The Union of general history with the archaeology and the ethnography: the department of general history of Dostoevsky Omsk state university in 1976-1991
Authors: Klyuev A. I. , Metel O. V. 
Published: October 2024

This article is devoted to the formation of the Department of General History of Dostoevsky Omsk State University (OmSU). The main sources for the authors were oral history materials, sources of personal origin and clerical documents of the Department, deposited in the Historical Archive of the Omsk Region. The Department of General History was established as part of the Faculty of History and Philology of OmSU in 1976, when some of the Department of History of the USSR staff members became part of the new structure, headed by Doctor of Historical Sciences, archaeologist Vladimir Matyushchenko. He came to OmSU in 1976 from Tomsk State University (TSU) and invited a TSU graduate Yuri Balakin to work at the new university. In addition to Yuri Balakin and Vladimir Matyushchenko, other former Tomsk citizens Nikolai Tomilov and Heinrich Sadretdinov also became employees of the new Department. Down the line, several more graduates of TSU (Svetlana Fomenko) and other Soviet universities (Galina Mukhina) joined the staff of the Department, and after that, it recruited and hired one's own graduates. The authors believe that in terms of organizational changes in the history of the Department of General History in 1976-1991 two main stages can be distinguished. The first stage lasted from 1976 until 1985, when the Department brought together specialists-“generalists”, archaeologists and ethnographers. The second stage, which began in 1985, was associated with interaction within the Department of historians-“generalists” and archaeologists. And only in 1991, when the Department had a sufficient number of archaeologists, it was divided into two independent units - the Department of General History and the Department of Primitive History. The main directions of the Department's work were quite traditional. The employees of the new structure were supposed to carry out educational and scientific work (the latter was considered as a load of “the second half of the day”, just like social activities). Professors were required to deliver courses broadly corresponding to their scientific specialization. Although later this principle was often violated, and a specialist in ancient history could deliver a course on the Contemporary history of the countries of Asia and Africa. Scientific work was approved in the form of planned topics, the development of which involved writing scientific reports, articles and monographs. However, the publication of scientific works in the 1970-1980s in the USSR was difficult and often the professors from the Department limited themselves to depositing manuscripts. In general, we believe that the Department of General History of OmSU developed within the framework of the well-established Soviet models of institutionalization of university science. Although it was characterized by its own specificity - this was a temporary “union” of historians-“generalists”, archaeologists and ethnographers. It was driven by personal rather than institutional factors.