Региональная история и краеведение

The article examines the activities of the anti-bribery commission under the Saratov Provincial Council of National Economy. The methods of the commission’s work and strategies for combating corruption in Soviet economic bodies in the early 1920s are analyzed. The author studies the results of the commission’s activities as one of the first purges in Soviet bodies after the approval of the NEP. 

The article examines the history of military educational institutions evacuated to the city of Volsk during the Civil War. The role of the Volsky machine gun courses and the Kronstadt diving school in the training of commanders for the Red Army and the Red Army is explored. The contribution of Volsky cadets in the defeat of Popov’s detachments in the Saratov Volga region and their participation in the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power in Transcaucasia and Central Asia is studied.

The article deals with the problem of previously unexplored charitable activities of the Volga Germans within the framework of the functioning of the Saratov branch of the Russian Red Cross Society. Particular attention is paid to the characterisation of the charity of the local German population of the county towns and villages. It is stated that the types and forms of German charitable activity did not differ from those inherent in the rest of the population of the province.

The article is devoted to the problems of social unrest caused by cholera epidemics in Russia in the 19th century. The subject of the author’s research is regional problems, namely the events that took place in the Saratov province, which still remain poorly studied in historiography. Based on the analysis of documentary materials stored in the State Archives of the Saratov Region, the causes and consequences of the “cholera riots” in the Saratov province are revealed.

During the Great Patriotic War, the rear areas of the country became centres where a network of evacuation and local hospitals was created. One of those regions was the Saratov Volga region. The paper considers the patriotic movements that unfolded in Saratov and the region to provide various assistance from the population to hospitals in which wounded soldiers and officers of the Red Army were treated. The author comes to the conclusion that people of the city and villagers immediately responded to the calls of the local authorities for help.

The article examines the activities of the American Relief Administration (ARA), a US charitable organization in Russia, during the mass famine of 1921–1923, and shows its specific role in eliminating hunger in the Saratov Volga region. 300 employees who came from America and about 10,000 Soviet citizens were involved in providing assistance. The humanitarian mission helped starving children and the sick with food, clothing, and meditsines, primarily in the most famine-stricken provinces of the Volga region.

This article examines how informal connections of A. A. Geraklitov (1867–1933), established during his work in the Saratov Scientific Archival Commission (SSAC, Russian: Саратовская ученая архивная комиссия, СУАК) in 1908–1917, influenced his path in historical science. Based on the materials of personal correspondence, the circle of his closest comrades in the commission is outlined, through which a certain idea is given about the social and intellectual aspects of the SSAC.

The article presents for the first time the biography of Saratov voivode Grigory Fedorovich Elizarov, as well as brief information about his ancestors, the Murom nobles. G. F. Elizarov began his service at the court of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the late 1570s. Under tsars Fyodor Ivanovich and Boris Godunov, he served for a long time as an elected nobleman in Murom, and in this rank was appointed to Saratov. Having become a Moscow nobleman under False Dmitry I, G. F. Elizarov in 1606 led the opposition to Tsar Vasily Shuisky in the Murom district.