Electrification of the Orenburg village in 1953-1959s

The article analyzes the prerequisites in the 1950s for the implementation of continuous electrification of Orenburg villages by connecting collective and state farms to high-voltage centralized power plants. In this paper, rural electrification is understood as the process of distribution and use of electricity in rural areas: in production needs, in households, household premises, cultural, educational and medical institutions. The objectives of the study are: the need to identify the main periods of the electrification process of Orenburg collective and state farms in 1953-1964; identification of the main indicators characterizing the dynamics of electricity supply of the Orenburg village, including through the development of centralized power supply in 1953-1959. It became possible to solve the tasks set by the researchers through the use of a number of scientific principles and methods, such as: the principle of historicism and objectivity (allow unbiased to identify historical patterns characteristic of a particular historical period); historical-comparative, which makes it possible to compare the pace of electrification of the Orenburg region with the rate of other regions and the entire Soviet Union, chronological, thanks to it the periodization of the process of electrification of the Orenburg village was made up, statistical and other methods. As a result of the analysis of archival materials, it was possible to identify two key periods in the process of electrification of the Orenburg village. The first of them is associated with the development of centralized power supply, expressed in the connection of villages and hamlets of the Orenburg region to state-owned power plants. These processes refer to 1953-1959. The second period, covering 1960-1965, is characterized by the implementation of the policy of continuous electrification, the prerequisites for which emerged in the first period. For the first time, statistical data reflecting a number of key indicators have been systematized: the dynamics of electric power supply to collective and state farms; the energy balance of electric loads intended for rural areas by energy districts of the Orenburg region; and changes in the total electric power generation in the Orenburg region during the period under consideration. It was found that up to 1970 the problem of centralized power supply to the countryside could not be completely solved, because even in 1959 collective farms received most of their electricity from their own power plants, not from state-owned ones.