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The article objective is to identify specifics of development of the state’s agricultural technology policy during the post-war Stalinism and “Khrushchev” decades and measures implemented by the Soviet government to develop the agricultural technology in the collective and state farms of Siberia. The study objective is to represent the scale and results of introducing modern systems of agriculture at the time, as well as the level of management culture. The author concludes that intensive methods were used to increase grain production during the period under review. The strategies of ecological technologies (herb crops, fallow lands, field-protective forest planting, land reclamation, etc.) and agriculture chemicalization (application of mineral fertilizers, herbicides and other means) were used in the policy of intensifying agriculture. The first strategy was deemed to be the “main” by the government in the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s. The emphasis was on introducing the grassland system without large capital investments. Applying this agricultural technology did not lead to increase in productivity of arable lands in the collective and state farms. N. S. Khrushchev called to abandon it completely. Expensive chemicalization was envisioned mainly in plans of agricultural development implemented only in the mid-1960s, when the comprehensive program appeared to intensify agricultural production with sufficient financial support. During the period under review, the authorities expected to increase agricultural production, primarily of grain, with extensive development of virgin and fallow lands. During the “Khrushchev” decade, it became the main lever to revitalize agriculture. Considerable funds were invested in the industry thanks to the virgin soil campaign; the country received additional grain yields. The reverse side of the new lands development was a significant drop of qualitative indicators of agricultural production.

The article investigates mechanisms of wheat purchase in foreign markets in connection with the grain crisis of 1963 in the USSR based on the documents of the CPSU Central Committee Presidium. It shows the process of negotiations and grain purchase by the Soviet government delegation in Canada, as well as analyzes the reasons, why the Soviet Union was unable to buy grain in the USA. The author believes that main reasons of the negotiations failure were related to the fact that the US leadership, unlike the Canadian government, pursued not only economic, but also political goals (attempts to strengthen the Democratic Party positions before the presidential elections of 1964 and to form a new political course of J. K. Kennedy). However, the protracted negotiation process, American bureaucratic machine’s clumsiness, and strengthening positions of the conservative force led to the negotiations’ termination. The author concludes that resolution of the bread shortage problem in the USSR became possible thanks to the Soviet diplomats’ efforts. At the same time, grain purchases abroad affected N. S. Khrushchev’s image and became one of the reasons for his resignation in October 1964.

The first part of the article was published in the previous issue (2018, N 4). This is its second part, which reconstructs the viewpoint of N. Ya. Gushchin, a famous Russian historian, in the collectivization debates of 1970s-1980s. A key event in the context of the studied issues was the XVI Session of the Symposium on Agrarian History of Eastern Europe (Chisinau, 1976), where sharp debates about kulaks’ social nature took place between V. P. Danilov, who claimed that kulaks and peasants were the same, and N. Ya. Gushchin, who insisted on their fundamental differences. Later N. Ya. Guschin took an active part in development of new approaches to study collectivization. At the turn of 1980s and 1990s he paid more attention to analyzing the political aspects of the problem and linked the agrarian policy’s difficulties with the wrong course of political power. At the same time, he came closer to the views then expressed by V. P. Danilov.

The Siberian Governors-Generals’ reports are repeatedly used by historians to study the regional administrative management, its socio-economic and cultural development, but so far they have not been the subject of special research in terms of identifying top authorities’ views on the region. The authors consider the Governor-Generals’ reports as a collective source text, whose parts were compiled by different persons, specialists in various fields, but signing it the Governor-General took responsibility for its content however difficult the process of the document's preparing might be. Representations of Siberia in the Governor-General’s reports were formed and evolved under the influence of a number of factors: first, their own direct impressions, changed and supplemented over time; second, reading the reports of predecessors and subordinates, as well as fiction, scientific, journalistic literature; third, familiarity with the complaints and petitions of individuals and groups. The understanding of the central authorities’ goals and policy influenced the way of presenting the data included in the report, as well as content of certain provisions; the Governor-General’s attention to certain aspects of his activities depended on tasks before him. The reports’ analysis shows that these documents do not always show the views of a particular Governor-General. Sometimes it is a list of materials, more or less reliable, received from subordinates of different levels. Often, several fragments were reproduced from one report to another, even when the Governor was replaced by his successor. In some cases, the Governors-General were the reports’ authors themselves. However, the report was a product of collective efforts most often. It was a common practice to repeat texts close to the governors’ reports. The Governor-General himself could not be completely sincere, he could, and sometimes did (consciously or unconsciously), try to influence the Monarch and/or Ministers, and other Supreme power and Central administration figures, highlighting certain characteristics, forming the image that should have been formed in the reports’ addressees.

