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The purpose of the article based on the previously unknown sources is to study the history of a clandestine student organization that existed in Omsk under the name of the Russian National Party Rights. Investigation materials stored in the archives of the Federal Security Service in the Omsk region allow us to clarify the views existing in the historical literature on personal composition, organizational structure and purposes of the association. Documents show that young people focused on the democratic traditions of revolutionary populism in creating an underground organization. The article presents fragments from proclamations published in the underground press giving the idea of Siberian students’ protest moods at the end of the 1920s. The keynote of the youth protest was dissatisfaction with the ideological and political monopoly of the Communist party. The rejection of Soviet reality and resistance to the dictates increased in proportion to the strengthening of authoritarian tendencies in the government policy. Slogans of illegal proclamations issued by the youth were accordingly transformed. Initially appeals focused on the need for consolidation of the student youth in order to resist the dictates of the Komsomol minority. Over time, the main slogan of the leaflets turned into the call for armed struggle against the dictatorship of the Communist party and for the establishment of a free People’s Republic. The protest activities of the illegal student groups, whose members were natives of villages, reached a peak in 1929 in connection with the beginning of the state repressive policy in the village. Based on the investigation materials the author comes to conclusion that youth protest actions were spontaneous and of local significance. However, the security organs, relying on a thesis about the sharpening of the class struggle, used student protests for large-scale repressions against members of the politically unreliable social groups.

The paper describes specific features of the national press in Siberia and the Russian Far East throughout the XX - the first decade of the XXI centuries; carries out a categorial analysis of the concept of «national press». The author considers in detail the process of formation of national periodicals among the peoples of Siberia, the Far East and the Far North, from the release of individual pages to publication of specialized newspapers and magazines in the indigenous languages of these peoples and within their traditional territories. The paper analyzes problems connected with the national periodical press, highlights the benefits of its creation. Since its inception, and at different stages of its history, the national press performed important social and cultural tasks. It served as a universal means of information and education for the indigenous population of Siberia and the Far East. The press was a catalyst for development of national script, education and national literature. Newspapers and magazines published in national languages contributed to preservation of ethnic traditions and identity, played certain role in cultural interaction of different ethnoses of Russia. The given statistical data on the output in the printed periodicals at the beginning of the XXI century testifies to the fact that the institution of national press has achieved a certain level of solvency and maturity; it also points out some growing problems connected with further expansion of the mediaspace of the country. The author analyzes different views on the state‘s role in development of national printed media, their influence on evolution of national cultures of various ethnoses. The paper considers the current stage of the national media development, determining whether it is a revival or take-off, crisis or collapse. The author advocates the need for greater independence of the national press; shows its significance for the cultural interaction of ethnoses living beyond the Ural; gives arguments for greater use of languages of the indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Far East in the press.

The aim of the article is to check the concept of “Russian orthodox landscape” against the historical record of the Tobolsk mеn’s monastery in the XVII century. By “orthodox landscape” the author means a system of religious objects arranged on a certain area and forming its territorial integrity. The monastery with the Church of Saints Zosima and Savvaty of Solovki is believed to be built on the right bank of the river Irtysh in 1595/96. Change of location led to renaming the monastery - the Uspenskiy (since 1609/10), the Znamenskiy (since 1624). The author proves that it is erroneous to suppose that the men’s monastery was established in Tobolsk before 1595/96, and expresses doubts about the existence of the Zosimo-Savvatievsky monastery. These doubts are based on the fact that according to the documents of the first quarter of the XVII century the tradition of honoring Zosima and Savvaty is not traced in the churches’ names and iconostasis of the Uspenskii and the Znamenskii monasteries. It originated in the monastery only in the second quarter of the XVII century and was reflected in the fact that a side-chapel of the Znamenskaya church was dedicated to these saints. In the last quarter of the XVII century a chapel dedicated to the saints of Solovki appeared in the Kazanskaya church. In the authors’ opinion it was connected with creating a tale about the Znamenskiy priory as a predecessor of the Zosimo-Savvatievsky monastery. The monastic community faced the need to identify its historical roots when the monastery changed its status within the sacred space of Tobolsk. Previously it had been a resting place for the feeble veterans of the civil service and a place for exile of the disgraced monks. After the establishment of the Siberian diocese it began to play the role of an ecclesiastical centre closely connected with the Tobolsk archbishops. The important step in that process was the discovery of the miraculous icon Our Lady of Kazan in the Znamenskii monastery in 1661. According to the author’s hypothesis, the Tobolsk monastery rose from a hermitage which appeared near Tobolsk before 1609/10. It was a home to a few monks and, most likely, there was no church. In 1609/10, they moved to the Uspenskii monastery, which was built by the service people preparing a shelter for their old age.

