Local Historians Research Articles

Filling historical studies with personal memory and folk memory: new publications of the works by A.N. Minh

The article is devoted to the publication of two manuscripts by local historian and public figure A.N. Minh from the State Archives of the Saratov Region. A small number of researchers previously knew them. Available to a wide range of readers, these books will expand the range of historical knowledge through sources related to personal memoirs and existed in the folklore tradition. It became possible thanks to the efforts of the folklorist and memoirist of the XIX early XX centuries and as a result of the good archaeographic and source study work of modern scientists from Saratov. Notes on the Crimean War adds new details to the tragic and heroic pages of Russias past. Robberies and Treasures of the Lower Volga Region give food for thought to historians, ethnographers, philologists, and everyone who works in the interdisciplinary field of studying the oral forms of collective memory. A large literature is devoted to the topics touched upon in the new Saratov publications, but the works by Minh cannot go unnoticed, they occupy a worthy place in it. Notes supplement knowledge about the Crimean War with new details, including its reflection in the public opinion, historical memory and cultural tradition. Robberies and Treasures expands the base for studying the Volga region at the expense of folklore, oral history and archeology materials. Published manuscripts characterize Minh as a scientist who expanded the space of historical knowledge with sources generated by personal experience and preserved in the collective memory.

New Ottoman Tombstones and Inscriptions from Izmail Fortress

In July-September 2022, during an abnormal drop in the water level of the Danube, near Izmail fortress at the bottom of the river, on a plot of 150-170×10-15 m at a depth of 1 to 1.5 m, local historians accidentally discovered three clusters of artifacts: fragments of marble tombstones, fragments of Ottoman ceramics, forged iron elements of rigging, as well as the remains of the hull of a small wooden sailboat and other finds (intact and fragmented cast iron cannonballs, bombs, and a flintlock pistol), which were more or less evenly scattered over the entire designated area.
 The purpose of the research paper is to publish and analyze the most interesting and unique complex of artifacts found at the bottom of the river, namely intact and fragmented marble tombstones, both with and without epitaphs.
 Scientific novelty. In the course of the research, conducted by the expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, it has become possible to expand significantly historical and archaeological knowledge about the history of the Izmail fortress during the late Ottoman period of its existence, mainly in the 18th – early 19th century.
 Conclusions. Thanks to a rare natural phenomenon and the attentiveness of local historians, the collection of Ottoman tombstones from Izmail is augmented with 10 marble objects all at the same time, on which there are four epitaphs. Although only one of them is dated 1749, which, unfortunately, does not extend the chronology of the known epitaphs of 1719-1756, however, the objects contain other, previously unknown historical information. On two slabs, former military men of the Ottoman Porte are mentioned – the shahid and officer Ismail Aga and the nameless janissary of the 12th Orta. From the inscription on the first of them, we learned about Ismail Aga’s father – Emrullah Çelebi, who could have been a resident of Izmail and a teacher at a local educational institution. We should also mention the slab with the names of God, which could have been the amulet of the only preserved mosque in Izmail.

Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy by Alex Sayf Cummings

Reviewed by: Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy by Alex Sayf Cummings Karen A. Rader (bio) Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy By Alex Sayf Cummings. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. Pp. 248. In 1868, when Jefferson Davis first articulated the idea that the U.S. South "shall rise again," he could not have imagined one of its forms as a high-tech university-business partnership in North Carolina. And yet, more than a century later, an unlikely band of suburban developers and university leaders envisioned and built the so-called Research Triangle Park (RTP) as a means of transforming what was once deemed "cornbread country" (p. 77) into an organized series of "knowledge work" towns and cities, one of which bore the nickname "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees" (p. 135). In Brain Magnet, Alex Sayf Cummings gives scholars and local historians a fascinating and well-written account of this historical moment and its importance for the historiography of technology and capitalism by "employing a distinctive method: refracting the story of broad changes in the nature of capitalism through concepts of space and place" (p. 6). Chapter 1 analyzes the design and building of the RTP as a Cold War–era Southern creative city, a site of "self-invention and audacious boosterism" (p. 21). Coming to terms with North Carolina's transitioning postwar population trends (with many African Americans leaving the state) and socioeconomic woes (like low wages and poor schools), business elites partnered with university and government leaders to conceive and promote the idea of the RTP as a geographic enclave—"a concentration of technological and scientific infrastructure and of social capital which was possessed by skilled workers" (p. 47). Chapter 2 chronicles the rise of the idea of the "knowledge worker," as it was first embedded in and later drew strength from the paired view of the RTP as a frontier for creating a "whole new economic sector: research" (p. 56). Cummings observes that research was always meant to bolster the economy through expanding educational opportunities and employment, but he also suggests that the RTP's long-term success came at an early price. Planners had to make a "major compromise in their vision of an anti-industrial space for intellectual labor" (p. 67) by welcoming applied research powerhouse tenants like the federally funded National Environmental Health Sciences Center, as well as corporations like IBM and Technitrol. Chapter 3 recounts what happened in the 1960s when more RTP knowledge workers came to live nearby: wealthy black executives and middle-class scientists struggled to reconcile boosters' promises of social enlightenment and good race relations with their own experiences of "blockbusting" in [End Page 638] the new surrounding suburbs. Chapter 4 pairs analysis of the design of two 1970s-era RTP buildings—the Burroughs Wellcome Building (1971) and the National Humanities Center (1978)—as "profoundly rigorous and intentional" (p. 105) embodiments of new forms of knowledge work, engineered to house intellectual resources abstractly, as "brains in a luminous structure in a suburban landscape" (p. 119). Finally, the book's last chapters return to the cities within the Triangle—Cary (ch. 5) and Raleigh-Durham (ch. 6) as paired emblems of "the good boring life" and the further displacement that the RTP's gentrification mandate wrought. The RTP became, in one of the author's most memorable sound-bite assessments, "a Jetsons success in a hipster era" (p. 184). Cummings's epilogue returns to the figure of the knowledge worker, quoting and reflecting on its place in what a 2017 journalist deemed the "lanyard-based class system" (p. 198) of the twenty-first-century tech economy. Brain Magnet, by the author's own assessment, "is in, but not of, Southern history. It is about the way we think about and imagine the economy, what the economy is, where the economy should go and, above all, who matters" (p. 17). In this way, Cummings's book both builds on existing studies of regional knowledge hubs (like Lily Geismer's account of Boston's Route 128 and Margaret O'Mara's work on Silicon Valley) and contributes new insights to...

ИСТОРИЧЕСКИЕ ПРЕДПОСЫЛКИ ЗАРОЖДЕНИЯ И РАЗВИТИЯ КОВРОВОГО ПРОМЫСЛА В СЕЛЕ БУТКА СВЕРДЛОВСКОЙ ОБЛАСТИ (1950-2012 гг.)

On the base of archive - documental and expeditionary materials, in this article was shows history of emergence, formation, periods of development of original carpet craft in the village of Butka, Sverdlovsk Region. The history of Butkin carpet weaving is considered in the context of artel and factory forms of development of the main carpet weaving centers of the 20th century in Russia. The role of the personality of Maria Andreevna Razlivinskikh (14.09.1919–12.02.1995), who contributed to the cultural heritage of the region, namely the development of carpet weaving, is determined. The author’s field materials from several ethnographic expeditions supplement the study. The article may be of interest to local historians from the point of view of preserving the regional cultural heritage. This article may be helpful for historians, museum employees and other people, interested in preservation of regional cultural heritage.

Обзор сборника «100 лет Кабардино-Балкарской Республике. Архивная летопись. – Наль-чик: Издательство М. и В. Котляровых, 2022. 384 с. + 80 с. вкл.»

