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The article objective is studying groups of Old Believers of the Upper Syda river basin (Idrinsky District of Krasnoyarsk Region). It deals with such problems as identifying the place of their exit, the time of appearance in the territory, settlement patterns, the “tolks” and “agreements” of Old Believers, who lived in the rural settlements of the region, description of the worship features, functions of mentors, marriage issues including marriages with “worldly” men, peculiarities of funeral and commemoration culture peculiarities. These aspects are poorly studied, as well as the Old Believers population of Minusinsk region as a whole. The article is based on expedition data of Minusinsk Museum of Local History in 2009 and 2016, most of which are published for the first time. The interview method was used to collect materials, a systematic approach - to analyze the data. Old Believers, natives of Perm-Vyatka Region, settled remote sub-taiga areas in the mid XIX century. They lived in Maly Knyshi, Ekaterinovka, Tobolka, Silkino, Il’inka, Oktyabryovka, Lutag (Cheremshanka), Migna, Kinzel’ village and in taiga borrowings. They were representatives of Belokrinitsky agreement and several tolks of Bespopovtsy. Old Believers led a closed way of life manifested in a number of behavioral and household attitudes; held prayers separately choosing as a place either a house, or natural objects (springs). They buried their dead in a separate cemetery or in a separate half of a regular one. There was a ban on marriages with representatives of other denominations, but the materials of the 2016 expedition showed it was not always observed. The longest preserved traditions were crossing with two fingers and a special attitude to dishes.

Krasnoyarsk Krai is a leading region in Siberia on a number of Belarusians who settled the territory at the period of mass peasant resettlements in the late XIX - early XX centuries. Despite this fact, it remains one of the least studied Siberian as regards the ethnography of Belarusians living in its territory. The ethnographic expedition held in 2017 in Mansky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai partially filled the gap. The expedition materials become an empirical basis of this study. The research methodology is based on a comparative historical approach. Features of traditional culture of the Belarusian peasants-migrants were compared with its prototypes in Belarus and a new ethnic environment of migrants in Siberia. The expedition revealed the most stable patterns of traditional culture brought to the Siberian territory by the immigrant ancestors. Adaptation processes most actively took place among the first and second generations of migrants. Originally, they were connected with adapting to new climatic conditions and ethnic environment. Later such factors as changes of social and economic life of the Soviet village related to collectivization, life modernization, as well as the World War II consequences affected the adaptation. Nowadays, the prevalence of the multiethnic population is typical for all villages in the surveyed area, where descendants of the Belarusian migrants live. A number of factors contributed to its formation. Initially, lots of sites were populated by people from different provinces with equal economic and social situation. It promoted faster interethnic integration of Belarusians with other migrant groups in comparison with those areas where they lived neighboring Cheldons, Russian old-timer population. In the 1930-1940s the composition of population in the surveyed villages became more ethnically mixed due to resettling residents of individual farms (hutors) to large collective farms (kolhoz), and a demographic failure after the Great Patriotic War. These factors led to mixed marriages becoming more widespread during this period. Due to this situation, today, the migrants identification with Belarusians is connected only with echoes of historical memory kept in their families.

Nowadays the decline in fertility takes place in a great number of countries and regions. It makes scholars to search for reasons forcing people to reduce a number of children in families. Using only statistical and mathematical methods cannot provide full explanation. It is necessary to study reproductive behavior that is realized through reproductive setting of a person. The paper considers peculiarities of the Buryat population’s reproductive setting in Ivolginsky Region. To solve this objective the authors apply sociological and mathematical methods. The research methodology is the theory of demographic transition. 300 people between 20 and 50 years of age have been reviewed during the research. Women that live in 15 villages of Ivolginsky Region took part in the sociological review, which revealed the ideas of Buryats about the optimum number of children (3,159 children per a woman). It is explained by the fact that the research was conducted in the countryside region where birthrates are traditionally higher than in urban areas. The expected number of children was close to an ideal number - 2,902 children. Demographers regard similarity of these indicators as a proof of high harmony of reproductive settings. The authors reveal that ideal and expected number of children have not significantly changed for over more than 20 years. Sharp decrease of the parameters is observed among the youngest group of women. The study confirms that women with high and incomplete high education have a lower ideal number of children than the rest of population. The survey results show the link between reproductive settings and financial situation. The lower is income size the higher is an ideal and expected number of children in families. Thus, the field research result proves that the Buryat population have clear ideas about the best number of children and their reproductive settings are characterized by a high harmony. In the short term one can expect further decrease in the number of children in a family and, consequently, declining birth rates.

