden utility rooms. The courtyards in the house were divided into open and closed and were located away from the house or around it. IN middle lane In Russia, open courtyards were most often built - without a common roof. All outbuildings: sheds, sheds, stables, barns, wood sheds, etc. stood at a distance from the hut.
In the north, closed courtyards were built, under a common roof, and panels lined with wood on the ground, along which one could move from one outbuilding to another, without fear of getting caught in rain or snow, the territory of which was not blown by a draft wind. The courtyards, covered with a single roof, were adjacent to the main residential hut, which made it possible, during harsh winters or rainy autumn-spring days, to get from the warm hut to the woodshed, barn or stable, without the risk of being wetted by rain, covered with snow or being exposed to street drafts. 
When building a new hut, our ancestors followed the rules developed over centuries, because the construction of a new house is a significant event in the life of a peasant family and all traditions were observed to the smallest detail. One of the main behests of the ancestors was the choice of a place for the future hut. A new hut should not be built on a site where there once was a cemetery, road or bathhouse. But at the same time, it was desirable that the place for the new wooden house should already be inhabited, where people lived in complete prosperity, bright and dry. 
The main requirement for building material was the same - the log house was cut from: pine, spruce or larch. Future home it was erected from a log house, in the first year the log house was settled, and the next season it was finished off and the family moved into a new wooden house with a stove. Trunk coniferous trees he was tall, slender, could be worked well with an ax and at the same time was durable, the walls made of pine, spruce or larch retained heat well in the house in winter and did not heat up in the summer, in the heat, maintaining a pleasant coolness. At the same time, the choice of tree in the forest was regulated by several rules. For example, it was forbidden to cut down sick, old and dried out trees, which were considered dead and could, according to legend, bring illness into the house. It was forbidden to cut down trees that grew on the road or near roads. Such trees were considered “violent” and in a log house, such logs, according to legend, could fall out of the walls and crush the owners of the house.
Details about construction wooden houses in Rus' you can read in a book written at the beginning of the 20th century by the famous Russian architect, historian and researcher of Russian wooden architecture M.V. Krasovsky. His book contains enormous material on the history of wooden architecture in Rus' from the most ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century. The author of the book studied the development of ancient traditions in construction wooden buildings from residential buildings to church temples, studied the techniques of constructing pagan wooden temples and temples. M.V. Krasovsky wrote about all this in his book, illustrating it with drawings and explanations.
