The Regional Peculiarities and Identity of the Ural Old Industrial District: Socio-Topological Aspects

Starting with the large-scale transformations of Peter the Great in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the mining industry of the Urals was subjected to increased state and legal regulation. Based on theoretical aspects of social topology, an attempt is made to describe the influence of the regional peculiarities and identity of the Ural old industrial region on the forms of management and social practices of the region’s mining economy. The work’s purpose is to identify the difference in the organisation of factory production, depending on the form of ownership of the enterprise: state, possessional, or allodial. It is necessary to identify the role of administrative and economic practices and constraining and developing factors: the vast territory and the predominance of traditional management and everyday practices, on which private and state entrepreneurship had been based on for a long time. The dual system of mining and civil administrations led to the emergence of complex phenomena like the district system (V. V. Adamov) and polymorphism (I. V. Poberezhnikov). The authors try to substantiate one of the main reasons for increased social turbulence in the early twentieth century. On the basis of this study, it can be assumed that in the conditions of a balanced development of industry at the micro-, meso-, and macro- levels, the need to resort to the levers of mobilisation and forced modernisation decreased due to the sufficient availability of financial, industrial, natural, and human resources.