ORDINARY LIFE,
EXTRAORDINARY TIMES
PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE
WHO WAS THE SOVIET “SUBJECT”?
• How did people think, view themselves and the
world around them?
• How successful was the regime in transforming the
consciousness of its people, in building New People
• How did people understand themselves, personally,
politically, historically…
SOURCES OF SELF EXPRESSION
& SELF DEVELOPMENT
• TEXTUAL
-autobiography, memoir
-diary
-testimonials
-letters
• -”ankety” (forms, applications, CVs)
• NONTEXTUAL
-display (appearance & choice)
-spaces
-relationships
GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE
SOVIET SUBJECT
• Totalitarian self (1930s-1960s)
• Resisting (anti-totalitarian) self (1960s-1990s)
• 1990s-2000s: multiple models
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
1968 COVER, AFTER THE FIRST CIRCLE
WAS PUBLISHED ABROAD
ANDREI SAKHAROV
THE BIG QUESTIONS FOR HISTORIANS,
FOR STUDENTS
• Is the self stable or dynamic?
• How much agency/choice is involved in
individual development?
• Can we ever access the “authentic” self
or “true belief” or only expressions of it
• How do forms of self-presentation shape
their content?
1920S:
A NEW WAY OF LIFE (BYT)
• Education, housing, hygiene, labor,
terror (i.e. reeducation) etc.
• New Social Classes
(Naiman, Halfin, Fitzpatrick…)
1930S: KUL’TURNOST’
• Transformation should be selfinitiated, monitored, and
perpetuated (“work on the self”)
• Socialist Realist “Big Men” as the
ideal
MODELS OF THE SOVIET SUBJECT
BASED ON THE 1930S
• New points of consensus:
1. Subject is socially-embedded in a particular society
2. Subject has some measure of agency
• Big Disagreements:
1. Usable Self, Pragmatic Self
(Fitzpatrick, Brooks, Petrone)
2. Negotiated Self
(Kotkin)
3. True Believer, Illiberal Self
(Halfin, Hellbeck, Kharkhodin)
A LETTER OF COMPLAINT,
DENOUNCEMENT 1930
“The position in our kolkhoz is pitiful. Comrades, answer us please
where we can find justice. We often read the papers and see in
them what great evil has been done in our Soviet Union by
enemies of the people of the rightist-Trotskyite bloc, how widely
it has spread, how they wrecked agriculture, how many horses
perished and pedi- greed cattle.... We as kolkhozniki, people
still unenlightened cannot get justice, for example in our kolkhoz
there is a very large amount of stealing of kolkhoz property […]
How many times we have told our local authorities about
this, both the kolkhoz board and also the chairman of the rural
soviet, Savoni, who has now been exposed as an enemy of the
people and the police chief Arkhipov who has also been taken
away by organs of the NKVD …but there were no results.”
From work of Shelia Fitzpatrick
FROM THE DIARY OF KOMSOMOL
ACTIVIST ANATOLII UL’IANOV:
• “4/12/1933 I’ve just read through a couple of pages. How
much emptiness, and how little reflection of life. The life about
which people write books…They rear heroes. But what do I
have? I will try to be more detailed and more prosaic in writing
about myself at home and at work.
• 5/7/1933. ‘The end of the notebook is approaching. The
notebook spans almost 8 months, i.e. 2/3s of a year,. But life is
very incompletely illuminated. It is even very, very slightly
illuminated. There are a lot of thoughts in there, but little on the
essence.”
Inspired by work of Jochen Hellbeck
FROM THE DIARY OF KOLKHOZ
ACTIVIST ALEKSANDR ZHELEZNIAKOV
ON 16TH ANNIVERSARY OF OCTOBER:
“How good it is to feel, live, and win in struggle! There
is not, there was not, and there will not be in world
history a generation more happy than ours. We are
the participants in the creation of a new epoch! Do
you remember, enemies, you who are encircling us
from all sides, that only 20 years ago we were puny
insects, crawling on master’s floors, and then this
paltry person, strangled by capitalism,
comprehended himself as a class and shattered the
whole world to its foundations on 7 November,
sixteen years ago…There is nothing greater than to be
a member, a citizen of the Soviet land and to belong
to Lenin’s Communist Party.”