The overview of the collection “100 years of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic. Archival Chroni-cle“, published by the KBR Archival Service in 2022 as part of the Documents Testify project and dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the statehood of Kabardino-Balkarian Republic. The paper includes 329 archival documents and 169 photographs on the history of the republic from 1922 to 2022. A description of the documents placed in the collection is given: regulatory legal acts and records of state authorities of the KBR (KBAO, KBASSR) in the field of national-state construc-tion, the creation and activities of educational and scientific institutions, the organization of health care and the cultural and leisure sphere, the main trends in the development of enterprises of the agricultural and industrial complex, documents with elements of statistical generalization, correspondence about the most significant events in the region’s history, etc. The documents of the appendix of the collection are described, which contains photographic illustrative material, information about the heroes of the Soviet Union, the heroes of Socialist Labor, full holders of the Order of Glory, and holders of the Order of Labor Glory. Attention is drawn to the fact that the publication is addressed to a wide range of researchers: historians, local historians, journalists, writers, students and schoolchildren, as well as everyone who is interested in the history of the peoples of Kabardino-Balkaria.

Эволюция дискурсов о покорении Сибири в локальной исторической памяти

Research objectives: Systematization and factor analysis of evolving ideas about the conquest of Siberia in the local historical memory of the Perm region from the end of the 16th century to the present. Research materials: The research draws upon archival materials, materials from local historians, journalists, historians, teachers, and intellectuals, folklore materials, media materials from different eras, local history works, and local teaching aids from the Perm region. Novelty of the research: Based on the introduction of previously unpublished local history and personal materials, the study examines local historical memory about the annexation of Siberia, which has been perceived as an insignificant topic in historical science. The regional dimension of the “collective memory” of the “Conquest of Siberia” explored in this research can be applied to other regions significant for this process. Results of the research: Although the Perm region served as a “springboard” for the conquest of Siberia and is a symbolic border between the “Russian World” and the “Trans-Urals,” the research does not confirm the hypothesis about the system-forming significance of the myth of the “Siberian capture” for the construction of local identity. The study identifies several interdependent discourses in the local historical memory of the Perm region regarding the annexation of Siberia. The first discourse is the glorification of Yermak, initially influenced by the government’s struggle with the “Cossack freemen,” but by the beginning of the 20th century, Yermak was endowed with the features of a local folk hero, and his campaign was a common cause of local residents. The second discourse is the role of the Stroganovs, which was developed in the 1830s by F.A. Volegov, survived the Soviet ideologization, and experienced a slight surge in the 1990s, but is not dominant overall. The third discourse emerged in the late 19th century and is a representation of the conquest of Siberia in the works of the local intelligentsia. They note Moscow’s insignificant attention to the role of the Perm region in the conquest of Siberia, which can be considered a typical colonial discourse, but they themselves do not regard the “Siberian conquest” as a significant factor in regional history. In general, the discourses of the local historical memory of the Perm region about the conquest of Siberia shift the focus of attention from events to specific heroes, and the retrospective interpretation of their exploits is more of a “folk” rather than a statist character.

Мykhailo Ivanovich Zham (1931-2002): Local historian, museologist, public figure

Мykhailo Ivanovich Zham (1931-2002): Local historian, museologist, public figure

“Field Journals” of ethnologist R.G. Kuzeev: archaeographic and source-study characteristics

The process of rapid development of the ethnological research, taking place currently, necessitated the search for new sources. Among them, of a great value are the records from expeditions of researchers of the past, which bear witness to the ethnographic realities of the respective time. From this point of view, the field notes (notebooks and journals) of Rail Gumerovich Kuzeev (1929–2005) — an outstanding Russian ethnologist, founder of the ethnographic sciences in Bashkortostan, who greatly contributed to the development of the problems of ethnogenesis and ethnic history of the Bashkirs and other Turkic peoples,— have priceless scientific value. The field records from the expeditions of the scientist in 1953–1982 to all major ethnographic and local groups of the Bashkirs are now reposited in the Scientific Archive of the Ufa Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The notes are made in special notebooks issued by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR for documenting materials of expeditions. In addition to the text (narration of observations, description of ethnographic objects and phenomena, transcripts of conversations with informants, etc.), they also contain many graphic representations (drawings, plans, diagrams). The notes and drawings are made in ink and pencil; in the latest documents, with a ballpoint pen. The aim of the work is to identify their archaeographic features and source-study value (ethnographic and historical evidence, methodology of the scholar's fieldwork). The textual analysis of R.G. Kuzeyev's field notes showed that they captured unique information on the history and ethnography of the Bashkir people, concerning ethnogenesis, migration, tribal structure, ancestral symbols, genealogies, social organization, land ownership, arts and crafts, clothing and ornaments, dwelling, economic activities and trades, traditional festivals and ceremonies, and toponyms. From the source-study perspective, they are of obvious interest to the ethnologists, ethnographers, and socio-cultural anthropologists, as well as to the folklorists (they contain texts of many historical and toponymic legends and tales), archaeologists, especially those dealing with the ‘archaeology of the modern period’ (there is information about old Bashkir settlements, summer camps, abandoned cemeteries), local historians and genealogists (information about history of the settlements, generation lists), etc.

