Herald of an Archivist最新文献

{"title":"Issues of the Outbuildings Construction Administration during the Livadia Estate Reconstruction in 1910–11","authors":"Andrey A. Yefimov","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-3-823-834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-3-823-834","url":null,"abstract":"The article studies the history of creation and development of one of the Crimean residences of the Romanov dynasty, the Livadia estate. Drawing on materials of the Russian State Historical Archive, the author reveals aspects of interaction and relationships between the employees of the Livadia-Massandra appanage administration and officials of the Main Administration of Appanages of the Ministry of the Imperial Court and Appanages during construction and reconstruction of outbuildings in Livadia in 1910–11. This work was purposefully entrusted to the staff architect of appanage administration G. P. Gushchin, who was granted indulgence in his official duties in order to complete the construction in time and give his account. The author points out that, despite these measures, the first difficulties arose at the stage of preparing design specifications and estimates. The article focuses on the visits of the Main Administration of Appanages officials sent from St. Petersburg in order to get acquainted with the actual state of affairs. The article notes that the head of the architectural department A. A. Stepanov always took part in these inspection trips. Each visit revealed some shortcomings in the organization of construction by G. P. Gushchin. The first two visits showed up insufficient number of assistants in the architect’s staff and delay in construction or reconstruction of individual buildings. The third inspection, which took place two months before the deadline submission of works, identified miscalculations in design specifications, requiring allocation of additional funds. The author notes that the deadlines were indeed violated, and there was a lag in preparation and submission of reporting documentation. The article points out that the Main Administration of Appanages not only had to give instructions on the procedure, but to issue repeated orders to send the necessary documents. The last of the identified letters denied G. P. Gushchin his final payment for the works due to his failure to submit a complete account. The study of the features of the outbuildings construction administration in Livadia in 1910–11 shows that preparation of design specifications, supervision of and accounting for the works proved almost a greater problem than the actual construction.","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136207920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Biographies of the Communists of the “Revolutionary Turning Point” Generation (1917–20s): Materials from the Archives of the Tambov Region","authors":"Vladimir B. Bezgin","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-3-835-848","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-3-835-848","url":null,"abstract":"The relevance of studying biographies of the representatives of the revolutionary generation stems from public interest in the fate of the makers of the era of change, as well as from heuristic potential of the “history of generations” approach in historical science. Drawing on archival fonds containing personal data of the Tambov communists born in the 1890s, the biography of the \"revolutionary turning point\" generation has been studied. Prosopographic study permits to establish their origin, social status, activities, and life strategy. It uses autobiographies, personal data cards, materials of the party census of communists registered with the Tambov Provincial Committee of the RCP (B) in 1918–22. Most sources are being introduced into scientific use for the first time. The object of the study is biographies of five communists. Our “protagonists” occupied various positions in the punitive and repressive bodies of the Soviet government system and took an active part in the suppression of the peasant uprising of 1920–21 in the Tambov gubernia. The research is to identify factors of social mobility and determine forms of “revolutionary” career of the young party members. It is interesting to study the society’s means of survival during systemic crisis and operation of “social lift” mechanism during social upheavals. The research methodology is based on “history of generations” approach and interdisciplinary nature of the work. Historical-comparative, historical-genetic, retrospective, systemic methods, and method of cohort analysis have been used. The novelty lies in recreation of life paths of the representatives of the studied group through the prism of most important events of the era of wars and revolutions. It has been established that career advancement was facilitated by education (as a rule, town or uezd school), military experience (in the Red Guard and special forces), and mandatory membership in the Communist Party. Four of the five protagonists were not native to the uezd, the arrived from the capital as appointees to strengthen the activities of the local authorities. As a result, a typical biography of the representatives of the studied generation, young communists of the Russian periphery during the Civil War has been reproduced.","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Cinema–Atlas of the USSR”: The Concept of M. V. Naletny: Archival Materials of the 1920s","authors":"Ivan A. Golovnev, Elena V. Golovneva","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-3-739-752","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-3-739-752","url":null,"abstract":"The 1920s saw an increased general release of documentaries about life