Oral history (or testimonies) are personal stories about people's lives, told by themselves. Conducting interviews (or interviewing) is a traditional method of research in various areas of the humanities, but especially in history. Oral history is based on interviews. Authentic experiences of people are contained in stories. Oral history is one of the most important methods of historical work, from Herodotus and Tacitus to modern researchers.

On the one hand, oral history is concerned with collecting historical testimonies of witnesses, because these testimonies record the experience of people, transmitted first hand, which becomes the working material for the historian's generalizations. On the other hand, human memory tells not only about events that happened in the past, but also about people's attitude to these events, about their explanation of social ties and values ​​of the past. Oral history provides an amazing opportunity to learn about attitudes, motivations in human behavior.

Everyone has something to tell about - not only famous and strong. Collecting the life stories of the older generation is a unique way to connect people of different ages, cultures, languages ​​and countries, and it is also an amazing chance to realize the uniqueness and importance of each person. The interview also provides an opportunity to understand and share the values ​​of the previous generation, including our parents, grandparents, neighbors, those who live nearby. Another advantage of testimonies is that they are a unique source of information about everyday life, the social atmosphere, and microhistory. They provide a good opportunity to see how official history is reflected in the everyday life of ordinary people, influenced their views.

In methods oral history exist serious restrictions:

• it applies to events that are stored in the memory of one or two generations, no more;
• respondents have selective memories of events of interest to the historian;
• oral history gives only a personal view of the past;
• evidence can be influenced by the dominant ideology, and the political situation can influence the assessment of events or the period as a whole;
• witnesses themselves may have stereotypes and prejudices that influence the stories they tell;
• there is professional difficulty in comparing evidence with other types of sources.

The choice of the type and content of the interview is connected with the research interest of the historian. Well-crafted interviews can evoke memories. When preparing for an interview, it is very important to be aware of what information you are going to receive. The researcher, on the one hand, must adhere to the given framework (for example, if he sets the task of conducting a structural or biographical interview), and on the other hand, take into account the choice of his interlocutor.

The interviewer should take into account that the chosen topic may have painful or neutral aspects for the interlocutor, that during the interview it is necessary to hear and often sympathize with the interlocutor; it is important to prepare the necessary equipment for recording.

What requirements should a potential respondent meet?:

• desire to speak openly and speak for the record;
• desire to remember the past;
• observation and good memory for details;
• the ability to correlate one's life experience with the past of society and the country as a whole;
• tolerance (that is, the absence of a fanatical adherence to certain views to the detriment of other positions).

Interview Guide

The easiest way to find a respondent is to interview friends or family members. Well-known people often have an interesting biography. It's great if there are people who keep the family archive, who love local history, who worked in local newspapers, etc.

Always start with preliminary interview. Ideally, the pre-interview should take place a day or two before the actual research interview.

• A preliminary interview will allow you to get to know the interlocutor and the issues that you will talk about.
• It gives you and your respondent a chance to get used to each other and to the interview situation.
• The pre-interview saves time because At this stage, you may find interesting points that may need to be covered in the main interview.

Respect the person you are interviewing. It is quite normal if during the preliminary interview the person does not want to answer all your questions. Don't push. The key to a successful interview is to create a trusting and friendly atmosphere right from the start and during the recording. The relationship between the respondent and the interviewer is based on the first contact. When conducting an interview, you need to balance between familiarity and overly formal style, feel and show respect and friendly concern for the person who tells you about his life.

Prepare a list of questions ahead of time and show it to your interviewee before you write it down. This will allow him to think about the answers and ask you questions before you start.

Take notes. Always have writing supplies handy. When talking about your story, especially about the past, your interviewee can always get distracted. You don't want to stop these digressions, but you don't want to get off topic either. Your notes will help you mentally go back and ask the right questions that will return the thread of the story. Notes also help you formulate good follow-up questions.

After obtaining consent for the interview, the interviewer must prepare and bring to the meeting passport for interview(see attached document at the end of the article). It is especially important to obtain the consent of the interlocutor to disclose the content. If your interlocutor relies on documents, photographs, materials from newspapers and magazines that are somehow related to the topics discussed, it is important to make copies of these historical sources and include this information in the content of the interview. In this case, you must also obtain permission to use these documents in the public domain.

Set time limits. By determining when the interview should end, you can focus on the subject as well as gauge how the interview is progressing. When you are interviewing older people, it can be difficult for them, and this is where self-time constraints can help as well.

Purpose: to train specialists in the field of oral history.

To give a general idea of ​​the history of the emergence, development and dissemination of techniques and methods of oral history in the past and present;

To study the foreign and domestic experience of oral history, to introduce the most significant oral history projects and programs, to give an idea of ​​the leading foreign and domestic centers of oral history;

To teach transcription, documentation, archiving of oral historical sources, to show the basics of the formation of "oral archives";

To instill skills in source analysis, interpretation and use of oral historical sources in research work.

This training course is designed to provide a theoretical and methodological basis for the organization and conduct of oral history work. It should contain both theoretical lessons and practical lessons in compiling questionnaires, preparing and conducting interviews, transcribing and designing oral historical sources.

"Oral history" in world historical practice in the past and present

The history of the emergence, application and dissemination of oral history techniques in the past. The emergence of writing as a way of fixing oral information and broadcasting it in space and time. The use of oral evidence during the formation and development of writing. The first historical works (Herodotus, Thucydides). Penetration of oral text into written sources.

Epistemological and technological conditions and factors in the formation of oral history as a new direction in historical research in the 20th century. The first large-scale oral history projects. Activities of A. Nevis. The American Tradition of Elite Oral History. The development of democratic oral history in Europe. Formation of the International Oral History Association. International congresses and periodicals on oral history (Oral History, Oral History Review, International Journal of Oral History and etc.). Leading foreign centers of oral history. Modern experience of foreign oral history.

