Special Settlements Research Articles

ПОХОЗЯЙСТВЕННЫЕ КНИГИ КАК ИСТОЧНИК ПО ИЗУЧЕНИЮ ДЕПОРТАЦИИ КАЛМЫЦКОГО НАРОДА: ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ И ПРОБЛЕМЫ

The article, based on the experience of field work of a scientific expedition in September-November 2022, July-September 2023 in rural settlements of various municipal districts of the Altai Territory, briefly outlines the work with household books. Researchers, together with employees of district archival departments and rural administrations, reviewed the rural household registers of village councils. The source study potential of household registers as a unique source that allows us to generally characterize the features of demographic, migration processes, and transformation of the structure of forced special settlers - Kalmyk families - has not previously been applied to the study of the history of the deportation of the Kalmyk people. Therefore, we considered it necessary to turn to mass formal material, namely, to the household registers of village councils, deposited in the funds of 56 municipal district archives of the Altai Territory, as well as partly in the funds of the modern village councils themselves.

Departmental Resettlements of Special Settlers during the Great Patriotic War: Mechanism of Realization and Significance (Based on the Materials of North-Western Siberia)

During the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet system of labor force mobilization functioned in extreme tension. At the same time, the existence of an extensive and multi-faceted system of forced labor in the country inevitably made the GULAG an obligatory element in the mobilization process and dramatically increased the role of various categories of special contingent in the general balance of labor resources. One of the users of forced labor during the war was the fishing industry, the development of which was included in the list of state priorities by a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of January 6, 1942. The article examines the mechanisms for the implementation of forced migration for the needs of a particular department (People’s Commissariat of the Fishing Industry) and determines their significance for recipient regions as exemplified by North-Western Siberia consisting of the Khanty-Mansi and Yamal-Nenets national districts of the Omsk (since August 1944 — Tyumen) region. The article demonstrates that the implementation of government decisions led to an increase in the significance of the department and to strengthening of the role of the People’s Commissariat of the Fishing Industry in the socio- economic development of North-Western Siberia. As a result of special resettlements, North-Western Siberia acquired the characteristics of a mono-specialized territory, which was “under the care” of one department. Nevertheless, the emergence of such a mono-region did not reduce the potential for interdepartmental conflicts and did not bring about the planned indicators, thus the goal of state policy, in this part, was not achieved.

Influence of the Geographical Environment on the Deported Chechens in the Places of Special Settlements

Influence of the Geographical Environment on the Deported Chechens in the Places of Special Settlements

Economic and Cultural Adaptation of the Rehabilitated Peoples of the North Caucasus in their Former Places of Residence

The article examines measures aimed at the economic and cultural adaptation of the repatriated North Caucasian peoples, which followed the well-known Decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 28 and July 16, 1956 on the removing restrictions on the special settlements of deported peoples, although without the right to return to their places of former residence. The measures taken by the state authorities aimed at legitimizing the spontaneous resettlement of representatives of the North Caucasian peoples from the places of special settlements are considered. Issues related to rehabilitation have repeatedly attracted the attention of Russian researchers, however, in their writings, much attention is paid to the fate of special settlers, but not to the state, which acted as a regulator of the process of rehabilitation and territorial reintegration of the North Caucasian peoples. This process expressed in the unification of titular groups within the national republics. Along with social actions, economic measures are being taken to support new territorial entities through the construction of industrial and household infrastructure facilities. The state paid great attention to public education, as well as to the training of the national intelligentsia from the representatives of the returned population. In the interests of further democratization and strengthening the role of working people in the political and economic life of the country, the work of local soviets, trade unions and other public organizations was reorganized, which included representatives of the rehabilitated peoples on an equal basis. The restoration of the economic potential in the foothill and mountainous regions of the KBASSR, KChASSR and ChIASSR, carried out at the expense of the federal budget, allows us to conclude that the state was interested in the speedy fulfillment of its obligations to the affected North Caucasian peoples. Of course, not all issues were resolved on time, but the beginning of the process of correcting mistakes made earlier by the state indicates a positive trend towards the democratization of the USSR.

Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union by Eliyana R. Adler

Reviewed by: Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union by Eliyana R. Adler Atina Grossmann Eliyana R. Adler. Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. 456 pp. Eliyana Adler's richly researched and evocatively written Survival on the Margins is the first major scholarly monograph to present the story of Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union as a key—and precisely not merely marginal—part of Holocaust and World War II history. By focusing on the by-now hardly unknown but still not adequately integrated "Other Side" (yener zayt, quoted in the opening epigraph) of Jewish life and death during the war, beyond the borderlines of German occupation in the Soviet Union, Adler excavates a neglected history of the largest group of Eastern European Jews, perhaps a quarter million, to emerge alive from the catastrophe of the Shoah. At the same time, she deftly traces and analyzes the conditions of its marginalization and the long-standing consequences of that inattention for memory and memorialization as well as historiography. Over the past ten to twenty years, it has become a reflex to greet each new publication or even public lecture, including new or reprinted memoirs, articles, and edited volumes on this topic with strangely repetitive reference to the uncovering of an "unknown," little-known, or surprising aspect of Holocaust history. As numerous publications remind us, this historical terrain has in fact been plowed, especially in recent years, notably including: Markus Nesselrodt, Dem Holocaust Entkommen: Polnische Juden in der Sowjetunion, 1939–1946 (2019); edited volumes such as Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet [End Page 436] Union, edited by Mark Edele, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Atina Grossmann (2017) or the valuable collection from Boston's Academic Studies Press Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939–1959): History and Memory of Deportation, Exile and Survival, edited by Katharina Friedla and Markus Nesselrodt (2021)—both with contributions by Adler; powerful second-generation investigations such as Mikhal Dekel's Tehran Children (republished as In the East: How My Father and a Quarter Million Polish Jews Survived the Holocaust (2019, 2021), and scores of family memoirs, some essentially self-published or increasingly published by smaller university presses. Up until now, however, we have not had a synthetic study that pulls together the substantial and, as Adler reminds us, decades-old existing scholarship, memoirs, oral histories, and archival sources in multiple languages to produce a coherent narrative that considers both the geopolitical circumstances of this Polish/Soviet/Jewish experience and the complicated individual trajectories (with useful maps) of those Adler distinguishes as "flight survivors." This is a remarkable achievement built on fluency in Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and Hebrew as well as familiarity with numerous national historiographies that have generally remained within their silos—precisely the desiderata that along with limited access to Soviet archives have hampered scholarship. Turning the necessity of working without "hard" statistics or comprehensive archival resources into a virtue, Adler has mined secondary literature and available archival materials but relied to an unusual degree on memoirs and oral histories, with a profound sensitivity to what might be called the "history of emotions" expressed in both written and oral testimonies, many, but certainly not all, composed well after the event. Her book gives us a recalibrated narrative that fulfills its goal of moving these survivors out of a "netherworld of history and memory" in order to "recover and reintegrate their stories" into the history of the "Nazi genocide" (2). She pulls together a dizzying array of memories of multiple transits—flight from the Germans, adjustment to life in newly Sovietized Poland, deportation to labor camps and special settlements in the Soviet interior (denoted by the cypher "Siberia"), renewed migration and hardship and resourceful endurance in Central Asia (marked by reference to Tashkent, known in a popular novel as the "City of Bread" as a "City of Want"), service in the Red or Berling Army, evacuation to Iran with the Anders Army for a small minority, repatriation to a virtually unrecognizable Poland or an entirely new Poland in the "recovered territories," another renewed flight to...

