ABOUT THE BOOK
In modern domestic and foreign historiography, the interested reader will find a considerable layer of scientific literature and journalistic articles devoted to the topic of everyday life in a totalitarian society.
The surge of interest in the issue of microhistorical research, the life of the “little man” and the anthropological turn in science made the topic chosen by us one of the most popular for conducting dissertation and daily scientific research of historians, cultural and political scientists and philosophers. In particular, solid works on Soviet life were published by the Institute of the History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Center for Oral History at the Department of History and Culture of Ukraine of the Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi State Pedagogical University named after Hryhoriy Skovoroda.The proposed study is a part of the historical and cultural research of the Department of Cultural Studies of Poltava V.G. Korolenko National Pedagogical University within the research topic “Global and regional polylogue in the formation of the sociocultural identity of the individual” (state registration number 0120U103840). Here are presented the achievements of researchers and those who have obtained the third (educational and scientific) level of higher education (doctor of philosophy) who have devoted their professional lives to the topic of everyday life of Ukrainians in a totalitarian society. The specificity of the collective monograph is the regional aspect, which allows to clarify and diversify the data obtained by colleagues from different parts of Ukraine and summarized in fundamental works on the history of everyday life.
The collective monograph consists of six sections. The first chapter is devoted to theoretical issues of the history of everyday life. He explains and reveals the specifics of the concept of “everyday life” in the terminological field, provides an analysis of the theoretical understanding of the concept and the interpretation of everyday reality by various scientists.
The chapter draws parallels with the views of historians, philosophers, ethnographers, sociologists and cultural experts on problematic spheres of life and daily practices. There is also a description of methodological problems in the everyday work of the researcher, related to the use of various historical sources. They are analyzed through the prism of the neo-Kantian and postmodernist approach, a prominent place is given to the issue of source criticism.The second chapter offers theoretical and methodological notes on the culture of the everyday professional community. It presents methodological guidelines for the study of the everyday population of the Ukrainian SSR using an anthropological approach. A prominent place is given to the methods of visual anthropology in the study of everyday life of closed groups. A separate section is dedicated to the common scheme of analysis of everyday microcollectives, which are governed by their own internal laws of coexistence. The section offers an example of a practical study of a closed professional collective based on a model description using the example of the collective of the Lubny Teachers’ Institute of the 1930s. Here, information on the sources of studying the everyday life of the community is analyzed, the systematic characteristics of the social group are given, and the internal taxonomy of the group is described (subgroups, sections, associations, unions, individual forms of organization). The section describes the life space of the closed collective, space and movement within the territories, and also analyzes the intellectual and professional space of the institute. Separate subsections relate to the topic of educators’ time budget, analysis of meeting basic needs in food and clothing, household items, and providing housing; as well as the issue of cultural morphology and worldview of the community.
The third chapter tells about the organization of the life of master potters of Poltava Oblast under totalitarianism.
Here, the issue of the organization of the working space, life in the conditions of the Holodomor, and the specifics of the transition of potters from home manucacturing to artisanal production in the village of Opishnia are highlighted. The chapter illustrates the influence of communist propaganda on the vorldview of potters, compares the specifics of work in a special artel of people with disabilities with other industrial associations. A separate section explains the issue of potters' education and the organization of the learning space.The fourth chapter is devoted to the life of Eastern workers in the Third Reich. It gives the typological characteristics of forcibly deported workers, provides an analysis of the all-German bodies that were engaged in the organization and control of the daily work of eastern workers. The chapter describes the strategies of the workers' behavior and their perception of their own daily working life, analyzes the specifics of the organization of food, clothing and footwear. A separate section offers a description of the social identity of ostarbeiters, fundamentally changed as a result of forced deportation. The block on the emotional and sensory background of the daily life of eastern workers analyzes the interpretation and manifestations of friendship, love, hatred and envy, condemnation of the behavior of colleagues (prostitution, eavesdropping, denunciations, theft, etc.). Significant for the understanding of everyday life is the part that illustrates the obstacles and inconveniences of being in the Reich due to the language barrier and the creation of patterns of everyday communication.
The fifth chapter provides a study of the everyday life of Soviet educators through the prism of audiovisual sources of the day. It analyzes the representation of educators in the Soviet poster of the 1950s-1980s, takes into account the system of verbal and non-verbal semiotic signs, social (everyday) and aesthetic components of works of art.
A separate subsection examines the visual representation of the solution to the “women’s question” on the Soviet educational poster. The author’s debatable characterization of the image of the teacher in the cinematography of the “thaw” era is also offered here.The sixth chapter offers an example of intercultural communication research at the everyday level of the life of an average individual. The memoirs of the ostarbaiter Maya Savchenko were taken as a basis, which made it possible to highlight several cultural traditions that influenced the everyday life of the author, forming her private cultural space.
We are convinced that this research will be useful not only to professional scientists who are interested in the topic of everyday life in a totalitarian society or to students who understand these issues within the framework of university educational programs, but also to a wide range of readers who are interested in the topic of the past through historical films. The relevance of this book is also high due to the fact that it debunks many myths that are being imposed on Ukrainians and globaly by Russians in the course of the formation of the ideology of the “Russian world”, a component of which is the veneration of totalitarian values as the values of the “golden past” of the USSR.