"Oral history" in Russian historiography

Oral evidence in early history: annals, chronicles. Note order and history of the XVI-XVII centuries. Collection and use of oral information in history and local history in the 19th century. V. Ya. Bogucharsky and the collection of memories of the revolutionary movement. Istpart and the activities of its branches in the regions. Artel "Local historian" and the Society of five-year-olds in Altai. "Golden age of local history" and academic science: collection of memories about the history of factories, plants, industrial enterprises (M. Gorky). Commission for the collection of memories during the Great Patriotic War.

Oral history projects on the history of the Siberian intelligentsia (Soskin, Ostashko). Formation of oral history collection at Moscow State University.

V. D. Duvakin. Memoirs of the scientific intelligentsia.

Creation of the Society of Oral History of the USSR (All-Russian Society of Oral History). Creation of Oral History Centers in the Russian Federation. International relations.

Oral history: definition, discussions

Definition of oral history. Its subject, goals and objectives.

The term "oral history" (Oral history): its appearance and interpretation. Synonyms of oral history in foreign practice: sound history, auditory history, contact history, etc. The status of oral history. subject of oral history. Foreign and domestic schools, approaches, concepts. Scientific discussions. Differentiation between the concepts of "oral history" and "oral tradition". Formation of scientific teams. Notable programs in oral history. oral history projects. Approaches to oral history: elitist and democratic directions.

Oral history as a method

Quantitative and qualitative research methods. Methodological recommendations for the compilation of the questionnaire. Types of questions: open and closed; general, clarifying, provocative, suggestive, probing, etc. Questions aimed at finding meaning. Questions for comparison. Questions in the conditional mood or indirect form. Questionnaire types. Questionnaire design principles.

Organization and conduct of interviews: guidelines. Technique and methodology of interviewing. Types of interviews: thematic, biographical, genealogical, etc. A sample of respondents. Categories of respondents. Features of working with them. Features of speech communication of men and women. Problem situations during the interview and ways of their possible solution.

Problems of selecting information for recording and subsequent storage. The role of the researcher-interviewer, his influence on the type, form, structure and content of the generated document.

Actual problems of source studies in oral history. Determination of the source of oral history. The specificity of the oral historical source. Benefits of an oral historical source. Problems of representativeness of oral sources. Interpersonal relationships during the interview. The impact of the interview on its participants: the respondent and the interviewer. The problem of authorship of the source of oral history. Approaches to identifying an oral historical source: historical and scientific interview, historical and sociological interview, biographical interview, oral historical source, oral historical evidence, research interview, etc. Types of oral historical sources and their specificity. Discussions about the subjectivity, reliability, objectivity of oral history documents. Influence of socio-cultural norms and stereotypes.

Preparing and conducting interviews

Stages of the interview. Immersion in the study of the topic of the interview. Preparation of information about the subject of the interview. Development of an interview strategy. Definition of goals and objectives. Search and selection of the respondent. Types of interlocutors and the specifics of communication with them. Drawing up a working list of informants: ways and means of searching for information carriers.

Collection of preliminary information about the respondent. Types of interviews: thematic, biographical, genealogical, etc. Interview strategy: free interview, guidebook interview, semi-structured interview, rigidly structured interview. Organization of the meeting. Choosing a place and time for the interview. Technical support for conducting audio and video interviews: recommendations for choosing a voice recorder, audio and video cassettes, video cameras, recording format. Requirements for recording: the location of sound recording equipment, fixing the date, time, place of recording and data about the respondent and interviewer on the tape. Features of photography. Stages of the interview, its structure. Features of the initial stage (warm-up) and establishing contact. The main stage of the interview: ways to activate memories and measures to encourage the narrator. Most common interview mistakes. Psychological climate of the interview. Interviewer behavior: the ability to formulate and ask questions, to maintain a conversation. Methods and techniques of heating the respondent's interest in the conversation. Ethical and moral problems (the "hidden microphone" problem). Records management. Taking notes during the interview. End of the interview. Creation of annotations and card files of interviews. Interviewer code.

Features of the transformation of the text of the interview from sound form to text (oral historical source, transcript). Transcription and oral historical source (transcript). Peculiarities of "oral text" and "written text". Transcription and textology. Correlation of oral and written language in documenting an oral historical source. Verbal and visual information of an oral historical source. Methods and ways of its fixation and encoding. Problems of adequate translation of the meaning of the text from one form to another. Topical issues of archeography of oral history. Compilation of a scientific reference apparatus of oral historical sources.

oral history- this is the practice of scientifically organized oral information of participants or eyewitnesses of events, recorded by specialists (by definition Sigurd Schmidt).

The concept of oral history was popularized in the United States in the 1940s in connection with the activities of an American journalist. Joe Gulda, who announced his work on a huge book "The Oral History of Our Time", compiled entirely from a record of the stories of different people. In 1948, an oral history center was opened at Columbia University. In 1967, the US Oral History Association was established, and two years later a similar organization appeared in Great Britain.

A significant role in the development and promotion of the method of oral history was played by the book of the English historian Paul Thompson "Voice of the Past".

In Russia, one of the first oral historians can be considered an associate professor of the philological faculty of Moscow State University V. D. Duvakina(1909-1982), who made his notes, talking with people who knew the poet V. V. Mayakovsky. Subsequently, the topics of the recordings expanded significantly: he recorded on magnetic tape conversations with more than 800 respondents about the professors of Moscow State University, their work at the university, and scientific life. In 1991, on the basis of his collections, a section of oral history was created in the structure of the Scientific Library of Moscow State University. In 2001, the Oral History Center was opened (at the European University in St. Petersburg), and in 2004, a center for the study of post-war Soviet society was established in Petrozavodsk.