Special contingent in the USSR coal industry in the 1930s–50s

The article discusses forced labor of the special contingent in the coal industry in the USSR in 1930–1950. The author defines the special contingent (which is a slang word for prisoners of a special category) as a part of the population of the USSR, which existed under tightened inspection from the side of NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) and was subjected to forced and hard manual labor. Historiography offers two views of the subject. The special contingent started from deportation of peasants in the framework of the dekulakization campaign in 1930. The author gives the size of the special settlers by the nationalities and social status categories. The manpower of the coal industry in the 1930s and 1940s is also specified. It was 471208 people in 1940. The special contingent was off the official statistics, and NKVD kept its own record of human resources. The issue of the deported Germans, their number and labor is addressed. For instance, in 1949 almost 100 thousand Germans worked in the coal sector. The special contingent had a certain internal structure categorized into criminal prisoners, deported Germans, prisoners of war, former rich peasants (kulaks), etc. The author emphasizes that contribution made by the special contingent to the total coal production was immense in some coal mining regions and reached 60–70 % in the overall coal output in the 1930s. The author illustrates the severe living and working conditions of the special contingent under absolute indifference, hostility and suppression of the outrage upon justice on the part of all agencies of authority. Sometimes the situation got little better. Ex-managers of mines accentuated that the special settlers always worked with full dedication and heroically even in the worst conditions. Seven special settlers became the Heroes of the Social Labor. The article raises a point on the general contribution of the special settlers in production. In 1950 the size of the manpower in the whole industry in the USSR was 18 million people, while the size of the special contingent was under 2 million people. Their contribution to the overall production was 10–11 %. The system of the GULAG collapsed sweepingly in the late 1940s–early 1 950s. The author lays emphasis on the lessons learnt from the phenomenon of the special settlements, particularly, on the scale of the inter-ethnic relationship in modern Russia. As one of the conclusions says, without the forced labor, the coal industry, that loco of economy, had no chance to meet the challenges the USSR faced that time.

Deportirovannye chechency i ingushi v strukture proizvoditel'nyh sil

The article is devoted to the daily life of deported Chechens and Ingush. The relevance of the history of the daily life of special settlers is due to the special attention to their life in the harsh conditions of wartime in an unusual environment and is associated with the task of more fully revealing the essence of totalitarianism. On the basis of factual material, the author reveals the issues of housing and living conditions, labor arrangements, medical care, industrial and social activities, as well as the legal status of internally displaced persons from among Chechens and Ingush.

The Mechanism of Personnel Support for Heavy and Defense Industry Enterprises (1946–1950)

Introduction. The concept of “mechanism” is widely used in modern economic research. The mechanism of staffing is a set of forms and methods of forming the necessary quantitative and qualitative composition of the organization’s personnel. The purpose of the article is to identify the mechanism of staffing used in the period 1946–1950 at the enterprises of heavy and defense industry, to disclose the industry specifics of its implementation. Materials and Methods. The methodological basis of the research is the modernization historical paradigm. When writing the article, the author was guided by the principles of historicism and objectivity. Work with historical sources was carried out through general scientific and historical methods. Results and Discussion. The mechanisms of solving personnel problems used at defense and heavy industry enterprises aimed at replenishing the workforce (transfer of employees, training of specialists in educational institutions, voluntary hiring, mobilization, use of labor of a special agent (prisoners, special settlers, prisoners of war)), securing personnel at enterprises (administrative and legal regulation and control of labor discipline, financial incentives for employees). Conclusion. The industry specifics consisted in a higher intensity of application of positive (benefits, financial incentives for employees) and negative (administrative coercion, control of labor discipline) forms of staffing at enterprises of priority industry objects. The use of mobilization tools made it possible to overcome the personnel shortage, accumulate labor resources for the development of priority industries.

