UNFINISHED COLLECTIVE WORK: PREPARATION OF “OCHERKI ISTORII URALA” IN THE LATE 1950S — EARLY 1960S (Documents from the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences)

The publication spotlights documentation materials related to the preparation for publishing the collective work “Ocherki istorii Urala” (hereinafter referred to as “Ocherki”) in the late 1950s — early 1960s at the A. M. Gorky Ural State University (USU). The complex of published sources includes correspondence between representatives of scientific and educational institutions, the decision to hold the Interregional Scientific Conference on the history of the Urals in 1958 in Sverdlovsk, which discussed the prospectus of “Ocherki”, the order on the organization of work and the plan of the two-volume book. The documents have undoubted value for studying the scientific and organizational activities of researchers involved in the work on this collective project. They contain information about the characteristics and structure of the early version of the “Ocherki”, plans, the composition of potential editors and authors. The published documents are of particular interest for studying the coordination of the research work of historians in the Ural region, as well as their cooperation with colleagues from the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The opening article underlines the relevance of these sources and characterizes their specifics. Special attention is paid to the circumstances of the work on the “Ocherki”: employees of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences (in addition to V. K. Yatsunsky, such authors as B. B. Kafengauz, N. V. Ustyugov, N. I. Pavlenko, A. P. Bazhova and other scholars were considered) and their enrollment in the preparation for publishing this collective research.