Albina A. Kozhaeva,
Student, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“That’s how I had to Experience Everything”. – Book Review: Shcherbakov A., Kozlova A., Ostrovskaya I. Na serdtse pali vse pechali. Sudby krestyan v XX veke. Vospominaniya [All the Sorrows Fell on My Heart. The Fate of the Peasants in the 20th Century. Memories]. Moscow: Agey Tomesh Publishing House, 2019. 432 p., ill.
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2020-5-21
In 2019, the international historical and educational, charitable and human rights society “Memorial” published a collection of peasant memoirs, including three ego-documents, the authors of which E.K. Makarova, N.I. Skrylev and A.I. Ponomarev, who were born in the early 19th century, describe various, including tragic aspects of their life, which fell on the first half of the century. In the texts, most of all attention is focused on the period of the 1930–1940s, the reflection of the peasants on the events that took place around them is presented: collectivization, industrialization and the Great Patriotic War. The publication is accompanied by a short introductory part, comments from the relatives of the authors of the memoirs, comments from publishers explaining the terms of the spoken village language and illustrative material. The collection, aimed at a wide range of readers, contains a small number of shortcomings associated with the external design of sources, but the internal content of the memoirs themselves draws special attention. The publishers of memoirs are distinguished by a painstaking and careful attitude towards ego – sources, the desire to preserve not only the stylistic features of the texts, but also the information contained in them about the inner world of the authors, the motivation of their actions, the logic of thinking. For researchers, the publication is of undoubted value as a rare reflection of the natives of the rural world on the realities of time and life in a country where depeasantization was carried out in harsh, violent forms.
Publishing: 30/10/2020
The article has been received by the editor on 25.07.2020
How to cite: Kozhaeva A.A. “That’s how I had to Experience Everything”. – Book Review: Shcherbakov A., Kozlova A., Ostrovskaya I. Na serdtse pali vse pechali. Sudby krestyan v XX veke. Vospominaniya [All the Sorrows Fell on My Heart. The Fate of the Peasants in the 20th Century. Memories]. Moscow: Agey Tomesh Publishing House, 2019. 432 p., ill. // Historical Courier, 2020, No. 5 (13), pp. 249–256. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2020/ISTKURIER-2020-5-21.pdf
Links: Issue 5 2020
Keywords: peasantry; peasant memories; ego-documents; publication of the memoirs and epistolary heritage; Stalinism; USSR