Siberian Historical Research

6

Authors: Kharus O.A.

Introduction to the issue

24-45

Authors: Zinovyev V.P.

The correlation of natural and monetary wages is an indicator of the maturity of the capitalist production. The higher is the share of cash in a wage, the more “purified” the relationship between the labour and the capital is supposed to be. This topic received much attention in the classical Marxist analysis of capitalist production. The paper analyzes the categories of wages paid to Siberian mine workers in the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. At that time the market and infrastructure were underdeveloped, and business owners were compelled to provide their employees with lodging, board and other services, reducing the share of cash remaining at the employees’ disposal. In Siberian mining industry natural wages which created the conditions for the “secondary” exploitation of workers and engendered social conflicts were almost never substituted for money. In the 19th century Siberia master’s board and lodging were a traditional means of payment to employees. In the 1860s to the 1880s the average share of ‘master’s board and lodging’ constituted 40 % of wages in Siberian plants and factories and from 25 to 35 % at goldmines. As the meals provided by the owner were scarce, workers always supplemented them with goods and food from shops belonging to the same owner. In the late 19th century “master’s board” was abolished by almost all of businessmen, substituted by the distribution of foodstuffs from shops on account of wages. On the basis of the author’s analysis of the reports submitted by enterprises and the results of official inspections, it has been revealed that the share of natural wages at Siberian mines showed no tendency to decreasing. Up to 1917 it constituted on average from 30 to 50 % of the total wages paid to Siberian miners. Workers had to get foodstuffs and other goods from the masters’ shops, they were also provided with lodging, medical services, and schooling for children. In the early 20th century the natural component of wages paid to Siberian mine workers was from 3 to 5 times higher than that paid to the workers of European Russia. The author raises a question about the factors accounting for the longtime preservation of natural wages in Siberian mining. He argues that the main reason for it was the weakness of Siberian retail trade which did not penetrate into the mining settlements. The role of retailers was taken on by the enterprises’ management. In Soviet times this role was performed by departments of supplies for workers (ORSy). In fact they occupied a monopoly position in this respect and that had the overpricing and lack of quality control as a result. Only enterprises located in Siberia’s well-developed areas, in particular mining plants, refused the functions of trade and provision of goods.

71-87

Authors: Razgon V.N., Zhdanova G.D.

Studying the history of the Great Terror at the micro level allows us to concretize the knowledge of the basic problems of the history of mass repressions in 1937–1938 adequate resolution of which is not possible if the study is limited purely to approaches based on the principles and methods of macro historical research. These are questions about the objectives of the repressions, criteria and the mechanism for selecting victims of repressions, forms and methods of interaction of the NKVD, party organizations and local activists in the implementation of repressive policies, the specifics of investigative procedures during the Great Terror. The repressions in Solton district, greater in scale if compared to many other districts of the Altai region, are accounted for by the following: 1) the special repressive action in November 1937 led to some ‘failures’ in the fulfillment of the grain procurement plan and in the campaign for elections to the Supreme Council of the USSR; 2) the use of specific methods for implementing repressive policies on the part of local district leadership that contributed to the escalation of terror (the examination of collective farms and compiling of special acts with an obligatory indication of ‘enemies of the people’; 3) the emphasize put on eradication of noncollective forms of rural economy, which had been developed in Solton. The last two factors are indicative of the specificities of the repressive policies implemented during the Great Terror in rural areas of the country, with its focus on the tasks of socialist modernization related to the strengthening of collective farming. Although the punitive action of November 1937 in Solton was more of a ‘special action’ character, and in this respect can be regarded as an ‘incident’, which was beyond the scope of the generally conducted repressions, it shows more clearly than ‘ordinary’ repressions do the specificity of the repressive operation fulfilled under the NKVD order № 00447: the extreme simplification of the investigative procedures, large-scale falsified charges, active cooperation in the implementation of repressive policies between the NKVD, party structures, and rural activists. Thus, this repressive action can be considered as one of the culmination points in the repressive policies on the implementation of the order № 00447.

108-135

Authors: Sorokin Yu.A.

The article describes the main trends in the development of national historiography in the 19th and 20th centuries in terms of studying the political regimes of Catherine II and Paul I. It reveals the factors that influenced the thinkingof professional historians and shows metamorphoses and transformation of their views, as well as provides a chronological order that allows not only to establish the authorship of the so-called conventional views, but to understand the specificities of the evidence upon which historians relied. This allowed the author to argue that, although historians have always thought the differences between the political regimes of Catherine II and Paul I to be quite substantial,they were unable to determine what, in fact, these differences consisted in, if considered in the actual historical and formal logical aspects.

142-148

Authors: Funk D.A.

Review of a series “Quellen zur Geschichte Sibiriens und Alaskas aus russischen Archiven“, Halle, 2000-2010 / «Istochniki po istorii Sibiri i Aliaski iz rossiiskikh arkhivov», Moscow / St.-Petersburg, 1999–2013.