An example of research work in the field of oral history is the creation of a collection of interviews with veterans of the Great Patriotic War as part of an Internet project A. V. Drabkina"I remember" and a series of books "I fought ...".

«+» 1) Oral history is not only a valuable source of new knowledge about the past, but also opens up new perspectives on the interpretation of known events. It enriches the social history by providing an insight into everyday life, the mentality of the so-called "ordinary people", which is not available in the "traditional" sources. Thus, a new layer of knowledge is being created, where each person acts consciously, making “historical” decisions at his own level. 2) Interviews with politicians and their associates, big businessmen and cultural elite allow revealing the ins and outs of the events that have taken place, reveal the mechanisms and motives for decision-making, the personal participation of the informant in historical processes; 3) Oral history has a powerful civic potential. During the interview, two generations meet.

«-» 1) An interview is an act of memory filled with inaccurate information. This is not surprising, given that narrators compress years of life into hours of storytelling. They often get names and dates wrong, combine different events into a single event, and so on. 2) The perception of the stories being told is literally worthy of criticism, since the interview, like any source of information, must be weighed - what is colorfully told is not necessarily so in reality. Thus, the use of interviews as a source is limited by its subjectivity and inaccuracy, however, in combination with other sources, it expands the picture of historical events, introducing a personal touch into it.

provisions characterizing interview technique quite a lot, here are the main ones:

1) The start and end time of each interview must be recorded in the interview form.

2) In order to establish an atmosphere of trust, one must try to look the respondent in the eye.

3) Answers should be recorded as imperceptibly as possible for the respondent.

5) Never try to interview more than one person at a time.

6) Interviews should be conducted in a face-to-face setting with the respondent.

7) Only initial responses should be recorded. It is not necessary to change the fixed answer if the respondent asks for it after hearing the next question.

8) When the respondent answers “I don’t know ...”, there is no need to rush to ask him the next question right away, because this phrase is sometimes introductory for a substantive answer (“Well, I don’t know ... it seems to me that .. .”).

9) It is never necessary to tell the respondent (even if he asks about it) that other respondents have answered this question.

10) At the end of the interview, before releasing the respondent, it is necessary to look over the entire form again to make sure that all questions have been asked and all answers recorded.

Interviewing technique (interpretation of interview texts). Researcher Shchepansky identified the following methods:

1. Designing

2. Illustrative (bringing a fragment of an interview to characterize a statement).

3. Typological analysis (the material of the interview is classified and cataloged to identify certain types of personalities, types of behavior; for example, the strategy of a person's survival in the conditions of mass repressions of 1937-1938 in the USSR).

4. Statistical processing (a type of analysis aimed at establishing the dependence of various characteristics of the interview authors, their positions).

5. Content analysis is a broader method to apply. This is the analysis of questionnaires, media, complaints, personal or court cases, biographies, population censuses in order to identify any trends by counting the frequency of occurrence of characteristics.

"Oral history" is a new scientific direction that has been intensively developing since the second half of the 20th century.

There are quite a few definitions of oral history:

Oral history is a scientific discipline in which, with the help of an interview, the subjective knowledge of an individual about the past is recorded.

Another definition of oral history is that it is the practice of scientifically organized oral information of participants or eyewitnesses of events, recorded by specialists.

Next option. Oral history is the memories of people about their lives and the events of the past that they witnessed, recorded on digital slates.

And finally, one more definition. Oral history is a scientifically organized technique for interviewing past participants in order to record and preserve through oral evidence their personal memories and experiences.

Already in antiquity, the creators of historical writings resorted to revealing facts through oral interviews of witnesses and participants in events, or simply those who could tell about the legendary past. For example, even the ancient authors Herodotus, Plutarch, Thucydides, medieval chroniclers and ancient Russian chroniclers used the memories of eyewitnesses to create their writings.

Pre-revolutionary Russian historians and writers, in particular I.I. Golikov, V.N. Tatishchev, A.S. Pushkin, N.I. Nadezhdin, V.O. Klyuchevsky, P.I. Bartenev also resorted to oral sources (epics, songs and other folklore works). So, largely thanks to the oral memoirs collected in the Volga and Orenburg regions, Pushkin wrote his only scientific historical work, The History of the Pugachev Rebellion.

However, oral history received the status of a scientific discipline only in the twentieth century. The prerequisites for its formation were formed by two important factors.

First, the development technical means of capturing memories of the past. And thus, with the help of technical means, oral history revived the ancient method of historical research and creation of a source, turning it from a myth into knowledge, into a full-fledged historical document.

Secondly, an anthropological direction arose in historical research, focused on the study of the spiritual and material world of people in all their aspects. Due to the fact that historians were increasingly interested in the biographies of ordinary participants in history and the fate of those social strata that rarely leave their written memoirs, the method of tape recording memories has become more widespread.

In the Soviet Union, one of the first serious oral historians was Viktor Duvakin (1909–1982), a philologist from Moscow State University, who initially collected memories by talking to people who knew the poet V.V. Mayakovsky. Subsequently, the topics of the recordings expanded significantly: he recorded conversations with 850 respondents, figures of science, literature and art, on magnetic tape. In 1991, on the basis of his collection, a section of oral history was created in the structure of the Scientific Library of Moscow State University.

Today, in a number of universities abroad and in Russia, research centers of oral history exist and are actively working.

So we found out that oral history is an actual direction in the methodology of the history of the XX-XXI centuries. Its main distinguishing feature is the reconstruction of historical plots based on oral sources - memories and testimonies of contemporaries and participants in the events.

Consider what are the sources of oral history.

The whole variety of oral historical sources can be divided into three groups: 1) reflecting individual historical memory. Evidence of specific participants and contemporaries of events, their immediate descendants

2) reflecting group collective memory. Family traditions and legends, urban rumors.

3) reflecting public, national memory. Heroic epic, historical songs.

