Saratov province

The article examines the activities of the anti-bribery commission under the Saratov Provincial Council of National Economy. The methods of the commission’s work and strategies for combating corruption in Soviet economic bodies in the early 1920s are analyzed. The author studies the results of the commission’s activities as one of the first purges in Soviet bodies after the approval of the NEP. 

The article deals with the problem of previously unexplored charitable activities of the Volga Germans within the framework of the functioning of the Saratov branch of the Russian Red Cross Society. Particular attention is paid to the characterisation of the charity of the local German population of the county towns and villages. It is stated that the types and forms of German charitable activity did not differ from those inherent in the rest of the population of the province.

The article is devoted to the problems of social unrest caused by cholera epidemics in Russia in the 19th century. The subject of the author’s research is regional problems, namely the events that took place in the Saratov province, which still remain poorly studied in historiography. Based on the analysis of documentary materials stored in the State Archives of the Saratov Region, the causes and consequences of the “cholera riots” in the Saratov province are revealed.

The article attempts to analyze the problem of identifying subbotniks through the prism of regional refraction, using the example of Saratov province as one of the sectarian centres of residence in the period under consideration. Subbotniks strove for the reception of Old Testament texts, religious traditions and ritual practices, under the influence of which the sectarians’ identity had been developing. The author also examined the origins of subbotniks in the region, their numbers, settlement areas and the building of contacts with normative Judaism supporters.

The article examines the changes in the national composition of Saratov province in the first half of the 1920s based on the materials of the All-Russian Census of 1920, the All-Union Urban Census of 1923 and the first All-Union Population Census of 1926. The factors influencing the evolution of the national structure of the region are being studied. The conclusion is made about the formation in the main features of the ethnic map of the Saratov region.

The published materials of the correspondence of the chairman of the Moscow Slavic Committee I. S. Aksakov and Saratov Governor M. N. Galkin-Vrasky chronologically refer to the prehistory and the beginning of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877–1878 and reveal a number of aspects of interaction between public organizations and the official authorities. An analysis of the content of the correspondence and its historical context reveals the importance of the social movement factor in the foreign policy activities of the Russian Empire.

The history of the peat industry both on the scale of Russia and in the regional framework of the Saratov province is a poorly studied topic. The article examines various aspects of the functioning of peat mining in Kuznetsk, Serdobsky, Petrovsky counties.

The article examines socio-cultural environment (or cultural community) of Saratov province district towns that had been founded as fortresses: Tsaritsin, Kamyshin and Petrovsk. Their social structure did not differ much from that of the other district towns of the province. Their socio-cultural environment was dominated by folk culture marked by legends, traditions and relics that kept the memories of the war-time past of the fortress-cities alive.

The article describes the reasons that determined the significant role of Russian ethnic culture in the urban socio-cultural environment of Saratov province. Its manifestations in various spheres of city life and, in particular, in the look of these cities are based on written sources. For most county-level cities its influence on the cultural process was dominant. In the main city of the province its features were evident in spiritual and ceremonial life of the general population.

Saratov province was one of more than 30 provinces in Russia, where since 1915 – early 1916 till 1923 there have been thousands of refugees from Belarus. Materials of the state archives of Saratov region helped to get a clear understanding about the scope, peculiarities and terms of assistance to refugees. Special attention is drawn to relationships between the local population and forced migrants.