MAJOR DISPUTES, QUESTIONS, RAISED
BY THE 1930S
• Is self-development in the 1930s static, enduring or
historically contingent?
• 1 or multiple Stalinist subjectivities?
• What about context? (adolescence, terror,
coercion)
• The gap between text and experience?
WWII: THE TURNING POINT
• War was inevitable, but unimaginable
• Momentary freedom, flexibility, questions about
“official script”
• A “people’s war”
• Short-term victory, long-term defeat
“THE MOTHERLAND IS CALLING YOU!”
MODELS OF SELF, BASED ON THE WAR
YEARS
• The Unknown, Unknowable Self
• The Entitled Self (the Little Man)
DRAWING BY VITIA LEONOV, LIVING IN
ORPHANAGE 42, A PICTURE OF “THE
BREAKING OF THE SIEGE”
THREE PHOTOS OF SOFIA NIKOLAEVNA
PETROVA: IN THE 1930S, IN MAY 1942, AND
IN OCTOBER 1942.
DIARIES OF THE WAR
DIARY OF ELENA MUKHINA
FROM THE DIARY OF ELENA MUKHINA
Already my brain is unable to respond to anything, I live as
if in a half-dream. […] To be honest it is quite funny
(smeshno): after all, I am not some kind of invalid, neither
an old man nor an old woman, I am a young woman who
has everything ahead of her. I am happy, and soon I am
leaving. Meanwhile, I look at myself, at what I have started
to resemble. An indifferent, melancholy expression, I look
like a Third Degree Invalid, I can scarcely (illegible), my
legs barely hold me up. I myself do not recognize myself.
[…] Earlier, perhaps a month ago, during the day I had
sharp pangs of hunger and I developed the energy to find
something to eat. For an extra bit of bread, something else
to eat I would have gone to the ends of the earth, but
now I almost do not feel hunger, in general I don’t feel
anything at all.
FROM THE DIARY OF ELENA MUKHINA
“Lena gazes into the mirror and is pleased to discover
that her normal appearance is returning. Her face
was no longer as frightening as it had seemed
before,” even though her body had really grown thin,
just bones, and nothing remained of her swollen
breast.”
MAN OF THE YEAR, 1942
LATE STALINISM, 1945-53
MAJOR CONTEXTUAL SHIFTS
• “Soviet” identity is normalized
• Not becoming, but being Soviet
• Waning of utopianism, waxing of expectations of
utopia
• Disillusionment with Reconstruction
• Without reform
• Without full acknowledgment of tragedy
• Without social reintegration
• Recognition of the Little Man
• Recognition of the Individual
(Zubkova, Zubkov)
REUNITING WITH SURVIVORS’ OF
OCCUPATION, 1942-43
MODELS OF SUBJECT, BASED ON LATE
STALINISM
• INTEREST GROUPS, COHORTS (new focal points of ID)
• Vets (frontoviki)
• Soldiers on the Home Front
• The Youth
(Edele, Weiner, Zubkova, Furst)
• CAREERIST
• Middling classes (meshchantsvo)
(Dunham)
V.S. IVANOV - “YOU RETURNED LIFE TO US!” 1944
LETTER TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE KOLKHOZ
AND VILLAGE SOVIET OF PURZYRKY IN THE
KOZIATYN DISTRICT, UKRAINE
“I have served three years in the year, was wounded
four times, and received a governmental award. I
[expected] that the local power would treat my
family humanely and help them. Perhaps the laws of
the USSR regarding army servicemen and the
privileges of their families do not extend to you, but
even the privileges of the decorated soldiers and
families do not concern you. I think that the law of
the USSR obliges you, unless there you have other
laws and another power. Maybe there are still those
among you who helped the German Fascists in their
vile work and activity. They should be thrown out
immediately.”
CAFETERIA IN KOMSOMOL’SKII
SOVZHOV
THE “THAW”(1960S)
MAJOR CONTEXTUAL SHIFTS
•
•
•
•
•
De-Stalinization & open criticism
Communism is coming in your lifetime!
