Social history of the peasant family of Pelagia Fedkova (mid-1940s - 1950s)
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Abstract
The purpose of this article is to find out the social history of Pelagiia Fedkova’s family, a soldier’s widow, a farmer from Dobrovillia village in Orynyn district, Kamianets-Podilskyi region (today – Kamianets-Podilskyi district of Khmelnytskyi region) in the mid-1940s –1950s.
The scientific novelty of the research follows the fact that, for the first time in historical science, the history of an
“ordinary” person and her family was investigated in terms of communist experiments in a Ukrainian village after the Second World War.
Methodological basis. The article is based on the documents of the Fedkovs’ Private Archive, in accordance with the original economic documents preserved by Pelagiia Fedkova (1912–1997). This made it possible to use modern methodological tools of new social history and related areas of historical science (history of everyday life, microhistory, women’s history, biography research, etc.), as well as general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis. Within research, the author followed the principles of scientific objectivity, historicism and systematicity.
Conclusions. The article contains unique biographical tacts of P. Fedkova’s family members and, at the same time,
typical features of the social life of the Ukrainian peasantry, who faced difficult trials. The soldier’s widow appeared to have had a disability from birth, but was forced to work as a poultry farmer on a collective farm. The “working days” were meagerly paid, but the collective farm worker repeatedly received moral encouragement from the economic and state institutions of the “workers’ power”. The main income of the family budget was brought by the work of family members on the homestead farm.
The author’s calculations presented in the article clearly testify to the growth of the tax burden on the family in 1946–1953 and a significant decrease in taxes in the post-Stalin era. Based on the documents, the article at the micro level reproduces the woman’s struggle in the conditions of famine in 1946–1947 as well as the total control of the communist state over the life of the peasantry. This paper proves that thanks to P. Fedkova’s selfless work, her family managed to survive in the post-war period.
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References
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