Phenomenon of Sovietness in Russian Historiographical Tradition

Abstract

The author proposes a new historiographic approach which is based on the identification of the essential lines of the historiographic split without dividing the works according to the disciplinary principle. The author connects another historiographic turn in the study of the phenomenon of Sovietness with the expansion of the source base and, above all, with the appeal to mass personal sources, in particular, letters to the authorities, which, due to the representation of different social groups, make it possible to clarify the process of establishing new Soviet values and, accordingly, existing historiographic conclusions, as well as to verify the theoretical and methodological foundations of modern research. The analysis showed that with all the variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, the idea of the dual nature of the phenomenon of Sovietness and the appeal to “greater meanings” seems to be the most promising one, and mass sources contribute to the transition from the study of the abstract Soviet man to the study of “homo soveticus” in all the diversity of his life at different stages of history.

Keywords

• soviet everyday life
• nostalgia
• letters to power
• supra-ethnicity
• historiographical splits