Vol 17, No 4 (2018): HISTORY OF THE PEOPLES OF SOUTHERN RUSSIA

In post-Soviet years, the North Caucasus gained the reputation of a politically unstable, conflict-generating region, with specific problems rooted in the distant past. To better understand the essence of today’s problems, it is necessary to study the complex vicissitudes of North Caucasus regional history at crucial moments. The article aims to clarify the role of the ethnic factor at the early stage of the Civil War in the North Caucasus (1917-1918). It traces the dynamics of interethnic confrontation in the very complicated poly-ethnic and multi-confessional region and the impact of this dynamics on the struggle between the opposing political forces. How did the Bolsheviks and their opponents use the ethnic factor for their own interests? Understanding the impact of ethnic identities on the conflict is of broader relevance; it is through an ethnic matrix that unresolved social problems turn into irreconcilable interethnic contradictions. This case study from the revolutionary era is based on hitherto unstudied archival material from the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History.

The labour mobilisation in Checheno-Ingushetia during the Great Patriotic War is connected to the evacuation of the industrial enterprises from the republic and their subsequent restoration, as well as to the establishment of a complex system of defensive lines. The article elaborates the essential characteristics of the mobilisation measures, their general patterns as well as their specific local features. The study is based on archival documents of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI) concerning the history of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic during the Great Patriotic War, mostly obtained from the electronic database of the Archives Department of the Government of the Chechen Republic (AHRC); equally used were materials from the periodical press of Checheno-Ingushetia from the period under consideration. Labour mobilisation was important for making the most effective use of the available human resources to carry out the work that the state prioritized. The dismantling of industrial enterprises for evacuation to places removed from the front line was carried out twice - in the autumn of 1941 and in the summer and autumn of 1942. Each evacuation campaign was accompanied by new mobilisation measures to provide workforce for the reassembling of the industrial plants. The need to concentrate skilled labour in the dismantling and restoration of the oil industry caused serious difficulties in other, related industries. The most massive labour mobilisations were carried out to provide for the construction of defensive lines; in the autumn and winter of 1942, the majority of the able-bodied population of the republic was involved in this program. At the same time, labourers from Checheno-Ingushetia also worked outside the republic. The war-related labour mobilisation affected all social categories of the population, regardless of their nationality; the indigenous population, however, provided the largest part of the unskilled labour. There is no evidence of any mass movement of evading labour mobilization in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. In 1944, the mobilisation measures were reduced significantly, which must be attributed to the deportation of the Chechens and Ingushs; the loss of about 500.000 deported people made it necessary to bring labour force from outside to the newly formed Grozny region.

The article is devoted to the ethno-political situation in the region of the Oka estuary up to 1238. In 1221 Nizhny Novgorod was founded in this region. The forthcoming 800th anniversary of the city lends particular social and cultural relevance to the present study; these aspects of the history of Eastern Europe and North-Eastern Russia are considered here for the first time. The research is based on the study of chronicles and narratives from the 17th to 19th centuries, as well as of toponyms. The source corpus is represented here by the Lavrentyevskaya chronicle, the Ipatyevskaya chronicle, the Simeonovskaya chronicle, the Tolkovaya Paleya, as well as the “Slovo o pogibeli russkoi zemli” (“The word about the death of the Russian land”), in addition to results of archaeological and toponymic research. The author offers a novel interpretation of the Cheremis-Meshcher group in the region of the Oka estuary, by demonstrating that these Cheremis lived between the rivers Volga, Oka and Klyazma; these Cheremis has no direct relation to the Mari. The article presents arguments in favor of the hypothesis that before 1221 there had been no Slavic population in the Oka estuary. The assumption that Brodniks were living in this region cannot be confirmed. There are not enough representative sources to interpret the occurrence of the term Purgasova Rus ’ . The Mordvins lived far from the Oka estuary. Polovtsy (Cumans), however, were present in the region. This territory remained beyond the political influence zone of Volga Bolgaria. Accordingly, it must be accepted that Nizhny Novgorod was founded on an uninhabited place. The area around Nizhny Novgorod was a frontier zone where the interests of Volga Bolgaria clashed with those of the Vladimir Principality. The foundation of Nizhny Novgorod changed the nature of the conflict in this frontier. The Cheremis were blocked, and a military-diplomatic offensive was launched on the Mordvins. The Polovtsy (Cumans) acted as allies of the Vladimir Principality, and the latter was victorious in the Russian-Bolgarian war of 1223-1230. The reconstruction of the complex ethno-political situation in the region of the Oka estuary enables us to study the imperial practices of the princes of Vladimir before the Mongol invasion.

The article deals with the state’s educational strategy after the Great Patriotic War. These are actual problems for both domestic and foreign historiography. The author draws on archival and historiographic sources that shed light on how schools were provided with staff in the RSFSR, and particularly in the Southern Urals, during late Stalinism and Khrushchev’s “Thaw”. The paper analyzes the main measures taken by the administrative apparatus of the region to restore the network of higher and specialized secondary educational institutions, and to solve the problem of the lack of teachers. As a result of the comprehensive measures during the first decade after the Great Patriotic War, and with the help of graduates from pedagogical educational institutions, the quality of teachers changed for the better. Many teachers who lacked appropriate education and did not wish to improve their qualification were replaced. The article furthermore studies the reasons for the large turnover rate among teachers. Pedagogical institutes and secondary educational institutions in the Bashkir ASSR as well as in the Kurgan, Orenburg and Chelyabinsk Regions were transformed in accordance with the ongoing social, political and economic changes. The author identifies the factors that influenced the reorganization of the teacher training institutes and the optimization of pedagogical schools in the broader region. The article reconstructs how the Party and State administrative apparatus in charge of Russia’s educational system functioned, and determines the degree of its efficiency. Special attention is paid to the ambiguous demographic processes leading to partial or complete “hidden” unemployment among teachers in 1953-1957. The author concludes that under “regulated bureaucratic pluralism”, the supreme bodies of state and educational administration were unable to rationally use the reserve of teachers in the face of an expected demographic decline.