of peoples and regions in the USSR, opening an opportunity for mass audience to make virtual trips through multinational and diverse country. It was within the frameworks of the project “Cinema-Atlas of the USSR,” an ambitious state program launched under the auspices of the Central Executive Committee, which involved creation of a 150-episode thematic film almanac. The article is to introduce into scientific use the archival documentary film “To the shores of the Pacific Ocean” (1927) directed by M. V. Naletny, created during complex film expedition along the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to the Far East. To achieve this goal, not only the film itself is analyzed, but also socio-political, cultural, and ideological context of its creation, in line with the state program for creation of the Soviet Cine-Atlas. Little-known visual and text archives, as well as data from the Soviet periodical press of the 1920s, are used as a source base for the study. Due to specifics of silent cinema, this film is a film text of a kind, consisting of approximately equal number of alternating film frames and text captions. One can tell that, in accordance with general recommendations for film making in the USSR, based on Marxist theory, the director designed his full-length film as a series of visual essays suitable for the “Cinema-Atlas” developed at the time. The study makes it obvious that M. V. Naletny sought in his film to overcome the format of superficial “tourist” narrative, widespread at the time, detailing geographical features of regions, types of population, their economic structures, etc. M. V. Naletny’s methodological developments, which are considered cocurrently, clearly demonstrate party requirements to capacious resources of cinematography as a means of information and agitation, textbook, and means for popularization of scientific knowledge. It is concluded that M. V. Naletny’s legacy is of multi-layered popular science significance, having become a contribution to the on-screen chronicle of Soviet transformations on the ground. The studied complex of materials is a significant example of visual and anthropological searches of the early Soviet period, as well as an informative historical source that has not lost its relevance for modern scientific study.","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136207735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Archives of Azerbaijan in the Orbit of International Scientific, Informational, and Cultural Relations in Early 21st Century","authors":"Efim I. Pivovar, Irina E. Khanova, Marya V. Katagoshchina","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-3-777-788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-3-777-788","url":null,"abstract":"The paper is devoted to one of the trends of development of archiving in Azerbaijan in the second half of the 1990s-2010s, international cooperation in the archival field. It is to study the activities of Azerbaijani archivists aimed at interacting with international archival community, including determining the role and place of inter-archival dialogue within the framework of participation of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the cultural cooperation with Russia and other CIS countries. The National Archival Fund (NAF) of Azerbaijan is an extensive collection of documents of high scientific, historical, and cultural significance. The authors emphasize that presence in the NAF of Azerbaijan of a large number of documents in Russian and languages of the peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus expands prospects of participation of the Azerbaijani archives in international research and in educational projects in the post-Soviet space. The study notes importance of Internet publication of documents from the non-state part of the NAF of Azerbaijan (private collections, family archives, etc.), as they become a part of the cultural dialogue of online communities in post-Soviet countries. In 2002, the Decree of the first President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev “On the improvement of archiving in the Republic of Azerbaijan” included search, digitization, and publication of archival materials as sources on the national history formation in the priorities of the work of archives of Azerbaijan. The authors focus on the most significant publications of documents from the State Archive of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the State Historical Archive of the Republic of Azerbaijan, propagating archival heritage of Azerbaijan in the scientific information space of Eurasia. Programs for identifying and copying written sources on the history of Azerbaijan, stored in the archives of Russia and other post-Soviet states, countries of the Middle East, the European Union, and the United States, take a significant place in the scientific and cultural policy of modern Azerbaijan. The article characterizes achievements of the Institute of Manuscripts of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Azerbaijan in the field of archival heuristics abroad. It concludes that there is significant potential for development of international relations of Azerbaijani archival institutions, including expansion of cooperation between Azerbaijani archivists and their colleagues in Russia and the CIS countries.","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136207923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Source Base for Studying the Children's Everyday Life in Post-Reform Orenburg at the Turn of the 20th Century","authors":"Ekaterina N. Abdrakhmanova","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-1-45-58","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-1-45-58","url":null,"abstract":"The