Pokrovskiy Nikolay N.,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Household Appliances from Everyday Life of Soviet Women. The Museum Aspect
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2019-3-17
There is no doubt that household appliances play a significant role in the life of a modern human being. It is also obvious that studying history of everyday life is impossible without knowledge of history of development, use and basic principles of home appliances. The article on the basis of the historical monuments of the Museum fond of science and technology of Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences gives an overview of some types of appliances of the second half of the 19th century that had been spread over the territory of the USSR. This publication opens a series of articles devoted to the introduction into scientific circulation of new sources on the history of science and technology in the framework of the author’s project “Monuments of science and technology of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok”, which is its purpose. The objects of the research are the items from the fond of the fund of the Museum of science and technology of SB RAS from the section “Household equipment”. The subject is the historical process of appliances’ improvement and changing practices of their use in the household. The methodological basis of the work consists of the basic principles of modern historical science, as well as the method of synthesis of historical and technical study of the object. The scientific novelty of the work is associated with the introduction into scientific circulation of previously unpublished items from the Museum’s fond. The article covers the period from the early1950s to the late1980s. Such time frame is not a random choice. In the five years since the end of the Second world war, significant progress has been made in meeting the basic needs of the population, restoring the economy destroyed by the war, which allowed the Party and the government to switch their attention to the problem of improving the life of the Soviet people. Significant capacities of defense plants were reoriented to the production of consumer goods, including household appliances. The upper time boundary is marked by the end of the Soviet era, when a new ideological paradigm changed both the concept of Soviet life and the degree of presence of domestic appliances and equipment in the daily life of Russians, reducing it to a minimum in subsequent years.
Publishing: 30/06/2019
How to cite: Pokrovskiy N.N. Household Appliances from Everyday Life of Soviet Women. The Museum Aspect // Historical Courier, 2019, # 3 (5). Article 17. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2019/ISTKURIER-2019-3-17.pdf
Links: Issue 3 2019
Keywords: Soviet Union; history of technology; history of everyday life; museology; Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; technical heritage; socio-cultural space