Project of publishing G.N. Potanin's ''Selected Works'' in five volumes

In the last decades of the 20th century the question of republishing the main works of Grigory Nikolaevich Potanin arose repeatedly. There was a paradoxical situation: his correspondence is published, a ''Case on separation of Siberia from the Russian state" [1] is taken out of the archive, in Pavlodar, the homeland of the researcher (now it is Kazakhstan) they published ''Selected Works" in three volumes [2], but the main works of an outstanding expert in Siberian ethnography and folklore are inaccessible for the present day mass reader. It negatively affects the development of region study, which is regional cultural and historical consciousness. Besides the editorial quality of these editions is not good: tens of mistakes and typographical errors in the 5-volume edition of "Letters", subjective selection of material in the 3-volume "Selected Works" of the edition of Pavlodar University. An appreciable step forward is expected to belong to "Potanin Encyclopedia", which has been worked on for about 10 years with both Siberians, and Muscovites participating. This private encyclopedia demanded efforts of experts of different fields and helped to realize the universality of interests and knowledge of the "honourable citizen of Siberia". For scientific commenting of the complete collection of works by Potanin (estimation shows that it will be over 20 volumes of a large format) it is necessary to involve experts in diverse spheres of knowledge - historians (experts in Siberia and orientalists), botanists, climatologists, linguists, geographers, ethnographers and specialists in folklore. In A.M. Sagalayev and V.M. Kryukov's opinion, "Potanin's life and creativity are a striking example of the universalism of old times" [3]. Such universality of knowledge does overwhelm modern experts. For this reason Potanin's scientific heritage is considered in detail. Basing on the information about the existing editions of G.N. Potanin's compositions the article describes the prospectus of his "Selected Works" in five volumes, which is now being prepared for publication. On real material general questions of selection of works for the edition of the ''Selected'' kind, of principles of scientific commenting of texts are brought up.

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