Chumak Roads — Lecture Series on the Salt Trade of Ukraine 16th-19th Centuries
Pyrohiv launches six lectures on Chumak salt trade — from Crimea to Belarus, from kulish on the cart to the economy of steppe Ukraine.
In February 2026 the Pyrohiv Museum opens a new lecture cycle 'Chumak Roads — Salt Trade of Ukraine 16th-19th Centuries'. Six lectures, held every Tuesday, cover one of the most important economic practices of the Cossack era — transportation of salt from Crimean lakes (Sasyk, Syvash) to Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, all the way to Belarusian lands. Chumaks — Ukrainian long-haul traders of the 16th-19th centuries — formed a separate social class with their own language, song, ritualism.
Programme lecturers: ethnographers of the Rylsky Institute of Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnology of the NAS of Ukraine, economic historians from Lviv University, archaeologists conducting excavations of Chumak camps. In the lecture hall a Chumak cart is reconstructed with a complete set of necessary equipment: a cauldron for kulish, wooden spoons for the whole artel, salt bags, tar barrels. A separate theme of the cycle is the cuisine of the Chumak artel: kulish, teterya, zatirka, halushky — dishes that were prepared right on the cart during six-week campaigns. Visitors can taste authentic kulish prepared according to 19th-century recipes.
