Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2016 number

The purpose of the article is to give an overview of works written by the contemporary English- and German-language researchers of the pre-revolutionary history of Siberia on the problems of mental representation of geographical space, development of “regional consciousness” and “Siberian regional identity”. Most of scholars consider the “Siberian identity” as being formed on the people’s common territorial base, therefore, they define it as “territorial” or “regional” identity. In this respect much attention is paid to the problems of development of “regional consciousness” and regionalism as a form of territorial communities’ self-identification. Western scholars addressed the phenomenon of “Siberian regionalism” in the 1970s-1980s (G.Hanson, S.Watrous, A.Wood, D.Mohrenschildt, W.Faust et al.) based mostly on the analysis of numerous publications of the Siberian oblastniks (N.M.Yadrintsev, G.N.Potanin et al.). In the early XX century theoretical and terminology aspects of the topic have been elaborated by the German historian St.Stuch who analyzes the meaning of such terms as “region”, “regional consciousness”, “regional movement”, “Siberian culture” etc. He believes that in Siberia the regional consciousness was formed mostly due to the common desire of the Siberian intelligentsia to treat the Siberian periphery on an equal footing as the regions of European Russia. German researcher E.-M.Stolberg, in her turn, argues that other factors - such as specific geographic and cultural conditions, the “frontier” character of Siberian territories - were even more critical for the formation of Siberian identity. However, the natural process of the Siberian identity’s development was deflected by the centralizing and unifying policy of the government. Unlike E.-M.Stolberg an American historian Ch.Steinwedel believes that governmental policy towards Siberia was based on the diferent criteria of identity taking into account the specific features of the region. Western historians rarely use the general term “Siberian identity” focusing on the identity of various groups of Siberian population (both indigenous and non-indigenous). However their research findings should be taken into consideration by those who study the topic of “Siberian regional identity” that became so relevant at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries.