Russia, Ukraine

Are Bast Shoes An Invention Of The Ukrainians?

Written by Arina KORSHUNOVA on
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Well readers, haven’t we been talking about politics too much? Not again. We’ll all go crazy soon. Let’s at least look at the traditional costumes, study the culture. Russians have traditional footwear made of tree bark. It’s called ‘lapti’ (bast shoes).

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Lapot. Saratov province, 1922–1923.
Russian- peasants-in- traditional-clothes
Russian peasants in traditional clothes

The shoes were universal and were worn by people of all ages at all times of the year in virtually all regions of the country… Oh, no, there it is, a familiar pony tail on the head: an expert in everything whatsoever crying that bast shoes were not worn in Russia. In their understanding, Russia is only the lands of today’s Ukraine and Belorussia and that bast shoes were invented by the Finns which means that Russians are not Slavs because Slavs wear only boots.

Any educated person would turn a deaf ear to that nonsense. However, we need to get to the truth. Footwear similar to bast shoes were used not only by Russian and Finnish peoples but also by the Germans and even Japanese.

Traditional-Japanese- warajigutsu
Traditional Japanese warajigutsu
Strohschuhe-from- Schwarzwald
Strohschuhe from Schwarzwald
German-soldiers- during-World-War-II- wearing-traditional- German-bast-shoes.
A photograph of German soldiers during World War II wearing traditional German bast shoes.

A photograph of German soldiers during World War II wearing traditional German bast shoes. A question to all the ukronationalists who admire the Nazis to one degree or another: are Finno-Ugric submen or Aryans depicted on the picture?

We will not go into Norwegian ‘birch-legged’ or Polish folk footwear called ‘hodaki’ with ‘drovnyaki’. Ukrainian scientists will be able to prove that the Germans and Poles are Finno-Ugrians somehow – they just rewrote their own history to hide the truth and belittle the importance of Ukraine. But how and why?…they’ll figure it out for themselves. Let our experts in bast shoes mull over it. And now, the most interesting part begins.

Before proceeding to it, it is necessary to determine how to delineate the boundaries between backward bast Finn-ugria and Scythian-Aryan Ukraine, the last cradle of white civilization. We should start…with the Belarusians. They are the very bast shoe-wearing Finno-Ugrians which is out of question.

Peasants-of-Brest-Litovsk-county-(uyezd)
Peasants of Brest-Litovsk county (uyezd)

Everything gets even more complicated when it comes to the Polishchuks since some of them are considered Ukrainians and some of them are regarded as Belarusians. However, their bast shoes put the lid on this dispute: they are not Slavs, but Finno-Ugrians. This means that they cannot be attributed to Ancient Rus. All that is lacking is Ukrainians themselves. However, there’s a problem here too…

According to ethnographers N.S. Polishchuk and A.P. Ponomarev, the population of the Middle Podneprovye wore ‘lychentsy’ woven from plant fibers or ‘postols’ made of one piece of rawhide in ancient times… Peasants’ primary footwear were leather postols or lychaki woven from bast (Fig. 75):

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Fig. 75 a – lychaki woven from bast (bast shoes); b – postols made from rawhide leather. Reconstructed by T.A. Nikolaeva
bast-shoes
 “In known places, especially the sandy plains of Zolochevsky and Zholkovsky counties, hodaki or lychaky were commonly used, that is, bast shoes made by peasants themselves from linden bald or wood strips using special skill. These were the cheapest and lightest footwear. It is remarkable that leather shoes are commonly worn in Galicia, and it is only this country where they wear lychaki allegedly brought from the northern countries. They strongly resemble the shoes of Belorussians, Lithuanians, Velikorussians and other country bumpkins.” However, it is debatable to regard Zolochevsky and Zholkivsky counties as exclusive given that Lviv has a whole district called Lychakivskyi where these very lychaki were made. These bast shoe makers must be written off ‘Rus-Ukraine’!

