Contenu du sommaire

The `Passportization' of the Soviet Far-Eastern Population (1933-1934) The article by E. N. Chernolutskaya is devoted to the introduction of the internal passport system in the Soviet Far East between 1932 and 1934. The author presents this action as a stage of establishing total administrative-police control over the Soviet population during the period of implementation of the Stalinist state. The peculiarities of the passportization process are shown in comparison with most of other parts in the country, such as the limitation for residence of the population considered as 'unreliable' and the relocation of more than 50,000 inhabitants of the region. The article is written on the basis of little or unknown documents of the Khabarovsk State Archives.

The Development of the Soviet Scientific Intelligentsia in the Russian Far Elena Vasilieva's article investigates the development of the Soviet technical intelligentsia in the Russian Far East during the first three decades of Soviet power and gives insight into the fate of many local institutions and personalities. The very limited amount of scholars working in the Far East — mainly professors of the Vladivostok State University and Polytechnic Institute — grew noticeably during the civil war. During the 1920s, they responded to the relatively tolerant attitude of the authorities and security organs by an attitude made of apolitical expectation and growing concern about their usefulness. Starting with the proletarization of its students in 1923, the Sovietization of the Far-Eastern intelligentsia increased at the end of the 1920s when the fallout of the Shakhty Trial and the overall assault on the 'bourgeois intelligentsia' reached the region. The stratification of this particular group of the population deepened, gaining momentum during the purges, when institutes were closed and hundreds of scientific collaborators were shot or sent to labor camps. One of the consequences of the expansion and proximity of the labor camp system in the Far East was that the frontier between freedom and imprisonment was blurred. Although the consequences of the Sovietization of the technical intelligentsia undoubtedly had a negative result in terms of professionalism and level of knowledge, the way it adapted to the specific historical circumstances shows the limitations of Soviet totalitarianism.

Railway Construction in the Russian Far East During the 1930s : Characteristics of the Labor Force and Aspects of Its Exploitation The article by O. P. Elantseva discusses the utilization of forced labor in the 1930s during the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline railway and the second track of the Trans-Siberian Railway, as part of the project to exploit the Eastern areas of the USSR. General trends and the specific conditions of prisoners are described, such as life and labor conditions, as well as organizational forms of labor achievement.

Pages of the History of the Sakhalin Oil Industry Viktor Remizovskij's article is devoted to the history of the oil industry on Sakhalin, from the discovery of oil on the site of Okha in 1878-79 to its development during the first two Five-Year Plans and its almost standstill during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. Detailed information is given on the contribution of Russian, Japanese, and other foreign geologists, the creation of the Soviet-owned trust 'Saxalinneft''in 1928 and its infrastructure, with figures concerning the quantity of extracted oil between 1930 and 1936. The article investigates the history of administrative measures taken to ensure the development of the industry and of its social aspects, such as the Stakhanovite movement. Drawing from archival sources, local newspapers, journals and private documents, the author then focuses on the massive repressions of the personnel of Saxalinneft' in 1936-38, the fate of many directing cadres, specialists, Party members, and industrial workers, and the catastrophic consequences of the purges on the industry itself.

Korean Emigration in the Russian Far East, Second Half of the XIXth Century — 1937 Aleksander Toropov is Director of the Russian State Historical Archive of the Russian Far East in Vladivostok. Drawing on extensive archival material, his article is devoted to the Korean presence in the Russian Far East from 1860 to 1937. After retracing the migration of Korean populations to the southern part of the Russian Far East in the nineteenth century, the article focuses on the life of the Korean population during Soviet rule and its deportation in 1937.