Atomic Atlantis: Ethnography of Settled Villages

Abstract In 1957 there occurred a technological disaster in the Southern Urals in the form of a nuclear accident at the Mayak chemical plant in Ozersk, Soviet Union. The accident led to the resettlement of two historical centres of the first wave of the Russian colonization of the region, as the villages along the Techa river were declared restricted areas during the cleaning of the radiation trail, and their residents were resettled. As a result, the original culture of the villages was lost. The inspiration for our research is Alexey Mityunin, a local historian, enthusiast, and public activist, who collected a martyrology of the disappeared Ural villages. This paper presents the results of field expeditions to Brodokalmak carried out in 2014–2017 by students of the Miass Branch of Chelyabinsk State University, Russia. Brodokalmak is the village where the people resettled from contaminated lands Zamanikha, Boevka, and Muslyumovo live or lived.

«Провинциальная литература» в ситуации культурного перехода

The paper is devoted to understanding the “provincial/metropolitan” opposition in the dynamics of cultural development. In this regard, the authors use extensive literary material (the creative work of A. P. Chekhov, Proletkult, lyrical prose etc.) and facts of history and culture (“The Local Historians’ Plot”, the Russian Revolution of 1917 etc.). The aim of the research is to reveal the interpretation of the meaning of the categories “metropolitan” and “peripheral” in transitional periods (the turn of the XIX-XX centuries and the XX-XXI centuries, the 1920s, the “thaw” period). The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the paper is written in the interdisciplinary field of literary studies and cultural studies, the categories “metropolitan” and “peripheral” are conceptualised in dynamics, the material of a rare edition, A. M. Toporov’s book “Peasants on Writers”, is involved in the analysis. As a result of the research, it has been proved that in transitional periods, the “centre” and “periphery” change places and in doing so, the sphere of the aesthetic, studied by a number of humanities, expands. The ongoing transformations of the meaning of the categories “metropolitan” and “provincial” are not just reflected in literature, but are often recorded by it until the moment of their theoretical comprehension, which happens during transitional periods for a good reason.

The Phenomenon of Dual Faith in the Volga Region as a Result of Russian Cultural Policy in the 18-19th Centuries

The subject of the study is the phenomenon of dual faith in the Volga region, which arose as a result of the cultural policy of the Russian Empire in the 18-19th centuries. At present, this phenomenon does not lose its viability, manifesting itself in various ritual practices of the population of the region. The study is based on the principle of historicism, which makes it possible to show the consequences of the influence of Russian cultural policy on the traditions of the peoples of the Volga region. The use of a systematic approach in the article explains the stability of the phenomenon of dual faith in regional everyday culture. The following historiographic methods were also used: comparative historical, logical, retrospective. The source base of the study was made up of official documents and reports of ethnographers located in scientific archives, as well as author's fieldwork. An additional source of information that gives significance to this work was the published materials of foreign researchers of the Volga region in the 18th century. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that the phenomenon of dual faith was one of the key factors in the formation of a unique everyday culture of the peoples of the region. For the first time, the approaches of the public authorities and local historians to the description of the traditional beliefs of the inhabitants of the Volga region are singled out: “condemning”, “justifying”, “ironic”. The conclusion is made about the fundamental nature of dual faith, thanks to which ethnic identity was maintained in the region. The results of the study can be claimed by lecturers, graduate students and students of the humanities for educational and research purposes.