article presents an analysis of the sources applicable to study of children's everyday life in the post-reform period on the example of the city of Orenburg. The relevance of the study lies in increased attention on the part of state and society to the creation of a comfortable environment for life and health of children. The past experience can help in solving contemporary problems of childhood. The novelty of the study is explained by the fact that at present there are no historical works containing a comprehensive analysis of the sources’ potential for studying children’s everyday life. The work is to systematize and analyze the available sources on children’s everyday life at the turn of the 20th century on the example of post-reform Orenburg. Its methodological base is comparative method for comparative analysis of the sources and their data and critical method for determination of the data reliability. The article provides a brief historiographical review of studying the problem. The author divides all sources on children's everyday life into written and material ones. Written sources are represented by unpublished materials (parish registers) and published materials (regulatory documents, statistical data, periodicals, and educational literature). A group of material sources is represented by photographs and portraits depicting children. The article details the value of parish registers as a source for studying children’s everyday life. Along with high information content, parish registers have a number of disadvantages. The article presents an analysis of the normative provision on situation of children in the 19th – 20th centuries; conclusions are drawn about degree of freedom of children and limits of parental authority. The article details research potential of statistical materials and highlights their shortcomings. It explains what a good textbook is and what its mission is. It formulates the peculiarity of periodicals as a source on children’s everyday life. The author gives a comparative description of portrait and photography as historical sources. The author concludes that each source reveals a certain aspect of children’s everyday life. Therefore, in order to create a comprehensive picture of everyday life of children at the turn of the 20th century, the researcher should consider all sources as a complex.","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69387351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Tikhvin Old Believer Almshouse in the Second Half of the 18th – First Half of the 19th Century","authors":"I. Melnikov","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-491-502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-491-502","url":null,"abstract":"The article highlights the history of establishing and functioning of the Old Believer almshouse of the Pomorian congregation, operating in the city of Tikhvin since 1764. In some sources, it is called “monastery” and “skete,” as nuns lived there. The main sources used in the article are documents stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts and in the Russian State Historical Archive; most are being thus introduced into scientific use. Among the identified documents are decrees and petitions related to the monastery establishing and its property acquisition in the 18th – early 19th century. The sources demonstrate the role of the Tikhvin Old Believer almshouse in maintaining ties with Old Believer spiritual centers in the Olonets gubernia, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. The skete housed locally revered relics: miraculous icons, relics of saints (some from Novgorod). Old Believers from other regions came to worship them, especially during the Tikhvin spring fair. There were active contacts between Tikhvin and Vygovskaya Old Believer community. The skete also promoted consolidation of the uezd inhabitants, gathering in Tikhvin to worship local shrines, to perform repentance, to make a prayer (nachala) for non-observance of the Old Believer rules, which was important for the priestless communities: thus, they returned to the community by the decision of the skete council of spiritual mentors. The article focuses on tragic closing of the prayer house and almshouse and its rearrangement into edinovertsy church. It happened during government repressions against the Old Believers in 1854. The Tikhvin Edinovertzy Church, founded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs official Yu. K. Arseniev, was the first in the Novgorod eparchy, antedating similar developments in the region. The success of this Ministry project sprang from readiness of the officials to forcibly take control of relics and locations sacred to the Old Believers (monastery’s revered icons, including those with relics, its cemetery with its prayer house, where the ancestors of the Tikhvin Old Believers were buried).","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"85 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69388581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Perestroika Periodicals as a Historical Source on the Transformation of Lenin's Image in 1987–91","authors":"Boris M. Sudants","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-553-564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-553-564","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyses the metamorphosis of Lenin's image in late Soviet periodicals. The method of socio-historical phenomenology has been applied in the study. The source base of the research includes materials from the newspaper Pravda, magazine Ogonyok, and newspaper of the Democratic Union Svobodnoe Slovo. The chronological framework of the research covers the period from November 1987 to June 