PEASANT MEMOIRS OF SOUTHERN UKRAINE OF THE 20TH CENTURY AS A SOURCE FOR HISTORICAL RESEARCH AT THE MACRO LEVEL

Abstract

The proposed article examines the potential of peasant memoir sources of the 20th century Southern Ukraine as a historical source and the possibilities of its involvement in historical research at the macro-level. An analysis of the definition of “macrohistory” and cases of legality of using this term is carried out. The texts of peasant narratives are studied for the possibility of determining the level of the informational potential of peasant memoirs in the study of global historical processes. The question of the information possibilities of peasant memoirs at the macro-levels in socio-psychological, emotional and ethno-cultural dimensions is considered.

It was noted that the peasant memoirs differ in their informational richness not only regarding the everyday life of the peasants of Southern Ukraine: daily life, traditions, diet, family relations, leisure, etc. And they have significant potential for involving peasant memoir sources in historical research on macro-level topics: the history of the settlement of Southern Ukraine, the history of international relations, the attitude of the peasantry to the political measures of the tsarist and Soviet governments, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and participation in it recruited peasants, the Stolypin agrarian reform, the First World War, the events of the Ukrainian revolution, the German occupation of Ukraine in 1918, Bolshevik aggression and the establishment of Soviet power, Stalin’s industrialization of Ukraine, the collectivization of agriculture, the Holodomor of 1932-1933, the Second World War, the famine of 1946-1947, the beginning of the decline of the Ukrainian Soviet village in the 70s of the 20th century, and many other issues.