Providence and the Invention of American History

Providence and the Invention of American History is a beautifully written work of breadth and depth that examines the creation, dissemination, and ultimate debunking of the “Marcus Whitman Saves Oregon” tale to offer a window onto the development of professional history in the United States. Whitman's tale emerged after his death in 1847 at the hands of the Cayuse he sought to convert. Oregon boosters transformed an 1842 winter journey by Whitman to the East Coast to keep his mission from being shut down into a tale in which he rushed to Washington, D.C., to prevent President John Tyler from giving possession of Oregon to the British. The tale gained epic stature by the middle of the nineteenth century and was then debunked by professional historians in the 1890s. Sarah Koenig argues that this process of debunking catalyzed a transition in what counted as professional history—a transition from providential narratives of Protestant/nationalist triumph grounded in eye-witness testimony produced by local historians to ostensibly objective narratives produced by university-based historians and grounded in primary-source documents. While this general transition has been examined by Peter Novick (That Noble Dream, 1988) and others, Koenig's intervention is to show that “objectivity” was not the fulcrum in this shift: both local and university historians stressed objectivity. Rather, the shift turned on the nature of the objective evidence (memory or experience versus documentary evidence) and the shift from a providential narrative structure in which faithful Protestant Americans triumph over pagans, Roman Catholics, and monarchy to a progressive/positivist narrative in which scientific objectivity triumphs over primitive mythmaking. Most importantly, Koenig demonstrates that university-based professional historians actually extended the narrative structure of the earlier providential histories as a way to give their writing significance and meaning. They understood their work as scientific progress beyond the primitive myths of George Washington's cherry tree and Paul Revere's and Whitman's famous rides. In other words, far from being soberly objective, turn-of-the-century scientific history, too, was invested in creating progressive narratives of meaning.

«GROMOV READINGS» IN THE CONTEXT OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND PROFESSIONAL ASSESSMENTS

The article is devoted to the review of the IV Green Readings held at Kostroma State University and the analysis of the actual problems of modern regional lexicography considered during the work of this scientific event. The article assesses the ascetic activity of A.V. Gromov, a well-known connoisseur of Kostroma folk culture and language, dialectologist and lexicographer, teacher and ethnographer. The analysis of the ideas and scientific heritage of A.V. Gromov in the context of the problems of modern dialectography reveals the vitality and modern nature of the works of the local historian- scientist. All this justifies the need to republish the «Linen Dictionary», as well as the publication of unpublished works by A.V. Gromov. The article discusses the key issues of regional lexicology and lexicography, to which scientific reports were devoted: typological diversity of dictionaries; principles, methods and techniques of creation, sources of regional dictionaries; regional dictionaries as a source of ethnocultural information. A separate section of the article is devoted to the feedback of the participants of the Gromov Readings of different years (2012, 2014, 2016, 2022) about these conferences as a significant scientific event. The high scientific level and creative atmosphere characteristic of the Gromov readings are emphasized. The merits of N.S. Gantsovskaya, the organizer and inspirer of the entire series of these scientific events, are particularly noted.

THE FORMATION OF SIGHTSEEING AND TOURISM IN THE 1920s. THROUGH INITIATIVES OF LOCAL HISTORY OF INBELCULT

In this article author says about the formation and developement of local history in BSSR in 1920s.. The study of local history was very important to the process of collecting and systematizing local knowledge for future touristic routes. The formation of tourism activity in the BSSR began with the development of local history, which in the BSSR was managed by the CBK under Inbelkult. The main means of communication between the management of the CBK and local history lovers was the magazine "Nash Kraj", which reflected the main trends and achievements in the study of local history at that time. Initially, special attention was paid to the study and preservation of architectural and historical heritage, but since 1926 a reorientation of local studies on "socially useful" topics were observed. Excursion routes were subsequently built on the basis of the knowledge collected by local historians.