The article aims to analyze command and control methods employed by the general of infantry N.N. Myraviov, Viceroy of the Caucasus and Commander of Separate Corps of the Caucasus in the course of the Köprüköy operation, which was an important episode of 1855 Caucasian campaign of the Crimean War. Historiography offers limited coverage of the operation with no attempts to analyze it in the context of the evolution if military art in the 19th century. This paper uses comparative approach to study the Köprüköy operation of the Crimean War of 1853-1856 through the lens of the Königgrätz operation of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. It pays specific attention to N.N Muraviov’s and Helmuth von Moltke’s command and control methods. Analysis of the Köprüköy operation reveals that the plan of a concentric advance against the Turkish forces defending the approach to Erzurum demanded establishing effective cooperation between the two groups of advancing Russian forces: Alexandropol force under personal command of Muraviov and Erivan force led by major-general A.A. Suslov. The Viceroy’s propensity toward detailed command, overcentralized control, and suppression of initiative among subordinate officers prevented the establishment of such cooperation. This allowed the Turkish forces to retreat unhindered from their threatened position at Köprüköy to Deve-boyunu mountain ridge. On the contrary, Helmuth von Moltke in 1866 succeeded in establishing decentralized mission command, thus ensuring a victorious end for the Königgrätz operation. Thus, despite Russian generals in the Caucasus being fully capable of operating successfully under mission command, as demonstrated by the 1854 campaign, the Viceroy of the Caucasus failed to fully grasp the demands of his operational situation and contemporary military art. In addition to limiting the eventual success of Russian forces in Eastern Anatolia, this failure also illustrates the limited degree of susceptibility that Russian high command demonstrated toward new trends in operational art.

The article objective is to study the issue of cessation the gendarme supervision of private gold mining industry in Siberia in the late XIX century. The author solves following tasks: 1) to identify reasons that prompted the authorities to raise the issue of such supervision's liquidation; 2) to determine interests of the officials concerned in this matter; 3) to reveal mechanisms of the officials’ interaction in solving this problem. The main research sources are the materials of the Central Gendarme Department stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation, as well as regional archives data. The main research approach is comparative historical analysis. The author came to several conclusions. The problem of cessation of the gendarme supervision of private gold mining industry had been considered for more than a decade. There were reasons that prompted the authorities and officials to take this step in the late XIX century: a number of workers’ protests in the gold mines decreased; the mechanism of gold mining and gold incomings to the state treasury was adjusted; and the main reason was the need to use gendarmes in the fight against the revolutionary movement at the vast Empire space, according to author’s viewpoint. The initiative to liquidate supervision came from the central government agencies - the Ministry of State Property and the Ministry of Finance considered inappropriate to maintain supervision and its financial support. The Gendarme Department, on the contrary, spoke in favor of maintaining this supervision. Addressing this issue, it turned out to be necessary to appeal to representatives of the Siberian executive power -governor-generals and governors, whose opinions were taken into account. As a result, the view on the necessity to liquidate the supervision and use gendarmes for solving other governmental tasks won, and since the second half of the 1880s gendarme officers ceased to supervise the private gold mining industry in Siberia.

