Journey from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow in 1923

Abstract

By examining the personal journal of Marfa Solov’eva, one of the staff of Krasnoyarsk Local History Museum (Yenissei Province), the article aims to analyze some changes of everyday life at the beginning of the 1920s. Aged 33, Ms. Solov’eva found herself among the members of the Yenissei Province delegation sent to participate in the First All-Union Agriculture and Orchard Industry Exhibition in Moscow in 1923. She wrote down her personal experiences of travelling from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow. Given that anthropological shift has taken the lead in historical research, the materials of personal origin (like personal journals) provide an additional avenue to get firsthand information on how contemporaries interpreted the turning points in history. By focusing on the findings from the personal journal introduced for the first time the article investigates the transformations in early Soviet society at the grassroots level and from the point of view of a young representative of Siberian intelligentsia. The article demonstrates how day-to-day and leisure practices of those who took part in the trip were organized. Additionally, it considers the emotional sphere, which is missed to a greater extent by official sources. A mixture of interdisciplinary, systematic and sociocultural approaches and descriptive methods for interpreting sources has been adopted. Keywords: personal journal, everyday life, the intelligentsia, Siberia, the Yenissei province, the onset of NEP, the First All-Union Agriculture and Orchard Industry Exhibition in Moscow in 1923