"To Unite Telescope and Microscope": Concerning An Attempt to Solve Methodological and Source Studies Problems of Studying the History of the Russian Peasant Family of the Yepifan Uezd in the 16th – 20th Centuries

Review

УДК 049.32+94(47)+94(470.312)

DOI 10.28995/2073-0101-2021-4-1265-1272

Yurkin, Igor N.

S. I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

"To Unite Telescope and Microscope": Concerning An Attempt to Solve Methodological and Source Studies Problems of Studying the History of the Russian Peasant Family of the Yepifan Uezd in the 16th – 20th Centuries

Abstract

The article assesses source and archival studies aspects of the V. P. Kozlov’s book “Remove to history ...”: The Peasant Family and Settlement of the Tula Region in the 16th – 20th Centuries. It is the first volume of the study, covering the period up to 1917. The work is devoted to the history and culture of the Yepifan uezd. This uezd is considered in two ways: as a territory, including the villages where the author’s ancestors lived, and as a part of its surroundings. The state of the territory is described for several periods. Via stepwise immersion accompanied by detailing of material, the author advances the restoration of the history of villages and their inhabitants. In the Russian scientific literature, an experience of large-scale and consistent implementation of this approach is a unique case. The author analyzes it theoretically, bringing it into correlation with trends of modern historical science and demonstrating its effectiveness. To study the history of the Yepifan uezd, a significant amount of documents, both published and stored in the archives, has been involved for the first time. V.P. Kozlov divides sources into three classes. In line with his approach used in his works on archeography, he characterizes eight types of sources. Among sources of personal provenance, he underscores oral history documents — records of his relatives’ memoirs collected over the years. He points to the cognitive heterogeneity of these sources: he emphasizes the need to take into account the “author's angles,” notes high reliability of correspondence, especially between relatives. Isolation by V. P. Kozlov of a special class of sacred documentary sources is new. The author refers to these documents as reflecting “relations with the sacred ... beliefs, convictions and symbols” and capturing “the sacrament of human communication with... extrahuman authority.” As an example, he cites his grandmother’s nightly prayers and recordings of miracles of St. Matrona of Moscow. V. P. Kozlov notes an abundance of such sources in the Russian archives. Identifying gaps in sources, he explains the reasons for different preservation of documentary complexes. He dwells on research methods that can partially compensate for the insufficiency of sources. He took some risk in choosing the inhabitants of a small village as main characters of his research. The analysis of source study and archival aspects of his research proves that such work can be successfully carried out even with insufficient sources.

Keywords

Family history, peasant genealogies, microhistory, sources of regional history, Russia, Yepifan district, preservation of documentary complexes.

Download the article: yurkin_doi

References

KOZLOV, V. P. Vtoroe arkheograficheskoe obozrenie istorii Rossii XX veka [The second archeographic review of the history of Russia of the 20th century. In Russ.]. Moscow, Drevlekhranilishche publ., 2016. 288 p.

KOZLOV, V. P. Osnovy teoreticheskoi i prikladnoi arkheografii [Fundamentals of theoretical and applied archaeography. In Russ.]. Moscow, ROSSPEN publ., 2008. 224 p.

MAZUR, L. N., GORBACHEV, O. V. Massovye istochniki po istorii krest'yanskoi sem'i v Rossii v ХХ v. [Mass sources on the history of the Russian peasant family in the 20th century. In Russ.]. IN: Dokument. Arkhiv. Istoriya. Sovremennost' [Document. Archive. History. Modernity. In Russ.]. Yekaterinburg, Ural. univ. publ., 2018, vol. 18, pp. 304–321.

About the authors

Yurkin Igor Nikolaevich, PhD in History, associate professor, S. I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, department of historiography and source studies of the history of science and technology, chief researcher, Moscow, +7-495- 988-22-80, +7-963-762-08-94, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Submitted 2.04.2021, published (for citation):

YURKIN, I. N. “Soedinit' teleskop i melkoskop”: ob odnoi popytke razresheniya metodologicheskikh i istochnikovedcheskikh problem izucheniya istorii rossiiskogo krest'yanskogo roda Epifanskogo uezda XVI – XX vekov ["To Unite Telescope and Microscope": Concerning An Attempt to Solve Methodological and Source Studies Problems of Studying the History of the Russian Peasant Family of the Yepifan Uezd in the 16th – 20th Centuries. In Russ.]. IN: Vestnik arhivista / Herald of an Archivist, 2021, no. 4, pp. 1265-1272. doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2021-4-1265-1272