“Formers” in the Sib(Kray)Plan in the 1920s: Aspects of Social and Professional Adaptation

This publication examines one of the challenges of the post-revolutionary era, associated with Russia's exit from the Civil War and the transition to “civil peace”, which required its participants to adapt to the new reality. This challenge was particularly acute for formerly active figures in the anti-Bolshevik movement, who were repressed but later amnestied by the Bolshevik regime. The high demand for intellectual labor in the newly established state economic planning bodies allowed several of its representatives (Professor N. Ya. Novombergsky, General V. G. Boldyrev, and others) to occupy key positions in the creation and functioning of the Siberian (Regional) Plan in the 1920s. Based on information from personal files and departmental records, a reconstruction of several basic structures of the everyday life of representatives of this category (wages, living conditions, health status, etc.) has been carried out. It is concluded that the adaptation processes were characterized by a positive resocialization of the “former” workers, and their basic life support parameters converged with those of the regional mid-level nomenklatura. The social and professional aspects of their adaptation were interrelated, ensuring the high and sustainable effectiveness of their intellectual work, which had been interrupted by the Bolshevik regime's resumption of large-scale discriminatory and repressive policies against its former political opponents after 1928. Thus, the period of restoration and dynamic growth of the country's and the region's intellectual potential in the 1920s gave way to a policy of extermination of some of its bearers in the following decade.