The issue of colonization tasks in the context of imperial building became an important element of the public discourse and state policy in the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries with growing migration movement to the eastern outskirts. Under conditions of peasantry mass migrations to West Siberia and steppe region (Steppe Krai), activity to define the colonization potential of settlement areas and to assess the capacities of resettlement territories for immigrants came to the fore. Solving current tasks and creating projects for “internal” colonization, the imperial authorities pursued ideological goals trying to put into practice certain elements of the “Russian cause” policy that were not implemented on the empire’s western outskirts. Mass relocations made it possible to implement a nationally conservative plan to create a “big Russian nation”. Special functions in this program belonged to the institution of imperial experts, which was the main conductor of imperial ideas in the eastern regions. The peak of migration movement to the region chronologically coincided with the approval of the governance principles of the country’s eastern outskirts, the meaning of which was to establish the empire’s special powers in russification; it gave chances to overcome the cultural distance between Russia and West Europe. Two periods can be traced in the imperial experts’ activities. Initially, the organizer of the expert activity was the West Siberian Department of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society (ZSOIRGO). However, along with intensifying peasant migration and reanimating nationally conservative ideas, as well as emerging institutions, which claimed the colonial ministries status, the need to re-format the institution of imperial experts appeared. In the 1890s new criteria defining the content of this group of persons were approved, which included strict adherence to instructions of sending institutions, servility, mobility and desire to correlate results of their expeditionary activities with the current state tasks of colonization.

This article objective is to reveal main issues related to peculiarities of the Arctic economic development during the Soviet period. The study is essential to define the historical experience of industrial development of the region rich in natural and mineral resources. The article’s problematic field includes step-by-step implementation of industrial programs in the Arctic. The first program was the industrial project’s realization in Norilsk: the metallurgical plant construction began in 1935; the first portion of nickel (the most important metal for the military-defense industry) was smelted in 1942. Norilsk industrial area continued its development after the World War II. In 1950s Norilsk had already been able to produce a substantial amount of nonferrous metals, which became even larger after Nadezhdinskiy smelter start-up. The article points out other events of the industrial modernization taking place after the World War II in the Arctic and northern Siberia regions under industrial program’s implementation. The next program was forming the West Siberian oil and gas complex to produce large volumes of natural gas and oil. Hydrocarbon extraction in Sub-Arctic and Arctic regions started in the late 1950s and actively developed in 1960-1980s. Nowadays, it is still the main source of fuel and energy resources in the country. The state strategy was aimed exclusively at promoting the growth of industrial capacity of eastern regions including Arctic Siberia. The Northern Sea Route along the Soviet Union’s northern border was very important for economic development of Soviet Arctic. The author concludes that the main factor of economic development of Siberia and Arctic in the USSR was industrial modernization which pre-determined the state approach to this region.

The New Economic Policy failure and transition to accelerated formation of the socialism radically changed not only the Soviet society’s political and economic sphere, but the daily life of people as well. The concentration of financial and other resources to implement forced industrialization, eliminate market mechanisms in the economy, including the population provision, led to a total shortage of everyday goods. Against this background, serious interruptions in supplying the urban population with food, first of all bread, and other goods, took place in Siberian cities, as well as throughout the country. The channels and structure of providing the population changed radically. The private trade which provided between a third and a half of consumer goods in the 1920s was eliminated in the early 1930s. The relationship between the cooperative and state trade changed dramatically in favor of the latter. Introducing the card system, realizing goods through the distributors of enterprises and institutions meant that an average citizen could no longer provide himself. The structure of retail turnover and consumer budgets in Siberian cities indicated that the population acquired mainly foodstuffs, where bakery products occupied the leading place. Thus, during the first five-year plans, the problems of meeting everyday needs became a difficult task for the population. In general, the people life quality and standards were sacrificed for implementing accelerated industrialization.

The article deals with the problems of introducing new methods of obstetrics as a factor reducing morbidity and mortality among pregnant and postpartum women in the late 1920s - early 1930s. The study is based on the materials of the Urals and the methodological concept of everyday life history, its ideas of the life world and everyday life structures. The article objective is to give a general description of the obstetrics in the Urals, to show the role of state maternity hospitals, delivery under medical supervision in the Soviet concept of medicine. It was established that introducing new methods of anesthesia in childbirth started in 1927. The author presents data on the mortality of expectant mothers and children during the treatment of placenta previa with the use of old methods as of 1927; shows activities of specialists of the Sverdlovsk Obstetric and Gynecological Institute and gynecologists from other institutions aimed at promoting the appropriate indications of cesarean section. The paper characterizes the contribution of the medical personnel of the maternity hospitals of Sverdlovsk, Perm, Tyumen, Ishim and others in new methods development and application: a technique of childbirth anesthetizing and women’s psychic-preventive training by A. Yu. Lurie, hypnosis; using evpapan-natrium (hexenal) for analgesia on the initiative of A.A. Ikonnikova, a Ural gynecologist, since the early 1930s. The author studies attitudes of pregnant women to new techniques, when the minority of women demonstrated distrust, while the majority’s attitude was positive. The article shows that Sverdlovsk Research Institute for the Protection of Maternity and Infancy instructed doctors coming to train from Ukraine, Donbass, Caucasus, Chuvashian, Siberian, Kazakhstan clinics since 1935, it promoted development of mass movement for anesthesia of childbirth in the USSR.

