LETTERS “TO THE AUTHORITIES” AS A SOURCE ON THE HISTORY OF STUDENT LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR
Keywords:
letters "to the authorities", students, Civil War, South of Russia, admission to the university, mobilization, material support, student organizationsAbstract
The article is devoted to student letters "to the authorities" in 1918 – early 1920s, taken as a source for studying the student corporation during the Civil War. The research is limited to the Cossack regions of the Russian South – Don and Kuban, centers of the armed struggle against the Bolsheviks. Higher education institutions were founded there shortly before the revolution. As a result of a powerful intellectual migration from Petrograd and Moscow, new universities were founded in 1918–1919. Student letters used in the study were obtained from the archival funds of higher educational institutions, government and administrative bodies of the State Archive of Krasnodar region, the State Archive of Rostov region, and the Professional Education Department Main Collection of the State Archive of the Russian Federation. Recipients’ and addressee’ statuses, time, subject, and motivation for writing are taken as parameters and considered in the analysis of letters. Attention is given to notes, official inscriptions on the documents, as well as accompanying letters, official answers, autobiographies, questionnaires, etc. The content of letters is examined within the context of the higher education space formation, along with migration processes of the revolutionary years, and the situation of civil confrontation in the South of Russia. Later, the authors of some letters became known in various fields; the discovered texts help recreate the milestones of their early biographies, especially since many tried to conceal the fact of their life and schooling on non-Soviet territories. The research reveals specific themes and plots of student letters "to the authorities", their value as an authentic source of information. These themes are admission / transfer to another institution, student mobilization, ways of solving material problems, and the activities of student organizations. The author notes how the contradictions within the anti-Bolshevik camp (clearly pronounced on the Don and Kuban) influenced the content of the texts. This is especially true for collective messages "to the authorities" that defended the interests of particular groups or students as a whole. It is shown that the interpretation of certain events and processes was determined both by the real needs of the authors of the letters and by the current political situation. In general, letters "to authorities" are an important source for reconstructing students’ daily life and the vital functions of higher education institutions in extreme conditions.References
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