Each group of oral sources differs in the content of historical information and purpose (role) in culture, helping to study any aspect of people's lives to the fullest extent. Oral tradition finds its application primarily in family history. An oral biography is indispensable when writing a biography of an individual or many people united by a common cause. Oral history is widely used in historical local history, in describing specific objects of a city or region, as well as in describing historical events, participants, eyewitnesses or contemporaries of which are the people interviewed by the historian. However, in addition to testimonies about the events of personal and "big" history, all groups of oral sources embody the spiritual world of a person, his values, traditions, stereotypes, fears, hopes and allow you to search for answers to questions about the peculiarities of people's worldview.

Typological features of oral historical sources are:

– extreme subjectivity, determined by the ideological attitudes of the narrators, their social experience, the degree of participation in a given historical event, belonging to a particular confession, and other factors. But if oral historical sources serve as the basis for studying the picture of a historical event constructed in the minds of eyewitnesses (participants, their descendants), and it is important for a researcher, including a schoolchild, to understand the mechanism of refraction of historical reality by individual consciousness, then the subjectivity of an oral historical source is its merit;

– the presence of a problem of establishing the degree of reliability. This problem arises when oral sources are used to reconstruct the past - the activities, experiences, feelings of people at a particular historical moment. However, if the subject of attention of historians is individual or collective images (interpretations) of history, then the problem of the degree of reliability of oral evidence loses its meaning;

– information "layeredness". The intonations, slips of the tongue, facial expressions, and gestures accompanying the oral presentation not only significantly supplement the historical information, but are themselves sources of information about the speaker's attitude to the subject of his statement;

– dual nature. An oral source is born as a result of a dialogue between two persons: an eyewitness-narrator and a person who fixes his memory, which actively influences the process of recall.

At the stage of creating an oral historical source, methods for collecting oral information are in demand, namely:

1. Interview (mass or individual). Mass interview is one of the survey methods of extensive research. Its attributes are clear and always the same formulations of questions of interest to the researcher, which are asked by a large number of people. An individual interview is a set of carefully formulated questions on a specific topic, which are asked by the interviewer in a certain sequence to a participant, eyewitness or witness of a historical event in the process of long and / or repeated communication. 2. Conversation, which in the narrow sense is a kind of informal interview; in a broad sense - a conversation on a predetermined topic with contemporaries or witnesses of a historical event. In this conversation, the respondent and the interviewer act as full participants in the dialogue. 3. Observation - a method of collecting primary information about the interlocutor by directly perceiving, first of all, the features of his speech (intonation, pauses, reservations), as well as non-verbal signs (facial expressions, gestures, emotional reaction).

Recording of oral evidence is carried out in the form of audio and video recordings, as well as keeping minutes of interviews or conversations. An audio recording preserves not only the respondent's voice, but is able to convey to the listener his intonation, tone and timbre, manner and character of speech, and thereby convey information about a person's age, education, physical and mental state, emotions that he experienced at the time of recording. Video recording allows you to see the facial expressions and gestures of the respondent, which is accompanied by his oral speech. Record keeping can be carried out in the form of a transcript, abstract, plan.

Methods for storing oral sources can be both specially organized audio, video and libraries at departments and research institutes dealing with the problems of oral history, as well as posting oral sources on the Internet.

An example of research work in the field of oral history on a voluntary basis is the creation of a collection of interviews with veterans of the Great Patriotic War as part of the Internet project “I Remember” by Artem Drabkin (a biologist by education). Based on the collected materials, Drabkin publishes a series of books “I fought ... (on the T-34, Po-2, ...)”, based on oral memories.

Oral history, as a rule, develops in two directions, either fixes the memories of great figures and details of significant events, or reconstructs the life, mentality of ordinary, inconspicuous people, and even marginals. In any case, we have before us an unofficial history, often without censorship prohibitions, and that is why it is valuable, because it makes it possible to see the past "from below", from the point of view of an individual.

Opportunities and prospects for the development of oral history lies in several areas of research activity. First, it makes it possible to carry out collective mass comprehensive research involving a large number of researchers and witnesses of the past. Secondly, oral history may well reconstruct the history of the "people from the sidelines", which cannot be created based only on written documents. Thirdly, all this activity provides great opportunities for the formation of a huge information base in order to organize new archives and source base.

Do not forget that oral history is interdisciplinary and is closely related to sociology, semiotics, linguistics, psychology and other sciences. Thus, it can be stated that oral history is an independent scientific discipline, within which, with the help of other sciences, new personal historical sources are created and analyzed, and on this basis the reconstruction of the past takes place.

Methodology for collecting oral sources

METHODOLOGY FOR COLLECTING ORAL HISTORICAL SOURCES

The teaching of history in schools is in a difficult position. It is conditioned both by the state of society itself and by the level of development of historical science. At the present stage, when the concept of school history education is being revised, it makes sense to return to the use of local history as a method of restructuring the teaching of history in educational institutions. Oral history can become one of the areas of local history work at school. Usually it is interpreted as one of the directions of historical research, based on the use of sources of oral origin, i.e. we are talking about the creation of "human" documents on the basis of conversations, surveys, interviews or questionnaires of direct participants and eyewitnesses of historical events.

Unfortunately, the development of oral history was reduced at best to the collection of collective sources of oral origin - legends, epics and other forms of folklore. The study of the facts of individual consciousness, the fate of an individual during the period of significant historical events was not carried out and was not encouraged. Nikolai Berdyaev wrote: "The epochs, so full of events and changes, are considered to be interesting and significant, but these are the epochs unfortunate and suffering for individuals, for entire generations" 1-.

For a long time, historical truth was fully reflected only in sources of oral origin, since the attitude to history as an ideological weapon led to the review and editing of not only printed works, but also to the cleaning and unification of archives, the biased selection of documents submitted for storage in state and party archives, creation of closed funds. There is a need on the scale of the district, village, region to organize purposeful work to record memories on various topics in the history of the modern period, to create a unique source on the history of the 20th century. - living collective memory of several generations.