The book was published in Moscow, which means that Russians cast aspersions on the Ukroaryans and attribute their Finno-Ugric garment to them. Except that Ukrainian ethnographers themselves note that it turns out that the ancestors of Ukrainians wore “Moscow Finnish-Mongolian-Turkic bast shoes”. But this is not the whole story… The Finno-Ugrians attacked from the rear and struck the heart of Western Ukraine-Russia, the last stronghold of White Europe. in the very heart. It appears that peasants who resided in Zholkiv and Zolochiv counties (nowadays the territory of the Lviv region) wore these very Ugrian bast shoes.

bast-shoes
The main footwear of Huzuls were postols with red or black woolen edgings” (voloki). In the eastern Carpathian regions, postols with a wide strap were also worn (see Fig. 82, 6). Both women and men put postols on above cloth (red or black) foot wraps (onuchi) decorated in the upper part with ornamental stripes. Along with onuchi, they also wore knitted woolen socks (kapchuri) embroidered at the top in case of girls and boys. In wintertime, on holidays, women wore peculiar stockings made of white cloth (nogavitsi, pokolinnitsi, pidkolinnitsi) that were tied with laces above the knees. Better-off peasants also wore boots (girls and young girls wore mostly red and yellow ones, older women, men and boys wore black boots) while poor peasants used woven lychaki made of spruce or lime bast (Golovatsky. P. 72; Gutsulshchina. P. 191 , 194-201; Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains. Culture. P. 94–99).

Maybe Carpathian Mountains were left intact after the Finnish-Ugric invasion and it is that remote corner where the very Ukroaryanism untouched by the Klyatomoskals has survived to this day. Nothing of the sort! The Huzuls also turned out to be Finno-Ugrians!

bast-shoes
Clothes across Little Russia, except for some nobles, military officers and foreigners, were long a la Polish style. Nobles wear long Polish caftans, whether woolen or silk, and kuptushes or cherkeskas with slit sleeves, mostly woolen or silk, over caftans; the clothes are tied up with expensive girdles or belts; the lower dress is wide and made of wool; pantaloons (sharavars) and underwear called ‘ubranye’. Every zone, however, has some distinction to differentiate from ordinary people in terms of clothes, almost as much as an adverb in a language (§ 12). In the east-south zone, the upper and lower garments are long and wide, similar to Tatar, especially their hats that bear a great resemblance to the hats of the Circassians. Almost everyone wears boots with high iron braces; some people wear boots with low iron braces called horseshoes instead of heels, sewn in Polish style; and in summer some common folks wear a kind of leather bast shoes called postols, which they make themselves by bending leather without any cutting or sewing and tying it around their feet with belt staps called voloki. In the middle zone, clothes are generally narrower and shorter, and in some places, people begin to wear woven shoes (langi) made of bast that differ from the Great Russian bast shoes and look exactly like those worn by the Chukhons.

And here is a low blow in the back of the nation recorded in Athanasius Shafonsky’s “Description of Little Russia” dating back to 18th century.

nd in fact, the middle zone of Malorossiya includes Kievshchina according to Shafonsky. And the bast shoes they used to wear are not just any shoes but Finnish-Prefinnish ones. Shafonsky, a native Malorussian who had traveled through half the length and breadth of Russia, was well-versed in differences between bast shoes. What a blow! Kiev princes once used to take bast as tribute from the Yatvyags (Baltic tribes) and Lithuanians not without reason.

“Russian princes fought against Lithuania and Yatvyaga, defeated them and took bast, baskets (koshnitsy) and bath besoms as tribute” (PVL).

Bast for shoes and bath besoms! Did Kyiv Finnic women use to freshen up in a bath house? In a Finnish sauna bath! After all, all ukronationalist bast shoe experts know that the real Russia did not have bath houses or bast shoes. But it’s a topic for another time.

I’d like to conclude something enlightening and to the point. There you are.

The chronicle of Kozma of Prague talks about Prince Přemysl, a Czech hero and ruler. So anyway, he was crowned a prince in his own bast shoes and after his death “…the Přemyslovský lychaki were kept in Vyšehrad in the prince’s chamber until the 15th century, until the Hussite wars.” Czech kings had to wear these lychaki during their coronation.

“Przemysl took on the road with him a bast feedbag and lychaki. He said the ambassadors the following:

“I bequeath to you and future generations to keep these lychaki as a reminder of the past. Let my descendants remember where they came from, live righteously, do not oppress those entrusted to them, and do not get blinded by pride because all men are equal” (Alois Iracek)

Once again, dear readers, you have witnessed just how much ukronationalist logic contradicts reality. The whole national idea of Ukrainianism is not to regard the outer world and analyze what is going on but to live in the cozy cocoon of self-created myth and try to humiliate others for the most natural being inherent not only in themselves but also in those they admire.

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