Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2019 number

Russia is a multi-ethnic country, where every nation has its own unique history, its own language and original culture. One of the humanities’ tasks is to tell each person about his history and culture. This is important both in terms of enhancing understanding of the geopolitical situation of the modern world, and in terms of upbringing patriotic feelings for one’s Fatherland. The United Scientific Council of the SB RAS for the Humanities consists of nine research institutes. They are closely connected with technological and natural science institutes within the SB RAS by ongoing interdisciplinary research. The indicators of the scientific research effectiveness often exceed the planned ones, as illustrated by the results of 2018. The text of this speech, prepared for the General Meeting of the SB RAS in April 2019, provides data on the publication activity of the humanitarian research institutes within the SB RAS. In conclusion, the United Scientific Council resolution on further prospects for the development of the humanities is given.

The article deals with the historical and genetic analysis of the relationship between local civil and departmental military authorities deployed in Kuznetsk Uyezd in the late 1730s - early 1740s within frameworks of the regional colonization, administrative and political processes. The research is based mainly on documents of records management from the fonds of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. Most of these documents have not been previously introduced into scientific circulation. Soon after the Newly formed dragoon regiment’s creation in Siberia, three companies of the formation were officially redeployed - to Kuznetsk, but in fact they were situated in the Biysk Fortress area; their commanders holding the ranks of Mayor and Captain interacted with the civil administration system represented by voivodes and prikazchiks. Initially the most urgent problem was the provision of garrison , which was not solved by the uyezd authorities and shifted onto ostrog chiefs, and, as a result, on local peasants, that caused protests among the poll-tax paying population. When V. Sokolov, the Kuznetsk companies’ commander, was redeployed to Kolyvan-Voskresensk plants region, the lieutenants remaning at the outposts in ostrogs and slobodas began to appeal not to their immediate military commanders but to the Kuznetsk voivode office to make important decisions. They sought some administrative patronage there despite the fact that the voivode office gave obvious priority to more rudimentary system of prikazchiks. The uyezd authorities controlled the state of troops left in Upper Priobie, purchased hay and even supplied the troops with horses. However, the excessive model of administrative communications did not last long and the next military commander A. Bibikov held a course for centralization and started to make numerous demands of the uyezd center. The main point of controversy was salt. The personality factor was key one in building relationships between the civil and military authorities under conditions of legislative mis-regulation in Kuznetsk Uyezd in the late 1730s - mid 1740s.

The Provincial reform of Catherine II started in Russia in 1775. On the local level, its implementation led to forming governorships and provinces. In Yakutia, a provincial administration was formed as part of the Irkutsk governorship. Until that period, the Yakut Voivode administration existed here with a small administration staff of officers engaged mainly in collecting yasak (fur tax). The local staff increased markedly when the Yakutsk province was created in 1783. The regional government structure was formed in accordance with the provisions of Provincial reform: Upper and Lower Raspravas (Justicement offices), Conciliar Court, Magistrate, Zemsky Lower Courts, County Courts, and Treasury. The staff of the Yakut bureaucracy increased quickly to 200 people excluding family members of officials by the late XVIII century. Nobles prevailed among them, who came from different regions of the country: the central and Volga regions, Baltic states, Siberia. The measures taken by government of Catherine II to recruit the nobility to the public service, were clearly manifested in the province, particularly in Yakutia. Many nobles were attracted by the opportunity to make a career in connection with formation of the Irkutsk governorship despite the remoteness and severe climatic conditions. The position of Yakut nobility weakened significantly, as they lost former sources of income due to abolition of the local noble staff. The Yakut bureaucracy was recruited from other classes as well: the Cossacks, clerical staff, bourgeois, non-OrtodoxYakuts. Many military servicemen, participants of the recent Russian military companies in the North Caucasus, Chukotka, arrived here. Among the Yakut bureaucracy there were many representatives of titled nobles, up to the 5th class rank according to the “Table of Ranks”. They got families here, some of them settled down for a long time. During this period a group of local hereditary bureaucracy began to form. It is of interest, that non-Ortodox Yakuts were attracted to the public service as assessors in the Upper Rasprava (court) for the first time just in the studied period. In general, the quite significant bureaucratic layer was formed in Yakutian local community under the influence of Provincial Reform of 1775.

