Article
Article name Foreign Historiography of the Soviet BAM: Thematic Dominants and Main Narratives
Authors Baikalov N.S. Candidate of History, Associate Professor, baikalov@bsu.ru
Bibliographic description Baikalov N. S. Foreign Historiography of the Soviet BAM: Thematic Dominants and Main Narratives // Humanitarian Vector. 2018. Vol. 13, No. 4. PP. 62–69. DOI: 10.21209/1996-7853-2018-13-4-62-69.
Section Regional History
UDK 930.1:94(571.5)
DOI 10.21209/1996-7853-2018-13-4-62-69
Article type
Annotation The late Soviet modernization of Siberia and the Far East occupies one of the central places in the foreign historiography of “developed socialism”. The Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), one of the greatest projects of the period, attracted foreign authors’ interests practically from the first years of construction. During the Cold War, attention to the BAM was caused to assess the effectiveness of the socialist system and determine the prospects for its development. Currently, there is a new rise in the research activity of foreign scientists, which is associated with the “Asian vector” of Russia’s foreign economic strategy and intensive raw development in the region. The work focuses on identifying thematic dominants and key narratives in foreign studies on the Soviet period of the BAM. Using traditional and interdisciplinary historiographic methods the author describes such thematic areas as the reasons for the construction, the motives for the arrival of builders, the comparison of official and unofficial images of the BAM, and an assessment of the BAM role in the history of the country. Typical interpretations forming the key narratives of research within every thematic dominant are described. All the narratives are correlated with three main periods of foreign historiography of the BAM.
Key words Baikal-Amur Mainline, late socialism, socialist modernization, socio-economic development, historiography
Article information
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