Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2021 number

The Round Table “NEP - Results and Prospects of Study” discussion was held on September 17, 2021, during the All-Russian Scientific Conference “Russian Economic Reforms in the Regional Dimension”. Its speakers raised the issue of the NEP prospects besides the historiography problems. V. Rynkov pointed out that the myth about NEP as the “golden age” of Russian economy was created in the late 1980s - early 1990s. Further research of the problem led to the myth deconstruction. NEP was accompanied by a series of crises, and reconstruction processes in a number of regions and industries were not completed. V. Il’inykh concluded that NEP had not created effective mechanisms to overcome rural poverty. Modernization of the country was impossible based on the small-scale peasant economy. V. Kondrashin did not rule out that agriculture could continue developing successfully on the peasant economy basis, had the state support not been curtailed. L. Borodkin supposed that problems of developing the agrarian sector were related to state policy that hindered the agricultural development. Its liberalization, continuation of NEP could lead to sustainable and dynamic development. V. Klistorin pointed out that the decision to wind up NEP, since in 1925, had a political character and was not directly related to economy. I. Poberezhnikov emphasized that NEP was a forced compromise by the Bolshevik government, which had to be curtailed at the end. G. Kornilov and A. Kilin defined NEP as a complex of social and economic reforms, which were carried out in the form of an experiment. V. Zinovyev believed that China and other countries used the NEP experience. A. Nikolaev called on researchers to study NEP in frameworks of longer economic cycles. As the discussion outcome, it has been concluded that it is premature to sum up NEP study results, and its historiography is at the next stage of thematic and methodological bifurcation.

The Year of Science and Technology has summed up the original results of reflecting the problems of domestic science and education in the pages of the journal “Humanitarian Sciences in Siberia”. The author analyzes thematic blocks of articles, reviews, conference reviews published in the journal over the past three years. The study reveals that the publications are devoted to various problems of the history of science, education, educational and museum activities; they are distinguished by thematic variety. The journal presents works on the history of the expeditionary study of Siberia in the XVIII century, educational activities and book business in Siberia, various scientific and educational institutions. The papers present the history of the academic science in Siberia - scientific centers, personal stories of leading scientists and their scientific heritage. Articles and reports on various areas of museum activities reveal the diversity of approaches of the Siberian museum community to the study and preservation of the scientific and cultural heritage of the region. The final part of the review indicates peculiar “gaps” in covering the problems of science and education history in the journal’s pages.

A significant historiographical problem is the historical and economic research formation in the Novosibirsk Scientific Center. The article shows the effect of Vladimir Alexandrovich Lamin’s works on studying the economic history. V. A. Lamin devoted several decades to a key scientific problem of the development and implementation of transport development projects in the northern and eastern regions of Russia. The article analyzes in detail the development of research approaches due to the original source base, appeal to the historical geography tools for the historical material analysis, intention to study key historical sources in a wide chronological and thematic context including cross-country comparisons. The important element of V.A. Lamin’s style is the aspiration to consider transport different types in their relationship, to indicate the influence of technological breakthroughs on the construction pace of new communication lines, organization of cargo flows, and the transport industry economy in general. Tracing the problem field expansion of V. A. Lamin’s studies of the economic history of Siberia, the author notes that, without leaving an increasingly detailed research of transport projects, he turnet to a retrospective analysis of the most important resource sectors of the economy of the eastern borders - gold mining (for the XIX and early XX centuries), and oil and gas production - for the second half of the XX century. The article describes the results of joint research projects carried out by historians and economists with V. A. Lamin’s participation. The last thirty years, V. A. Lamin aimed his fellow historians at expanding the problem field of studying projects for the natural resources and industrial development, their practical implementation including social and demographic consequences. As a result of scientific and organizational efforts by V. A. Lamin, the historians have comprehended a huge amount of factual materials, formed a major scientific direction, and created fundamental collective works of an interdisciplinary nature.

The museum space of Siberia is analyzed in the context of state and society integration for the first time in the historical dynamics. The state museum management, a key problem of museum activity, has not received proper development both at nationwide and regional levels of research. The author’s approach to study the problem in the museum space context is highlighted as relevant. The article determines foundations of the museum network formation in the late XVIII - early XX centuries: effective state and society interaction, active position of patrons, intelligentsia representatives, and population in Siberia. In the 1930s-1940s priorities in the state museum policy were: creating museums of a historical and revolutionary profile and industrial character, reflecting the socialism achievements, involving the educated public in ideological and educational work with the population. The author presents the leading trends of the museum sphere development in the 1960s-1980s: interdependence between ideological demand and funding, organization of museums of different departmental affiliation, social needs to preserve and reproduce historical and cultural values. The cultural policy and development strategies of the regional museum space in the first decade of the XXI century are associated with multichannel financing, fundraising technologies, adaptation of museums to the market economy, implementation of targeted programs and national projects. The model of the state and society interaction based on enhancing the potential of each region in the historical and cultural heritage development field under the interaction of federal and local authorities, as well as inclusion of museums in the areas of branding territories, publishing, and Internet space are relevant and promising.

