Panorama of the public life of Novonikolaevsk in figures and facts (1895 – February 1917)

Novonikolaevsk did not have a long history and administrative status of at least a county seat. It emerged in 1894 as an industrial, commercial and transport hub in Tomsk region during the construction of the Siberian Railway and became a place of increased concentration of employees, entrepreneurs and hired workers. Novonikolaevsk grew up at the intersection of the navigable Ob River and the Siberian Railway. The main occupation of its inhabitants was the transshipment and processing of Altai products - bread, butter, meat, timber, fish from the Baraba lakes. The social life of Novonikolaevsk was different from an ordinary Russian city on the scale of a county center, since workers from mills, sawmills, printing houses, a state-owned biscuit factory, porters and railway station loaders, dray drivers, shop clerks were the main workers. Entrepreneurs could not choose merchant certificates and differed in appearance and morals from the "dirty" shopkeepers. Enterprises were built using steam and electric motors, steam locomotives, steamships and factories smoked. The social life of Novorokolaevsk was much more intense than in an ordinary Russian city on the scale of a county center. Various subjects related to the manifestations of social activity of the city's population in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were highlighted in the works of experts on the history of the socio-political movement in Siberia, but they did not conduct a quantitative analysis. The authors of this article have set themselves the goal of forming a holistic view of the scale, dynamics and features of the social movement in Novonikolaevsk in the late XIX -early XX century. based on a generalization and quantitative analysis of the facts available to historians. To achieve this goal, the materials of the chronicle of the socio-political life of Tomsk province compiled by the authors were used, supplemented by some information from an essay on the history of charity in Tomsk province, and recent monographs. In total, 241 facts indicating the presence of socio-political activity, including 48 public organizations, 125 public actions, 68 facts of agitation and propaganda through the distribution of illegal publications, leaflets and newspapers, were recorded in Novonikolaevsk in 1894 - February 1917 (Table 1). Of the 48 public organizations, 10 were philanthropic, 8 - leisure, 3 - scientific and educational, 18 - economic, 8 - political, 1 - sober. For a city without travel, this is an outstanding indicator. For comparison, it can be noted that there were at least a hundred public associations of various purposes in Tomsk province, about 72 in Barnaul, 20 in Biysk, 15 in Mariinsk, and no more than 5-10 organizations in other county towns. Thus, non-political forms of social activity were the main ones, they formed the skills of social organization in the leisure, philanthropic, and economic spheres of city life. The Socialists and Black Hundreds were the most politically active; the liberal movement remained unformed until 1917 The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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