Omsk Historians and Archivists Have Published a Work on the 75th Stalin Volunteer Independent Rifle Brigade of Omsk Siberians

The reviewed collection of documents is timed to the 80th anniversary of the formation of the 75th Stalin Volunteer Independent Infantry Brigade of the Omsk Siberians. The authors-compilers have conducted painstaking research in order to identify documents in the archival fonds. The collection contains five sections related to the following main thematic areas: formation of the Omsk volunteers and their way to the field army; their participation in the hostilities at the Kalinin front and their reformation into a guards division; unity between front and home front; veterans’ memoirs; historical memory. Relevance of the reviewed documents collection is determined not only by the high interest of the contemporary Russian society in the events of the Great Patriotic War, but also by the conditions of the special military operation in Ukraine in 2022-23, by the fact that the Russian Federation is now partially mobilized and, as 80 years ago, the former territory of military camps “Cheremushki,” where the Omsk Institute of Armored Vehicle Engineering is now stationed, has once again became training ground for the armed forces of our state. The book is supplemented with a synoptical scientific article by the famous scholar, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor A. V. Sushko, a list of abbreviations, geographical and name indexes, which greatly facilitate the readers’ work. The uniqueness of the collection is due to engaging documents that provide a comprehensive picture of the insufficiently studied mass heroism of the Omsk Siberians in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. The structure of the book is logical, falling in line with this particular type of publication. The publication is preceded by a detailed introduction substantiating its scientific significance, describing the state of the scholarship on the brigade history, and providing a brief source studies description of the materials thus introduced into scientific use. The history of the 75th Stalin Volunteer Independent Infantry Brigade of the Omsk Siberians, as revealed by the team of authors-compilers, has many “white spots” and has been studied insufficiently. The reader, acquainted with the published materials, becomes aware of the lack of the brigade history written on modern theoretical and methodological level, using available archival documents. The reviewer notes disproportionately small (in relation to the total mass of published documents) amount of materials from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, where there is a significant collection of sources on the 75th Brigade’s participation in combat operations at the front. This observation applies to the second section of the collection, in which documents of the military counterintelligence bodies prevail. The publication would have benefited, if the authors had set apart the documents of the special services, forming a separate section, and prepared an additional section on combat operations of the brigade on the basis of documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.