The paper highlights the activities of the International Scientific and Practical Conference with elements of the scientific school «Historical science and education in the XXI century» (Novosibirsk, March 23-27, 2021). Scientists and teachers discussed the modern transformations that occurred in the field of historical education at all levels under the influence of socio-economic and political factors, the global process of digitalization; developed practical recommendations for its adaptation to the new challenges of modernity. Speeches and discussions concerned the use of historical sources in research, school and higher school education, new interpretations of plots in the past, methods of teaching history in Russia and abroad.

Terence Edward Armstrong (1920-1996) was a British linguist, geographer, economist, historian, who had worked at the Scott Polar Research Institute (Cambridge) for many years and been recognized widely as a leading researcher of the Arctic. Despite the high appreciation of his scientific achievements by Soviet and Russian experts, T. Armstrong’s works were not given due attention in the Russian historiography. The paper objective is to fill this gap. It’s proven that T. Armstrong made a significant contribution to the Arctic studies in the UK. While focusing on the Soviet North problems, he actively promoted the scientific cooperation between Western and Soviet scholars, implementation of international research projects, development of educational programs and training specialists in the field of polar research at western universities. T. Armstrong was among the first Western researchers who studied a wide range of issues related to the Russian Arctic (the Northern Sea Route development, the forced labor use, the indigenous people policy, oil and gas production, urbanization problems, environmental protection etc.). Comparing the tsarist and Soviet policies in the Arctic he came to conclusion that changes occurring in the North after 1917 were so striking and profound that the whole pre-revolutionary era could be considered as a prequel to the Soviet period. Giving a high assessment of the Soviet Arctic policy results, T. Armstrong pointed the need to widen the international cooperation in the region further developing and solving its problems. Being an adherent of the ideas of “environmentalism” (the theory consideting the environment’s decisive role in human evolution), he perceived the Arctic as a unique habitat with a fragile ecosystem that must be preserved for future generations. The scientific heritage of the British researcher is still relevant and deserves to be thoroughly studied by the Russian specialists.

The article discusses the problems of interaction between the Military and Mining Departments during the military order implementation in the early XIX century. Applying the historical-genetic and problem-chronological methods the author identifies the causes of contradictions between the Ural enterprises leadership and military inspectors, who controlled the quality of military products at state plants and wharves of the Urals; shows the main stages of the conflict development. The author notes that contradictions between representatives of the Mining and Military departments during acceptance of military products arose early at the beginning of the XIX century. Military inspectors reported about the unsatisfactory quality of products of mining plants, as well as the violation of deadlines to deliver products. Mining officials, in turn, were dissatisfied with receivers’ slow work and a large number of rejected products. As a result, to solve these problems, production acceptance rules were elaborated. They were approved in 1804 and supplemented in 1808. These documents established the technical requirements for military products and regulated the procedure of inspectors and mining administration interaction. However, in ten years since their adoption, the number of complaints on actions of artillery officials grew. It was caused by a significant increase of military order volumes, and the plants could not implement them. In most cases, conflicts between the mining administration and inspectors were quickly resolved. However, in the early 1820s these contradictions escalated, when N. R. Mamyshev, the head of Goroblagodatsky plants, and Y. M. Bikbulatov, the main receiver, entered into a dispute over accepting shells and other military products. The disagreement between them was caused by unsatisfactory quality of mining plant products (iron, shells, guns), as well as the working procedure of military inspectors. The great scale of disagreement forced the leadership of the Mining and Artillery Departments to intervene and send their representatives to the Urals. The conflict was to resolved after the arrival of the Mining Department commission, as well as I. A. Neratov, Orenburg artillery district head, to the Urals in 1825.