Completing the industrial revolution and the first stage of industrialization in the Russian Empire led to growing number and social role of industrial workers, emerging “question of labour” and, as a consequence, the labour legislation by the late XIX century. Pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and modern scholars have actively studied various aspects of labour legislation regarding it as a part of the Great Liberal Reforms, or, as a means to exploit and oppress the working class. At the same time, its direct impact on the workers’ life and state was considered by reseachers sporadically, mainly for the most industrially developed regions (Central, North-West, etc.). The article objective is to study how the forming labour legislation was implemented into the practice in provincial regions with an average level of industrial development, by the example of Kazan Province. To achieve the goal, various sources and documents (reports, references, statistics) are involved including the internal regulations of nearly 30 factory enterprises in the province which have been sdudied considered and analyzed for the first time in historiography. The study showed that in the second half of the XIX century the state undertook large-scale reforming of the workers’ legislation. Its implementation in the Kazan Province faced a mixed and contradictory reaction of industrialists: most of them had a negative attitude to innovations, others were ahead of them. It led to forming the specific system of relations between workers and industrialists, which included both productive and non-productive ones. Workers acted as a passive object in this system which was characterized by a high level of paternalism, almost paramilitary discipline, which was due to the semimarginal social status and mentality of workers. At the same time, the development of the labour legislation positively, though slowly, influenced their lives.

The relevance of studying the history of reading is determined by its huge educational, enlightening, developing, upbringing potential, which plays an important role in forming a person, society, and state. Investigation of reading of the late XIX - early XX centuries is important to define the scales and rates of the Russian modernization, and factors accelerating or slowing it. For the first time in historiography modernization of Siberians’ circle of reading in the late XIX - early XX centuries becomes a subject of an independent research. The paper objective is the historical characteristic of modernization of Siberians’ circle of reading in the late imperial period. The theory of traditional society’s modernization became the research methodological basis. Modernization is understood as complex of innovative process to proceed from an agrarian traditional society to modern industrial one covering all spheres of public life, including cultural. The study is carried out in compliance with the principles of historicism, objectivity, consistency. The author applies common scientific approaches: terminological, structural and statistical analysis, inductive, deductive ones; in addition uses special historical methods: source study, historical and comparative, chronological ones, localization of historic facts. The paper represents basic principles of the theory of modernization of reading. Obtained data allow specifying and adding a regional and all-Russian picture of reading in the late imperial period; characterizing rates and scales of modernization of the Siberians’ reading. The research results represent knowledge of main segments of the circle of reading and their volumes ratio, reader’s preferences of Siberians, where the first place was steadily given to fiction, while religious, spiritual and moral literature was gradually removed to the last place, giving way to historical, geographical, economic, social and political editions, periodicals.

The article considers the participation of the Komsomol (the All-Russian Leninist Young Communist League) in the elections to village councils in the territory of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialistic Republic (RSFSR) from autumn 1924 to spring 1925. The author tried to answer the following questions: the basis upon which the Young Communist League took part in the elections; how the Komsomol cells behaved during the election campaigns and what results it led to. The methodological basis of the article is the principle of historicism, according to which studying the phenomena of the past should be considered in close connection with the cultural and historical context, as well as the principle of objectivity, assuming an open-minded approach of a researcher to the subject under study. The author has chosen the problematic and chronological method of a wide range of specific historical techniques involving the division of historical material into a number of narrower problems studied in the order of their time sequence. The Komsomol members had no legal grounds to participate in the elections of the Soviets; such a right was granted them by the documents of the governing party and the Komsomol, but not by the legal acts. Ensuring the representation of as many as possible Komsomol members in the village councils was considered by the leadership of the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks (RCP(b) as an important political task. Therefore, throughout the election campaign of 1924, the state bodies, the Communist Party and the Komsomol members themselves everywhere tried to put pressure on voters to force them to vote for Komsomol candidates. The peasants protested on a massive scale against turning the elections into a farce; the decrease in voter turnout, as well as the policy announced during the internal party struggle to “revive” the Soviets, prompted the top leadership of the RCP(b) to agree to conduct new elections in a number of provinces during the period from winter to spring 1925. Previous attempts of Communists and Komsomol members to impose their candidates upon the peasants was unequivocally condemned by the top leadership of the RCP(b), who in advance reconciled the possibility of increasing the share of non-party peasants in village councils. The refusal of administrative pressure caused a noticeable decrease in the Komsomol member’s share in village councils, thereby demonstrating the low credibility in the eyes of the peasants.

