Ego-documents of the Siberian Indigenous Peoples in the Context of the Great Patriotic War

This publication continues the authors’ research within the framework of the scientific project of the State Public Scientific Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In this work the authors focus on studying the document flow of ego-documents of the indigenous peoples of Siberia (publications and Internet resources). We conducted the study using materials from the largest regional bibliographic database “Nauchnaya Sibirika” with the involvement of missing sources from the catalogues of a number of large libraries. The purpose of the article is a comprehensive description of ego-documents containing memoirs, diaries and letters of Siberian indigenous peoples (study of the documentary flow content in the printed form and on websites, review of publications on ego-documents on the problem). The authors defined scientific approaches and research methods. The documentary flow consisted of 64 publication titles from 1966–2023, primarily in Russian. The authors selectively included publications in the languages of indigenous peoples (if there was a translation into Russian). The authors noted significant difficulties in selecting documents: there were no nationality data in many publications; often the affiliation of war participants could be determined by indirect signs (characteristic names, surnames, geographical data, etc.), however, many indigenous peoples have Russian surnames; there was no translation of titles into Russian, etc. These reasons justify the inevitability of gaps in the selected flow of documents. The authors emphasize that this study is the first approach to the problem under research. Novelty of the study: for the first time, the publications and Internet resources flow ego-documents of Siberian indigenous peoples (Altaians, Buryats, Mansi, Siberian Tatars, Tuvans, Khakassians and Yakuts) has been selected and comprehensively studied with a certain completeness as historical sources. The authors have come to the following conclusions: the most acceptable option for introducing ego-documents into the scientific and social circulation is their presentation in the languages of the Siberian peoples with the translation into Russian, that makes it possible to convey information about the feat of indigenous peoples to the entire Russian society; there is raise of the pressing issue of the prospects for preserving ego-documents located in private archives; the lack of necessary data on the nationalities of the peoples of Russia makes it difficult to find information on relevant websites; there are problems of accessing full texts of egodocuments in the Internet space.

1. Varshavsky DI (2012) Memoirs, diaries and letters as a historical source in the study of the front-line life of Soviet soldiers in the Great Patriotic War. Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo oblastnogo universiteta. Seriya: Istoriya i politicheskie nauki 4: 18–22. (In Russ.).

2. Zaretsky YuP (2021) Ego-documents of the Soviet era: terms, his-toriography, methodology. Neprikosnovennyi zapas. Debaty o politike i kul'ture 3: 184–199. (In Russ.).

3. Mandrinina LA and Soloviev NA (2023) Ego-documents of Siberi-ans on the history of the Great Patriotic War: document flow analysis. Bibli-osfera 4: 67–79. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.20913/1815-3186-2023-4-67-79

4. Barmina EV (2021) An alien or a Soviet citizen: the image of the indigenous peoples of Siberia after the Great Patriotic War. Grishaevskie cht-eniya: materialy III Nats. nauch. konf., posvyashch. pamyati d-ra ist. nauk, prof., zasluzh. rabotnika vyssh. shk. V. V. Grishaeva (Krasnoyarsk, 18–19 noyab. 2020 g.). Krasnoyarsk, pp. 335–338. (In Russ.).

5. Sivtseva SI (2016) The Great Patriotic War in the historical memory of the population of Yakutia. Obshchestvo: filosofiya, istoriya, kul'tura 12: 103–105. (In Russ.).

6. Kazantsev YaR (2024) Little-known heroes of the Great Patriotic War from Buryatia in the memoir heritage of U.-Zh. Sh. Dondukov. Vestnik Buryatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Gumanitarnye issledovaniya Vnu-trennei Azii 2: 44–51. (In Russ.). DOI: https://journals.bsu.ru/doi/10.18101/2305-753X-2024-2-44-51

7. Sedip-ool MM (2010) We will live in a short word – MEMORY. Novye issledovaniya Tuvy 3: 268–271. URL: https://new-tuva.info/journal/issue_7/2145-sedip-ool.html (access: 21.05.2025) (In Russ.).

8. Ivanov VI (2011) Modern problems of publishing letters from the period of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. Otechestvennye arkhivy 2: 50–57. (In Russ.).

9. Ivanov AYu (2008). Frontline letters of the 20th century as a his-torical source: analysis methods. Uchenye zapiski Kazanskogo gosudarstven-nogo universiteta. Seriya: Gumanitarnye nauki 150 (1): 49–53. (In Russ.).

10. Beloglazova GN (2013) Letters from the front as a historical source of the Great Patriotic War. Mir nauki, kul'tury, obrazovaniya 2: 188–191. (In Russ.).

11. Butueva ZA and Tsyrenova MG (2015) Everyday life of war in letters from the front (based on materials from the family archive of Ch. B. Budaev). Buryatiya na perekrestke kul'tur (Shestye Egunovskie chteniya): materi-aly Vseros. nauch.-prakt. konf., posvyashch. 20-letiyu Buryat. gos. un-ta (Ulan-Ude, 9–10 iyunya 2015 g.). Ulan-Ude, pp. 46–52. (In Russ.).

12. Kaneva TA, Nemkova SN and Nikolaev OR (2008) «Don’t torment the little ones too much, I am writing this letter with tears...»: E. D. Khozumov's letters from the front in Mansi (from the funds of the open-air ethnogr. museum "Naiotyr Maa", Sosva, Berezovsky distr., Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra). Slavyanskii khod: materialy i issled. Saint Peters-burg, iss. 4, pp. 142–164. (In Russ.).

13. Tartakovsky AG (1990) 1812 through the eyes of contempo-raries. 1812 god… Voyennyye dnevniki. Moscow, pp. 5–28. (In Russ.).

14. Mandrinina LA (2024) The Great Patriotic War in the diary entries of Siberians: analysis of the ego-document corpus. Trudy GPNTB SO RAN 2: 9–17. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.20913/2618-7515-2024-2-9-17

15. Khobrakova NG (2010) About the legendary Buryat Eagle. U podviga sroka net: st., vospominaniya, pis'ma voyen. let, frontovyye dnevniki, dokumenty. Ulan-Ude, pp. 238–248. (In Russ.).

16. Zhalsanova BTs and Kuras LV (2021) «Whoever survives this war will be forever happy and free...». Front-line diary of Hero of the So-viet Union V. B. Borsoev as a source on the history of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. Vestnik arkhivista 1: 218–231. (In Russ.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-0101-2021-1-218-231

17. Khalkharova LTs (2018) Buryat diary prose of the war peri-od. Prostranstva kommunikatsii: yazyk, literatura, media: materialy Mezhdunar. nauch. konf., posvyashch. 100-letiyu Irkutskogo gos. un-ta (Irkutsk, 18–21 sent. 2018 g.). Irkutsk, pp. 188–195. (In Russ.).

18. Nizhnikova GS (2010) I compose an ode to the soldier... U podviga sroka net: st., vospominaniya, pis'ma voen. let, frontovye dnevniki, dokumenty. Ulan-Ude, pp. 250–260. (In Russ.).

19.

20.