1991. The focus is on the interaction of three discourses in press, which introduced different purport of Lenin's image into the readers’ minds. The first discourse contained positive description of Lenin's image and linked his teachings with the reforms, justifying the Perestroika transformation. The second discourse was based on ideological confrontation between Lenin and Stalin. The periodicals blamed the latter for all costs of Soviet power. Through criticism of Stalin's image, the second discourse urged to abandon shameful criminal past in favour of Leninist legacy endorsed by the society. Nevertheless, such imprudent tactics eventually widened the criticism, intensifying the political debate of more significant symbols of the Soviet system. Such was the content of the third discourse endorsing deconstruction of Lenin and other pillars of the Soviet system. The study constructs three time periods of domination of the aforementioned discourses. The first period was 1987–88, when the first and second discourses prevailed. The second period refers to 1989, when major ideological shifts took place. More articles defending Lenin’s image appeared in the pages of Pravda, indicating presence of legitimate criticism in the press. The Ogonyok magazine called for a condemnation of the results of the October Revolution of 1917. The newspaper Svobodnoe Slovo was published freely, encountering no resistance from the authorities. It openly denounced Lenin's image. The newspaper became the main vehicle for the third discourse. It could be argued that 1989 was a milestone in terms of the transition to the third discourse. In 1990–91 of the third interim period, the anti-Leninist discourse took over the pages of Ogonyok, the Pravda remaining the last mass media defending Lenin's image from criticism. As a result, Lenin's image was negatively reinterpreted in the eyes of the readers and gradually disappeared from the pages of late Soviet periodicals.","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69388747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prosopographic Portrait of Senior Officials of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat for Justice in the Days of the Great Patriotic War of 1941?45: Documents from the RGASPI and the GARF","authors":"V.A. Rybakov","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-589-601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-589-601","url":null,"abstract":"In reference and research publications there is almost no information on most heads of the republican justice administration body, the RSFSR People’s Commissariat for Justice (PCJ RSFSR), of 1941?45. This is largely due to limitations of the source base and secondariness of republican bodies in the USSR. Meanwhile, during the war, the republican justice administration bodies were endowed with great powers. Not only they monitored the activities of the courts and correctness of their application of legislation, but also issued secret instructions of illegal nature. In this regard, the identity of their heads, who held such powers and had such impact on court practice, is of great importance. The article draws on party nomenclature accounting records from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) to reconstruct official biographies of two people’s commissars for justice of the RSFSR and four their deputies. The prosopographic method has permitted to create a collective portrait of senior officials of the republican administrative justice bodies in the period between two personnel purges of the Soviet justice system – prewar one and postwar one. According to the documents, the nominees who took senior positions in the PCJ RSFSR on the eve of the war were relatively young and from “correct” social background. In the nomenclature system their lack of professional education and experience was compensated by their Bolshevik affiliation, following the main trend of the Stalinist personnel revolution. The official biographies of nomenclature establishment, as well as presence of odious figures and persons with dubious reputations among the PCJ RSFSR senior officials allow the author to conclude that appointment of nomenclature personnel to the republican People’s Commissariat for Justice by residual principle eroded its authority. Their lack of professionalism and practical experience had a direct impact on the activities of the PCJ RSFSR under the extreme war conditions. In the purge of the justice system in 1947?52, the establishment of the republican People’s Commissariat for Justice lost their posts. Thus, senior officials of the PCJ RSFSR repeated the fate of their prewar predecessors, but unlike the latter, they were not repressed.","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69389238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Requests to Statistical Directorates: Potential for Historical and Demographic Research (1950–70).","authors":"A. Burmatov","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-565-575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-565-575","url":null,"abstract":"The article considers the possibility of using official requests of scientists to territorial state agencies for statistics in Western Siberia to study the demographic history of the region. The history of the population of the Soviet Union remains poorly studied, despite huge number of works devoted to the topic. During the Soviet period, entire eras were not covered in statistics and science. The authorities hid negative consequences of the modernization and huge losses following wars, famine, and repression. In addition to direct concealment of statistical information, data falsification was widely practiced. The first postwar fifteen years are a