The creation of archives of oral history at educational institutions is a strong and noble task for history teachers and their students. The most favorable conditions for this work are for a teacher in a rural school: a good knowledge of the students, their families, fellow villagers, old-timers; Living permanently in one locality and knowing the capabilities of informants, a rural teacher can systematically work for a number of years to create oral historical documents, repeatedly turn to valuable informants, improving historical records. An important advantage is the trust of fellow villagers in the teacher and the children. Outside respondents often encounter the reluctance of old-timers to answer questions about previously taboo topics or a lack of sincerity.

The appeal of a rural school teacher to oral history is due to the need to use new local history material in the study of domestic history and the organization of feasible research activities for schoolchildren.

One of the reasons for the decline in interest in history is the schematic, uninitiated assimilation by students of a set of historical facts and phenomena in the volume of a textbook, which limits the vision of the historical past to the position of the authors and does not give the reader the opportunity to take part in solving historical problems. It is advisable to build the teaching of history on the basis of active creative independent study of recent history by the students themselves through the organization of the collection and compilation of oral sources based on local history. The work of students creating oral historical sources will give them the opportunity to come into contact with living history that cannot be accommodated by any schemes and concepts. History in this case will appear like children as a complex contradictory process in which the fate, consciousness and psychology of an individual accumulates the features of an entire historical era.

The material collected from year to year by students and teachers will gradually form an archive of oral historical documents, on the basis of which the teacher can organize the research work of students to study certain topics, write reports and abstracts, use the brightest material during lessons; This will help not only to intensify the mental activity of each student in the process of compiling oral sources, but will also provide a scientific basis for the school history classroom.

The school archive of historical sources will be able to compensate for the narrow base of published historical and memoir local history literature, the lack of historical information, the imperfection of textbooks and teaching aids, the lack of a source base in the villages (scientific libraries, historical archives, local history museums).

Oral history is an effective educational tool and is designed to fill the resulting spiritual vacuum. The impersonality of history, the collapse of ideals and heroes cut off from life contributed to the rupture of communication between generations, the formation of a skeptical and cynical attitude towards the work and life of the older generation, the loss of universal values, disappointment in one's own life. Teaching history at school has lost its main purpose - the strengthening of pride and love for their homeland and its history.

It is necessary to combine the study of general historical processes with the study of the local history of the village, region, region, the history of one's family, a particular person. Oral history concretizes global historical processes on the basis of local history; on the basis of the life experience of an individual, it makes historical categories understandable: kulak, middle peasant, poor peasant, commune, migrant, dispossession, deportation, etc. The main source of studying local history in a rural school is the memoirs of old-timers. The involvement of children in the work of recording stories will contribute to the upbringing of a sense of respect for their past, to instill the habits of communicating with people. The older generation will open up on the positive side: their attitude to work, family, village, life principles. All this will form respect for elders.

The choice of the main directions of the work of the school team can be determined both by the historical past of the settlement where the work is carried out, and by the interests of the collector. In each locality there is a wide field for collecting oral testimonies. However, it must be borne in mind that with the departure of the generation of 1900-1920. birth, an entire historical era will disappear - the era of revolutions, civil and domestic wars, the first five-year plans, collectivization, therefore, first of all, it is necessary to intensify work on recording people's memories of the forgotten and hushed up events of the 20-40s, while there are living witnesses and eyewitnesses of the so-called "blank spots" (la-kun) of history.

POSSIBLE DIRECTIONS OF COLLECTING WORK

I. The history of social cataclysms of the 20th century, subjected to distortion in official historiography:

a) the perception by rural residents of the most important events of the civil war (attitude to ongoing events, the concept of whites and reds, rich and poor, etc.);

b) the life of an individual peasant family during the period of free land use and the development of individual farming and cooperation (NEP);

c) the life of peasants in the 30-70s (events, relations, assessments of collectivization, dispossession, enlargement of collective farms, the fight against unpromising villages, the impact of the Great Patriotic War of 1841-
1345);

d) repressions of the 20-50s;

e) deportation and resettlement of solo in the Soviet era;

f) participation of fellow villagers in the development of virgin and fallow lands, large reclamation construction projects, etc.

2.. Traditional peasant society:

a) folk culture (labor, change houses, social and family traditions in a peasant family);

b) the history of disappeared and disappearing villages;

c) agrarian policy of the 50-80s and the fate of the village.

3. People's consciousness:

a) the cult of personality to popular consciousness;

b) attitude towards totalitarianism;

c) the formation of a one-party system and popular consciousness;

d) popular ideas about socialism and Soviet patriotism, democracy, capitalism, etc.

4. Perception by rural residents of the most important events of current history:

a) attitude to modern agrarian policy (rent, farming, private land use, collective farms, state farms);

b) resettlement of refugees, etc.

There are practically no such historical problems in the history of the modern village, about which a history teacher could not get information by turning to various segments of the population with a questionnaire. A cross-cutting topic of historical research at school can be the study of the history of disappeared and existing villages. The fate of the Russian countryside in the Soviet era reflected all the turning points in the modern history of Russia, covering the period from the revolution to the civil war to the historical processes in the modern village. Historical events and phenomena of the last decades of the XX century. are stored in the memory of fellow villagers, reflected in the fate and consciousness of a particular person.

The peculiarity of an oral historical source is that it contains double information: factual (event) and evaluative (psychological). There is a dispute between historians regarding the factual reliability of oral sources, since oral stories reflect historical reality only in the form in which it was "refracted" in the minds of eyewitnesses of events. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the possible distortion of facts. Instead, the facts obtained by the survey method can become the starting point of a new, unknown in the history of the area. Often in oral historical sources, it is not the facts themselves that are of interest, but their assessment, comprehension. The study of folk consciousness and psychology was practically not an object of academic historical science and gives scope for the initiative creativity of the student and teacher.

