Dialectics of the core and the periphery in the development of the cultural environment of Barnaul in the 18th -19th centuries

The article deals with the problem of dialectical interaction between the sociocultural categories of the core and the periphery manifested as a flexible nonlinear process, as illustrated by the development of the city of Barnaul as a center of European culture in Siberia in the 18th-19th centuries. Based on the dialectical method, we use the core-periphery scheme in order to identify the course and dynamics of cultural development, focusing on the ambivalent nature of evolution of Barnaul’s urban cultural environment. As the starting point for the development of Barnaul’s urban environment we have identified one production and technical center beyond the Urals - Barnaul Silver Smelting Plant, around which a life-supporting infrastructure was formed, and subsequently company town transformed into a cultural center. In this context, we consider the phenomenon of “Petersburgia” in Barnaul, which is manifested in a number of analogies and similarities with St. Petersburg in the planning, infrastructure development and cultural life. The dialectics of the binary opposition "core-periphery" is also manifested in the reverse influence of Barnaul on St. Petersburg, in particular, in the role of Barnaul as a peripheral industrial center, which significantly influenced the development of the defense and economic potential of the Russian Empire. The study shown the development of a special type of regional culture in Altai Mountain District, which specificity was conditioned by the core-periphery model of socio-cultural interaction.