Local Lives, Parallel Histories: Villagers and Everyday Life in Divided Germany

In Local Lives, Parallel Histories: Villagers and Everyday Life in Modern Germany, Marcel Thomas aims to get past divided histories of postwar Germany that set up one (usually the West) as the “ideal” against which we should measure and understand the other's relative success. He finds many similarities between the perceptions and experiences of villagers east and west of the Berlin Wall.Thomas employs the German historical framework of Alltagsgeschichte (“the history of everyday life”) to better understand how two villages, in different regions of divided postwar Germany, negotiated changes in their communities in the years after World War II.He focuses on Ebersbach, in the Federal Republic of Germany, an erstwhile “market town” in Baden-Württemberg, and Neukirch, in the German Democratic Republic, a modernizing village in Saxony. Ebersbach and Neukirch are not mirror images of one another, divided only by their divergent experiences of national government between 1945 and 1989; they are, rather, similar but unique, embedded in the distinct local histories of their regions.Thomas draws on a variety of sources, including local historians and museums, in constructing his argument about the fundamentally similar nature of village life and politics in the two Germanys. One of his most interesting sources comes in the form of the oral history interviews he conducted with residents of Ebersbach and Neukirch over a three-year period.The text is composed of six thematic chapters, each of which deals with some aspect of the postwar development of the German village. Their common goal is to complicate the narrative of centrally directed change enacted at the local level and passively accepted by local communities. Instead, Thomas argues for a “give-and-take” (as he titles chapter 5) between national leadership in Bonn and Berlin, local government and bureaucracies, community activists, and ordinary citizens.In the first and sixth chapters, Thomas evaluates the twin processes of village modernization (chapter 1) and community engagement with the local, regional, and national past (chapter 6). Villagers in both Ebersbach and Neukirch looked to a modern future and understood that rural modernization represented a key component of national progress in Cold War Germany. Neither group posed an obstacle to modernization so much as they hoped to shape it to their benefit. Accordingly, while forging “Modern Villagers” entailed the development of a vision of the future by those within and outside the community, the final chapter shows how villagers marshaled their past to bolster that vision through the production of local histories.Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the shifting boundaries of the village community as it was reconceived in the postwar world and reconstituted from within by longtime residents and by newcomers. Thomas points to common contradictions in both Ebersbach and Neukirch, noting a tension between a growing desire for privacy, associated with modernity, and a nostalgia for the close-knit rural communities of the past. Both communities, too, struggled to fully integrate outsiders, including groups of ethnic German refugees, foreign workers, and urban commuters (chapter 3).Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the communities’ engagement with and perceptions of political developments in the village, region, Germany, and the world. Thomas challenges the idea that only border communities and Berlin were cognizant of their role in the broader dynamics of the Cold War and shows that Ebersbachers and Neukirchers engaged with the other Germany, often using it as a metric for the relative progress achieved by their own community. As might be imagined in a book that focuses on the village, Thomas emphasizes the effects of local, “bottom-up” efforts to negotiate political change, both as a response to “top-down” politics and as a catalyst for them.Thomas's Ebersbachers and Neukirchers are emphatically villagers, not peasants, and seldom farmers. Those who are interested in the modernization of farming techniques, the status of agriculture in postwar Germany, or the role of agribusiness in shifting the economic landscape of rural Germany might look elsewhere. Rural Germans, however, have long been linked to both food production and to an idealized past, and Thomas is attuned to how this symbolic baggage might affect the self-perceptions of rural communities in a postwar world in which nostalgia and autarky are no longer central concerns of the state.Thomas's monograph is especially useful as a model for linking local histories to national and transnational narratives. He resists simply projecting changes at the national level onto the local one, even as the national and the international are ever-present in the minds of the villagers.

