Heritage of the "Cast Iron Grandmother": Narrative Versions of Kasli History

In: Izvestija Ural'skogo federalʹnogo universiteta: Ural Federal University journal. Serija 2, Gumanitarnye nauki = *Series 2*Humanities and arts, Band 26, Heft 1, S. 230-248

Abstract

This article focuses on the production of Kasli castings in the 1930s–1940s (essays by N. Dobychin, M. Zuev-Ordynets, and P. Bazhov). The authors carry out a historical contextualisation of the sources referring to the travel notes of D. Mamin-Sibiryak (1887) and interviews with the inhabitants of Kasli obtained during an expedition to study the narrative landscapes of Ural cities (2021). The authors aim to comprehend the situation of alternative history with reference to the city of Kasli, which is set by options for describing the present, focused on the desired future. In the history of Kasli castings, the 1930s is considered both as a relevant present with the nearest future, and as a turn in the past favourable for local production, preserved in the memory of the Kasli people. Methodologically, the research is based on multiscalar analysis with an emphasis on the interaction of different time and space scales. The article introduces materials of the State Archive of Administrations of Sverdlovsk Region related to the biography of N. Dobychin which has never been done previously, since it is his essay Living Cast Iron that is said to have played a decisive role in the revival of the production of artistic iron casting. The authors analyse texts about Kasli castings in terms of their possible influence, due to the scale of the placement platform (central or regional press, circulation, etc.) and the accuracy of compliance with the moment of cultural politics, reflected in the composition and motif structure of the text and the communication of an external or internal view of events. The essay, which influenced the local narrative about the fate of either dying or rising production, may have become a resource for mythologising the "long-lived" Ural craftsmanship in the words of the famous "cast-iron grandmother" of Bazhov. The judgments of today's Kasli residents about the past and present of the city testify to a complex combination of pride and resentment towards their historical past and present.