Classes in oral history require certain professional qualities from the teacher and serious preliminary preparation of groups of students. It becomes sad when there are such lovers of antiquity who for years, collecting oral stories, did not take into account the mandatory conditions for research conversation and scientific recording. Incorrectly conducted surveys and formalized records cannot be published and taken into scientific circulation. It must be remembered that the collected sources will be of great historical value for future generations.

It is advisable to start work with a special elective course "Methods of collecting work"; In the course of the classes, along with general theoretical training (studying the history of these places and the current economic and cultural state), it is necessary to provide for mandatory training in survey methods, recording techniques and working with sound recording equipment, conducting training sessions and compiling questionnaires on topics of interest. problems of history.

The most acceptable and effective methods of collecting historical information is a survey of two types: questioning (written form of communication about the respondent), interviewing (oral form).

The survey is preceded by scientific work. The teacher is required to prepare questionnaires in advance, which will become the specific program with which schoolchildren will contact eyewitnesses and participants in historical events in the course of their collecting work. During the summer expeditions, students of the Barnaul Pedagogical Institute tested the program of studying the history of the disappeared villages of Altai. It can be successfully used in the work of teachers in rural schools.

STUDY PROGRAM OF A DISAPPEARED OR DISAPPEARING VILLAGE

I. GENERAL DATA.

Modern name of the village.

The village council.

Area.

P. HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE VILLAGE.

Education time.

Reasons for formation (Cossack outpost, village; resettlement, mine, Old Believers, settlement, what else?).

Name in the past.

Administrative affiliation (province, county, volost, region, district, village council).

S. DESCRIPTION OF THE VILLAGE LOCATION

1. The geographical position of the village relative to the river, tract, railway, village council, district center, city (south of the district center about 5 km, on the Zmeinogorsk tract 5 km from ...).

2. Toponymy of the surroundings (local name of streams, springs, mountains, ravines; swamps, copses, forest edges, etc.).

3. Legends and were about the origins of local names.

4. The productive space of the village (plowing, hayfields, pastures, apiaries, hunting and fishing grounds, logging, berry and mushroom places ..,).

IV. ECONOMY OF THE VILLAGE.

1. Traditional branches of agriculture:

a) arable farming (what kind?);

b) the production of other agricultural crops: "buckwheat, millet, barley (what else?);

c) production of industrial crops: flax, hemp, sunflower (what else?);

d) gardening: potatoes, peas, watermelons, pumpkin (what else?);

e) agricultural tools;

f) traditional ways of cultivating the land;
e) agricultural calendar.

2. Cattle breeding (cattle, horse breeding, pig breeding, deer breeding, what else?)

a) ways of keeping livestock:

b) famous breeds of horses, cows, what were they famous for?
c) common breeds.

3. Poultry farming (chickens, geese, ducks, turkeys, who else?).

"Gradated peasant crafts: fishing, beekeeping, hunting, tobacco growing, picking nuts, berries, mushrooms (what else?), Bright unusual cases associated with this;

Handicraft industry and craft.

A) for the processing of agricultural products (oil-making: butter, sunflower poppy, hemp, flax; flour-grinding; sheepskin; fur coat; what else?);

b) woodworking: wood chips, cooperage, tar, tar, etc.?

c) ironworking:

d) pottery;

e) what else?

6. The survey is preceded by (whorl, windmill), kru-powder, creamery, cheese factory; a forge, a craft workshop, reclamation canals, what else?

7, Local trade:

a) periodic trade points: fair, market, car shop, etc.;

b) permanent points of trade: shop; score;

h) character: exchange, buying, credit, consumer, cooperative, state; d) characteristics of goods (sold and bought).

V.. COMPOSITION AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POPULATION

The first surnames of the village, genealogies of hereditary peasants. Characteristics of original names and surnames.

Mass migrations in the village:

b) places of eviction (Tambov province, Saratov, Kursk, where else?);

c) the position of migrants (assigned, not assigned, farm work, etc.).

3. Resettlement in Soviet times:

a) reasons (dispossession and repression, deportation, exile from Central Russia during cholera, etc.);

b) places of eviction (Volga region, Checheno-Ingushetia, Kalmykia, Moldova, Ukraine, Moscow, etc.);

c) the situation of immigrants.

4. Famous people who influenced the fate of the village, region. Countries (scientists and cultural figures, scientists, writers, artists, teachers, composers, heroes of the revolution and war, labor, folk healers and craftsmen, inventors, politicians, local historians). Population in different historical periods (what events influenced the increase or decrease in the population in the village?)

VI. TRADITIONS. LIFE AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE VILLAGE.

1. Composition of believers (Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and others) and buildings of religious worship (church, cathedral, monastery, prayer house).

Relationships in the family (between parents and children, between husband and wife, between relatives). Distribution of labor duties in the family. Financial position in the family.

Relationships between villagers. Forms of communication:

a) labor (joint types of work, help, subbotniks, etc.);

b) rest (gatherings, parties, meetings, solemn ceremonies, rural holidays).

VII. OUTSIDE OF THE VILLAGE. HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL SIGHTS.

Building density. The layout of the village (one street along the raki, at the foot of the mountain ... how else?).

Architectural structure (in the center of the village is a square... how else?).

Monuments of architecture (church, chapel, merchant's house, etc.);

4. Historical sights

a) a building or places associated with the visit or residence of famous people:

b) buildings or places associated with historical events (the first peasant house, village government, church, school, headquarters of a partisan detachment, etc.);

c) monuments dedicated to some events or people.

