THE KREMLIN ACCIDENT IN 1921: NOTES ON CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF FOLKLOR SOURCES

Abstract

Background. The study of such topical issues as social foundations, mentality, various aspects and areas of everyday life of the Soviet society, its behavioral principles and practices, rules and norms of relations with the authorities requires the expansion of the empirical base and the involvement of new sources, including folklore. This circumstance gives special importance to the critical analysis of folklore sources, which is achieved, in particular, by comparing them with archival materials. The aim of the work is to substantiate the opinion by comparative analysis of archival documents and folklore sources (political anecdotes) that the latter represent the basis in the process of studying certain aspects of the Soviet Russia of 1917–1921. Materials and methods. Realization of research tasks is provided on the basis of complex application of folklore sources, testimonies and memoirs of contemporaries, archival documents from the Russian state archive of social and political history, including, for the first time involved in scientific turnover. In methodological terms, the study is based on such a method of source criticism as a comparative analysis of diverse evidence about the past, in this case – folklore sources (political anecdotes) and archival documents. Results. The content of characteristic samples of political anecdotes about the Bolshevik elite of the Civil war period is analyzed. Source criticism of a number of similar folklore sources was carried out, which was achieved by comparative analysis of anecdotes, on the one hand, and published memoirs of contemporaries and archival documents, on the other. Conclusions. Comparative analysis of archival documents and political anecdotes gives grounds to confidently assert that the latter are not a figment of imagination, but are based on actual facts and, thus, can be fully used as historical sources in the study of the relationship between society and the Bolshevik regime in 1917– 1921. The results of source criticism of anecdotes indicate that the negative assessments of the moral appearance and behavior of the Bolshevik elite contained in these folklore sources are not exaggeration and correctly reflect the attitude of a significant part of society to a certain part of the representatives of the party-Soviet apparatus.

Keywords

• anecdote
• the bolsheviks
• famine in 1921–1922
• historical sources
• the kremlin
• folk