Retrospective Analysis of Conversations with Residents of the Pre-Reform Russian City in the Genre of Oral History

Abstract

The analysis of cultural and historical perceptions of merchants and petty bourgeois of Samara in the middle of the 19th century became possible thanks to the records of their stories made by G. N. Potanin. His notes had distinct attirbutes and patterns that have been revealed in the process of indentifying and examining of the living oral tradition in modern research. These material from Samara is not only of regional interest, bu also unique as far as all Russian provincial cities are concerned. In particular, it has been shown that their analysis enables to use methods of “oral history”. Manuscripts “Notes on Samara” and “Grandfather from Samara” by Potanin were made for the Russian Geographical Society and are kept now in its archive. During their creation written sources were almost never used. Potanin gave preference to oral stories by old-timers representing average residents. Representatives of the nobility and bureaucracy were not questioned by them. The received oral testimonies were hardly criticized. He fixed, often verbatim, both reliable and fantastic versions of local stories. Due to this method, the local oral tradition has been preserved very fully and in detail. The records by Potanin traced the transformation of historical memory. It had been alive for about 80 years, while there remained eyewitnesses of events. In a society where it was not recorded in memoirs and scholarship, the realities of the past were replaced with myths. Collective consciousness retained only the most vivid or generally significant events. Records of conversations with Samara residents are yet to be careful studied by specialists from various fields of humanitarian knowledge. The existence of such notes give hope for discovering similar sources in other cities of Russia.