Imaginary Soviet City in High School Students’ Diaries (1945–1953)
https://doi.org/10.21603/sibscript-2025-27-6-983-998
Abstract
The article outlines the patterns of social imagination in diaries of Soviet high school students in 1945– 1953. Their descriptions of a collective future revealed the role of socialism in the life world of a young Soviet citizen. Although the general self-attitude seemed to depend on the rural or urban environment, the subjects were united by the same Soviet school and shared the values of a progressive society, i.e., education, natural vertical mobility, differentiated social environment, etc. Diarist 1 combined the principle of rationalism with some idealized concepts of justice and equality borrowed from the ethical code of the communist utopia. Diarist 2 created a utopian narrative about a science city, where he would be a prominent researcher of flora and fauna. Diarist 3 dreamed of replacing political dogmas with a dramatic text of his own authorship, and party bosses with writers and intellectuals. The post-war youth based their future projections on the norms, values, and symbolic codes of urbanized Soviet culture: their collective socialism was of entirely urban nature.
About the Author
Andrey N. Kabatskov
Perm State National Research University
Russian Federation
Competing Interests:
Russian Federation
Perm
Scopus Author ID: 57200106463
Competing Interests:
The author declared no potential conflict of interests regarding the research, authorship, and / or publication of this article.
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For citations:
Kabatskov A.N. Imaginary Soviet City in High School Students’ Diaries (1945–1953). SibScript. 2025;27(6):983-998. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.21603/sibscript-2025-27-6-983-998
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