A society of New Men, Little Men
Socialism is superior in production AND consumption
Persuasion (over coercion)
“NEW” SOURCES, FOCAL POINTS OF
IDENTITY
•
•
•
•
•
From Gulag (memoirs, tattoos, vocabulary, songs)
Consumer choices
External appearance
Domestic (private?) spaces & relationships
Jokes, anecdotes, slang
MODELS OF THE SUBJECT, BASED ON
THE 1960S, 1970S
• Young self (Youth Culture & Counterculture)
• Material/Displayed Self
• Stilagi (Hipsters)
• Gulag returnees
• Consumers, shoppers
• Situated, Embedded Selves
• Kitchens
• Kruzhok/intellectual circle
• Living Rooms (TV viewers)
(Reid, Edele, Furst, Toker, Dobson, Lahusen, Walker, Boym,
Paperno, Wolfe, Evans…)
GULAG TATTOOS
(FROM DOBSON, KHRUSHCHEV’S COLD SUMMER)
GULAG TATTOO
THE “KHRUSHCHEBY”IN AVTOVO,
LENINGRAD
MASS-PRODUCED FURNITURE IN
A PRIVATE KITCHEN
“STILIAGA” (HIPSTER)
ALEKSEI KOZLOV (STILIAGA)
VASILI AKSENOV, STILIAGA
FILM “STILIAGI” (HIPSTERS) 2011
A PERESTROIKA-ERA LETTER FROM
VIEWER GN BOCHEVAROV, PUBLISHED
IN IZVESTIIA, TO COMPLAIN ABOUT A
SHOW THEY SAW AS ANTI-SOVIET:
“One question interests me and all of my television
viewing friends, by whose hand was Pozner made a
political observer for Gosteleradio? At this moment,
elections for leaders are taking place in our country
in the localities. And we television viewers have full
right to choose for ourselves those observers and
commentators, who express our point of view.”
LETTER RECEIVED BY TRUD THAT
BECAME THE IMPETUS FOR A SERIES OF
ARTICLES, SENT BY A FEMALE STUDENT
AT ELEKTROSTAL:
“Can you tell me, please, what’s the cost of the
dollar or the British pound in relation to the Russian
ruble? Who lives better, Soviets or Americans? Can
you please compare for me…what their salaries are,
how much do they pay for a loaf of bread, their
rents, their car, blue jeans, and this kind of thing. Not
a dissident letter, but a very simple, sincere and
excellent letter.”
SOVIET JOKES
• Brezhnev asked the Pope, 'Why do people believe
in a Catholic paradise, but refuse to believe in a
communist paradise?'
• 'Because we don't show our paradise!'
• Lenin showed us how to govern. Stalin showed us
how not to govern. Khrushchev showed us that any
fool can govern. And Brezhnev showed us that not
every fool can govern.
• What nationality were Adam and Eve?
• Most certainly Russian! Only Russians can run about
barefooted and bare assed, without a roof over
their heads, where there is only one apple for two
and nevertheless cry out that they are in paradise!
CONCLUSIONS—MANY MODELS, MANY
SUBJECTIVITIES?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Obedient
Egoist, careerist
Resister, dissident
Actor, performer
Consumer
Devotee
illiberal
CONCLUSIONS: MAJOR SHIFTS
(BETWEEN 1930S AND POSTWAR)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Coercion  persuasion
Big Man Little Man
Production production and consumption
Entitlement for Some for All
Becoming Soviet Being Soviet
Collectivism Collective with the Individual
War on Privacy Room for Privacy
• Textual sources actions, appearances, spaces
CONCLUSIONS: MAJOR QUESTIONS
• What is the nature of the Soviet Self?
• Dynamic or stable
• Liberal or illiberal
• Active or constrained
• What role does form play?
• When we say “Self” do we really mean identity,
persona, or role?
• Where can access the inner worlds of people (what
kinds of sources, evidence)
CONCLUSIONS, ASSUMPTIONS WE
NEED TO INTERROGATE
• They are just like us!
• They are exotic, different, other!
• Private life emerges only when Soviet control fails
• Theory of self rooted in consistency, coherence
LASTING QUESTIONS
• Why did the regime create a discursive
sphere that it could not control?
• Why did many Soviet people
participate in it so readily and eagerly
narrate their lives and selfdevelopment, even when they knew
that often -• the state would not respond?
• this act posed a threat to their lives?