Рассматриваются вопросы истории Февральской буржуазно-демократической и Октябрьской большевистской революции в контексте истории уездного сибирского города Тюмени. В качестве приоритетов выбраны сюжеты, связанные с повседневными наблюдениями и оценками людей, попавших в непростую жизненную ситуацию. Сделана попытка создать эффект «включенности» читателя в события. Вряд ли стоит полагать, что в период революции произошел переход «от чужой к своей власти». Делается вывод, что интерес обычного горожанина не выходил за рамки будничной борьбы за выживание, а «героическими» эти события сделала их мифологизация второй половины 1920-1930-х гг.

The article deals with the history of the February bourgeois-democratic and the October Bolshevik revolutions in the context of the history of the provincial Siberian city Tyumen. The purpose of the work is to analyze the views, opinions and evaluations as well as the actions of the contemporaries of these events whose main intention was to survive in the political disorders and economic ruin. The sources are not only archives but also memories, rumors, gossip, speculation, stories related to public events, all that is called personal testimonies. The research methodology is based on an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the revolution through the prism of the history of everyday life, historical anthropology, gender history, the history of emotions as well as the experience concept which is the interpretation of active and passive experiences of an urban community. Subjects related to everyday observations and assessments of ordinary people caught in difficult life situations have been chosen as priorities. The author intentionally ignores the political or socio-economic component which is traditionally provided by official authorities regardless of their ideological orientation since they do not quite correctly reflect the essence and perception of the revolutionary events by ordinary people. The history of everyday life and subjectivity is limited to the world of ordinary people. It is based not so much on official documents but rather on personal correspondence, memoirs, rumors and evidence. The mood of people according to reports and their mood in real life are different things. The description of daily events made "from a bird's eye view" and with the help of official documents loses a quality important for the history of everyday life: it ceases to touch, loses the effect of indirect contact, of dangerous proximity. The article analyses the events from March 1917 to July 1918: dispersion of power, household difficulties and the redistribution of property rights, the change of power - everything that directly affected the everyday life of the district town. A steady decline in living standards which began in August 1914 and led to a humanitarian catastrophe of 1921 influenced the citizens' emotions more than the monarchy collapse, the collapse of state institutions, political community degradation, the establishment and the fall of the Soviet power, the Civil War in the region. The person in the revolution era was more concerned about food availability, an opportunity to get clothes, common and infectious diseases than paper decrees and orders. The late autumn of 1917 was a gray and inexpressive period and the Bolshevik revolution in Petrograd was estimated by Tyumen residents just as a change of one provisional government by another. The author has made an attempt to create the effect of "involvement" of the reader and to avoid the notorious "local conditions" which did not appear at a closer examination. It is hardly worth believing that there was a transition from "alien government to the native one" during the revolution. As a result, a conclusion has been made that the interest of an ordinary citizen did not go beyond everyday survival and these events became "heroic" only due to the mythologization of the second half of the 1920s and the 1930s.