Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2021 number

The article is based on an ego-document - a personal diary by A.I. Dmitriev, a worker of an aircraft factory in the city of Molotov (Perm), who regularly kept a diary since 1941. He told in detail about his own life, recorded his impressions of what was happening in his family, at the factory, in the country. The study objective is to identify the relationship between cultural patterns and emotional representations in Dmitriev’s diary. K. Girtz’s concept was chosen as a methodological approach. According to K. Girtz’s views, a person’s culture organizes his emotional world and ways to express feelings. A.I. Dmitriev’s diary allows reconstructing the paradoxical reaction of a Soviet man to a military disaster. The theme of Moscow in the diary appeared in August 1941. Detailed entries of February-June, 1942 have been analyzed. In Soviet culture, Moscow was a kind of earthly paradise: a symbol of victorious socialism, a promised land for Soviet citizens: food abundance, miracle machines, cultural people reminiscent of heroes from movies, a source of benefits for all Soviet people in an achievable historical perspective. Pre-war Moscow was a culturally and technologically advanced city for A. Dmitriev. There was a lot of products in the shops. Soviet people lived happily in the city full of food. Analysis of the diary allows studying the work of the Soviet man’s social imagination. The specific historical material shows how the personal experience of the diary’s author is synthesized with the cultural and ideological attitudes of the authorities. The result is a unified, integral image of “ideal socialism” without war. The image of happy days in Moscow was formed by the author of the diary under the influence of the military situation in 1941-1942. A.I. Dmitriev, as well as his fellow citizens of Molotov, felt a constant need for food, clothing and shoes, heating of homes and industrial premises. In contrast to military life, A. Dmitriev described his stay in Moscow as a long holiday, the happiest time of his life. The image of happy days reproduced the mass values of Soviet citizens: leisure, plenty of food and alcohol, carefree life.