Vitaliy Grigorievich Zelyak,
Doctor of History, Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e‑mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Gold-Mining Offices of Siberia in 1923–1925: Main Results of Activity
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-1-15
The main purpose of the article is to analyze the activities of four gold-mining offices in Siberia for the entire period of their existence (1923–1925), to determine their role and significance in Siberian gold mining. The relevance of the research is determined by the fact that significant gaps in the historiography of the industrial development of Siberia of the 1920s are filled, the experience of organizational work and the main results of the activities of small-scale gold industry units in the conditions of the new economic policy are studied. The author used historical-genetic, historical-comparative, concrete-historical methods. The methodological basis of the research is a region-oriented approach developed within the framework of modernization theory. In the course of the study, it was established that the Altai, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk gold-mining offices were organized by the Siberian authorities under the general leadership of Sibprombyuro to involve a huge mass of remote mines in the operation. These divisions gave organizational stability to mining operations in their areas of activity and consistently implemented a course of transition from buying gold to organizing prospecting works. At the same time, gold-mining offices failed to satisfactorily resolve a number of acute problems: to ensure their own self-sufficiency, organize geological exploration, mechanize production, etc. Having found out that, on average, during the 1922/1923–1924/1925 operational years, gold-mining offices gave the country about one ton of gold (this corresponded to 4.2 % of all-Siberian and 2.16 % of all-Union production during this period), the author comes to the conclusion about a relatively small but valuable contribution to the replenishment of the country’s gold reserves. In the future, it seems promising to compare the work of gold-mining offices with the activities of the Sibzoloto trust, which replaced them, to consider the problems of the development of the prospecting sector and the work of tenants of gold mines by the mid-1920s related to the activities of gold-mining offices.
Publishing: 28/02/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 01.12.2022
How to cite: Zelyak V.G. Gold-Mining Offices of Siberia in 1923–1925: Main Results of Activity // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 1 (27), pp. 186–196. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-1-15.pdf]
Links: Issue 1 2023
Keywords: Siberia; Sibprombyuro; goldmining industry; gold-mining offices; prospectors