Local studios of soviet everyday life: experience, lessons, challenges

Abstract

The purpose of the article is an attempt to analyze the results of the activities of domestic researchers of the history of Soviet everyday life (historians, ethnologists, cultural scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, art critics), which were presented at seven all-Ukrainian scientific and theoretical seminars of the series «Everyday Life: Visions and Meanings», held at Vinnytsia State Pedagogical University M. Kotsyubynskyi during 2015-2023. The research methodology is based on a combination of general scientific, special-historical and interdisciplinary methods and tools of socio-cultural analysis. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that it attempts a primary (self) analysis and generalization of the local experience of the problematization of the Soviet past through the lens of everyday life. Conclusion. The initiative of the scientists of the Center for the Study of Everyday History of the Faculty of Vinnytsia Pedagogical University was launched in the context of the beginning of Russian aggression as a response to the request for an in-depth historical-anthropological and socio-cultural study of the (un)completed Soviet past through the visions and meanings of the life world of an ordinary Soviet person. Researchers of leading scientific institutions and higher educational institutions of Ukraine actively responded to the proposal of a scientific and theoretical dialogue between specialists. Some summaries of the journey can be expressed in several theses. First, the choice of topics for each subsequent seminar was not arbitrary. It is determined, on the one hand, by specific public requests and the professional readiness of researchers, and on the other hand, it arose from the specific interdisciplinary work of each previous seminar. Secondly, in Ukraine as  result, a stable core of qualified researchers of the Soviet past from various scientific fields has formed, to which new generations of researchers are interested. Systematic scientific dialogues contributed to the expansion of the subject field of Soviet everyday life, deepened and improved the methodology of its study, significantly for the development of an adequate understanding and interpretation of the Soviet past.