The explosion on 1 August 1918 in Omsk

The aim of the work is to analyze the causes and consequences of a tragic incident - an explosion of ammunition in Omsk at the cargo yard of the city railway station on August 1, 1918. The incident is first studied in historiography. The following objectives are reached in the study. Firstly, the complex of sources that give an idea of the event were studied. Secondly, the factors and actions of specific individuals and forces that led to the tragedy and influenced the course of the investigation of its causes were identified. Thirdly, the research aspects were determined that emerged due to the anthropological study of the event regarding the situation of the Civil War. For the preparation of the work, mainly unpublished sources, stored in the Historical Archive of Omsk Oblast, were used. These are the protocols of interrogation of witnesses and materials of office work, which are part of the investigation file in the fund of the Omsk District Court, and the records of the victims of the explosion, made in the registers of the Orthodox churches of Omsk, available in the fund of the Omsk Spiritual Consistory. Memoirs, periodicals, and photographic documents were also used. The connection between the general historiography of the topic and the issue under study is described. The anthropological approach combined with the comparative historical and problematic chronological methods formed the theoretical basis of the work. Particular attention in the publication is paid to an attempt to a “politicized use” of the tragedy by representatives of the right-wing conservative public, who saw the cause of the incident, like all Russia's failures, as a “German-Bolshevik trace”. In conclusion, the author states the inconsistency of the initial version of the investigation about the malicious intent of certain political forces. The inquest recognized the cause of the tragedy as criminal negligence, initiating the closure of the case. This was also facilitated by the changed political conjuncture of the anti-Bolshevik Omsk, which perceived the incident as a local one. In the case under consideration, the anthropological vision of the past orients us towards comprehending the circumstances of the military and political everyday life of the Civil War, the psychology of the tragedy's contemporaries who lived in the militarized society, the influence of the phenomena of captivity and the human factor. The work is intended for a wide range of readers, including specialists who study military history, military anthropology, the Civil War in Russia and Siberian everyday life in this period.

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