Providing vast areas of the Siberian region with means of electrical communication has been an urgent task at all times. During the war years, this task acquired special significance. It became necessary to organize uninterrupted communications under conditions of an extremely increased load, determined by the needs of the front, on the one hand, and by the needs of the rear, which was being rebuilt in a war-like manner, on the other hand. A main difficulty encountered by the Siberian telecommunications was the lack of spare communication centers, reserve capacities, which the front desperately needed. Another problem was the radial system of wire telecommunications, which did not allow most of the country’s economic centers to connect with each other, bypassing Moscow. The war period left its mark on the work essence of enterprises and telecommunication industries. The telegraph, long-distance telephone communications, as during the civil war, were almost entirely placed to serve the army and state. In this case, the population interests were, as a rule, infringed upon, limited, relegated to the background. The quality level of the telecommunication industry was low as well. Line-station facilities did not meet technical requirements; station facilities, as a rule, were not equipped with the necessary equipment. Single-wire networks were installed everywhere, there was no repair base for telecommunications. Only after transiting initiatives to the Red Army, the accents were again shifted to nationwide communications and establishing traditional operational communications enterprises. Thanks to the internal reserve mobilization and measures of an administrative-repressive nature, Siberian communications managed to strengthen its economic base during the war period. The Siberian industry strengthened significantly due to evacuation means. The region launched the production of telecommunication products (mainly radio products). The equipment of telecommunication enterprises improved greatly with the latest technology and trophy equipment, more advanced as a rule.

The publication objective is a comprehensive study of the personal subsidiary economy of the collective farm family during the Great Patriotic War. In line with this goal, the authors identify the following tasks: to determine the role of household books in studying individual subsidiary plots; consider the structure and composition of personal subsidiary farms; characterize the state of gardening, cattle breeding, beekeeping under extreme conditions of war. The research source base were materials of household books (more than 30 cases) collected by authors and students of the Historical Department during the complex historical and ethnographic expeditions of the Center of Oral History and Ethnography” (Altai State Pedagogical University) in six Altai Region districts - Krasnoshchekovsky, Volchikhinsky, Topchikhinsky, Krutikhinsky, Kulunda, Romanovsky ones. The source analysis made it possible to determine the significance of household books as a base to study individual subsidiary farming, which is inaccessible to researchers. For a long time, household books weren’t a subject to study. The household books contain primary written (statistical) information, which includes data on the rural population registration, individual subsidiary farms (amount of land, livestock, cultivated crops, buildings, taxes, etc.) reflecting information on arrived and leaving families, that allows tracking the historical, socio-economic processes of individual subsidiary farms in an annual section. The household book data analysis made it possible to identify and characterize the main important “vital” indicators of peasant families ensuring their existence during the war years. According to household book research, the individual subsidiary plots of the peasant collective farm families in Altai Region in the war years developed largely depending on external drivers, to a lesser degree - to internal ones.

The main study objective is to identify the features of implementing measures of the supreme power in the middle 1950s - early 1960s initiated by Soviet scientists-economists, supporters of development under conditions of state and group ownership of market relations. The article substantiates the thesis that the “liberal reformist course” realization led to a significant transformation of the existing agrarian system. Based on the analysis of the peculiarities of the collective farm-state farm system functioning during I.V. Stalin’s reign, and relying on new factual material, the author reveals the specifics of post-Stalinist reforming the procurement and pricing mechanism in agriculture, the system of material and technical services for collective farms, the procedure of functioning of the collective farm self-government, and analyzes the anti-crisis initiatives of the supreme power and scientists-economists in the first half of the 1960s. The paper argues that during the period under review, the Stalinist agrarian model foundations were dismantled - natural tax procurements, the system of low-paid forced labor of collective farmers, machine and tractor stations. The transition to purchasing agricultural products at uniform prices took place. The guaranteed cash wages were introduced, the collective farms received ownership of agricultural machinery. However, realizing the “liberal reformist direction” of the agrarian policy was hampered by the parallel implementation of Khrushchev’s leftist reformist initiatives, which provided establishing the domination of state ownership over group and personal ones, forced industrialization of agriculture, and using mobilization tools to solve production tasks. Therefore, the most important agricultural measure - MTS reorganization - was carried out in a short time without taking into account the real capabilities of farms by N.S. Khrushchev’s demand, and therefore did not lead to the high economic results predicted by its developers in short terms.

The world has recently seen a constant and intensive increase of the elderly population size. The process of the population demographic aging has affected all countries that have embarked on the path of demographic transition, including our country, it is accompanied by the older people’s growing activity. The author aims to identify the concept of the heuristic possibilities of the concept of the older generation’s resource potential, that makes it possible to consider older people as the productive members of the society, to study risks of demographic aging in Russian regions. To achieve the goal, the author analyzes the resource potential components, such as health, educational, qualification, motivational and social ones and their current status in the Russian elderly population, in general and in the regional context. The study is based on data of state statistics bodies, state authorities and results of sociological surveys of the elderly population. The analysis has shown the lack of statistical data to determine the level of the elderly population’s social potential, because the older generation’s activity level in various spheres plays an important role in its condition. In this regard, it is necessary to carry on surveys of older people to identify their activity in maintaining their health, and other components of the resource potential. The resource potential’s structural elements analysis is the base to develop methods and tools for such surveys, and their results allow characterizing the level of older people’s resource potential in the regions deeply and comprehensively.