PRO MEMORIA FOR THOSE WHO LEFT IRRETRIEVABLY: BIRMUKHAMED AIBASOV

Among the greatest catastrophes of an anthropogenic character in the 20th century alongside with the world wars, a “worthy” place is occupied by large-scale repressive actions of the Soviet State against its people. Therefore, recollecting the names of those innocently shot or who died in the camps and special settlements of the GULAG according to the judgments of “specified conventions of the NKVD”, “triplets of the OGPU” and other extrajudicial bodies does not lose its relevance (actuality) at present. One of the true, faithful patriots of the Kazakhnative land, whose name is undeservedly forgotten is Birmuhamed Aibasov. He belongs to the galaxy of talented, energetic individuals who had a deep inner desire for active transformative activities, high self-sacrifice for achieving the goal -improving the life of their people. Side by side with Magzhan Zhumabayev, Mirjakyp Dulatov, Saken Seyfullin and other distinguished representatives of Kazakh intelligentsia with whom for many years B. Aibasov was bound by ties of friendship and joint social activities; he had shared the fate of many “enemies of people”, whose only “fault” was high benevolence and courage, inability to stay scared and quiet watching lawlessness and arbitrariness going on around. Being a supporter of democratic reforms in Kazakhstan in the pre-revolutionary period, B. Aibasov was one of the most successful managers-agrarians in Soviet times. Tragic events of the early 1930s, connected with hunger and high mortality of the aul population in the Kazakh steppe, inspired the students of the Moscow Agrarian Institute of Red Professors, including B. Aibasov, to write a letter to I. Stalin in 1933 “On the Activity of the Kazakhstan Party Organization” known as “Letters of six”. It describes the scale of human catastrophe -mass deaths of Kazakhs, being a consequence of collectivization and subsidence of nomadic and semi-nomadic farms, expropriation and death of socialized livestock, inaction and indifference of local officials and the ignorance of terrible facts by the official authorities. This highly moral, civil act did not remain without consequences. In 1938, by the decision of the visiting session of the Military Collegiums of the Supreme Court of the USSR, B. Aibasov was shot.

Neizvestnaya perepis': Vsesoyuznyj pereuchet vyselencev i specposelencev v SSSR v 1949 g.

On the basis of documents from the State Archives of the Russian Federation, statistical data of the All-Union re-registration of deportees and special settlers, a large-scale statistical event among citizens forcibly deported to special settlements, carried out in 1949, is presented. All-Union re-registration in departmental documents was called a census and corresponds to the main features of all-Union censuses. The article presents an analysis of archival documents, provides information on the conduct of the census in the regions.

Зарубежная историография проблемы адаптации народов Северного Кавказа, насильственно переселенных в Казахстан в 40-х гг. ХХ века

The article is devoted to the study of the works of foreign authors, which deal with the issues of adaptation of the peoples of the North Caucasus, forcibly relocated to Kazakhstan in the 40s of the twentieth century. Among the problems that can be called key ones on this topic, we can name the problems of everyday adaptation of special settlers in new places of resettlement, identifying the scope of their labor skills, social arrangement, and others. In the course of the analysis and evaluation of the works of foreign authors, an attempt was made to determine the degree of objectivity and impartiality in the study of the identified problem. It should be noted that in the period from the late 40’s to the 70’s. XX century, a large number of monographs, scientific articles, dissertations, etc. was written by immigrants from the USSR, who for one reason or another emigrated abroad. At the same time, in the second half of the 20th century, the topic of deportation to the USSR was also studied by foreign authors, who, in particular, were characterized by the absence of a large number of sources, primarily archival ones on the topic under study. A number of works analyzed in the article were written in recent decades, which indicates that this topic continues to be relevant today and has not been fully explored. The works of foreign authors have not lost their relevance to the present day for historical science.

Custodians: Commandants of the Special Settlements of Western Siberia in the Inter-War Period

