History of the Family and Native Place in the Projection of the Life Path of a Professional Folklorist and Ethnographer

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to determine the value of works like the book Pomni korni svoi (“Remember your roots”) by the Karelian folklorist A.S. Stepanova about the history of her native village for humanitarian research and for the dissemination of historical and ethnographic knowledge. Stepanova’s book is examined in the context of problems concerning the possibilities and ways of reconciling academic and personal everyday knowledge in the situation when a humanities scholar is acting as a first-hand historian or as an ordinary life writer. While Stepanova’s scholarly works on Karelian lamentations are internationally known, the book in question was published both in Russian and Karelian and is addressed to her direct descendants. It is about the North Karelian village of Shombozero, which no longer exists. Most of its inhabitants were related by kinship. The narrative is based on the author's memoirs and autobiography. The book includes the results of genealogical reconstruction, documentary information about the history of the settlement, oral history materials, and the demographic history of households in the late 19th — first half of the 20th centuries. It describes the topography of the area, ways of communication and means of transportation, the traditional household, and economic and everyday life of the Karelians in the 1930s–1950s. The history of the place and the everyday life of its inhabitants are presented in the projection of the formation and life path of a professional philologist and teacher. The author of the book describes and reflects on the activities of rural “national” boarding schools in the 1930s–1940s, teachers and students, life stories of various immigrants from local peasant families, the daily life of university students in the 1950s, twists and turns in the life of her family, the process of becoming a scholar, and episodes from the history of the study of Karelian folklore. As a result, the book notably exceeds its objective to preserve family memory. It is a valuable source for the study of ethnography, ethno-social and ethno-linguistic processes, the circulation of folklore, social history of families and other areas of humanitarian and social studies. It conveys both local and general historical knowledge and can be used by specialists as a professional description of the life of the settler and family-related communities during changes due to chrisis.