Political views and public activities of N. Novoselskogo

The purpose of the article lies in the study of political attitudes and activities of a well-known lawyer N. Novombergsky. Field of research is the reconstruction and analysis of the circumstances of the scientist's life, the results of his impact on the political processes in Siberia in the first third of the XX century and the influence on the surrounding social reality. Thus defined, the field studies led to the use of the techniques of psychohistory, which allowed to find out the influence of his childhood and youth on the formation of the foundations of his world; the historical-legal method that enabled us to establish the type of legal consciousness of the scientist to analyse his legal writings; the methods of social history, which allowed to assess the effectiveness and impact of the scientist on the socio-political processes and influence of these processes on the evolution of his views. Methodological basis of research was the dialectic method, the principles of objectivity and historicism. Historical sources for the research were the scientific and journalistic works of the scientist, autobiographical materials, documents of state bodies and the judicial investigation of the case of A. Kolchak's Ministers. A number of documents were introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. In the result of the research the author came to the following conclusions. Difficult childhood and adolescence defined the programmatic basis of the Novombergsky's worldview and the ability to adapt to changing social reality. Education, experience, public service, research and teaching in Tomsk University allowed him to become one of the outstanding attorneys of the Russian Empire. He was a positivist, an advocate of constitutional development, the theory of the welfare state, Siberian regionalism, autonomy of the peoples of Siberia. His political activity led to conflicts with officials of the Russian Empire, a military dictatorship of Kolchak, the Soviet authorities. The nature of these conflicts was in lawyer's opposition to the non-legal methods of implementation of the state policy. However Novombergsky was able to realize the most important ideas of the constitutional agenda: the idea of the autonomous Siberia influenced the political processes of the civil war period and was partially implemented through the creation of the Siberian region during the Soviet period; the idea of protection of the Siberian peoples has been realized with the creation of national-territorial and national-cultural autonomies in 1918-1920s. Novombergsky played a prominent role in the development of planning the national economy of Siberia in the 1920s. The contribution of the scientist to the development of national education in Siberia and the Russian North was valuable.

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