Today's wide access to archival materials of the Soviet era and the involvement of modern new research methodology allow a holistic and objective analysis of Soviet industrial policy, including one in the coal industry, as well as to determine the features of its development in the Volyn region. Taking into account the lack of thorough research on the history of the coal industry of Volyn region, the proposed dissertation is the first comprehensive study on the history of the coal industry of Volyn region in the second half of the 40's – early 90's of the twentieth century. The search for ways to restructure the coal regions by the Ukrainian authorities forces them to re-trace and analyze the process of development of coal production in the Volyn region under Soviet leadership. Today, the coal industry is in a difficult position due to insufficient funding, reduced coal production, low technical modernization of mining equipment, and mines are almost on the verge of final liquidation. Therefore, scientists now have the opportunity to determine the preconditions for the crisis and the decline of the coal industry, which caused the policy of the CPSU. Thus, the dissertation is relevant for modern historical science. Insufficient level of study of the history of the coal industry of Ukraine determines the novelty of the researcher's scientific work. The dissertation analyzes the state of scientific study of this problem. Three groups of historiographical works: Soviet, domestic and foreign are identified. They give a general description of the formation of the coal industry of the USSR, its importance in the structure of heavy industry of the USSR, but they do not fully cover the problems of development of coal enterprises within the Lviv-Volyn coal basin. Execution of the set tasks led to the use of a wide base of sources. Archival materials of the central archives of the Russian Federation and Ukraine are used in the work, in particular: the State Archives of the Russian Federation (obtained by the author upon request), the Central State Archive of Public Associations of Ukraine, the Central State Archive of Higher Authorities of Ukraine, the State Security Archives of Ukraine. A significant amount of archival information is taken from the State Archives of the Volyn region, the State Enterprise « Lvivvugillia» and the Archival Department of the Chervonohrad City Council. In total, the dissertation used materials from 262 cases, 48 descriptions, 34 funds placed in seven archives. In addition to archival materials, collections of documents and materials, memoirs, diaries, oral testimonies, photographs, statistics, etc. have been used. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, systematization, scientificity and comprehensiveness. Among many methods used in the work, there have been used the general science methods - analysis and synthesis, typology, logical, system-structural, etc. and historical ones – historical-chronological, comparative, cliometric , retrospective, scientific heuristics, criticism of sources, methods of historical source studies. Their combination and complex use allowed to realize the research tasks formulated in the work and to achieve the set goal.