5. Geographical attractions (cave, lake, spring, healing springs, etc.).

VIII. SOCIO-POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND MAIN HISTORICAL EVENTS IN THE FATE OF THE VILLAGE.

1. The influence of the NEP on the life of the peasants of the village.

Carrying out a policy of complete collectivization and fighting the kulaks in the countryside.

The influence of the Great Patriotic War on the life of the village.

What post-war events influenced the life of the village (virgin lands, reforms of the 50-70s: the enlargement of the village, attitude towards unpromising villages, etc.).

IX. TIME AND REASONS FOR THE DEATH OF THE VILLAGE.

The time of the main migration flow.

Reasons for migration.

Places of migration (to other villages of the district, to other districts, regions, territories).

When and who was the last to leave the village?

What was left in that place (material remains of dwellings, monuments, cemetery?...)

INTERVIEW

An interview is a casual conversation between two equally interested people, conducted according to a certain plan, and the answers are recorded either manually or mechanically. In world scientific practice (oral history is most widespread in England and the USA), memories are recorded using a tape recorder and other auxiliary technical means (dictaphones, video and audio equipment). Then the text is transcribed (transferred) to paper. But, taking into account the real possibilities of rural schools, the recommendations for conducting a survey for interviews involve, among other things, a manual recording of memories. The art of using this method of questioning is to be able and to know:

what exactly to ask?

how to ask?

who to ask?

what questions to ask?

where to have a conversation?

how to process data?

Conducting an interview requires a creative approach and depends on the individual qualities of the presenter. It is impossible to give a single recipe for all interviewers (leading the survey). The skill of the interviewer is determined by the ability to correctly group questions and arrange them in a certain order, taking into account the current circumstances, the atmosphere of the conversation and the age of the person being asked. Usually the interview is built in stages.

1. Introduction and contact. The purpose of this stage is to arouse interest in the conversation, to convince people how important their knowledge is. To create an atmosphere of trust, you can tell something yourself (about the road, weather, refer to someone in the village). You need to address the interlocutor respectfully, by name and patronymic, and not familiarly, as is customary in the village. A prerequisite is information about yourself and the organization you represent (school, museum). The facilitator is obliged to explain where and how the information received will be used. As a rule, the guys are quickly convinced that the success of the entire interview is determined precisely by the introductory conversation.

2. Program issues. The first questions should not be complicated and voluminous. The interlocutors conduct a kind of warm-up. The transition to the main questions should be clear to the interviewee. You can highlight them with the phrase: "Let's move on to the most important issues."
The end of the conversation should consist of simple questions, since by this time both the interviewer and the respondent (interviewee) are tired. You can clarify any questions, return to the unsaid. The optimal duration of the entire interview is 40-50 minutes. Further questioning will not give the expected effect. If it is felt that the respondent still has sufficient information, it is better to reschedule the interview for another day.

3. Registration of a passport (basic information about the respondent). Experience shows that students do not understand that collecting information about the interviewee is a prerequisite for scientific recording. Usually the passport contains the following questions:

FULL NAME.

Year of birth.

Place of Birth.

Profession.

Where and in what capacity did he or she work (if retired, since when).

Address.

Any interview is a complex socio-psychological communication. The student must have not only a certain level of knowledge on the topic with which he comes to the respondent, but also a certain level of culture; necessary to communicate with people. During an oral survey, the guys have to turn to the painful periods of the respondent's life (deportation, repression, dispossession, etc.) ". Therefore, questions should be asked in such a way as not to offend the respondent's pride, his dignity, prestigious ideas, try to avoid negative emotions in the respondent (rescue for the consequences of the survey, unpleasant associations, sad memories and other negative emotional states that affect the mental well-being of the respondent).Experience shows that generations of the 30-50s still have a fear of the consequences of They often ask the question: “Will they be attracted somewhere for the story?” Therefore, the interviewer must be able not only to call the respondent to sincerity, but also not to disturb his spiritual comfort and peace.

Interviewers should understand that communication with the respondent is determined by the situation of the survey, its conditions, which should be favorable for the respondent to work calmly and concentrated on the questions. It is necessary to choose the optimal time and place for the survey. You can not conduct interviews in crowded rooms, with strangers. Even the silent presence during the interview of a "third" person (neighbor, colleague, relative) affects the content of the answers. A person has a lot of time and frankness at home. However, it is necessary to take into account the busyness of the respondent with household chores. For example, for a farmer, the arrival of an interviewer during the morning hours of work on the farm or evening doshas may cause a refusal to answer questions.

Finally, the success of the survey is determined by the psychological state of the person himself at the time of the interview and the use by students of psychological methods of conducting a conversation. So, the interviewer must know how to encourage the answer: an attentive look, an approving nod, gratitude for a detailed answer, admiration for the memory of the interlocutor; genuine interest, respect for the respondent. Do not interrupt the interlocutor or openly and rudely question his statements. Many other methods can be used to verify information that has caused distrust: the method of partially disagreeing with the interviewee ("You say that .... but many,"), stimulating a more detailed memory ("Do you think so? "), point out the inconsistency "Maybe I misunderstood you?").

When interviewing, there is a danger of the facilitator actively influencing the content of answers and assessments. It has been observed that the respondents often strive to "guess" the answer to the question, which would coincide with the partner's opinion. Therefore, students should be self-possessed in showing their own reactions to the answers or behavior of the interviewee, not to enter into a discussion with him about his opinion, not to ask questions, prompts, but to give him the opportunity to think. The interviewer was required to minimize the impact of their assessments and judgments on the quality of memories.

Apparently, each school team involved in oral history should develop its own Interviewer's Code, as is done by the Oral History Sector of the Laboratory of Local History of the Barnaul Pedagogical Institute.

INTERVIEWER CODE

Interviewing should become a daily routine in historical research in the 20th century. At the same time, the interviewer-researcher must be aware that he is creating documents that are a historical source for future historians. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully document the results of the survey.

