«The Purpose of Our Meeting Is to Present an Article with the Purpose of Upbringing of the Youth...»: the Activity of Military Research Group at Siberian Military Command Region on the Memory of Participants of the Civil War. 1959-1961
Authors: Shcheglova T.K. 
Published: November 2024

The publication is devoted to Military research group at Novosibirsk House of officers in Siberian military command region. It started working in the year 1958. One of their activities was the study of military and revolutionary memory with further publication of interview materials and recollections of participants of these events. The topicality of research is determined by the fact that there is no research on its activity and its place in social and scientific life of Siberia; the objectives of the publications are to reveal the correlation of research and upbringing activities and compare them with the practice of national oral history of the years 1920-40s. The publication represents transcripts of the meeting of military historical section of Military research group from the State archive of Novosibirsk oblast. The main approaches to source finding were determined by anthropology of memory - a new trend in historical and ethnological research and methods of oral history from the practice of Military research group in the years 1950-60-ths in Novosibirsk and its branches in Barnaul and Krasnoyarsk; which includes techniques of recording and preparing materials for publishing and editing. The accent is put on the materials recorded in the process of interviewing the participants of guerilla movement concerning the events in Steppe Altai in 1919 and written by the participant of Minusinsk events in 1918. The first materials being discussed were written on the basis of the interview of the participant of Ziminsk rebellion M.A. Rozinkin and the head of Oskolovsk headquarter and the member of E. M. Mamontov's guerilla army headquarter I.L. Suknev. The editor of these materials was the son of the participant of guerilla movement, the member of Military research group, M.I. Suknev. In distinction from Altai materials the discussion of the manuscript of the military leader of one of the ten N.K. Obuhiv's «guerilla armies» of Minusinsk rebellion by the participants of guerilla movement was lively and heated. During the discussion two variants of interpretation clashed - the author's variant and his opponent's variant, his opponent being V.G. Soldatov. In spite of a harsh discussion during the meeting in 1959, the text was published in 1961. It was an open discussion with many participants of guerilla movement taking part in it and reminded of the way of working with the memory widely spread in 1920 - reminiscences meetings with several participants or witnesses of the same event gathering together to discuss, argue and find out the details of this event. One of the conclusions is the statement that the research and upbringing tasks are interconnected in educational and scientific activities of Military research group. It is pointed out that for Military research group as well as for other public organizations and practices of the Soviet time the primary feature of scientific and scouting activities was civil patriotism. The research reveals the influence of ideology on the process of constructing the version of the Civil war in researching and publishing activities of the members of Military research group that is based on the participants' experience by means of accentuating in oral history the role of the Party in preparing guerilla movement and the reflection of it in fiction literature.