The main purpose of the project is the analysis of the diaries, notes, and letters of the big Siberia Jewish gold entrepreneur Yakov Frizer (Barguzin, 1869 – Harbin, 1932). Yakov Frizer personal archive makes possible the reconstruction of everyday life of Siberian merchant strata, peculiarities of the Eastern Siberia exploration, development of gold mining industry and consolidation of the local merchant elite, interaction between the merchant class and the state, the fate of private initiative, peculiarities of the Jewish question in Siberia, problems of national and religious tolerance.
The project is based on the extended use of original ego-document that reconstruct the comprehensive reality of everyday life of the Siberian society at the end of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th centuries. The researches are planning to connect between different groups of historical sources which were never used as a part of the sole research ground or never being a part of historical research (the Russian Geographic Society funds, private funds of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Russian state Historical Archive (RGIA), the State Archive of the Khabarovsk region, libraries and archive of the Russia Abroad (Moscow), Russian State library, local museums of Irkutsk and Bodaibo, Chita regional museum, funds of the Bakhmetyev archive (New York), fund of the Hoover Institute (Stanford), the Finland National Library, the National Library of the Czech Republic, etc.). As a result of the project, the researches are planning the publication of the monograph "No one could jump ABOVE himself: the unfulfilled dreams of the Jewish Siberian gold entrepreneur Yakov Frizer" (preliminary title) and the organization of the thematical exhibition.
Dr. Irena Vladimirsky, Achva Academic College, Israel.
Prof. Maria Krotova, St. Petersburg State University of Economics, Russia.
In the picture: the working room of Yakov Frizer in Harbin (fragment). Source: personal archive of Tamar Alexander-Frizer.