The role of electrification in the industrialization of the Russian Far East (1929-1937)

The article deals with the role of electrification in the industrialization of the Russian Far East during the first five-year plans. In the current state programs for the development of the Russian Far East, an appeal to the historical experience of economic development of this region is becoming topical. The main factor of industrialization, the electrification of industry, is still remains poorly studied in the study of problems of development of the Far Eastern part of Russia in the 1930s. In this article the author analyzes the regional specificity of the process of electrical engineering restructuring of industrial enterprises, reveals the importance of the use of electrical equipment and machines in various types of production in the 1930s. The source of the research is scientific, technical, production and economic documentation, concentrated in the funds of the Russian State Archive of Economics, the State Archives of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Historical Archive of the Far East, the State Archives of the Primorsky Territory and the State Archives of the Khabarovsk Territory. The research is based on the principles of historicism and interdisciplinarity. The first allowed the author to consider the process of electrifying the industry of the Far East since the late 1920s until the end of the 1930s in accordance with the specific historical situation, taking into account the cause-effect relations. The second principle played a decisive role in covering problems that are not directly related to the historical orientation of the work, such aspects as technical, economic and others. The historical-comparative method contributed to revealing the regularities, trends and distinctive features of the electrotechnical restructuring of industrial enterprises of the Far East in the period under review. Using the problem-chronological method, some narrower issues were singled out from a general theme and were considered in chronological order. The first part of the article it reveals the process of electrification of such heavy industry enterprises as coal, machine building, non-ferrous metallurgy, oil, construction materials. In the second - the enterprises of forestry, fish, food and light industry. The author comes to the conclusion that the electrotechnical re-equipment of Far Eastern enterprises has become a decisive factor in the industrialization of the Russian Far East, the growth of regional industrial production, the discovery of its new species and the increase of efficiency and labor productivity.

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