There are no Foodstuffs in Grocery Stores, Everything is Very Difficult to Obtain: Women’s Everyday Life in the Provincial Soviet City in the 1950-1960s
- Authors: Pushkareva N.L.1, Bogdashina I.V.2
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Affiliations:
- Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology RAS
- Volgograd State University
- Issue: Vol 23, No 4 (2024): THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN THE DESTINIES OF THE PEOPLES AND REGIONS OF RUSSIA
- Pages: 476-489
- Section: ARTICLES
- URL: https://journal-vniispk.ru/2312-8674/article/view/322046
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.22363/2312-8674-2024-23-4-476-489
- EDN: https://elibrary.ru/PTIRUV
- ID: 322046
Cite item
Abstract
The authors have explored alimentary practices (obtaining, preparing, cooking, consuming foodstuffs) in the context of gender relations, social history of women and everyday life of women in non-capital cities of the USSR in the late 1950s - early 1960s. The main sources of their work are: personal documents (unpublished diaries and memoirs), materials from recipe books that were in almost every home at that time, information from periodicals (magazines), archival materials from the funds of the State Archives of the Volgograd Region and the Center for Documentation of the Contemporary History of the Volgograd Region, and specific office documents - reports of inspections of district committees of people's control and confirming facts of abuse in the sphere of public catering. The main source is unstructured oral biographical stories or “women's oral story,” which preserved an emotional assessment of the difficulties experienced at that time. In the anthropology of Soviet everyday life, the gender aspect plays an especially significant role, since the ordinary and inconspicuous things in everyday life are better captured and preserved by women's memory; women's everyday life differed significantly from men's due to the greater burden of household chores. The authors conclude that despite the social policy of the Soviet state aimed at freeing women from household chores, the patriarchal idea of the role of women in the family turned out to be stable phenomena and can be traced throughout the Soviet period, including the “thaw.” Moreover, across the period there was the formation of a special type of Soviet gastronomic culture, simplified in terms of recipes, a form simplicity which provided time and energy for women's activities outside the home.
About the authors
Natalia L. Pushkareva
Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology RAS
Author for correspondence.
Email: pushkarev@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6295-3331
SPIN-code: 3853-8032
Senior doctor of History, Professor, Chief Researcher and Head of the Center for Gender Studies
119334, Russia, Moscow, Leninsky Pr. 32AIrina V. Bogdashina
Volgograd State University
Email: i.bogdashina@volsu.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9908-2039
SPIN-code: 5242-6150
PhD in History, Assistant, Department of History and International Relations
100, Universitetskiy Prospekt, Volgograd, 400062, RussiaReferences
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