Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2020 number

The most important problems in the history of Russia, including its imperial period, is a problem of implementing dialogue between the authority and society providing communication channels between administration and intelligentsia. The article considers an original form of such communication - meetings of the «well-informed people» initiated by Priamur Governor-General A.N. Korf. The analysis is carried out within several problematic areas: administrating, intellectual and personal histories. The main sources are records management documents (reports, «Program of Priamur General Governorship Development «), press materials, ego-documents. A.N. Korf and his entourage are defined as intellectual officials. The author argues in favor of such characteristics based on the governor-general’s deep understanding of economic, geopolitical and sociocultural situation in the region, ways of its development, his awareness of the need to study the region and his various actions to this direction. The paper focuses on A.N. Korf’s initiative to organize meetings of «well-informed» people as a communication channel between the power and society. The paper lists key issues studied during these meetings, characterizes the ways they were organized, the debate proceedings and their participants. The article shows the local intelligentsia’s perception of these meetings reflected in the materials published in the Far Eastern and Siberian newspapers, as well as in the diary by A.V. Kirillov, an outstanding local intellectual. The author concludes that the meetings of «well-informed people» have become a communication platform, or a place where members of regional administration, business and intellectual elites could exchange their ideas and knowledge; emphasizes the role of joint activities of the governor-general and local intellectuals aimed to create the Program of Priamur Region Development.