The article discusses the methods of defining various social groups in rural areas, the process of their transformation in the 1920s - early 1930s with the emphases on the groups of “kulaks”. Their interpretation in the historical literature is ambiguous, which is related to different attitudes and understanding by the authorities and population of that time, the absence of clear criteria to define them, their periodic revision. Based on the analysis of the archival sources, the author comes to conclusion that by the end of the 1920s the criteria for defining individual social groups (“farmhand”, “pauper”, “medium peasant”, “substantial farmer”, “kulak”) were developed mainly by the provincial, district and local authorities, individual organizations, which had different approaches to their revealing. The studied methods of the peasantry differentiation allowed paying attention to some points: first, the allowable property norms (livestock, land) for the same social groups were different; secondly, the majority of them separated kulak farms from well-to-do ones, and according to the logic of their definition, the labor farms were well-to-do, and kulak farms were those who lived on unearned incomes and used labor exploitation. In the late 1920s the criteria for kulak farms started to be established by “higher-ups”, the central government, and were included in the legal regulatory framework permitting to change them taking into account local peculiarities. The kulak features were periodically corrected, detailed, adjusting to the goals and objectives of the state. Gradually, the government obtained clearer differentiation of population, eliminating the transitional status that allowed peasants to belong to two groups at once, and ultimately refused such groups as “substantial farmer” and “strong medium peasant”.

The article tells about the first post-Soviet year of 1992 in the life of the traditional economy of Yakut’s Arctic, which presents all the indigenous peoples of Yakutia - Evens, Evenks, Yukagirs, Chukchi, Dolgans, Russian old-timers, Sakha. They were historically engaged in reindeer herding, horse breeding, cattle breeding, hunting and fishing. The 15 Arctic and northern regions are divided into three groups based on natural and economic specialization: North-west-coastal, North-east, Indigirka-Kolyma. Archival documents help to show the main issues of managing the economy authorities, the real problems of the development of farms in the first post-Soviet year. The irreversible process of reorganization of the Arctic farms, the transformation in ways of management is considered. In 1992, these farms continued to be under the jurisdiction of a separate department of the agricultural complex of the North, which had a complex hierarchy of subordination and cooperation with the relevant federal and regional ministries and was now under the jurisdiction of the new Ministry of Minority Affairs of the North of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). This year, the trend towards the organization of nomadic tribal communities as an original form of traditional nature management, as a public process of reviving the economic traditions of the indigenous peoples of the North, intensified. At the same time, tribal communities were initially considered by the state as business entities. The dynamics of the indicators of the main branches of the traditional economy at the beginning and at the end of 1992 are shown on the basis of the analysis of official statistics. The most vulnerable in the first post-Soviet year were areas of the northwestern coastal group with a predominantly reindeer herding direction of economic development. An attempt was made to show an objective picture of the situation of the studied farms and problematic issues of statistical data were identified.

The paper presents and analyzes approaches used by international and Russian researchers to understand the intangible cultural heritage. Intangible cultural heritage is the usual forms, representations and expressions, knowledge and skills, as well as related objects and cultural space recognized by the community as a cultural heritage. This concept follows the idea of relationships of intangible cultural heritage, tangible cultural heritage and natural heritage. One should noted a pronounced ethnic orientation of the term “intangible cultural heritage”. This is confirmed by the foreign researchers of intangible cultural heritage who use the concept of “First Voice” which appeared in the process of uploading the rights of indigenous peoples. “First Voice” is a metaphorical designation of a carrier of traditions, i.e. intangible cultural heritage. The Russian researchers prove it using the concept of ethnocultural heritage. Scholarly works on the problem of studying and preserving intangible cultural heritage are relatively few both in international and Russian historiography. Most of the theoretical developments on this issue are based on the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) and the general theory of heritage studies. While writing the paper, the author found that the directions of studying intangible cultural heritage are diverse both in Russia and abroad. However, in the first case, the preference is given to ontological issues of understanding the intangible cultural heritage and preserving it under natural conditions of living culture as close as possible. Thus, a number of international researchers consider intangible cultural heritage in the focus of relevant topics: supervision, information technology, cultural diversity, cultural identity, commodification of heritage, conservation practices, etc. In the second case, attention is paid to conceptualization of museum and the practice of working with intangible cultural heritage. For example, Russian scientists actively work with practitioners of museumification of intangible cultural heritage in theoretical and practical aspects. A common feature of these two directions is the recognition of the cultural landscape as a complex form of preserving intangible cultural heritage.

