THE JOURNAL OF REGIONAL HISTORY V.3 No.2
You May Gallop for Three Years before You Reach a Foreign Country… Cities of Si...
THE JOURNAL OF REGIONAL HISTORY V.3 No.2

You May Gallop for Three Years before You Reach a Foreign Country… Cities of Siberia in the Diaries of Siberian Gold-Mining Magnate Yakov Frizer

Authors:
Irena Vladimirsky
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This article focuses on the diaries of Siberian gold-mining magnate Yakov Frizer, the diaries being a replica of the original texts written anew in 1921–1931 in Harbin, where he moved after the October revolution of 1917. The diaries of Frizer are unique in their content and structure. Originally, they were intended to be a memoir rather than a source of purely informative character. Close reading of these diaries breaks many stereotypes deeply rooted both in everyday practice and among researchers – namely, of Siberia being a distant outlying region with its own habits and norms where nothing interesting and significant happens; of Siberia being the land of the eternal cold and half-civilized local tribes where the residents get against their own volition; of the image of a Jew persecuted by the authorities and limited in his opportunities.
Irena Vladimirsky
PhD, Head of the History of the Ideas Department,
Achva Academic College, Beer Tuviia, Israel
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4766-5312
irena@achva.ac.il
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Keywords:
Yakov Frizer, personal archive, Siberian cities and towns, ego-documents, merchants, gold-mining industry, diaries, Jews
For citation:
Vladimirsky, I. “You May Gallop for Three Yyears before You Reach a Foreign Country… Cities of Siberia in the Diaries of Siberian Gold-Mining Magnate Yakov Frizer.” Historia Provinciae – The Journal of Regional History, vol. 3, no. 2 (2019): 672–711, http:// doi.org/10.23859/2587-8344-2019-3-2-4

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