Научно-публицистический журнал “Центр и периферия”
The scientific journal “Center and Periphery”
UDK 908
EDN MILVGU
Original article
Pushkareva N. L., Zhidchenko A. V.
Abstraсt
The article is devoted to the analysis of women’s everyday life in the emerging space of the new Soviet city of the 1970s, which was built during this period at the Kostroma hydroelectric power station, the city of Volgorechensk. The analysis of everyday practices is carried out on the basis of oral history materials (collected by the authors of the memoirs of old-timers of Volgorechensk — representatives of several generations: who arrived to build up the state district power station and the construction of the city already at an amateur age, and their daughters, born and raised here in the 1970s). Such research became possible using interdisciplinary methods related to the history of everyday life and a gender approach. Analysis of a set of sources revealed that the formation of the urban environment and social infrastructure gave rise to changes in women’s everyday life, which, however, depended on the general historical socio-economic and socio-political context of the development of the USSR during this period. The construction of a non-public, private space of women’s everyday life based on ego sources opened the way to understanding the conservative attitude towards memory, the phenomenon of “nostalgia for the Soviet past,” as well as the collective image of the past era. Despite the large role of the state in determining the patterns of daily life of workers, their social security, as well as the étacratic gender order, old residents of such cities retain a nostalgic mood for the Soviet past. Behind the screen of nostalgia lies the construction of social historical memory, the collective past about the life and everyday life of women in the 1970s, the image of another, unofficial informal past, the study and documentation of which is so important in modern historical science in connection with the anthropological turn and the special value of ego generalizations — sources in the history of people distanced from power.
Keywords: everyday life, women’s history, city, sociocultural space, USSR
Funding: The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 22-28-01428 “Women’s history as the basis of Russian social optimism (non-capital urban everyday life of the mid-twentieth century”.
For citation: Pushkareva NL, Zhidchenko AV. “The First 10 Years Are Hard”: Women’s Everyday Life in the City of Hydraulic Builders Volgorechensk in the 1970s. Center and Periphery. 2024;19(3):50—57. EDN MILVGU
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Information about the authors:
Natalia L. Pushkareva, Chief Researcher of Head of the Center for Gender Studies of the Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (32a Leninsky Prospekt, Moscow 119991, Russia), Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6295-3331, pushkarev@mail.ru
Alexander V. Zhidchenko, Chief Researcher of Head of the Center for Gender Studies of the Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (32a Leninsky Prospekt, Moscow 119991, Russia), Candidate of Historical Sciences, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2948-4008, zhidchenko220689@yandex.ru
Contribution of the authors:
Pushkareva N. L. — critical analysis and scientific editing of the text;
Zhidchenko A. V. — concept development, methodology development, data collection and literature analysis, writing the initial version of the article.
Conflict of interests: the authors declare no conflict of interests.
The authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
The article was submitted 29.05.2024; approved after reviewing 21.06.2024; accepted for publication 27.06.2024.