Suchergebnisse

The article examines narratives as a historical source and a unique form of information not only about the personality of the author but also about their special individual view on events, facts, people, and their actions. The study demonstrates that by means of assessing and evaluating the events described for compliance with their own ideals, the heroes of biographies transform themselves and their surroundings not so much into an object of narrative proper as into an object of analysis. At the same time, self-identification of the authors of women's ego-documents is a specific form of attitude towards self, which is reflected in the assessments of everyday life and the characteristics of social reality. Memoirs are a representative source, with the help of which it is possible to retrace self-identification of the authors, i.e. to establish the identity of a person with any social community according to a set of features by means of their comparative study. On the basis of concrete examples, it is shown that self-identification of an individual in narratives largely reflects the features of the development of society as a whole and its problems. Comparative analysis of the memoirs of M. Bock, M. Kschessinska, M. Klyucheva, A. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, and M. Tenisheva, made it possible to consider the issues of self-identification based on gender, social status, level of material wealth, professional and social activities, and the attitude to social reality, including the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 and the Russian Revolution of 1905–07. The memoirs under analysis indicate that the priorities identified in the narration of the events of the memoirists' lives are largely a reflection of their gender identity and also demonstrate a gradual expansion of the scope of women's activities and the perception of this trend by society. The memoirists appear as independent, mature personalities, whose self-identification has common and specific features. The latter, among other things, being dependent on mentality and life priorities, determine the means to achieve the goals.

The article attempts to consider local issues related to the role and significance of a park of culture and leisure as a place of recreation during the Khrushchev Thaw in the context of the formation of urban socio-cultural space. Documents from the collection of S. Kirov Central Park of Culture and Leisure in Leningrad stored in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art (TsGALI) reveal the main forms of organized leisure of Leningrad citizens in the second half of the 1950s and in early 1960s. Resolutions, decisions and orders of the Leningrad Oblast Party Committee, the Leningrad City Executive Committee, and the Culture Committee, as well as plans and reports of the institution, scenarios of celebrations, and transcripts of conferences of Park visitors reflect various aspects of its activities and contain representative material, which, among other things, includes informal sincere reactions from the population, opinions on events, recommendations, wishes, and sometimes criticism of Kirov Park. The article shows that the organization of leisure was characterized by a dichotomy typical of the Soviet society in general and of the period under consideration in particular. This was reflected, on the one hand, in the formalized attitude to this area and the assessment of its effectiveness by quantitative rather than qualitative indicators. On the other hand, the attention and sometimes interference of the party and the state in the ways Soviet people spent their free time indicate public priorities and ideological dominants. Concrete examples and facts presented in the article confirm that organized leisure during this period was characterized not only by ideologization and politicization of content but also by the desire for mass involvement, staginess, and diversity in form, which to a certain extent also contributed to the formation of leisure patterns of the Soviet people.