Archive

Shaping the historical memory of the Russian peasants

09.11.2006, 11:37

Romanov Andrey

Shaping the historical memory of the Russian peasants
at the end of XIX ? beginning of XX centuries

For recent years the problems of historical memory, the ways it is born, accumulated and transferred through generations, have been the core of historical debate. In Russia the ?natural? or ?live? historical memory of social groups and peasants in particular, underwent serious transformations, being affected by compulsory education that replaced traditional peasant learning only in the XX century. This process had been influenced greatly by historical writings, from where the achievements of professional historiography, after inevitable simplification and adaptation, were disseminated into wider ?masses?, thus contributing to the process of creation of an ?artificial?, or ?historicized?, memory. Eventually, both ?true? and ?artificial? memory became the objects of close research interest of historians.
Just like in other European powers at the edge of XIX-XX century, in Russia numerous textbooks and teaching aids along with popular historical fiction, turned into ?sites of memory?, from where ordinary people obtained most clear and accessible historical representations aimed at awakening national pride and mobilizing people for political and geopolitical purposes of the new national states.
Despite the influence of modernization, even at the end of XIX century historical images shared by the Russian peasants were of mythological character, combining reflections of real historical events with poetical fiction and folklore. Moreover, instead of being national, peasant memory was predominantly regional and local and did not accentuated images which could become the basis for building new historical consciousness, neither around monarchic and imperial paradigm offered by the conservatives, nor around the national one offered by the liberals. But still, step by step, the textbooks and popular historical fiction were becoming the site were ?high? (urban) and ?low? (rural) cultures encountered and interacted. The textbooks and popular literature reproduced the models of a certain ?real? peasant derived from authors? consciousness and based on their communication with real or fictionalized peasant individuals. These mental models determined the process of selection of historical material and narrative strategies of its textual representation.
However, in Soviet and contemporary Russian historiography the role this sort of literature played in the process of formation of the new type of public consciousness has never been studied systematically, and especially in the context of fostering new type of consciousness connected with ?imagined community?, that is, the ?nation?.
In this respect, the projects intends to explore the strategies of cultural influence to ?live? and actual historical memory of Russian peasants; to uncover the most popular and significant historical images; to figure out to what extent the images and representations offered to peasants were connected to political dispositions of their creators and supporters; to follow the inherent logic and variability of historical models being implemented into peasants? consciousness.
Therefore, the project is focused on exploring the cultural and historical processes, that suggests specificity of methods applied. Historical aspects of the project suggest using general historical approach where all phenomena are explored in their historical development, while the cultural aspects require studying them in their dialectic inter-relation with various fields of cultural production. As a result, this is a fundamentally interdisciplinary project, combining arguments and approaches not only of various relevant branches of contemporary historical research (including gender studies, micro-history, the history of everyday life, generational history, and memory studies), with the methods from many related disciplines in the humanities--sociology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, semiotics, psychology, political science.
The impact of the project will be visible in several ways. First, this is its research innovativeness that lays in combination of the recognized achievements of peasant studies with achievements of political and cultural history. Second, the implementation of the project would enhance our knowledge on peasants? response to the efforts of the educated society to reconfigure their historical memory and traditional culture. This, in its turn, would contribute to further exploration of the models along which the Russian traditional society transformed, providing at the same time better understanding of the specificity of historical consciousness of ordinary ?soviet? individual that proved very resilient in spite of all the recent changes in the Russian society. The results of the project will be brought to life with a series of conference presentations and detailed research essay that later will be incorporated as a chapter in doctoral dissertation on the problems of cultural impact of school and enlightenment activity to everyday life and consciousness of Russian peasants.
My personal interest to the topic derives from my previous studies on experience of implementing the system of elementary school in the Russian village. Later, this experience was instrumentalized by totalitarian political projects, manipulating mass consciousness and building new models of national identity. Promoting rationalized reforms through traditional symbols and organizational forms, this experience provided opportunities for implementation of the values and images previously had been rejected or not recognized by traditional societies, thus facilitating overall political mobilization. Here arises one more important point of research interest ? problem of political socialization of peasants.
The stages of the project:
2007-2008. Archive and library research: the Central Historical Archive (holdings of Chief administrator of Moscow educational district, personal papers of key figures in public education), State Archive of Russian Federation (materials and pamphlets of political parties and movements exploiting historical images in their propaganda); Russian State Historical Archive (papers of Learned Committee of Ministry of Public Education concerning competitions for history textbooks for ?people? and the process of selection of educational literature for elementary schools); study of relevant original and secondary literature in the libraries of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
2009. Working over the monograph.