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Humanitarian sciences in Siberia

2019 year, number

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SIBERIAN BUTTER INDUSTRY IN THE FIRST THIRD OF THE XX CENTURY

A.A. Nikolaev1,2
1Institute of History SB RAS, 8, Nikolaev Str., Novosibirsk, 630090, Russian Federation
2Novosibirsk Military Institute Named after Army General I. K. Yakovlev of National Guard Troops, 6/2, Klyuch-Kamyshenskoe plato Str.,Novosibirsk, 630114, Russian Federation
Keywords: historiography, Siberia, butter industry, dairy cooperation, NEP, modernization, comprehensive analisis, community

Abstract

The article analyzes publications on the history of Siberian butter industry and dairy cooperation published from the early XX century to the modern period. The main historiographical heritage of pre-revolutionary period are monographs containing the description of socio-economic and natural-climatic conditions and factors favourable for the establishment and development of the butter industry and dairy cooperative societies in Siberia. The author introduces into scientific circulation actual materials reflecting the opposition of cooperators to private enterprises, activity of foreign capital, role of state institutions in supporting butter production, interaction of peasant communities and cooperation. Some works which appeared in the early 1920s partly inherited the tradition of systematic scientific analysis of the pre-revolutionary stage, but in the late 1920s the Soviet doctrine prevailed, which ignored the achievements of pre-revolutionary butter cooperation in Siberia. The most significant works devoted to NEP period shifted the focus of research to technical and technological aspects of the butter industry’s modernization. Only in the 1970s-90s, researchers again drew attention to the phenomenal development of the butter production in the pre-revolutionary period. In 2000s, historians showed greater interest in identifying patterns and features of development of Siberian butter manufacturing in the early XX century. The period of the First World War, studied superficially in Soviet historiography, attracted special attention of researchers. Publications on NEP period are few. They revealed the dynamics of butter production in the context of major manufacturers’ competitive struggle, causes of slow recovery and declining butter industry and dairy cooperative societies. A considerable drawback of modern historiography is the lack of works in which butter manufacturing and cooperation are examined over a long historical period in conjunction with a complex of domestic and international factors. A comprehensive, multivariant analysis of the development of butter cooperation, from its inception in the late XIX century and elimination in the early 1930s to the present time has not been carried out from the economic history stand-point.