scholarly journals Sociological methods of studying the history of the great patriotic war: opportunities and limitations

Author(s):  
Galina Gritsenko

The article reveals the possibilities of using sociological methods to collect the empirical information that relates to the spiritual sphere of everyday life. One of these is the oral history method. Its application allows you to create an empirical database of subjective emotional-sensory data. The necessity of not only knowing this data, but also translating it into the educational space, which ensures the sociocultural continuity of the natural historical process of the development of society, is substantiated.

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1–2) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Benno Gammerl

This opinion piece enquires into the history of male homosexuality in West Germany since the 1950s and focuses on the transition from the homophile bar to the gay disco as a prototypical meeting place for same-sex desiring men. Which emotional shifts did this spatial variation entail? Based on oral history interviews and gay magazines, the analysis explores intricate changes in queer everyday life beyond the all too simple supposition that closeted shame was supplanted by openly gay pride. In addition, the study shows on a methodological level that the allegedly antagonistic approaches in emotion research – constructionism, praxeology, affect-theory and phenomenology – can actually be fruitfully combined with each other, especially when it comes to analysing the interplay between spaces and feelings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-269
Author(s):  
Sergey N. Uvarov

The article offers the previously unpublished memoirs of eleven Leningrad residents who were children during the German blockade of the city. All of them were collected in 1998-1999 by Nina Aleksandrovna Koroleva, and are today kept in her collection in the Central State Archive of the Udmurt Republic. After the war, Nina Aleksandrovna came to live in Udmurtia, where she started to record memories about wartime. Conventionally, her documents can be divided into two groups. The first includes the memories of those who were evacuated to Udmurtia during the Great Patriotic War. The second group consists of memories of those who ended up in the republic after the end of the war. All documents are preserved in the author's edition. The memoirs reflect childhood impressions of the siege period. Their authors share their feelings from the beginning of the blockade, and report details of their daily life during the siege; they also reveal the coping strategies of the respective families. Descriptions of the labor conducted by children invite for conclusions about their contribution to the Soviet victory. Very emotional are the reports about the lifting of the blockade. Some memoirs contain details of the evacuation from Leningrad to the mainland. From the perspective of the history of everyday life, the publication of these memoirs expands our knowledge about the Great Patriotic War and, in particular, about the blockade of Leningrad.


2020 ◽  
pp. 308-321
Author(s):  
I. V. Skipina ◽  
E. I. Dubnitskaya

The 1941—1945 correspondence between servicemen and fellow countrymen, kept in the State Archives of the Tyumen Region is examined in the article. Letters are considered as documents with high information potential, giving new knowledge about the war, obtained on the basis of studying the communications of ordinary participants in the events. The purpose of the publication is to show letters from the front as a source on the history of everyday life, filled with communication of close people on issues important to them, allowing them to reconstruct their life activities, analyze the experience of the past, and use the results of research in modern reality. Correspondence allows us to consider military everyday life as part of big politics and as a personal experience, to expand the source component of the discourse on the history of the Great Patriotic War, contributing to a scientific assessment of the experience and understanding of its historical significance. It is proved that collective and personal letters, appeals “to power” testify that the war, having become a time of difficult trials, stimulated the formation of an identity characterized by the unity of the state and society with the prevalence of socially significant values over individual ones.


Author(s):  
Galina N. Kaninskaya ◽  
Natalya N. Naumova

The article is devoted to the participation of French pilots of the Normandy squadron in battles on the Soviet-German front as part of the Red Army in 1943-1945. After the defeat of France at the first stage of World War II (1940), the occupation of its territory by Germany and the organization of the Resistance movement “Fighting France” in London by General Charles de Gaulle, the pilots joined him expressed a burning desire to fight the enemy in the skies over Soviet soil. Their participation in the ranks of the Soviet Air Force was a unique event in the history of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union (1945-1945). The article analyzes the information of the Soviet press during the war years about the French squadron “Normandie-Niemen”, which fought in the Soviet Air Force on the Soviet-German front. It is shown that Soviet readers during the Great Patriotic War could get a very complete and reliable idea of the military exploits of French pilots, find out the names of heroes, get acquainted with the military everyday life of officers, appreciate their patriotism and sincere friendly feelings for the Soviet Union and its people. Along with stories about the air battles of the Normandy, the articles of Soviet correspondents contained information about the history of France, how the pilots reacted to the defeat of their country, how and where they fought in the first stage of the Second World War. The press of the war years gave brief sketches of the everyday life of French fighters on Soviet soil, about the curious events that happened to the pilots of the squadron. On the example of newspaper publications 1943-1945. about the military alliance of our and French pilots, you can get an idea of how the cooperation of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition developed and strengthened.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 205-249
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz S. Więch

