Irina V. Bogdashina

PhD in Historical Sciences, Postgraduate Student in the Center for Gender Studies

Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology named after N. N. Mikloukho-Maklay RAS

(Moscow, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2023-2-31-41

Abstract. The article studies women's everyday life in the non-metropolitan and completely wartorn Stalingrad (now Volgograd), the largest city of the Lower Volga region. The aim of the research is to reveal peculiarities of women's everyday life in the period of socio-cultural transformations of 1950– 1960s. The methodology of the research is based on the comparative-historical, biographical and empathic methods. The source materials of the research are the diary-chronicle of the surgeon, candidate of medical sciences Zinaida Sergeevna Sedelnikova (1920 – 2006), mass media (newspapers, magazines) and statistics. As a result, it was possible to reveal that women's memory (diaries in particular) reflects sensual-emotional experiences, allowing us to reconstruct the anthropological component of women's everyday life at a new level. In conclusion, an unpaid domestic work took up a considerable part of women's free time and communal and foodstuffs disorder of the city only made it difficult to perform even the most basic household tasks. Because of her high professional and domestic workload, a representative of the middle class (doctor, teacher) faced many difficulties (lack of time, choice between rest, personal fulfillment, and household chores), but continued to perform the duties traditionally assigned to every housewife.
Keywords: everyday life, Thaw period, Stalingrad (Volgograd), domestic life, female doctor, diary.

Acknowledgements: this article has been prepared with financial support from Russian Science Foundation (science project no. 22-28 01428) "Women's History as the Basis of Russian Social Optimism (Non-City Urban Everyday Life in the Mid-20th Century)".

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Bogdashina, IV 2023, ‘Household and Domestic Concerns as an Important Part of a Woman Physician's Daily Life in Stalingrad (Volgograd): According to the Diary Records of the 1950s and 1960s’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 2 (14), pp. 31–41, http://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2023-2-31-41 (in Russ.)

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