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

The article objective is to study the issue of cessation the gendarme supervision of private gold mining industry in Siberia in the late XIX century. The author solves following tasks: 1) to identify reasons that prompted the authorities to raise the issue of such supervision's liquidation; 2) to determine interests of the officials concerned in this matter; 3) to reveal mechanisms of the officials’ interaction in solving this problem. The main research sources are the materials of the Central Gendarme Department stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation, as well as regional archives data. The main research approach is comparative historical analysis. The author came to several conclusions. The problem of cessation of the gendarme supervision of private gold mining industry had been considered for more than a decade. There were reasons that prompted the authorities and officials to take this step in the late XIX century: a number of workers’ protests in the gold mines decreased; the mechanism of gold mining and gold incomings to the state treasury was adjusted; and the main reason was the need to use gendarmes in the fight against the revolutionary movement at the vast Empire space, according to author’s viewpoint. The initiative to liquidate supervision came from the central government agencies - the Ministry of State Property and the Ministry of Finance considered inappropriate to maintain supervision and its financial support. The Gendarme Department, on the contrary, spoke in favor of maintaining this supervision. Addressing this issue, it turned out to be necessary to appeal to representatives of the Siberian executive power -governor-generals and governors, whose opinions were taken into account. As a result, the view on the necessity to liquidate the supervision and use gendarmes for solving other governmental tasks won, and since the second half of the 1880s gendarme officers ceased to supervise the private gold mining industry in Siberia.