Murmansk railway: organization and transformation of social order

The article deals with the system of formation of a multi-ethnic social structure during the construction of the Murmansk Railway. The main problem is the collision of the official norms of social order with traditional ethnic norms in the specific conditions of the formation of local society. The Department for the Construction of the Murmansk Railway is a formal structure, which was organized in 1914. This structure provided the coordination and management of different ethnic and social groups. Using the rules established in the legal documents helped to organize the normative order, which proved problematic to maintain at some of the construction sites. There was no transport infrastructure in the area. This deprived the management of the ability to carry out coordinating and controlling functions, which led to the transformation of the public order by the construction participants. Thus, social order was ensured through ethnic traditions rather than through the functional distribution of duties and powers on the basis of relevant norms.