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Cambridge researcher studies teenage diaries from Stalin-era
The diaries of teenage boys in pre-war Soviet Russia have revealed how they navigated ideology and propaganda while expressing Zadirko, a Slavonic Studies researcher at Trinity College, Cambridge, studied 25 diaries written between 1930 and of the documents had never been studied before and preserved the voices of teenage boys from a range of families and said the diaries showed how "Soviet ideology shaped people, but they weren't completely brainwashed".
The project focused on male teenagers growing up in the pre-war Stalinist era. "Scholars tend to disregard most of what's in these diaries as just teenage concerns," Zadirko said. "But in 1930s Russia, writing was a key strategy for teenage boys to process their coming of age and find their place in society. "Even if their diary remained a private document, writing for these boys felt very high-stakes, even existential."Zadirko believed the diaries provided a crucial safe space for 1930s Soviet teenagers to work out how to perform their public identity, which she said gave them an advantage over many teenagers today."Working out your identity in public on social media today feels much less safe... in the private setting of a diary, the only judge is yourself."
One diary was that of Ivan Khripunov, the son of a man who was labelled a kulak, a wealthy peasant who was then exiled as an enemy of the people. It was a rare example of a peasant diary written by a young person with insights into his life from 1937, at 14, until his conscription into the Red Army in writing followed Maxim Gorky's literary model and he wrote about his family surviving famine, exile, and his mother and elder sisters suffering from the public humiliation of 'dekulakisation'.
"I don't think Ivan realised that he was doing something potentially dangerous," Zadirko said. "By imitating Gorky, Ivan was following established literary conventions, but in doing so, he broke the rules of a Stalinist public autobiography, by discussing taboo subjects. It was not an expression of conscious political dissent but a clash of cultural models."Zadirko added that from today's perspective, teenage boys in 1930s Russia seemed conforming but, while diarists used Soviet ideological concepts to fashion themselves, they did so in creative, unexpected ways."These boys bent and circumvented Soviet doctrine, so they retained their teenage sense of self while still trying to fit the Soviet mould," Zadirko said."We mustn't over exoticize Soviet lives. Soviet ideology shaped people, but they weren't completely brainwashed. "There weren't just true believers and dissidents. People didn't simply accept or reject propaganda, or play by its rules to survive. "The diaries show that Soviet people, including teenagers, were many things all at once, trying to assemble their identity and make sense of the world with what they were given."
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