ЛИСТИ УКРАЇНСЬКОГО ФІЗИКА П.Г. БОРЗЯКА ДО ЗОЛОТОНІСЬКОГО КРАЄЗНАВЦЯ М.Ф. ПОНОМАРЕНКА

The aim of the work is to analyze the letters of a Ukrainian physicist Petro Hryhorovych Borzyak to Mykhailo Fedorovych Ponomarenko, a well-known local historian of the Cherkasy region of the second half of the 20th century, from the period of 1967–1972. The scientific novelty of this article is determined by the fact that the study of the epistolary heritage of the researcher P.G. Borzyak is conducted for the first time. In modern Ukrainian historiography, a specialised study of the specified topic of regional history has not been conducted before. Based on a detailed analysis of letters from the fund of a local historian M. F. Ponomarenko (5428), stored in the State Archive of the Cherkasy Region (SACR), a number of research interests of P.G. Borzyak was outlined. Methodology. In the process of handling the topic, biographical and chronological methods of historical research and the general scientific method of systemic analysis were used. The archeographic method of source research was also applied. Conclusions. Based on a brief overview of the fund of P.G. Borzyak (No. 61) from the Institute of Archival Studies of the National Library of Ukraine named after V. I. Vernadsky and archival materials collected by a local historian M.F. Ponomarenko from the SACR fund (5428), documents that will supplement the biography of the scientist were covered. During the research, it was found that P.G. Borzyak was quite actively interested in the history of the left-bank Cherkasy region, in particular – the villages of the former Irkliiv district. Communication with a local historian M.F. Ponomarenko highlights the awareness of P.G. Borzyak regarding the biography of an amateur local historian Kost Fedorovych Kushnir and his desire to save the creative and historical heritage of this researcher. Because according to the physicist, it contained valuable materials on the history of the coastal villages of the Irkliiv region, the genealogy of the local population and folklore.

Introduction of 19th century manuscripts from local historians of the Tobolsk Province into scholarly research

This article evaluates a monograph written by linguist O. V. Trofimova and historians N. I. Zagorodniuk and E. N. Konovalova. The monograph is the first in a series of scientific publications that analyze manuscripts from the Scientific Archive of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) regarding Tobolsk Province in the second half of the 19th century. The focus of the first book in the series is on the language used by the Russian population of Tobolsk Province. The linguistic materials were collected by Siberian local historians N. A. Abramov, V. V. Adrianov, I. V. Bednyakov, F. K. Zobnin, M. I. Kostya, I. F. Lisitsyn, V. F. Tveritin, and A. G. Khudyakov at the request of the Ethnographic Program of the RGS. The publication begins with a historical overview of the Russian Geographical Society and its programs, as well as biographies of the local historians who collected the linguistic materials. The main focus of the monograph is on “Materials for the dictionary of Russian folk speech of Tobolsk province of the 19th century (1848-1891)”. These materials, derived from eight author’s dictionaries, provide insight into the unique characteristics of Russian speech in various locations in Western Siberia. The significance of this research lies in the need to incorporate new linguistic materials into scientific discourse, as they are valuable for understanding the history of language. The novelty of this work lies in its contribution to historical and lexicographic studies, which are relatively scarce in Russian historical research, as well as its exploration of the local peculiarities of the Russian language in Western Siberia during the 19th century. The information presented in this monograph makes a substantial contribution to preserving and describing Siberian written texts. It also aids in the study of dialectal differentiation of the Russian language, particularly in the realm of secondary colloquialisms and in specific territories of Western Siberia. Additionally, it helps reconstruct a comprehensive understanding of the vocabulary used during the latter half of the 19th century.

