Zhidchenko  A.V.

«WOMEN'S HOLIDAY»: TRADITIONS OF CELEBRATING THE NEW YEAR IN A NEW SIBERIAN CITY IN THE 1950-60S.

Authors

Zhidchenko A.V.

Keywords:

everyday life, women's history, holidays, urban culture, Siberia, oral history

Abstract

The article reveals some of the features of the popularly beloved in the USSR holiday–New Year, through the prism of women's everyday life, on the materials of new cities in Siberia, built in the 1950–60s –Omsk Gorodok Neftyanikov and Angarsk, Irkutsk region. In the study, for the first time in domestic and foreign historiography, an attempt was made to penetrate under the cover of festive gloss and the atmosphere of nostal-gia, and to understand the real emotions, feelings and experiences of Siberian girls and women who were gaining life experience at Komsomol construction sites, far from their parents. They wanted family happiness, but they faced the harsh realities of Soviet reality – a shortage of food, work shifts on New Year's Eve and the desire of their husbands to «escape reality». Such examples were not massive and comprehensive for such new Siberian cities, but they clearly show all the contradictions be-tween the ideal picture of the holiday created by Soviet propaganda and its real embodiment in everyday life.

«WOMEN'S HOLIDAY»: TRADITIONS OF CELEBRATING THE NEW YEAR IN A NEW SIBERIAN CITY IN THE 1950-60S.