In 1641, service class people from Tomsk, Tara, Tyumen, Tobolsk and Kuznetsk built Achinsk Ostrog under the direction of Ya. O. Tukhachevsky. It was constructed for collecting yasak tax and protecting upper Chulym yasak people from the Yenissei Kyrgyz people. From Tukhachevsky notes, it is known that Achinsk Ostrog was built on the Iyus River and the lake Syzyrim. For a long time, the Iyus River had been associated with the river Belyi Iyus. Therefore, the lake Syzyrim was supposed to be the modern lake Bilyo. K. N. Serbina located Achinsk Ostrog of 1641 at the confluence of Belyi and Chernyi Iyus on the map appended to the 2nd Volume of “The History of Siberia”. This location determined the positioning of the Russian-Kyrgys border of the middle XVII century by V. S. Sinyaev. D. Ya. Rezun agreed with Sinyaev’s suggestion in general, but he believed that the lake Syzyrim and Achinsk Ostrog location should have been searched near Belyi Iyus and the lakes Bilyo and Shira. However, all attempts to locate Achinsk Ostrog in the present-day river basin of Belyi Iyus yielded no result. In 1988, Elert published a historical and geographical description of Tomsk Uezd written by G. F. Müller in October 1734 clarifying which Iyus is mentioned in the documents. In his another work the Siberian historiographer located the lake Syzyrim as well. Based on the data presented by G.F. Müiller Elert concluded that Achinsk Ostrog of 1641 was located not on Belyi Iyus near the lake Bilyo, but on the modern Chulym. However this fact couldn’t explain that according to different documents, Achinsk Ostrog had been built either on Iyus or Belyi Iyus. In the Siberian Prikaz records of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts the author of the present article found a document which resolves this contradiction. In the XVII century the Yenisei Kyrgyz people used the name Belyi Iyus for the upper part of Chulym River up to the Meletsk Ostrog. This name was accepted by the Russian service class people who abbreviated it to Iyus. The precise location of Kysil Volost’ is also determined.

The article reviews genesis and development of a cooperative elite in Russia. Formation of this elite was paralleled by the establishment and development of a cooperative movement in the Russian Empire. It started in the years of reforms of Alexander II. However, the underdeveloped cooperatives sector in Russia determined weakness of its elite. In the 1890s significant socioeconomic changes led to increase in the number of cooperative societies. Since that time cooperative elite had a real opportunity to implement its ideas in practice. The cooperative meeting in 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod and the First All-Russian cooperative Congress in Moscow in 1908 played an exceptional role in ideological and psychological consolidation of the elite. Thus up to 1917 the elite managed to take control over the key leverage of Russian cooperation. Representatives of the cooperative elite differed in their social origins, professions and political views. In terms of social background its majority consisted of the members of nobility, priesthood and petty bourgeoisie. Most of them held key positions, served as heads of departments and members of the boards of large cooperative unions. Some members combined service in cooperative societies with different government and public agricultural organizations. Others worked as journalists and publicists advocating ideas of cooperative movement. The cooperative elite members also included university lecturers, representatives of higher ranks of the Russian army and civil administration. Cooperation brought together people with different political views. Most of them expressed leftist political views. The number of socialists of various types increased in proportion to the growing opposition to the government and, in the broader sense, to the ruling regime. However the Russian cooperative elite lacked common ideology and understanding of further evolution. This was the main reason why it didn’t turn into a stable community.

Based on the archival and published sources the article discusses the issues of innovations in agriculture in Western Siberia in late XIX - early XX centuries emphasizing activities of rural entrepreneurs who not merely borrowed but transformed knowledge and technology. Theoretical and methodological basis of the study is the concept of “diffusionism” that characterizes historical process in terms of diffusion, contact, borrowing, transfer and interaction of cultures. The article concludes that the need for eradication of outdated patriarchal attitudes was objectively caused by economic and cultural «backwardness» of Russia compared to Western Europe as well as by modernization processes occurring at the regional level. «Commercialization» changed everyday life, consciousness and behavior of the rural society, that became increasingly involved into economic activity. The author concludes that in the Siberian region innovations infiltrated and spread in two projections - «downwards» and «from the center to the periphery». Rationalization of entrepreneurial agriculture was stipulated by the rural entrepreneurs’ farming experience and exposure to the ideas of advanced scientific thought. Local peasants actively concerned themselves with agrotechnology and modernization in the rural entrepreneurs’ arable farms; moreover, they even borrowed some of these innovations.

