Museum Collection as a Source of Knowledge on the Anthropology of Everyday Life of the Female Bolshevik Elite in the 1920–1930s.

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2023-4/157-169

Authors

Keywords:

material culture, everyday life, women's history, anthropology of gender, Bolshevik elite, museum artifact

Abstract

The study of material artifacts in museum collections in order to identify typical patterns in the everyday life of a certain social stratum, until recently, did not concern the narrow stratum of the party elite that formed after the victory of the Bolsheviks in 1917. The article aims to fill this gap. Analyzing artifacts from the funds of the memorial museum "The office and apartment of V. I. Lenin in the Kremlin" (now stored in the Leninsky Gorki Museum in the Moscow region), the authors reconstruct the life, habits and lifestyle of women who surrounded the leader of the party and the state in the first years of Soviet power. The analysis of behavioral practices, their functioning, the taste preferences of N. K. Krupskaya, M. I. Ulyanova and their associates, led to the conclusion that their behavioral modes are weakly separated from the modus vivendi of the social stratum of their origin, despite all the statements about the construction of "the new life".

Author Biographies

  • Svetlana Generalova, the Russian Academy of Sciences N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology

    Generalova, Svetlana V. – Ph.D. Student, the Russian Academy of Sciences N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (Moscow, Russian Federation). E-mail: generalova_s69@mail.ru  ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6021-6688

  • Natalya Pushkareva, the Russian Academy of Sciences N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology

    Pushkareva, Natalia L. – Doctor of History, Professor, Head of the Department for Gender Studies, the Russian Academy of Sciences N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (Moscow, Russian Federation). E-mail: pushkarev@mail.ru ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6295-3331

    For Citation: Generalova, S. V.  and N. L. Pushkareva. 2023. Museum Collection as a Source of Knowledge on the Anthropology of Everyday Life of the Female Bolshevik Elite in the 1920–1930s. Herald of Anthropology (Vestnik Antropologii). 4: 157–169.

    Funding: The study was carried out as a part of the research plan of the Russian Academy of Sciences N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology.

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Published

17.12.2023

Issue

No. 4 (2023): Herald of Anthropology

Section

The Anthropology of Gender