Celebrating the anniversary of the establishment of anti-Bolshevik power in Siberia on June 7, 1919. According to the documents of the Omsk City Duma

Scientific article

doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2024-2-370-380

For citation

Petin, Dmitrii I. (2024), “Celebrating the anniversary of the establishment of anti-Bolshevik power in Siberia on June 7, 1919. According to the documents of the Omsk City Duma”, Herald of an Archivist, no. 2, pp. 370-380. doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2024-2-370-380

Petin, Dmitrii I., Omsk State Technical University, Omsk, Russia

Celebrating the anniversary of the establishment of anti-Bolshevik power in Siberia on June 7, 1919. According to the documents of the Omsk City Duma

Abstract

The paper analyzes the story of the history of Omsk city self-government, associated with the attempt to approve a new public holiday in anti-Bolshevik Siberia - the anniversary of the entry of White-Czech troops into Omsk. The connection of the investigated issue with the historiography of the problem is given, on this basis the relevance of the work is connected with the introduction into the scientific turnover of unpublished sources from the funds of the Historical Archive of the Omsk region. These documents allow us to detail the emergence, discussion and coordination of the initiative, the course and results of the official celebrations in Kolchak's Omsk on June 7, 1919, positioned as the day of "liberation of Siberia" and "revival of Russian statehood". The importance of those events is connected with the fact that Omsk then had the official status of the capital of anti-Bolshevik Russia. The aim of the paper is to analyze the preparation and results of the celebration on the basis of new sources - minutes of the Omsk City Duma meeting within the period - the end of May and the beginning of June 1919. The theoretical basis of the research is a combination of approaches (institutional, systemic, anthropological) and methods (problem-chronological, comparative-historical) traditional for historical science. This makes it possible to establish the degree of participation of the institutions of power in the attempt to establish a new public holiday of potential significance for the entire anti-Bolshevik Siberia, as well as the role of specific socio-political figures in the realization of that initiative. The nature and course of the celebration demonstrate the conservative views of the authorities in White Omsk (both at the level of the Russian government and the City Duma), as well as the special importance of the festivities of June 7, 1919 for the highest circles of the anti-Bolshevik statehood. In addition, the study of the celebrations in the Kolchak capital prompts thoughts about the significant influence of the religious factor in the Civil War in eastern Russia. The study is an example of when a casual episode of local history acquired all-Russian significance. The work also emphasizes the inviolable postulate of historical research that for a full-fledged assessment of events it is essential to take into account the widest possible range of sources. The publication may be of interest to academic specialists studying the Civil War and anti-Bolshevik movement in the East of Russia, the history of public holidays, as well as socio-political and everyday life in the era of social cataclysms.

Keywords

Historical sources, cultural anthropology, public holiday, Russian Civil War, White movement, history of the municipality, city council, local history, Omsk.

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References

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About the authors

Dmitrii I. Petin, PhD in History, associate professor, Omsk State Technical University, Department of History, Philosophy and Social Communications, associate professor, Omsk, Russia, +7-950-333-56-81, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The article was received in the editorial office on 7.11.2023, recommended for publication on 20.03.2024.