Population of small towns of North Ossetia: between the village and the city

Abstract

The article presents the problem of putting into practice the main directions of state policy, which was later called the «Soviet project». Along with the undoubted successes of the all-Union policy in the North Caucasus, it should also be noted that the leveling of the traditional specifics of the region led to the inhibition of some plans of the Soviet government, there were not the results that the central government hoped for.The article is written in line with a new trend in Russian historiography - historical anthropology. In regional studies, the history of small towns has not yet become an object of interdisciplinary analysis, although it is a frontier topic that requires the joint efforts of historians, political scientists, sociologists, and specialists in other humanities. The object of the study was the population of small towns in North Ossetia, which by a directive method turned from rural residents into townspeople. One of the most important directions was the formation of urban settlements by merging several promising villages and the formation of a city. Cities specialized in those industries that were provided with local raw materials.At the same time, traditional forms of dormitories and farming were not taken into account. The creation of cityforming enterprises expanded the labor opportunities of «new citizens» who adopted professions unknown to themselves and moved away from agriculture over time. On the basis of a corpus of heterogeneous documents, an attempt has been made to study the folding mentality of new urban residents, yesterday’s collective farmers. The study of the issue showed that traditional and urban forms of dormitories, cultures and mentalities coexisted in small towns, which represented a peculiarity in the process of urban environment development.The study of the features of the socio-cultural, economic, psychological formation of «new citizens» makes it possible to fill in the problems in the study of an important scientific direction «urban history».

Keywords

• city
• transformation
• population
• city-forming enterprises
• culture
• migration