The article shows the historical mortality rate - an important population processes - in East Russia at the end of the Imperial period. The annual overall mortality rates, calculated by the author, in West and East Siberia over the period 1887-1914, in the Far East for 1894-1914, as well as in some cities of these regions for 1902-1914, are summarized in time series and presented in tabular and graphs form. The author shows mortality indicators in the country’s Trans-Ural suburbs against one another and the European Russia in year-to-year and phased 4-5-year dynamics. The paper reveals prevailing trends of changes with particular attention to the urban population which determined the demographic prospects during the period of the country’s emerging urbanization. The few available data for 1915-1917 are included. The analysis of time series proves the correctness of views made earlier by the author of this article and supported by historians V.A. Skubnevsky and Yu. M. Goncharov, that a general population trend was declining overall mortality during the studied period both in East Russia and in the country’s center. It was particularly marked in cities, but was “camouflaged” by explosion of mortality rates in West Siberia taking place at the stages of increased agricultural immigration from European Russia. Perhaps, the mortality downward trend continued even at the early stages of the First World War. This is more evident in rural areas, but in large cities the mortality rate declined for two years after an extraordinary jump in 1915. Therefore, one can argue that the initial phase of the demographic transition was unfolding at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, which was characterized by an advanced decrease in overall mortality rates with more stable birth rate not only in the center of the Russian Empire, but in its eastern regions as well.

The article attempts to highlight the main trends of health care development in Siberia and its impact on Siberians’ health. This period is characterized as the time of forming the health care system in Siberia. Based on the analysis of progressing medical network, staffing, financing health care, the author concludes on the insufficiency of health care development rate during the Imperial period. The emerging Siberian medicine’s success was quickly dashed under the Civil war conditions. After the Civil war, the state resumed active measures to develop medical care for population. However, the Siberians’ health of that period was far from ideal. Infectious morbidity was high, it firmly occupied the first place in the structure of death causes. In the early 1930s, famine struck Siberia. Peasants exhausted by malnutrition left for cities massively. Such a sharp increase of urban population was not provided with the adequate level of social sphere development. All three factors necessary for the successful development of epidemics coincided in these circumstances: presence of a susceptible and malnourished population, active migration flows, lack of sanitation. The epidemics growth in such an environment was inevitable. As a result, epidemics became the main cause of supermortality in the early 1930s. The need to overcome this severe infectious situation, the country’s economy growth led to the active health care system’s development in Siberia. Widening the medical activity affected the population health. In the second half of the 1930s, almost all infectious diseases had a clear declining dynamics. By 1940, Siberian health care had become a serious factor influencing the residents’ health.

In modern scientific literature, the population explosion is interpreted as a sharp increase in the population growth rate. The basis for this phenomenon is increased fertility, decreasing mortality and a corresponding expansion of natural growth. As a rule, a population explosion is closely linked to the process of demographic transition from the agrarian (traditional) to the industrial (modern) type of population reproduction. It is proved that the population explosion is territorially localized in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chronologically, it is fixed, as is believed in demographic literature, in the second half of the 20th century. This article hypothesizes that for the first time in demographic history, a population explosion occurred in the 1920s. It was due to the accelerated socio-economic development of the Siberian region in the 1920s, based on the new economic policy. This, in turn, caused the rapid development of global processes of demographic transition and was manifest primarily in a marked reduction in mortality rates. At the same time, the article shows that the decrease in the birth rate expected during the demographic explosion did not happen. On the contrary, for Siberia in the 1920s an increase in fertility rates was characteristic. The causes of this phenomenon are thoroughly investigated by the author. It is shown that the special conditions of family work in Siberia, the distribution of benefits from younger generations to older ones, and the absence of full-fledged pension provision were important factors in stimulating fertility. Based on the increase in natural growth, the population growth rate sharply increased, which caused a population explosion. The article analyzes not only the causes of population explosion, but also shows the socio-economic consequences of this phenomenon, reveals its short duration and reveals the factors that led to its rapid completion.