The latest papers on the activities of the protective bodies of the Stalin era demonstrates a gap between the scale and depth of the study of the institutional aspects of the system itself, with a major focus on objects, the target groups of repression, and the degree of development of activity (behavioural practices of the corps of specific implementers of the state’s repressive policy). Thus, while the circle of initiators and the upper and middle links of the punitive system are part of scholarly research, the numerous nomenclature workers of the lower level and direct executors of directives remain outside analysis. The above is also true about the personnel of penitentiary institutions. During early Stalinism, the establishment of the largest segment of the system of isolation and forced labor (i. e., the special peasant settlements) required strict deadlines and the recruitment of commandants. Being a part of the GULAG apparatus, the commandant corps, whose basic functions were similar to those of camp workers (supervision, punishment, and organisation of industrial and everyday internal activities), occupied lower positions in the hierarchy of protective organisations. They had limited opportunities for promotion, tighter control over their activities by the local party nomenclature, and a multitude of conflicts with the latter. Based on the available sources and literature, the author reconstructs the basic aspects of the activity, everyday life, and nomenclature of the commandant corps of special settlements in Western Siberia. In addition to specific historical methods, the work refers to concepts developed by R. K. Merton and M. Foucault (functionality, disciplinarity, deviant behaviour) and the use of a database containing brief biographies of commandant office employees. These help us to identify the conditions, incentives, and motivation of their activities, and the typology of normative and deviant behaviour. It is concluded that the commandant corps was both an embodiment and a hostage of the Stalinist management model, in which the line between norm and deviance was blurred. The functioning of the special settlements system was ensured by high mobility, personnel “dropout”, and the ability of commandants to adapt their activities in extreme conditions.

ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙНА ДІЯЛЬНІСТЬ ПРИБУЛИХ ІЗ ТАБОРІВ І СПЕЦПОСЕЛЕНЬ УЧАСНИКІВ ПІДПІЛЬНО-ПОВСТАНСЬКОГО РУХУ (ДРУГА ПОЛОВИНА 1950-Х – 1960-ТІ РР.)

After the return from camps and special settlements some former members of the underground insurgent movement have begun activities aimed at re-establishing clandestine organizations and attracting new members. They discussed the prospects for further national liberation struggle, prepared programme and organizational documents, printed and distributed leaflets and anti-Soviet materials among the young people. They closely followed anti-Communist movements in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and encouraged Ukrainians to follow their example. Numerous facts show that the Soviet State security organs, using various methods and techniques, made great efforts to neutralize clandestine organizations and to bring their members to justice.

UKRAINIANS OR POLES? STRATEGIES FOR THE SURVIVAL OF POLES–SPECIAL SETTLERS IN THE 40–50S OF THE 20TH CENTURY IN A TOTALITARIAN STATE (According to the archives of the Head Offi ce of the Ministry of Internal Aff airs in Lviv region)

Some behavioral strategies for the survival of the Polish population in Western Ukraine in the 40–50s of the 20th century were determined based on the secret documents of the Archives of the Head Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Lviv region. It is outlined that after World War II there was a widespread tendency for Ukrainians to enroll in village councils, to conceal and reticence the Polish nationality. Features of Polish assistance to Ukrainian insurgents are revealed. The reasons for helping Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) soldiers have been clarified: from coercion and family ties to personal choice. It was noted that Poles, suspected by the MGB of «gang involvement» in the UIA, were convicted as Ukrainians. The documents in which their Ukrainian nationality is written are listed. The accounting and personal files of the accused were analyzed in detail. Previously unknown biographical episodes of Polish special settlers have been revealed. Their Polish nationality is revealed in the course of the case and accusations are made to dispel suspicions of aiding the OUN. Rehabilitation of Polish ancestry was a strategy for survival in difficult conditions. This was done to avoid deportation to special settlements in Siberia or imprisonment. Further strategies of substantiation of pre-war Polish ancestry in special settlements and their purpose are gradually traced, namely: due to Polish origin from leaving the Soviet Union to Poland, or returning home. It was noted that special settlers were forbidden to return home, but the Soviet authorities allowed them to travel to Poland only based on applications from Polish relatives, despite the documented Polish nationality. Also, the results of these strategies and the fate of special settlers are indicated. Keywords Ukrainians, Poles, nationality, special settlements, survival strategies, Western Ukraine, Poland.

