The formation and development of everyday life history. Foreign and Russian historiography: experience of comparing

Introduction. The history of everyday life is no longer a sign of scientific fashion. Enjoying academic recognition and arousing great interest among readers interested in history, it has developed into a full-fledged scientific field. In this regard, the topicality of the article is determined by the ongoing scientific reflection on what everyday life is for a historian and how productive its study is.

Materials and methods. The study is based on the analysis of historiographic sources presented by the papers of historians from different countries and different generations. The methodology combines traditional methods of historical research and the approach of new intellectual history.

Analysis. The anthropological approach of historical study, which was developed by French school “Annales”, attempted to eliminate the bias towards political history, prompted the turn to the topic of everyday life. A common ground in the interpretation of history by representatives of different generations of this school has become attention to “history from below”. Historians who advocated the productivity of microhistory made a significant contribution to the development of this approach. The Italian scientist, Giovanni Levi, is the most outstanding representative of microhistory. The development of everyday life history got a significant impetus in the 1980s in Germany. Alf Lüdtke considered the definition “history of everyday life” to be not entirely suitable, but the most acceptable as since through this approach a “prosopography of the masses” is formed. The interdisciplinary matter of the everyday phenomena studied by historians encourages us to turn to the experience of sociologists. Thus, A. Lefebvre called for separating the everyday and the mundane. In Soviet historical science, everything that concerns everyday life was considered as a subject of ethnography. Natalia Pushkareva was one of the first to speak out against such an approach in the post-Soviet period. She emphasizes the influence of both the tradition of Russian chronicling and the achievements of Western humanities on the Russian experience of studying everyday life history.

Results. The study of the development of the field of everyday history abroad and in Russia allows making conclusion about the influence of national traditions of historical research and the specific historical context that gave rise to certain requests in the field of historical topics. Moreover, the intention of historians of different generations to make the ordinary person a full-fledged participant in great historical events is also remarkable.

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