“Perm catastrophe": local self-government bodies in the period of the Supreme Ruler

Scientific article

doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2024-3-943-959

For citation

Dolgova, Angela V. (2024), “Perm catastrophe”: local self-government bodies in the period of the Supreme ruler, Herald of an Archivist, № 3, pp. 943-959, doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2024-3-943-959

Dolgova, Angela V., Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia

“Perm catastrophe": local self-government bodies in the period of the Supreme Ruler

Abstract

The article is devoted to the socio-political situation in Perm province during the period of the Supreme Ruler. The research is based on the documents of the fund R-746 of the State Archive of the Perm Region (GAPK) - “Manager of the Perm Province of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Provisional All-Russian Government”, which were first introduced into scientific circulation. The Perm archive received the documents for secret storage in 1940 from the Sverdlovsk regional archive, and access to them was limited until 1994. Manuscripts and typewritten texts are reports of police chiefs, monthly statements of criminal offenses, correspondence of zemstvo employees with the Governor of the province. It is noteworthy that one of the documents mentions the name of General G. A. Verzhbitsky. Of greatest interest are the reports of district governors on the progress of mobilization and on the political mood of the population under the change of power. A tragedy was unfolding in the city of Perm and its districts in those days. The situation was aggravated by an epidemic of typhus spread by soldiers, inflation, the cessation of work of factories, mobilizations, and an influx of refugees. The lists of executed citizens compiled by the zemstvo clerks show that the Bolshevik terror fell at the end of December 1918, which was explained by the change in the military and political situation on the Eastern Front. Paradoxically, the thesis about the temporary failures of the Red Army and the surrender of Perm looks quite plausible, in the sense that it was not a “catastrophe” of the entire Eastern Front, since we cannot speak about the stability of the Supreme Ruler's power in the province. On the other hand, the situation in the first half of 1919 was truly catastrophic. The discovered archival documents contain information sufficient to assert that during the period in question the local residents did not experience any relief from the hardships of the Civil War, despite the titanic efforts of zemstvo employees to restore order. The aim of the paper is to show the socio-political situation in Perm province by the example of previously unpublished archival documents. The object of the study is local self-government bodies, county and volost zemstvos, town militia, the subject is the realities of socio-political life after December 1918. The main methods of the study were the problem-chronological and comparative-historical. Both methods and sources cited by the author allowed to restore the sequence of events after December 1918 and to analyze the attitude of the population to the change of power.

Keywords

Civil War, Perm Province, zemstvos, Supreme Ruler, A. V. Kolchak, archive, crimes, militia, Governor of Perm Province, White Movement.

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About the authors

Dolgova Angela V., PhD (History), Associate Professor, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Faculty of Social Sciences and Mass Communications, Department of Humanities, Moscow; Russian Federation, 8-926-557-68-52, 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 16.02.2024, recommended for publication on 20.06.2024.