Bobruisk District Historical Economic Summaries

Provided by
The Minsk Historical Genealogy Group
Oleg Perzashkevich, Director

Village of Kovchitsy

by Oleg Perzashkevich

Kovchitsy before 1917

History

Before 1793 - Kovchitsy was a village in Rechitsa District of Minsk Province of Rech Pospolitaya.

1793-1917 - Kovchitsy was a village in Russian Empire.

Since 1801 - Kovchitsy was a village in Bobruisk District of Minsk Empire.

1847 - after the Emperor permitted Jews to live in the rural area and to work in agriculture, Jewish agricultural colony was founded in Kovchitsy as Kovchitsy II.

Vital Statistics

Jewish Life

In 1847, after obtaining permission to live in rural area and to work on land, some Jewish families from that area mostly rented the land from the State and moved there.

In 1898 there were 478 Jewish peasants in Kovchitsy, who rented for money about 330 hectares of land. 50 local Jews were officially busy in non-agricultural sphere: trade and business. But in fact since at least 1880s agricultural activity became not too popular among Kovchitsy Jews, majority of them returned to traditional life of local Jews: business and trade, their agricultural activity was secondary to them.

In the end XIX - early XX century there were 3 praying houses in Kovchitsy.

Economic Review

Traditional activities of local population were agriculture and chopping of wood. That settlement was out of any trade ways and was not interesting for non-agricultural matters.

During Russian principality the authorities did a lot to develop the region because of military and fiscal reasons mostly. But Kovchitsy itself was the State-owned agricultural settlement, as many other ones in the locality, and the authorities saw no reason to change or develop anything new there.

In XIX, because of development of the All-Russian Market, new types of communications appeared in the area in 1873. Construction of the railroad and highways provoked new increase of development of local settlements. But it did not effect seriously the development of Kovchitsy, because it was an agricultural settlement and the railway station was far from it. That was why it took long enough time to involve local inhabitants in market economy environment even in small extent. That was why, despite that it was not too popular and profitable to work in agriculture, local Jews continued to do it to support their living conditions.

Since 1873 to 1917 the closest railway station was 39 km afar from the Village in Bobruisk. It seems that there were no significant particular enterprises in Kovchitsy before 1917. However, there are some reasons to say, that Jews from Kovchitsy kept their businesses in Brozha, that was the regional timber business centre. Here are Brozha major business and trade enterprises for 1902:

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