Ханты-Мансийский автономный округ – Югра в зеркале исторической географии: обзор тематических карт первой половины XX в. из коллекции Музея геологии, нефти и газа

The article gives a brief survey of a set of 14 thematic maps of the late 1920s–1940s representing the territory of the modern Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug — Yugra. This collection of electronic maps, which has been received by the Museum of Geology, Oil and Gas in 2020, is a unique cartographic source containing a valuable historical information on the region’s territory as regards of economy and nature management, land use and land tenure system, economic geography and geourbanistics, as well as geobotany, environmental history and other earth sciences and related disciplines. The maps are hand-made with the use of original design of the legend and the system of symbolic designation. These cartographic products are also of great scientific value, first of all, in connection to the historical geography. The preparation of the maps had been fulfilled at a time when there were no extensive topographic and geodesic works on the territory of Western Siberia, and expeditionary works and field surveys were not widespread. At that period, the region was characterized by the predominance of traditional economic forms of its indigenous inhabitants, as well as the development of agriculture, fishery and logging by special settlers. Today, these maps are of particular importance as they provide information for comparative analysis — since the beginning of the 1950s, the large-scale industrialization of the region began in connection with the discovery of the country’s largest hydrocarbon reserves and the start of exploitation of the West Siberian oil and gas province. This new period of the region’s development, which is lasting up to the present day, to a large extent transformed all previous forms of economic use of territory and radically changed the course of environmental history.

Comparative content analysis of the memoirs of the repressed: gender aspect

Political terror was a distinctive phenomenon of the Soviet era, affecting broad segments of the population of the USSR. In addition to the official traditional sources on the history of this period (statistics, personal files of prisoners, court materials, periodicals), sources of personal origin play an important role – diaries, letters, interviews and memoirs of prisoners of camps and special settlers. Of particular interest among other sources of personal origin on the history of repression in the USSR are collections of memoirs of the repressed. The largest collection of memoirs is presented on the resource of the Sakharov Center "Memories of the Gulag and their authors". The texts of memoirs posted on this electronic resource have become the main source of this research. Based on the materials of the resource, a full-text thematic collection of memoirs was created and analyzed using the methods of content analysis, network analysis and statistical analysis. A comparative analysis of the reflection of camp life on the pages of memoirs of male and female prisoners is carried out. The analysis suggests that men and women converge in the fundamental aspects of the perception of camps: regardless of gender, the camp stage of life became the most traumatic and was remembered by former prisoners in similar tones. At the same time, neither the gender of the authors of the memoirs, nor the profession, nor the age at the time of arrest, nor the number of years that prisoners were forced to spend in camps globally affect these general perception trends. There are particular features inherent in individual subgroups, both among women and men, of the perception of camps, but in general the perception is the same, and it is the general features of the perception of camp life that are brought to the fore, overshadowing the particular elements. This can serve as a confirmation of the thesis that the collection of memoirs collected and studied in the framework of this study is a mass source.

Personal Files of the Expelled — A Source for the Research on the Special Settlement Regime

This article explores an important archival source, the personal files of deportees, the original form of the document compiled by the NKVD characterizing the identity of a person who is on special settlement. These are massive official documents of a personal nature, applied to all adults deported during World War II from different regions and republics of the former USSR. The author reveals previously classified personal files and documents on the legal status of special settlers. The introduction of new documents into circulation made it possible to shed light on many aspects of the life of deportees related to their social and legal adaptation in new places of settlements. A personal file clearly demonstrates both the conditions of detention at the special settlement, and changes in the regulatory framework governing the life of this category within the framework of the special settlement system in the USSR. In accordance with the ongoing changes, a special commandant introduced each special settler to the new standards, who were given receipts. The file contains four receipts that allow one to divide the period from 1944 to 1957 into four stages. The article emphasizes that for post-deportation generations, the presence of personal files containing personal data was a good opportunity in restoring not only history, but also genealogy. It has both important scholarly, socio-legal, and political significance for the study of destinies, both of individuals and of entire nations. As examples, some documents are contained in the personal files of the evicts.

