Non-Soviet Childhood in a Vologda Village: Narratives of the Past and the Cultural Geography of Late Socialism

Abstract

The subject of this paper is to examine how “rurality” is represented in accounts of childhood in Vologda villages during late socialism of the 1960s and 1970s. Interest is focused on how belonging to urban or rural culture affects remembrance and interpretation of rural daily life in late socialism. The analysis is based on an examination of interviews with individuals who were raised and grew up in rural parts of the Vologda Oblast in the 1960s and 1970s and then relocated to urban areas. Various discursive models used by respondents in stories about rural childhood are identified and correlated with the areas where the people concerned were socialized (urban or rural) by analyzing narrative descriptions of child labour, rural landscapes, nature, and beliefs about modernity. The article’s methodology is based on a theory of modernity according to which a certain vision of the future is established in society and hierarchies of social groups are created based on their differing positions on the scale of progress. Theories from cultural geography and narrative analysis of interview have also been incorporated into the work.