From Mościska to Jugów. Testimonies of Józefa Wójcik and Maria Kocur, repatriates from the Eastern Polish BorderlandsThe history of the inhabitants of the former Polish Eastern Borderlands is an interesting research topic, especially when connected to everyday life issues. Oral testimonies are important historical sources which help explore the subject better. This paper presents transcriptions of two conversations with sisters Józefa Wójcik (born in 1930) and Maria Kocór  (born in 1928). Both of them were born and spent their prime years around Mościska near Lviv, and after World War II were re-settled to Jugów in Lower Silesia. The interviews were conducted in 2014 as part of a research project in the field of oral history entitled “Everyday life of inhabitants of the Owl Mountains in 1945-1970”.


Author(s):  
Елена Спартаковна Сенявская

Фронтовая повседневность определяется автором как совокупность опасности боя и повседневности быта во всём многообразии их типичных и уникальных проявлений. В  данной статье рассматриваются особенности фронтового быта Красной Армии в  период Великой Отечественной войны на основе эго-документов (писем, дневников, мемуаров) и материалов «устной истории» – воспоминаний-интервью её участников, представителей разных родов войск и военных профессий, принадлежащих к рядовому, младшему и среднему командному составу. Показано, что от качества солдатского быта, его организации в  экстремальных военных условиях во многом зависел моральный дух войск и их боеспособность, а недостаточное внимание к отдельным бытовым факторам негативно сказывалось на ходе боевых действий или приводило к неоправданно большим потерям. Изучение фронтовой повседневности, ее тяжести и противоречивости, через мироощущение и судьбы отдельных фронтовиков позволяет глубже понять «человеческий ракурс» новейшей военной истории, тот трудноуловимый субъективный фактор, который в экстремальных условиях войны мог неожиданно перевесить все факторы материальные и оказаться «последней каплей», склоняющей чашу весов в сторону побед или поражений. Front-line life is a combination of the danger of battle and everyday life in all the variety of their typical and unique manifestations. This article examines the specifics of the front-line life of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War based on ego-documents (letters, diaries, memoirs) and on “oral history” – memoirs-interviews of its participants belonging to the armed forces and military professions of the rank-and-file and the command staff. It is shown that the morale of the troops and their fighting capacity largely depended on the quality of the soldier’s life, its organization in extreme military conditions. Insufficient attention to certain household factors negatively affected the course of hostilities or led to unjustifiably large losses. The study of the front-line everyday life in all its diversity and controversy through the eyes and the fates of individual front-line soldiers allows us to better understand the “human perspective” of recent military history, the elusive subjective factor that in extreme conditions could unexpectedly outweigh all material factors and turn out to be the “last straw” that tips the scales in favor of victories or defeats.


2021 ◽  
pp. 141-149
Author(s):  
Sergey Yu. Kondratenko ◽  

The article provides a review of the book “Front-line Astrakhan. Hospitals. Astrakhan, 2021”. The author of the article analyzes both the positive and the negative aspects of the work. It is worth emphasizing that the book is devoted to one of the promising subfields of research in the history of the Great Patriotic War – the everyday life of the front-line and of the military rear. The publication is a comprehensive research of the activities of the hospitals located in Astrakhan and the Astrakhan region during the war. Compilers acquaint the reader with the main aspects of the daily occurrence of the medical personnel of the hospitals and the wounded soldiers and commanders of the Red Army. The reviewed work contains numerous memoirs of both the medical workers and residents of Astrakhan, and it allows the reader to plunge into the hard and heroic days of the hospitals. Another important aspect, considered in the publication, is the patronage assistance provided to the hospitals by enterprises and ordinary citizens. It involved millions of people, especially children and adolescents. Corporate assistance played an important part in the psychological rehabilitation of the wounded Red Army soldiers. It is also necessary to note the illustrative material, the peer-reviewed works, which in fact represent additional sources for the research of the front-line and the military rear routine. This research will be interesting to everyone who is keen on the history of the Great Patriotic War.


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