The article deals with the issue of the number of civilians evacuated to West Siberia. The paper notes inconsistency of the data number published up to date; analyzes sources of the published data on the size of evacuated population quantity. Based on a legal definition of “evacuated population”, the author identifies the following varieties: “refugees” and “organized population”; reveals features of their accounting and corresponding errors. The article formulates several conclusions: the exact number of people who arrived in the region during the civil evacuation can’t be established due to accounting errors in statistical data. At the same time, errors of generalizing statistical data are greater than the primary data collected by the local population accounting authorities, because the first ones accumulate errors of the second ones. Thus, to determine the evacuated population (and the population in general) size, it is necessary to rely primarily on the documents of the primary population registration, despite the complexity of this approach. Business correspondence of the accounting authorities is of particular importance in this case, as it contains information that allows taking into account the error size inherent in the statistics provided by them. It is important to consider as well, that the error in the accounting the population during the war increased significantly, its value differed significantly in various war periods and in different regions, and, consequently, should be differentiated. In West Siberia, the statistical data errors for each territorial subject (Altai, Novosibirsk and Omsk regions) was about 5 thousand people, and as for general estimates of the number of people who arrived in the region, it is advisable to specify it with an accuracy about 10 thousand people. This value is justified by the peculiarities of preparing data on the natural and mechanical movements of population, as well as the mortality rate in the region, ranging from 13 to 20 thousand people a month during the war.

The article objective is to identify practices of incentive social-labor communication (SLC) in the public space of Novosibirsk and reaction of defense industry workers to this process in the late 1941 - early 1942. The research methodological basis of the research includes SLC concept and typology. SLC is viewed as a process of transferring information from some participants of production relations to others. There are two types of communication strategies in the framework of SLC, that trigger moral factors of labor motivation - prompting and coercion. The institutional form of motivation in the Soviet rear was the epic Stakhanov epos (prometheism) used to create the heroic era of the Great Patriotic War. In this context, the paper shows the process of deploying a propaganda campaign to glorify the foremost workers who performed production tasks by at least 200 %, which was carried out through a combination of channels of verbal and figurative symbolic propaganda providing information exchange between local authorities and factory staff, as well as within the staff. The author concludes that an integral part of such exchange was the theme of labor heroism identified with producing two or several norms. In general, the official propaganda created conditions for strengthening the motivation of Novosibirsk and migrant population, which led to increase of the number of “two hundred” workers (dvukhsotniks) in existing military factories. However, due to many organizational and technical costs associated with establishing defense production, this category of Stakhanovists remained a thin layer in the total mass of workers. At the same time, their motivation to over-fulfill the state defense order, including the influence of the epic cult of two-hundred workers created positive prospects for the further development of social competition as one of the communicative strategies to force social labor relations at the initial period of War with Nazi Germany.

The article objective is to investigate preconditions and stages of new railway construction in the Urals and West Siberia; to identify modernization processes in transport construction, and to establish reasons for low rates of the regional railway network development. The author concentrates his attention on the problems of material-technical provision and scientific support of new railway construction in the regions of virgin lands development in South Ural, Kazakhstan and West Siberian oil-gas province. The study deals with the documents of the Ministry of Railways’ Scientific and Technical Council and the correspondence of the CPSU’s Tyumen Regional Committee on Transport Construction in the northern Tyumen Region. The research methodology is the modernization theory applied to railway transportation as a fundamental technical and economic transport renewal based on electrification, diesel traction and new lines construction. New railway construction is a separate field of transportation modernization associated with increasing the railway network length, rationalizing transportation processes, developing new territories and natural raw materials, forming additional lines between the country regions. The complexity of the construction conditions, weak territorial development, lack of local building materials caused a powerful rise of scientific research and new construction technologies’ elaboration. As a result, the railway network was created at a zero level of the territory development, and without the international experience of railroad construction under severe conditions. At the same time, the Ural and West Siberian railway network was not developed to the extent necessary to optimize the transportation process due to material and financial resources concentration on the drastic technical reconstruction of the existing railway network.