There is still no consensus among historians about the national communists - who they were - the imperial policy conductors, or defenders of interests of non-Russian peoples. The activity of Stepan Vasilyevich Vasilyev, a party-Soviet leader, was hushed up as a “bourgeois nationalist” for many decades, but in the post-Soviet period some publicists tried to evaluate him as an “apologist for Stalinism”, which distorted the truth as well. The article objective is to study Vasilyev’s activities to resolve “the national issue” to form the nationhood in the autonomy form, his role in economic and social development of the republic and the country in the context of network interrelations between central and regional political elites. The research is based on L. P. Repina’s method of cultural and intellectual history involved studying and understanding the historical process through a personal context. The authors conclude that the desire for knowledge, work capacity and organizational experience allowed Vasilyev to grow professionally from a Komsomol leader to a statesman of all-Union scale for a short period. His historical merit was economic and socio-cultural modernization, which led to economic, social and cultural leveling of Yakutia’s development with the center. This period was marked by the formation and development of the Yakut nation, national statehood, economic and socio-cultural revival, and growing intellectual potential. Stepan Vasilyevich stood at the origin of Yakutian gold mining industry. Moscow patrons, Yaroslavsky and Ordzhonikidze, helped him in his professional activities, but the repression of the 1930s destroyed the existing model of social networks between the central and regional elites.

This article explores the establishment and activity of the Natural History Department of the Institute for Siberian Studies (ISS) based on a wide range of sources and scientific literature. The study is of high relevance due to the need to analyze a new model of scientific structure established by the Siberian scientists during the crisis period of Russian history. The study objective is to reconstruct and interpret the history of creation and work of the Natural History Department of ISS. The natural history studies initially were supposed to be conducted in four separate departments: botany, zoology, agriculture, and forest science. However, during the approval of ISS Regulations by A.V. Kolchak’s Russian government these departments were reorganized into sub-branches of the Natural History Department. It is worth noting that some distinguished scientists from Siberia, European Russia and foreign countries worked at the department, such as P. N. Krylov, V. V. Sapozhnikov, M. D. Ruzsky, G. E. Ioganzen, A. G. Gennkel, I. I. Podpera, S. A. Teploukhov, et al. The research has revealed the multidimensional activity of the Natural History Department. It arranged expeditions to study the Ob and Taz Bays’ tundra terrain, investigate ichthyofauna of West Siberian rivers (Ob, Tom, Tobol, Polui, etc.), phytoplankton of Lake Baikal and others. According to the expeditionary results, the members of the Department published a number of scientific works in “Izvestiya IIS”. The Department put forward the idea of organizing courses to train researchers of Siberian wild life, as well as the sub-department of physical geography; supported the Baikal Hydrobiological Station activity; sponsored the activities of the South Usuriisk Branch of the Russian Geographical Society, etc. The author concludes that the difficult political, social and economic conditions adversely affected the Department’s activity, not allowing its members to realize many ideas. However, if ISS were not closed by the Soviet authorities, its work would have developed on an even larger scale.

The main objective of this article is to analyze the first phase of Stalin’s mass repressions against the top-ranking officials of the Communist youth league (Komsomol) in 1937. The study focuses in particular on the role of the Komsomol General Secretary A.V. Kosarev regarding the implementation of Stalin’s murderous policy against the functionaries of the Komsomol at the onset of the Great Terror. Based on the widespread viewpoint that Kosarev’s intentions were to temper the terror impact on his organization upper ranks, the article scrutinizes the meeting of Stalin and Kosarev 21 July 1937, and proves that such allegations are most likely unfounded. The reassessment of the well-known sources as well as new archival material led to the assumption, that Kosarev’s role in Stalin’s repressive policy was not only of a “pawn” on the chessboard of power, who followed his master’s wishes blindly. On the contrary, the author shows that Kosarev was a single-minded, powerful functionary, who was keen to protect his own interests and tried to use the Great Terror to pursue his own goals. Even if he was seeking to mitigate the effects of the purges, his primary goal was to cover himself and his close associates against the possible accusations by NKVD. All his attempts to protect his promotees from the persecution and detention failed. Finally, he was forced to bend to Stalin’s will; this helped him to avoid being arrested, even if not for a too long time.