Sources for Studying Interactions between the Authorities and Workers in the Urals during the Civil War

УДК 94(47).084.3

Olga S. Porshneva, Ural Federal University,

Mikhail A. Feldman, Ural Institute of Administration – branch of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation

Sources for Studying Interactions between the Authorities and Workers in the Urals during the Civil War

Abstract

The article offers a systematization and analysis of the contents of a comprehensive and diverse database of sources for studying the interactions between the authorities and workers in the days of the Civil War. There is a number of published and unpublished documentary complexes that allow to explore not only the nature of these interactions, but also to identify factors and trends of their evolution. In the first group of the sources the authors include legislative and regulatory documents of the government and administration agencies of the Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik authorities. They allow to define the legal basis for economic, social, military and political transformations advanced in the Urals by the opposing regimes, and also to identify some crucial decisions that determined the political and social life. Another group of sources includes record keeping documentation of governmental and public institutions: transcripts and minutes of meetings of central and local authorities and trade unions documentation. The latter is the only evidence of some important decisions that is available to historians in some cases. Valuable sources for research on the subject are reports of various organizations of the communist party, the Red Army, the Cheka and the Soviets on the political situation and the peoples’ (workers’ in particular) frame of mind. Another group of sources is materials of periodicals of various political movements published in the central region or in the Urals in the end of 1917–1920. Personal provenance sources and ego-documents (letters and memoirs from both Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik camps) are also of great importance. Traditional source study and latest interpretive methods allow to identify the meaningful data contained in these sources, which sometimes can be found in no other documents, to offer some insights, and to help to interpret testimonials and “voices” of contemporaries and participants of those historical events.

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Keywords

Sources, archival document, Bolsheviks, power, workers, the Urals, Civil War, anti-Bolshevik movement, White movement.

References

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PORSHNEVA, O. S, FEL'DMAN, M. A. Vlast' i rabochie Rossii i Urala v usloviyakh Grazhdanskoy voiny: problemy vzaimootnosheniy. Ocherki istorii i istoriografii [Power and the Russian workers in the Urals during the Civil War: Essays on history and historiography. In Russ.]. Ekaterinburg, UrI RANKhiGS publ., 2013, 356 p.

“Skoro li konchitsya eta proklyataya voina…” (iz svodok otdeleniya voennoi tsenzury pri I Trudovoi armii o soderzhanii pisem, prislannykh krasnoarmeytsam) ["Will it end any time soon, this goddamned war?" (From reports of the military censorship department of the 1st Labour Army concerning substance of letters received by the Red Army soldiers). In Russ.]. IN: Arkhivy Urala, 2009, no. 13. pp. 35-53.

FITZPATRICK, SH. The Russian Revolution. Third Edition. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008. pp. 68-91.

BROVKIN, VLADIMIR N. (ed.) The Bolsheviks in Russian Society. The Revolution and the Civil War. New Haven, London, 1997.

About author

Porshneva Olga Sergeevna, PhD in History, professor, Ural Federal University, professor, Russian Federation, Ekaterinburg, +7-912-601-09-41, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Feldman Mikhail Arkadyevich, PhD in History, professor, Ural Institute – branch of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, professor, Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation, +7-906-800-89-58, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Submitted 5.03.2017, published:

PORSHNEVA, O. S., FEL'DMAN, M. A. Istochniki izucheniya problemy vzaimootnoshenii vlasti i rabochikh Urala v usloviyakh grazhdanskoi voiny [Sources for studying interactions between the authorities and workers in the Urals during the Civil War. In Russ.]. IN: Vestnik arhivista / Herald of an archivist, 2017. no. 2, pp. 57-71.