Areas of Study and Main Results

Areas of Study and Main Results

The Institute is mostly involved in social and economic studies of Siberia from the 17th to the 21st century and the public conscience of the peoples that have populated Russia from ancient times to nowadays. Other areas of research include methodology, historiography, source studies and archaeography.

A distinctive feature of the studies carried out in the 1990s and 2000s was that people as carriers of social and cultural experience became the center of attention, which has made history more vivid and convincing. Reformed areas of study and updated methodology and historiography have brought history studies to a higher level.

The studies conducted at the Institute are in line with the priority orientations of basic research performed by the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and outlined in the Basic Research Program for the State Academies of Sciences for the years 2008–2012. On top of major research projects, the Institute is actively involved in the projects included in the RAS Presidium programs and in the integration projects of the RAS Siberian Branch: from 2005 to 2009, six projects from three RAS Presidium programs and eight integration projects were carried out.

In the last five years (2005 to 2009) research workers of the Institute published 64 monographs, 34 documentary editions, 7 academic reference editions, 31 collected works, 8 study guides, 257 papers in national peer-reviewed journals, 14 papers in foreign publications, 72 reports in international conference proceedings, and over 1,000 papers in other publications.

At the Institute, two academic schools have formed and are currently fully functional:

-  Source documents on Siberian and general Russian history from the 18th to the 20th century: detection, study techniques, preparation for publication (headed by Academician N.N. Pokrovsky); and

-  Economic development of Siberia in the context of Russian and world history (headed by RAS Corresponding Member V.A. Lamin).

The most important achievements of the years 2000 to 2009 are the following:

Ø  Accomplishment of the many years of work has been preparation of the Stepennaya kniga (The Book of Royal Degrees) for complete academic edition. This book is the first compilation of non-chronicled Russian history made at a most important and tragic turning point – at the eve of Oprichnina (the political and administrative apparatus established by Ivan the Terrible). For the first time in the world historiography the edition is based on the six early copies including the Tomsk copy discovered by Academician N.N. Pokrovsky. A thorough archaeographic and textological examination of this copy revealed the author’s alterations made by Athanasius, metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia, which emphasized the ideological concept contained in the monument on the unity of the supreme power and the church. Also, the study of the Tomsk copy shed light on the main reasons why the monument had not been completed: there was a glaring contradiction between the ideas put forward in The Book of Royal Degrees and the established Oprichnina, and a bitter conflict between Ivan the Terrible and the church. Stepennaya kniga tsarskogo rodosloviya po drevnejshim spiskam: Teksty i comment. (The Book of Royal Degrees from Ancient Copies: Texts and Commentary), 3 volumes. Vol.1: Zhitiye sv. Kniagini Olgi. Stepeni I-X (Life of St. Princess Olga. Degrees I-X), Moscow: Yazyki slavianskih kultur [Languages of Slavic Cultures (Eng. Transl.)], 2007. – 598 p.; Vol. 2: Stepeni XI – XVII: S pril. i ykaz. (Degrees XI – XVII: with Appendices and Instructions), Moscow: Yazyki slavianskih kultur [Languages of Slavic Cultures (Eng. Transl.)], 2008. – 568 p.). The source was published by the international team of Novosibirsk, Los-Angeles, St Petersburg, and Moscow scholars under the supervision of Academician N.N. Pokrovsky.

Ø  Fruition of the Russian-German cooperation has been the first Russian publication and preparation for publication in the German language of the previously unpublished magnum opus on Siberian ethnography by the eminent Russian historian and ethnographer of the 18th century G.F. Muëller: Miller, G.F., Opisaniye Siberskih narodov (Muëller, G.F., Description of Siberian Peoples) / Compiled by A. Ch. Elert, W. Hintzsche, Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli [Monuments of Historical Thought (Eng. Transl.)], 2009. – 456 p.). Accomplishment of this academic edition required the study of a voluminous corpus of works by the participants of the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–1743) – G.F. Muëller, J. G. Gmelin, Ya. J. Lindenau, S.P. Krasheninnikov, and others – many of which so far have not been translated or published. The text is accompanied by extensive academic commentary.