The article deals with the population of Western Siberia in 1964-1970. During this period, the decline in mortality has stopped, and the reverse process of increasing mortality and reducing life expectancy begаn. The purpose of the article is to identify the causes of these demographic phenomena. The study is based on the statistical data obtained from the official territorial bodies of the state statistics of the regions included in the region of Western Siberia at the moment of the all-Union census of population in 1959 at the request of the author. The value of the answers lies in the uniformity and continuity of the demographic series, both absolute data and indicators of natural movement, on the basis of which the author’s calculations were made. In 1964-1970 in the USSR, the age-specific mortality rates started growing, especially among men. This process mainly affected the working-age population and persons in retirement age. To some extent, the growth reflected improvement of the statistical system, but it was associated with a real reduction in life expectancy. In West Siberia, the mortality rate was higher than all-Union and all-Russian indicators. To a large extent, this was determined by two groups of death causes - tumors, which became more common at a younger age, and external causes (accidents, poisoning, injuries, etc.) which claimed the lives of young and healthy people. The positive dynamics was only in childhood, especially infants, throughout the studied period of 1964-1970. However, there were already negative trends, which later lad to increasing the mortality rates in these age groups.

The article is devoted to the identification of key characteristics of the Russian women- journalists’ corpus - who were authors of ego-documents at the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. The author establishes social origin, educational level, marital status and professional specialization of women - authors of texts of memoirs, autobiographies and diaries. The main sources of the article are the ego-documents of women journalists. The author uses dictionaries and other editions of biobibliographical nature, as well as research papers containing information about biography and professional activity of staff members of periodicals, who left sources of personal origin. The author’s composition varied in quality despite its relatively small size. It includes employees of periodicals, who were of a noble, merchant, spiritual and peasant origin. Social status together with generational affiliation had a significant impact on the methods of upbringing, concept of education and its level amond the future women journalists. The high level of education allowed holding various positions in the editorial office, as well as having a wide professional specialization. Among the journalists who left ego-documents are publishers, editors, department heads, secretaries, proofreaders, feuilletonists, reporters, correspondents, columnists, literary and theatrical critics and reviewers, translators, novelists. At the same time, women often combined these activities at different stages of their lives, or they held multiple positions at the same time. Marital status influenced the professional career. A significant problem for women journalists was the need to combine professional activity and family life. Most of female employees in the periodicals were married, others were in a civil marriage and had illegitimate children. Some practiced a form of family relationship different from the traditional one.

The article deals with the formation of the first archaeological collections in Buryatia stored in the oldest museum of East Siberia - Kyakhta Local Lore Museum; gives the chronology of their creation and territorial coverage. The author defines an archaeological collection as a complex historical source, which includes the material remains of ancient human life united by the principle of origin, authorship, belonging to the historical era, as well as written documents of scientists-archaeologists, who excavated and studied these archaeological materials. The collection of artifacts created by Yu. D. Talko-Gryntsevich, A. P. Mostits, P. S. Mikhno and other first archaeologists studied the antiquities of Buryatia became a necessary basis that contributed to humanitarian science development in Buryatia. The collections are accompanied by published and unpublished written materials - reports, office documents, letters; this is what makes them a comprehensive historical source.

The article studies the history of consumer society “Deyatel’” (1912-1918) in Tomsk based on the Charter, reports, protocols in the framework of the modernization concept considering cooperation as an exo-innovation factor of the modernization transition. The author marks the ideological influence of social democrats and social revolutionaries on its activity. “Deyatel” had the cooperative common characteristics that time: a lack of experience and control by the managers, a chronic shortage of working capital, commercial benefits’ pursuit, weak development of cultural activities. The paper considers them as consequences of the commodity and money market crisis, managerial errors and abuses. The cooperative experience of uniting the population to solve urgent life problems, forming a culture of social action is relevant in the light of modern theories of the participation economy.

The article devoted to the exposition of the Zay-Pandita Museum of KalmSC RAS, shows its originality in the iconic dominants of the nomads’ economic activity. The specificity of culture is represented by the soft felt part of the home as a result of human adaptation to the natural environment. The problem of exhibiting is solved in the information field of a symbolic model of the house, rich in artifacts of crafts and, in particular, felting. The exposition module of the museum of traditional culture was found in the spherical, wooden frame of the “Ishkger” trolley, which enclosed the time and space of the nomadic universe in the circle of being. The felt-wooden structure of the dwelling is reconcepttualized as the material context of the exposition, in which details and objects form an organic whole. The living sphere is likened to a natural panorama showcase in an open exhibit of the object environment. The species and complex completeness of the museum collections is presented in the historical and cultural approach and methodology of ethnocultural display of Kalmyk household items. The material is systematized according to the principle of sections uniting objects into “groups of cultural phenomena”: tools, clothes, household items, religious accessories made of wood, metal, fabric, felt and leather. The decoration of a dwelling, ornamental quilted decor of felt mats conceptually assembled in an interior ensemble is perceived as a universal code of ethnic culture.