The article considers and analyzes some brief historical evidence and visual materials testifying to Kuchum Khan’s run out of Siberian metropolitan town of Qaşliq, accompanied by his entourages and supporters from among Siberian Tatar warriors. He hastily headed southward to the steppe southern regions of West Siberia and northern regions of current Kazakhstan to those remote areas, where at that time there were settlement sites of Kazakh steppe nomads within the Kazakh nomadic association. Accompanied by his supporters, Kuchum Khan went to his former residence, where he used to live before seizing power in the Siberian Khanate. He left many Siberian Tatar towns in the Siberian Khanate territory without his military support, hastily escaped and refused to defend them, fearful to confront the Russian Cossacks weaponed with fire-arms. Some brief information about these historical events is reflected in the text and illustrations of «Brief Siberian (Kungur) Chronicle». This article objective is to examine the data and visual materials dedicated to a historical plot presented in the text and illustrations of this historical source. The analyzed illustration of Siberian Tatar three towns located between streams on a hillside along the Irtysh River bank. There is a defensive trench along the walls of a Siberian Tatar town. At the upper part of the illustration, there are three troops of equestrian Siberian Tatar warriors, who are probably going to the steppe regions of West Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. The authors analyze features of the armament, headdresses and clothes, as well as the standards of Siberian Tatar warriors, which are at the illustration. They consider an image of a pedestrian Siberian Tatar warrior troop. The pictorial materials significantly supplement the studied written source data about the hasty escape of Siberian Kuchum Khan and his supporters to the steppes.

The paper presents main problems of representing the historical knowledge in the modern public space of Russia, which were discussed at the All-Russian Scientific and Practical Conference “VI Yadrintsev Readings” held in Omsk in October 2021. Leading scientists of various fields of humanitarian knowledge (historians, geographers, culturologists, archaeologists, ethnographers and others), as well as specialists in archival, library and museum affairs from twelve regions of Russia considered the issues of myth-making in public history, the experience of preserving cultural memory and updating historical and cultural heritage, and more general problems related to traditional and modern interpretations of the concepts of “local history”, “local historian” and “amateur local historian”. It has been proposed to understand the local history as the process of forming a multidisciplinary knowledge about the nature, history, economy and culture of a certain region aimed at popularizing the results in the public space and fostering love for a small homeland.

The designated transition of libraries to the communicative development paradigm implies the use of concepts of “space”, “library space”, “cultural and information space”. Analysis of interaction and mutual influence of the library environment and humanitarian space in Novosibirsk shows that, according to multiplicity of the city images formed for relatively short period, its library environment developed quite quickly as a multi-level structure borrowing resources, creating a variety of specializations and directions. Libraries have ensured orderliness and structuring of resources, gave solidity and stability to the emerging information space of the megalopolis.

The paper analyzes the degree of involving the book culture of the indigenous and small peoples of Siberia and the Far East into the electronic information environment by its presentation on websites of at local libraries different level. It overviews modern Russian publications on the issue of studying Internet resources dedicated to indigenous and small peoples. The practice of creating full-text databases by regional libraries including both books in indigenous languages and editions reflecting the ethno-cultural specifics of a particular territory is considered as the main way to represent their book culture.

The book under review is devoted to a significant page in the Great Patriotic War history - the Lend-Lease assistance program for the allies. The review notes the importance of introducing into the Russian scientific circulation the documents of the Government Purchasing Commission (GPC) deposited in the Russian State Archive of Economics, and thoroughly studied by the monograph’s author. The analysis of internal structural contradictions in the US government, which played an important role in delaying the implementation of the Lend-Lease program, is also of undoubted importance. The description of GPC actions in May 1945, after a sudden suspension of supplies to the USSR from the United States, closes a lacuna that has still remained in the Lend-Lease national historiography.

The article is devoted to the results of the scientific school-conference, within the framework of which young historians discussed topical problems of historical science. An important part of the event was the scientific school «Popularization of history: from theory to practice». The experts shared with the audience their views on the problem of popularizing historical knowledge, which became the main topic of this year’s conference. The school-conference’s main activity was held at sessions in five topical areas: source studies and historiography; society and power in the world history: relationship problems; socio-economic processes in the world history; history of culture; history of international relations and military affairs. The scientific forum ended with a general thematic panel discussion «Translation difficulties: from science to popularization».