Ø  Studies of the documents issued by the Communist Party Central Committee (TsK RKP(b)) Politburo, classified until 1991, have been performed as a source of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. S.G. Petrov’s monograph Dokumenty deloproizvodstva Politburo TsK RKP(b) kak istochnik po istorii Russkoi tserkvi (1921 – 1925 gg.) (TsK RKP(b) Paperwork as a Source of the History of the Russian Orthodox Church (1921 – 1925)), Moscow: ROSSPAN, 2004, 408 p. Documents of the country’s supreme authority have been examined with consideration for the special features of secret party record management and management of classified archives, where the documents went through the different keeping conditions. With the help of special techniques combining investigation methods of archival studies and these of specialized historical disciplines such as archaeography, textology and sphragistics, S.G. Petrov has managed to decipher the content of virtually each document, including the top secret and strictly confidential Politburo Decree on Church Issues issued within the period under examination. The research carried out by S.G. Petrov has made major corrections in such chapters of the 20th century Russian Church history as expropriation of church valuables, most important legal proceedings involving the church, the Renovated Church controversy, preparation of litigation over Patriarch Tikhon, and many others. In his appreciation published in Paris, Boris Weil called S.G. Petrov’s monograph an “example of academic scrupulousness.” (Review: Weil, B. Politburo i tserkov (Politburo and Church) // Russkaya mysl’ [La Pensée Russe], (Paris), 2004, July 29 – August 4 (no. 30), p. 10).

Ø  On the basis of detected and examined texts of secret decrees by the Communist Party and the government, for the first time in world historiography a document database for the study of mechanisms, development and practical application of the policy of de-peasantization has been compiled. In the documentary series Arhivy Kremlia (The Kremlin Archives), the collected works Politburo i krestyanstvo: vysylka, spetzposeleniye. 1930-1940. (Politburo and Peasantry: Exile and Special Settlements. 1930-1940), 2 vols., N.N. Pokrovsky, V.P. Danilov, S.A. Krasilnikov, L. Viola, Ed., Moscow: ROSSPAN, 2005–2006, (912/1120p.) were published. The publication includes about a thousand documents from the Russian State Archive, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, the Russian State Archive of Economics, and the Central Archive of the Russian Security Service. Systemized and supplied with archaeographic and informatory comments, the collection of the decrees issued by the authority bodies (TsK VKP (b) Politburo, SNK and TsIK SSSR) and reports by executive bodies (punitive, administrative, and others) contains new information on mass and local deportations of peasants, and organization and operation of special settlements as a basis of the forced labor system set up in the 1930s. The reaction of peasantry to the repressive policy is presented in a wide spectrum of behavioral reactions; by the mid-1930s, passive protest tended to be replaced by a variety of adaption practices.

Ø  The experience of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences establishment and development has been generalized. The setting up and development of the RAS Siberian Branch has first been represented as a story of implementing a major project, comparable to other 20th-century grandiose social-economic projects on the development of Siberia. The project implementation is shown to correspond to the state policy priority of accelerated development of the Siberian productive power. Characteristic of the primary stage of the Siberian Branch development was maximum mobilization of all resources and creation of a new model of the academic organizational structure; typical of the 1960s–1980s was the constructive impact of the RAS Siberian Branch on the social-economic development of the region; and the post-Soviet period was characterized by resource concentration on reinforcing the backbone foundations of the Siberian Branch and its adjustment to the social, economic and political context. (Rossiyskaya akademiya nauk. Sibirskoye otdeleniye. Istoricheskiy ocherk. (Russian Academy of Sciences. Siberian Branch. Historical sketch), Academician N.L. Dobretsov and RAS Corresponding Member V.A. Lamin, Ed., Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2007, 510p.).

Ø  Biographical articles on the leading Siberian researchers have been collected, which has produced a database for the scientometric analysis of the Siberian academic elite over 50 years. (Rossiyskaya academiya nauk. Sibirskoye otdeleniye. Personalniy sostav. (Russian Academy of Sciences. Siberian Branch. Personnel), Academician V.M. Fomin, Ed., Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2007, 603 p.)

Ø  In cooperation with Byelorussian researchers, a detailed study of the Byelorussian participation in the development of Siberia in the 17th – 20th cc. has been carried out. Prominence has been given to the people’s destinies and family dynasties (in the span from the legendary time of Ermak to nowadays) that had passed the baton of Slavonic migration to the east of the Urals. As a consequence, a sweeping panorama of historical process has been reconstructed that has resulted in the present demographic, engineering, economic, and socio-cultural potential of Siberia. The results of this work are presented in Ocherki istorii belorusov v Sibiri v XIX–ХХ vv. (Sketches on the History of Byelorussians in Siberia in the 19th – 20th cc.) by M.P. Kostiuk and RAS Corresponding Member V.A. Lamin, Novosibirsk, 2001, 20 printed sheets. The authors of the Sketches – V.A. Lamin, D.Ya. Rezun, T.S.Mamsik, G.A. Bochanova – were awarded with the Academician Koptyug Prize.

