Scientific article

УДК 94(47)+94(394)

DOI 10.28995/2073-0101-2021-1-93-104

Natalia L. Pushkareva, Irina V. Bogdashina

N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

Personal Provenance Sources on the History of Provincial Daily Life of Soviet Women in the 1950–1960s

Abstract

Introduction of women’s ego-documents (diaries) into scientific use as is an urgent task of gender anthropology and history of everyday life. 179 diaries of the surgeon Zinaida Sedelnikova, found in the State Archive of the Volgograd Region, are a comprehensive documentary source for studying women’s everyday life in one of the cities of the Middle Volga region. It allows us to reveal features of the daily life of a non-capital city through the prism of female perception. The authors set themselves the task of analyzing in detail a document that reflected the everyday life of a city dweller in a non-capital city in the Middle Volga region that was reviving after the war. In the course of the work, historical-comparative, biographical (biography as case analysis), aggregative methods have been used. The author of diaries lived for 60 years in Volgograd, studied and worked there as a doctor. Her way of thinking, value system, everyday practices have interested the participants of a collective project for studying the characteristics of Russian female social memory. The records dating from 1951 to 1969 (notebooks no. 35–85) depict professional, home, family, everyday, and festive life of the Soviet provincial city in its repeatability and rhythm. The diaries contain detailed descriptions of foraging (food and non-food products) in the provincial Soviet city, housing conditions, household life (cleaning methods, simple recipes preserved in oral tradition or borrowed from newspapers and magazines are listed), impressions of leisure activities, relationships with relatives and friends. An emotional, sometimes poetic description of events (the author rhymed and wrote down poems in her diary) is revealed through the prism of female perception. This allows us recreate the provincial female life; photographs, newspaper clippings, calendars, telegrams, letters, theater booklets, event tickets, shreds of fabrics, herbarium present the details of everyday life and help to analyze the identity of a women from amongst the intellectual elite of the Soviet city of the 1950–1960s.

Keywords

Ego-documents, diaries, women's history, women's social memory, gender anthropology of everyday life, life of the Soviet province in the 1950–1960s, State Archive of the Volgograd Region, heuristic potential of a source.

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About the authors

Pushkareva Natalia Lvovna, PhD in History, professor, Russian Academy of Sciences, N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Center for Gender Studies, head of the center, Moscow, Russian Federation, +7-916-324-93-89, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Bogdashina Irina Vladimirovna, graduate student, Russian Academy of Sciences, N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Center for Gender Studies, Moscow, Russian Federation, +7-905-330-13-78, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Grant information

This article has been prepared with financial support of the Russian Fund for Basic Research (science project no. 19-09-00191) “Women’s social memory as a consolidating potential of a multi-generational family, strengthening statehood and the Russian nation (18th–21st century).”

Submitted 18.03.2020, published (for citation):

PUSHKAREVA, N. L., BOGDASHINA, I. V. Istochniki lichnogo proiskhozhdeniya po istorii zhenskoi sovetskoi provintsial'noi povsednevnosti 1950–1960-kh gg. [Personal Provenance Sources on the History of Provincial Daily Life of Soviet Women in the 1950–1960s. In Russ.]. IN: Vestnik arhivista / Herald of an Archivist, 2021, no. 1, pp. 93-104. doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2021-1-93-104