Abstracts of thesis about the Japanese prisoners of war in the USSR (1945-1956) as the historiographical source

The paper first presents the results of research of abstracts of candidate and doctoral thesis, defended in Russia in the period of 1994-2016, which cover issues of stay of Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union in the period 1945-1956. It is noted that until 1994 defense of the thesis was not, because theme of Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union is one of the newest in Russian historiography; it ceased to be a “closed” only at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Analysis of abstracts was conducted on a number of parameters, presented in the structure of the article: number of thesis (respectively, abstracts), years of defenses, specialty; organization, which performed the thesis; institutional aspects of defense; supervisors (consultants); opponents; leading organizations; object and subject of research; source base; methodology. The author concluded that sufficiently serious consideration by candidates mandatory sections of dissertations on historical sciences. The absence in one case section “methodology” was caused, in our opinion, the sit u-ation of the methodological uncertainty faced by applicants in the 1990s and early 2000s. The author noted the presence in the vast majority abstracts solid characteristics of the source base studies that indicates a serious search and research work of the authors and gives reasons to believe sufficient deep study of their thesis problems. The author concluded that the studied abstracts of thesis are very important historiographical source.