В. К. Арсеньев и его изучение русского населения Дальнего Востока

The paper describes the study of the Russian population in the Far East, which was carried out by the famous traveler Vladimir Klavdievich Arsenyev (1872–1930). At the first stage, his research was of a military purpose with elements of ethnography, aimed at the defense of the Russian Far East. After 1917, Arseniev dealt with the problems of the indigenous inhabitants of the region, as well as activities related to the settlers. His publications on Slavic studies are based on travel diaries and field reports on the results of expeditions (1906-1926). The first monograph on the Russian population was the “Military-geographical and military-statistical essay of the Ussuri Territory” (1911), the last “Life and Character of the Peoples of the Far Eastern Territory”, prepared in collaboration with E. I. Titov (1928). In some cases, his assessments are subjective. The publication notes scientists and local historians who were engaged in the same research and were in close relations with Arsenyev (local historian S. I. Yakovlev, Russian historian M. A. Petrakeev, anthropologist E. M. Chepurkovsky, ethnographers M. K. Azadovsky, G. S. Vinogradov, V. V. Bogdanov and A. G. Danilin, philologist A.P. Georgievsky). The publication uses the personal library and archival collection of the scientist, stored in the Society for the Study of the Amur Territory (OIAK) in Vladivostok. The paper is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of V. K. Arsenyev, which is celebrated in September 2022.

Letters of O. S. Sklyarenko to the Zolotonosha Local Lore Specialist M. F. Ponomarenko (1963 – 1976)

The article first published the correspondence of Oksana Semenivna Sklyarenko, the daughter of the famous Ukrainian (Soviet) fiction writer Semyon Dmytrovych Sklyarenko, to local historian Mykhailo Fedorovych Ponomarenko, the founder of local history in Cherkasy region. Also, the scientific novelty of this study is due to the fact that no fundamental study of the epistolary legacy of S. D. Sklyarenko has been carried out in modern Ukrainian historiography. Thus, this correspondence will allow solving the problem of expanding the source base of the study of the writer's biography. At the same time, the correspondence reflects the relationship of the local historian with the writer's family and his environment. The contribution of M. F. was characterized Ponomarenka in preserving the memory of S. D. Sklyarenko and popularizing his work in Zolotonyshchyna. Based on a brief overview of the fund of S. D. Sklyarenko (No. 467) from the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine and archival materials collected by local historian M. F. Ponomarenko from the fund (5428) of the State Archive of the Cherkasy Region, this publication highlights the documents, which will complement the scientist's biography. In the process of analyzing this correspondence, it was found that M. F. Ponomarenko was engaged in collecting materials for the writer's personal exhibition in the Zolotony Museum of Local History and actively published local history articles about S. D. Sklyarenko in the regional periodical press. At the same time, the letters contain information about the professional activities of O.S. Sklyarenko and her family. In the process of developing the topic, biographical and chronological methods of historical research and the general scientific method of system analysis were used. The archeographic method of source research was also applied.

Ternopil regional museums in the funds of the State Archive of Ternopil Region

The article highlights the activities of museum institutions of Ternopil Region based on the documents and materials of the State Archives of Ternopil Region. A brief description of the documents composition and a list of archival collections containing information on this issue are given. The current state of museum and archival affairs development allows numerous researchers, local lore researches and historians to find necessary information for writing scientific papers on various topics. Public interest in the historical past is growing every year, and museums, as specialized institutions, provide an opportunity to get acquainted with the artifacts of the past. Documents kept in state storage in the State Archives of Ternopil Region (hereinafter – the State Archives) allow us to better cover this issue. The emergence of this study is determined by the tasks of clarifying the content and composition of documents related to the activities of museum institutions in Ternopil and the region and stored in the State Archives. All of this together actualizes the research issues. The purpose of this study is to analyse the composition and content of the documents and materials of the State Archives related to the activities of museum institutions of Ternopil Region. The object of study is the activity of museum institutions of Ternopil Region since their foundation on the basis of documents of the national archival fond. The subject of the article is the documents of the State Archives concerning the work of museum institutions of Ternopil Region. A holistic study of the problem will allow to better highlight the activities of the museum institutions, and will give impetus to further research in this area. The work is the first to provide the most comprehensive analysis of the State Archives source base related to this issue, and this is the scientific novelty of the study. The scientific and practical value of the results and main ideas of study is that the analysed factual material, theoretical provisions and conclusions can be used in writing generalised works on the history of Ukraine, the history of museum affairs, in archival studies, historiographical and local history publications, in the preparation of relevant special courses, and in practical teaching. This study is an attempt to simplify the search for information for further researchers of Ternopil museums, local historians, and all those interested in the museum business of their native land.