Соціально-політичний портрет «указника» 1948 року (за матеріалами довідок-характеристик)

The article focuses on the analysis of the character references presented by village councils and boards of collective farms in the Vinnytsia region for those people who were subject to exile to remote regions of the USSR in accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the eviction of the individuals for evading agricultural work and leading an antisocial parasitic lifestyle from the territory of the Ukrainian SSR” of February 21, 1948. The research methodology is based on the combination of general scientific (abstraction, analysis and synthesis, generalization) and specific historical (historical and critical, historical and systemic, concrete and problematic, quantitative) methods with the principles of historicism, consistency and scientific nature. The paper’s scientific novelty lies in the analysis of the previously unexplored archival sources and documents which served as the basis for exiling the villagers to special settlements for 8 years. Conclusions. Materials of character references confirm the practice of permanent coercive methods of regimes in relation to the rural population that refused to work in collective farms primarily due to the lack of interest in the results of labor, minimal payment, or its complete absence.

Escapes from Special Settlements: Goals, Means, and Sanctions

This paper explores escapes from special settlements by analysing three key escape components: goals, means, and sanctions. Based on this, the author identifies the correlation between the factual circumstances of the escape and the subsequent punishment. As a result, the paper expands on the understanding of policies pursued by the Soviet regime in relation to special settlers. More particularly, it offers a new analysis of the decree of 26 November 1948, according to which escape from such settlements was to be punished with twenty years of penal servitude. Further, the paper explains in detail why special settlers violated the rules established by the regime, providing an answer to the question about whether this behavior was a form of protest or a means to potentially improve their situation in exile. In addition, particular attention is paid to analysing the methods that special settlers used to make their escapes. The paper explores where escapees procured money and false documents, what type of transport they preferred, and who hid them. The information presented is drawn from Soviet documentation, party, and law enforcement agencies of various levels (district – region – centre). These sources make it possible to analyse the positions of various actors on fighting escapes, as well as to characterise the confrontation not only as being one between the centre and the regions, but also as being a confrontation between different power and economic structures. The chronological framework covers the post-war period; the territory examined encompasses three regions of western Siberia, i. e., Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, and Tomsk. The article is divided into three parts, each of which considers a separate type of escape: unauthorised absences, unauthorised relocations, and intentional escapes. These categorisations are determined in accordance with the final goals that the special settlers wanted to achieve.

THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTHERN TERRITORIES - THE GOLD OF YAKUTIA: KОCHULUKAN AND YNYKCHAN IN THE POST-WAR PERIOD (MEMOIRS OF THE OWNER)

The paper is devoted to a part of A. M. Ozhigov‟s memoirs, recently found in the family archives of the authors. The memoirs describe the working conditions at the gold mines of the Dzhugdzhurzoloto trust in 1947. The post-war period required an urgent replenishment of the state gold reserves, which was reflected in the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (1946) on increasing the production of gold and platinum in the country. As a result, the Special Main Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (Glavspetstsvetmet) has been created. The activity of this Directorate was focused on the search and exploration of new deposits, technical modernization and improvement of working conditions in mines This period of profound post-war crisis of gold industry, entirely determined by the war efforts, was characterized by a high share of manual labor, labor of prisoners and special settlers, low qualifications of workers and arduous living conditions. Here, we have evaluated reliability of the above memoirs using a comparative historical method. The factual knowledge of the memoirs was confirmed in open official sources. However, these sources are rather scarce in terms of human relations directly in gold mines and newly discovered areas. New names and circumstances of the everyday life of gold prospectors developing the deposit of the Kоchulyukan spring, brightly presented in the memoirs of A. M. Ozhigov, reveal the unknown details of the Soviet history of the industrial development of the northern territories. The psychological aspect of the recollections, expressed in the author's vivid subjectivism in relation to the organizers of the works (managers), also brightly show the opposition of the "worker-boss" type. Scanned copies of A. M. Ozhigov‟s memoirs are kept in the V. F. Vereshchagin Museum of Local Lore, Bodaibo town, Irkutsk region.