ORAL STORYTELLING ABOUT CHILDHOOD AS A SOURCE FOR STUDY- ING EMOTIONS OF THE SOVIET SOCIETY (1970–1985)

Abstract

In this article, the emotions of a Soviet child are put into the center of scientific research, which largely reflects the way of accepting/expressing its own attitude to surrounding events and the world. Еmotions exactly accompanied a human all life, greatly influenced on acts and started or halted the mechanisms of memory and the forming of remembrances, that influ- ences the process of remembering in adult age. Analyzed interviews of women and men as primary sources to study the emotions of a Soviet child. Such oral sources involve working with «emotions in a square» – the feelings that accompanied the respondent during a described situation in the past, and feelings that occur directly during the recording of the interview. The differences between the emotional coloring of narratives according to gender, social roles, and the significance of a specific event that was stored in memory are determined. Through the prism of emotions, the engaged ideological world and the private world are investigated.Public life that passed under the sign of propaganda laid on the own «emotional mode» on a daily occurrence, hiding behind a screen «no emotion» indignation and non-acceptance, and also faith in soviet ideals and infatuation for the organization of celebrations. The children were wrapped with a sense of security, the same as in the parental home and in the state as a whole. The security was that «emotional code» of childhood, and it became the platform for the expression of other emotions and feelings. The spectrum of positive (joy, fascination) and negative (fear, indignation) children’s emotions, models of their appearance and difference in expression in accordance with the personal character and public changes are analyzed. Private life, which was largely determined by social terms and the well-being of parents, gave a wider corner for the display of children’s own attitude toward events, thus allowed them to show the emotions and feelings on anything, lying down in forming character bases and values.