Basic historical sources for the study of living conditions of urban population in Western Siberia during the Great Patriotic War

The article contains main types of historical sources (published and unpublished), which help to reconstruct the scene of living conditions of urban population in Western Siberia during the Great Patriotic War. Investigation of the living conditions is nearly concerned with a big theme of daily living during the War, which is treated as a matter of high priority in the current context. All sources can be divided into the following groups: 1) legislative and regulatory legal acts, 2) documents of management and record keeping, 3) statistical material and documents, 4) materials of central and local periodical press, 5) personal documents. Group 1 includes published guiding documents of higher bodies of state authority, which were of all-union importance. Regulatory acts of regional authorities, which were published in the local press, also refer to this group. Unpublished (archive) documents (regulations and decisions of local authorities), which were not intended for public media, but were legally binding, also belong to the group of regulatory acts. Generally, the analysis of legislative and regulatory legal acts makes it possible to look over the juridical and actual changes in the domestic policy under the conditions of war which influenced the living conditions of urban population. Group 2 includes archival (unpublished) documents. Their number is so huge that it is appropriate to separate some groups: a) deliverables, b) correspondence of state institutions and functionaries, c) records and report verbatim, d) current records of party organizations. The study of the documents makes it possible to delve deeper into the problems and find out facts that official information does not include. Group 3 is statistical material and published collections of documents. They provide a way to investigate the demographic situation of the region, quantitative and qualitative changes in national economy development. Periodical press, which is classified as Group 4, is a valuable, but very peculiar resource. Its value is that the newspapers immediately reacted to the major events of urban life, reported about made decisions, informed about coming events, volunteer clean-up, etc. The study of periodical press help the modern researcher to get into the atmosphere of the investigated period, feel the spirit of the war time. On the other hand, periodical press was censored by the All-Union Communist Party, had a pro-communist character and could not cover the current events objectively. In this regard, reading newspapers requires objective assessment of the publications. Group 5 includes personal documents (memories). They not only tell about the events of the war, but also give an emotional evaluation of what happened. When studying memoirs some facts are to be taken into account: the place and attitude of the author towards the events they write of, lapse of time, motives of publications. The value of such documents is in facts, examples of a private life, which were not reflected in any other source groups. That way, a conclusion should be drawn that to reconstruct a complete picture about the living conditions of urban population in Western Siberia during the Great Patriotic War all historical sources should be used taken together.

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