Ø  An important contribution to studies into the role of the state in the development of Siberia has been the publication, within the integrated multidisciplinary project, of the collective paper Aziatskaya chast’ Rossii: noviy etap osvoyeniya severnyh i vostochnyh regionov strany (Asian Part of Russia: New Stage in the Development of the Country’s Northern and Eastern Regions), Academician V.V. Kuleshov, Ed., Novosibirsk, 2008, 428 p. The study gives an appraisal of the native and foreign experience of interaction processes and mechanisms of state administration and public self-government, reveals tendencies of public crises that may lead to a disintegration of the common economic space, analyzes the management mechanisms that worked in the past and are still relevant in the present.

Ø  The result of an integrated effort of a few arts research institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is the popular science Atlas of Asian Russia (Sibir. Atlas Aziatskoi Rossii) published by the Design. Information. Cartography design and production center (Novosibirsk-Moscow, 2007, 864 p.). Underlying the publication is the concept of Siberia and the Russian Far East that treats Siberia not as a Russian periphery but as a region having its own value. Each topic two-page opening includes a map, some textual information, and illustrations (drawings, photographs, charts, and diagrams), which makes the publication compositionally universal. The Institute of History has prepared a history popularizing section that provides a deep insight into the main historical events and processes that occurred in Siberia in the time span from Ermak’s campaign to the late 20th century.

Ø  For the first time in the national and world historiography, a broad panorama of the development of Siberia from the ancient times to nowadays has been presented in the encyclopedic format: Istoricheskaya entsiklopediya Sibiri (The Encyclopedia of Siberian History), 3 vols., RAS Corresponding Member V.A. Lamin, Ed., Novosibirsk: ID “Istoricheskoye naslediye Sibiri” [Siberian Historical Heritage Publishing House (Engl. Transl.)], 2009 (Vol.1, 715 p.; Vol.2, 807 p.; Vol.3, 783 p.). The publication includes sketches on the historical development of entire Siberia and of its cities and regions, which allows emphasizing the integrating function of the country’s eastern regions and their role in the economic, demographic, political, and socio-cultural development of the Russian state. The publication encompasses archaeology and ancient history, ethnography, historical science, population, administrative territorial division, state power and management bodies, political system, public and political life, economic development of the region, research and higher education, social sphere, religion, and culture – all in all, about 4,000 entries in the alphabetical order, without topic sections. The publication abounds in illustrations and references: maps, diagrams, pictures, and indices. Istoricheskaya entsiklopediya Sibiri is designed to fill the gaps in the history of Siberia and to promote a balanced and theoretically substantiated approach to national and regional history.

Ø  In cooperation with the Novosibirsk Oblast State Library, Novosibirsk Oblast State Archive, and Novosibirsk Museum of Regional Studies, the history of industrial development of Siberia’s largest center – the city of Novosibirsk – has been reconstructed, from 1893 to 2005. Novonikolaevsk (the former name of the city), which sprang up as a link between the vast agricultural outcountry and the nation’s industrial centers, has been shown to turn, in less than twenty years, not only into a transport and trade center but also into an industrial city of national importance. The influence exerted by the public authorities on the development of local industry has been traced in detail; and the impact of the radical social, economic, and political reforms of the 1990s has been represented as impersonally as possible. The history of 91 largest township-forming enterprises that were the basis of Siberia’s industrial, research, and cultural center has been traced. Istoriya promyshlennosti Novosibirska (The History of Novosibirsk Industry), 5 vols., Novosibirsk: Izdatelskiy Dom “Istoricheskoye naslediye Sibiri” [Siberian Historical Heritage Publishing House (Engl. Transl.)], 2004–2005.

Ø  The outcome of a collaborative effort by a large team of authors is a detailed history of Novosibirsk from inception to the early 21st century. The city has been shown in its continuous economic and cultural development, and interrelation between the different periods of its history has been established. The publication is richly illustrated. Istoriya goroda. Novosibirsk-Novonikolaevsk. Istorichesliye ocherki. (The History of the City. Novosibirsk-Novonikolaevck. Historical sketches), 2 vols., Novosibirsk: Izdatelskiy Dom “Istoricheskoye naslediye Sibiri” [Siberian Historical Heritage Publishing House (Engl. Transl.)], 2005–2006).