TOWARDS A HISTORY OF EVERYDAY LIFE OF THE FIRST RUSSIAN WOMEN HISTORIANS OF THE LATE 19TH — BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY: LEISURE AND RECREATION

Abstract

The article focuses on the study of the anthropology of everyday life of persons of intellectual labor. The subject of the study are the leisure peculiarities of the everyday life and home life of the first Russian women historians of the pre-revolutionary period, the variety of forms of free time available to the first women scientists among professional historians, as well as the budget and the ratio of their working and free time. Reflecting on the peculiarities in the study of the everyday life of the academic and teaching communities and describing the main forms of leisure of “learned ladies”, the authors give examples of how they organize and attend intellectual “evenings”, reading professional and fictional literature, forms of public engagement, including charitable activities. Various documents of personal origin—memoirs, diaries, personal correspondences of the first Russian women historians—made it possible to draw conclusions about the complex interweaving of free and working time in the life of women scientists, the flow of work into leisure and vice versa. The authors also demonstrate that the gradual entry of women into the male academic environment significantly influenced the practice of leisure: the contamination of work and rest was sometimes forced, and the adaptation to an academic career went, among other things, through the assimilation of appropriate leisure practices, which became an integral part of the lifestyle of women scientists. The marginalized position of the first Russian women historians forced them to try to keep being involved in social interactions. For this purpose, they sought to consolidate professional acquaintances at informal evenings, where it was possible to understand the unwritten rules of conduct and corporate norms of the academic environment. That said, the real joy for women was the presence of personal space in which they could devote themselves to the scientific process—engaging in fruitful research work.