The paper analyzes the discussion on the social mobility of peasants that took place in Siberia in the 1920s. This issue was of high political relevance. Social transformations in the rural areas could be characterized only in connection with evaluation of the ruling party’s agrarian policy. In Siberia the discourse on this problem evolved in the context of the nationwide polemics. Judging from the available source base the majority of analysts defined the peasantry social structure on the basis of seeding groups, and since 1927 - on the basis of groups of peasant households formed according to the value of durable means of production. Social interpretation of these groups depended on political, scientific and theoretical principles of interpreters. Having analyzed the period of the late 1910s - early 1920s the majority of experts stated that the Siberian peasant household had been evened out at a lower wealth level. The discourse of the 1920s evolved in the context of a heightened political struggle. Adherents of the left opposition argued that NEP led to restoration of capitalist differentiation which acheieved in Siberia the “American” rate of growth. The right-wing Communists in fact denied any stratification in the NEP village. They were supported by the “neo-populists” who defined the vast majority of peasant homesteads as poor. The Party’s majority leaders proposed the concept of leveling-out the village according to which the key figure in the NEP village was a “middle peasant”. Supporters of this idea believed that it was proved by the cluster censuses data obtained in 1927 and 1928 and processed by V.S.Nemchinov’s methods. These methods were more adequate; however conclusions drawn upon such data processing were also subjective. In the late 1920s any discussions on the peasant social mobility were stopped. The official opininon was considered to be the only true point of view.

This article analyzes the main trends and results of studies in social mobility in Russian society during the first half of the XX century in the national and foreign historiography. The founder of the theory of social mobility, P.A. Sorokin, formulated the basic idea that the multidirectional social mobility is a universal attribute of all social systems. Before Perestroika, social mobility as a subject of study was taboo in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that pace and results of social mobility in Russia had been unparalleled in world history. Western historians until the mid-1970s also ignored the subject of social mobility, because the dominance of the totalitarian model of Soviet society left no room for the analysis of social movements. A breakthrough scientific research on this topic was performed by the historians of the revisionist school in the United States, who paid particular attention to certain means of social mobility in the Soviet society which played an important role as a pillar of Stalinism. Besides, they actively studied a range of social, gender and ethnic groups with high mobility. However, in the recent years, influenced by the history-of-mentalities approach, Western researchers shifted to analysis of the identities mobility. Russian historians still remain outsiders in the study of social mobility in Russia. Nevertheless, there is a considerable amount of books and articles on mechanisms of social mobility that provided the downward trend of vertical mobility in the 1920s-1930s. As a result, the picture of social mobility was significantly deformed. This historiographic “skewness” is in need of serious adjustment through the identification and study of those social lifts that provided climbing up the social ladder in Russia in the first half of the XX century. Only an objective analysis of social mobility allows getting a realistic view of what was in fact a vector of social evolution of the country in the first half of the XX century.

The article analyzes the effects of modernization on the changing socioeconomic living conditions of rural population. On the materials of sociological monitoring of the development of rural society the author has developed methods for studying behavioral reactions of the rural population; determined the main adaptation strategies under the conditions of socioeconomic transformations; revealed the three stages of transformational changes in the socioeconomic development of agricultural production. Analysis of the dynamics of development of Siberia’s agricultural regions shows that social and innovation processes have increasingly influenced the development of the Siberian village, life of different groups of rural population, the process of formation of new value orientations and new social standards. Institutional basis of socio-economic transformations in Siberian village was provided by the destruction of the whole system of social relations. Liberalization, expansion of social freedom, introduction of market relations, development of the new forms of property changed the entire way of life of the rural population, the entire system of social and economic life. These processes resulted in formation of a mixed agricultural economy, increase in labor productivity and GDP growth, development of a broad agricultural market. In the Russian rural society, on the level of mass orientations, the passive adaptation strategies are being rejected, since they have exhausted their resources and have not met the challenges of a changing socio-economic situation. They are not able to encourage the population to make full use of available resources and to implement the most successful adaptation strategies. In the context of reducing share of revenues from personal farms, due to the loss of their marketability, the rural population is forced to seek the new sources of survival.