«ARMY FOUNDATIONS GOT LOOSE COMPLETELY»: THE YEAR OF 1917 IN FELIX MOROZ’S MEMOIRS

Abstract

The publishing memories of the 1917 events is written by Felix A.Moroz, a former officer of the General Headquarters of the Northern Front, in exile. The main subject of the memories is the collapse of the Russian army, caused by its democratization. The relations between officers and soldiers escalated after the notorious Order № of the Petrograd Soviet are shown. The publishing source, however, is interesting not only due to the details inherent in revolutionary everyday life of the front, which formed overall picture of the Russian army degradation. Moroz’s memories on the events in Pskov in 1917 are a clear example of how the revolutionary events were being thematized, hierarchicalized and interpreted in hindsight. Along with the same accounts, Moroz’s story captures the formation of a certain tradition, perhaps even a kind of canon, of narrativization of the 1917 Russia by the representatives of the Russian emigration. Motives of self-advocation and foreknowledge in the source together with its content actualize the problem of meaning and purpose not only of the analyzed text, but of ego-documents in general. There is no doubt that the source is as polysemantic as any other ego-document that turns the publication of the document into the event that contributes not only and not so much to the mechanical growth of source resources. It also gives the possibility to understand the way individual experience of living duringthe revolution was conjugated with collective experience which from research standpoint is valuable and promising as such.