Material-Proprietary Environment of the Rear Everyday Life in the Urals (According to the Evidence of Ego Documents)
The article is devoted to the study of the material and proprietary aspects of everyday life of the population of the deep rear during the great Patriotic war. The study was performed on the materials of the Greater Urals (Bashkir ASSR, Udmurt ASSR, Kurgan, Molotov, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Chkalov regions). The research was based on documents of personal origin: diary entries, memoirs, and letters published in publications of various types and formats. Along with ego documents, archival sources of official origin were widely used. The source base allowed us to focus on the issues of inclusion of household items in the socio-cultural context of rear life. The author proceeds from the fact that on the eve of the war, social practices related to the organization and use of the material environment were built on a deficit matrix. In the extreme situation of war, the shortage of basic necessities became total. The factors that influenced this situation in the Urals are considered. Practices of providing and self-sufficiency of local and evacuated population with mass consumption items are described. There was a social differentiation in the industrial supply of urban and rural population. Changes in the status and functions of things are shown, and different aspects of people’s attitude to things and to each other in regard to various things are described. The study of the topic allowed to come to the following conclusions: 1. in the long-term extreme situation of war, the pragmatic essence of things came to the fore, in people’s perception they returned to the primary level of functionality; 2. The maximum functionality of things testified to the general (with a small and conspicuous exception) impoverishment of the material and proprietary environment of the rear everyday life; 3. Things not of the first vital necessity (gramophone, silk dress, jewelry, toys, etc.) became symbols of the former peaceful life and their possession could reflect the desire to “get away from the war”; 4. The practices of obtaining and using things differed depending on the status of people in the social space, but in any case they were in the nature of adaptation to the general situation “Everything for the front, everything for the victory over the enemy” and in the mass indicated their readiness to undergo everyday hardships.