typical example of Soviet statistics. There was no published information on the population until 1957. The first post-war estimates dated back to April 1956 and were not confirmed by the 1959 census. After the next census, statistical agencies recalculated the dynamics of the population and all indicators of its natural movement. In the USSR, there was an underestimation of demographic events. This is especially true for the mortality. Statistical agencies collected, rechecked, and clarified the collected data; the information was not only corrected, but also subjected to a comprehensive analysis. Dynamic series on the population and its natural movement by regions and edges were never published. The transfer of statistical materials to the state archives has not yet been conducted in full; the available materials contain large data gaps. Sometimes the data was distorted intentionally or accidentally. Publications of the Central Statistical Administration (TsSU) and statistical directorates for regions and territories sometimes differ. The author has made requests directly to the territorial bodies of state statistics of the regions of Western Siberia. The official responses contained information collected and calculated by the same procedure. Chronological period is 1950–70. The decade of 1950–59 was a period when population data was virtually not published. For the period of 1959–70 there were some fragmentary publications, but they did not give a complete picture. Materials contain data on the population (including urban and rural), absolute number of births, deaths (including children under 1 year old). All materials on urban and rural population are given for the whole region. The responses contain indicators of natural movement, including infant mortality. The peculiarity of the information provided is that all data on absolute numbers and indicators of natural movement are recalculated on the basis of the 1970 census. This makes it possible to compare it with previously published data, especially in collections “for official use.” Thus, the responses of statistical agencies allow us to fill the gaps in the demographic history of the regions of Western Siberia. Western Siberia is considered within the borders of the eponymous economic region at the time of the 1959 census: the Altai Krai, Kemero","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69388363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Role of the Norilsk Nickel Smelter in Formation of Norilsk Urban Environment in 1950–70s","authors":"N. V. Gonina","doi":"10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-540-552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2023-2-540-552","url":null,"abstract":"Existence of the cities above the Arctic Circle is a topic that is gaining importance. Most scholars adhere to economic approach, some to urbanistic, and rarely to social. However, it is the sociocultural situation that distinguishes a city from a settlement near a plant, the quality of the urban environment playing a decisive role in preservation (or loss) of population. Urban environment is a multidimensional notion. This paper aims to correlate the elements of the urban environment of Norilsk created with direct involvement of the Norilsk Nickel Smelter with those evolved entirely without its intervention. The paper demonstrates that absolutization of departmentalism in city life can camouflage essential features of the urban environment, while the widely used notion of “single-industry town” (monogorod) contradicts the very essence of the city. The work is based on archival materials and memoirs of the Norilsk citizens, some are being introduced into scientific use. The authors employed “new urban history” approach, in particular, works of Henri Lefebvre. The paper analyses the sources and specific character of urban population growth, investigates the driving forces of Norilsk development and improvement. The paper also shows constructive and destructive influence of the smelter upon the urban environment. The paper explores the ways in which residents contributed to city development. Additionally, it considers natural and climatic factors. The authors conclude that it is wrong to overemphasize the activities of the Norilsk Nickel Smelter in creation of Norilsk and to contrapose city and plant. Though there are clear physical boundaries for both town and plant, their social and cultural spheres are interconnected. The development of plant and town are like two sides of a coin. Those who inhabited the town and those who worked for the smelter or managed it were with few exceptions the same people. The plant organized and financed city construction and development, but realization was in the hands of its citizens. Even if the initiative belonged to the plant administration, side issues of municipal improvement were settled by dint of citizens’ activities. The geographical position of Norilsk influenced its specific lifestyle. It was impossible to cope individually with existential threats of living beyond the Arctic Circle. In this respect, the smelter paternalism was natural. Simultaneously, the difficulties of everyday life united people and formed collective spirit that remained even when people left the town. The same hardships promoted construction of health and wellbeing resources, contributing to urban development, organized and sponsored by the smelter. Altogether, the paper argues that the development of the smelter and the town was interrelated. It became a crucial factor for survival in extreme environments.","PeriodicalId":41551,"journal":{"name":"Herald of an Archivist","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69388457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}