The interview should only be recorded after the respondent has been informed of the responsibility for their materials and the rights to them. The researcher should document any agreements with those being interviewed,

2. Before the start of the interview, if possible, ask the respondent to give an overview of sources on the topic of this survey, which must be indicated in the entry,

3. The interviewer should engage in an informative dialogue with the respondent by asking questions that stimulate more coverage of the topic.

4. The interviewer is obliged to protect the interviewee from possible social traumas, to conduct a conversation with respect for his human dignity. Even if the answers cause doubt of the respondent, the interviewer should not show dissatisfaction,

5. The interviewer is responsible for the correct citation of materials,

6. Teachers who involve schoolchildren in this kind of work are obliged to familiarize them with the rules of the survey and with the responsibility in general for this survey,

7. The survey material is signed by the respondent. If the information is of historical value, then the signature is certified by the seal of the village council or other state institution. In this case, the record of the survey may be handed over to the state archive.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

In order for the records of the survey, interviews, questionnaires to be published and taken into scientific circulation, a number of mandatory conditions must be observed. As a rule, it is during the preparation of an oral historical source that the researcher makes the most mistakes, which sometimes cross out all the work done.

The recollection, in the case of written fixation, is written down immediately after the story verbatim, without skipping individual words and phrases, and is presented in the first, and not in the third person. The interviewee's expressions should be used as much as possible. You can use the small boxes on the right for your notes: "unwilling to answer", "lively", "nervous", etc. It is advisable to record not only all the answers of the respondent, but questions and comments of the interviewer,

Memorizing and transferring the story later to paper is strictly prohibited. Such a method will inevitably entail incomplete recording of memories, distortion of facts, assessments and judgments of the narrator. The recording itself will inevitably “refract” through the consciousness and worldview of the interviewer and will carry incomplete and distorted information.

3. It is unacceptable to edit the text, even if the respondent's speech seems illiterate (both when transcribing from a tape recorder, and when recording in writing). The entry should reflect the vocabulary that the narrator has. If incomprehensible words are encountered, they are clarified during the conversation and their explanation is fixed in the interpretation of the narrator. Text impersonation is not allowed.

4. A draft entry is carried out on one side of the sheet, margins are left on the left. The reverse side and margins are used for the narrator's additions, if he returns to this event, to clarify what is incomprehensible, for his comments, notes of the nature of the story (alertness, restrained, hostile, insincere, etc.). This form of direct recording will help in the final execution of the document.

5. The final version of the story is drawn up manually or printed on an expanded sheet of paper on one side, observing margins of 2.5-3 cm on the left for stapling the sheets. In order for the document to be readable, it is necessary to write down the plots themselves from the red line or highlight them as a separate question. If the final version is rewritten by hand, then this is done in clear handwriting. The recording should not be too dense.

6. A correctly formatted text is given to the interviewee to read. After reading it, the respondent, if he does not have major comments and clarifications, puts his signature, and when submitting the material to the state archive, all the requirements of paragraph 7 are met (see "Interviewer's Code").

QUESTIONNAIRE.

Unlike interviewing, less prepared children can participate in the survey, since the quality of work depends more on the correct design of the questionnaire and the wording of the questions. Compiling a questionnaire for a teacher is not an easy task and requires a thorough knowledge of the essence of historical phenomena and survey techniques. Compilation of the questionnaire is defined as the author's work. The teacher, before sending students with questionnaires to addresses, must be sure of the perfection of the questionnaire. To master the skill of compiling a questionnaire, you can turn to the experience of ethnographers, sociologists, folklorists and study the topic of questioning in depth. fills out the questionnaire independently, within the limits of his knowledge. A joint form of work is acceptable, when the anke-ter writes down answers to questions under dictation. In rural schools, written, postal surveys can be widely used on a number of topics: surveying former residents of the disappeared villages of the district, fellow villagers subjected to dispossession, and so on, surviving not only in the region, but also beyond its borders. Below is a sample of a tested questionnaire for the dispossessed:

QUESTIONNAIRE

Dear …………………………………………………………………

The Laboratory of Historical Local Lore of BGPC appeals to you with a request to familiarize yourself with the questions of the questionnaire and answer the questions contained in it. Your answers will be of invaluable help in restoring historical truth and justice. The results of this survey will form an independent archive on the history of unjustified repressions in the Soviet era and will be used in scientific and educational work. Thank you in advance for your participation in the study.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR FILLING OUT THE QUESTIONNAIRE

Answers are given in an arbitrary, free form on any blank sheets of paper.

The text is written on one side of the expanded sheet (as in the questionnaire). On the left, fields of 2-3 sms are left

The size of your answer is not limited. For us, all the details that are stored in your memory are important.

The question does not need to be rewritten. You can indicate his number before your answer.

First of all, let me ask you a number of questions about your life before dispossession.

1. Where did your family live?

What was the family like (family composition, education, occupations of family members?)

How much land was on the farm?

How many livestock (horses, cows, sheep) did they have?

What technical means were used in the economy?

How were the products of the economy disposed of?

How were work responsibilities distributed in the family?

Did you invite neighbors or other citizens to harvest, care for animals and do other household chores, i.e. Was hired labor used in the economy?

9. How did you and your family react to the formation of collective farms?

10. When was your family dispossessed? Which of the fellow villagers was dispossessed with you?

11. What was the reason for dispossession?

12. By whom and how was the necessity of dispossession of your family substantiated?

13. How do you yourself explain the reasons for dispossession?

14. How was your family dispossessed?

15. How was the dispossession of kulaks in your village (actions of local authorities, the NKVD, the courts)?

16. What forms of repression were identified to your family?

What material and moral damage did your family suffer?

How did you dispose of the property confiscated from you, the house?

Has your relationship with your family changed?