SOURCES ON PRE-REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF SIBERIA IN THE ARCHIVES AND BOOK COLLECTIONS OF THE USA, CANADA, THE UK AND GERMANY

Abstract

In the XX century the research work in the Russian and later Soviet archives and libraries entailed great difficulties for foreign researchers. Under these circumstances the efforts of Westerns scholars aimed at creating archives and book collections of "Rossica" in their own countries were of key importance. The purpose of the paper is to review main collections of documentary materials and printed editions on pre-revolutionary history ofSiberiain foreign countries in order to make an objective evaluation of historical sources available to Western researchers. The author shows that such collections of materials connected with the early period of Siberian history have been deposited in the archives and libraries funds inCanada,Great Britain,Germany, and other countries. The largest collections of "Rossica" and "Sibirica" are located in the USA - in the Library of Congress; Harvard and Yale Universities; the University of Hawaii and the UC Berkeley; the University of Alaska Fairbanks; Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University; the National Archives in Washington, DC etc. For the most part these documentary collections appeared owing to the efforts of researchers who came fromRussia– F. A. Golder, M. Z. Vinokouroff, B. A. Bakhmeteff, G. A. Lensen, A. Ya. Gutman-Gan, V. Lado-Motsarskiy, A. S. Lukashkin and others. Western researchers compensated certain limitations of available sources on Siberian history by using the published materials, translating historical documents into English and German. With all the variety of sources on Siberian history kept in the archives and book collections outside Russia, Western historians still have the tasks of further expansion of source base, more active cooperation with the research centres, archives and libraries in Russia.