Alternative methods of combating history

On April 28, 2016, the Moscow House of Cinema was awarded the winners of the All -Russian contest of historical research work of high school students “Man in history. Russia is the XX century. " Schoolchildren from different regions of Russia gathered together - from cities, small villages, remote villages. These are the authors of the best works, many of which analyze historical sources of private origin (diaries and photographs from family archives, oral interviews) or reflecting local history (meetings of local history museums). Through the memory of the family or a specific place, they tell the history of the country and the people inhabiting it. Members of the jury came to congratulate the winners (including the writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, historian Nikita Sokolov, radio host Ksenia Larina and many others), representatives of embassies of different countries and Russian regions in Moscow, publishing houses and the media that covered the competition. It was the 17th award ceremony.

Competition "Man in History. Russia - XX century ” - one of the oldest in Russia, has been held since March 1999. It arose as a joint project of the Memorial, the Department of Regional History and Local History of the Russian State University and a number of Russian and German funds. The idea to look at the story through the prism of fate of specific people, to shift the agenda from traditional stories about the “great story” towards the history of local found a very wide response. In the first year, in the absence of the Internet and social networks, more than two thousand works came to the address of the Memorial, many were written by hand or printed on a typewriter. The reception period was extended several times - from some places the post was delivered by helicopters, which were irregular.

During the existence of the competition, more than 30 thousand works took part in it - these are hundreds of thousands of witnesses surveyed, huge archival research, amazing sources that have already become scientific circulation thanks to specialized magazines and publications of the school competition. Now the competition has acquired a participant’s personal account with the possibility of registering and loading work via the Internet, a difficult database, a site and other time signs. In total, 19 collections of work in Russian were published, some of them were transferred to German, Italian and Norwegian (electronic versions can be found on the website “History Lessons” - http://urokiistorii.ru ). Although the main thing, of course, is tens of thousands of schoolchildren, thousands of teachers. One and a half thousand people became participants in annual schools for winners in Moscow, in which schoolchildren listen to lectures by famous historians, writers and journalists, participate in seminars and debate, prepare presentations of their own works. For everyone, participation in the competition has become an important event in life, for many it was a turning point. For example, each year, several participants entering humanitarian universities get the opportunity to become scholarships of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation.

Over these 17 years, the country has changed - ideas about freedom of speech and even freedom of thought have changed. Fortunately, the competition itself is more conservative. When he began, no one could think that in the center of Moscow, when the police connected, the awarding participants would be watered with green, in the presence of children, “activists” would protest against “alternative history” and call the history teachers “fascists” and “German laying”. Today it is our reality with you. But someday it will become a story.

Irina Shcherbakova,
Head of Youth and Educational Programs of the International Human Rights Society "Memorial" ( www.memo.ru )

A selection of quotes from the works of winners of the XVII school competition

Not a single war does without casualties. But how does it happen that people with names, surnames are called to the front, and then they become missing, buried, as unknown? One of the reasons for the inability to establish names is the absence of soldier's medallions. Most of all I was struck by the fact that on November 17, 1942, the medallions were generally canceled. Someone decided that they were not needed. And I believed that the lack of medallions is the result of superstition: the medallions were called "mortals." The rejection of the medallions deprived the fighters of the right to be recognized, even if decades after death. And they wanted to be recognized. Notes with the addresses of relatives were found in home -made medallions - sleeves. The fighters scratched their names on spoons, flasks, cigarette cases.

Vladimir Alov (Karelia, the city of Petrozavodsk)
"He just did not return from the battle ..."

In 1946, hunger began. The whole farm was covered with taxes: cattle, bird, shrubs ... The family helped that there were two goats in the farm. “Grandma said everything:“ Go, girls, bring them. ” We will give a crust a rod and baby. I even dream now. They gave two liters of milk. ” So the goats helped to survive, for some reason they were not taxed. They were kept by people in small cities, like a nyandom. The goats began to be called "Stalinist cows."

Elvira Kinzhaeva (Arkhangelsk region, the city of Nyandom)
"Childhood in Solombal and not only ..."

The case was launched on October 13, 1937, and already on November 29, the operative of the Kirov NKVD issued an indictment. In just a month, fifteen people were decided. The testimonies of the witnesses are given: “Shlyakhtin met along the way, and I started a conversation that they shot bandits and traitors. Shlyakhtin said to this: "They shoot good ones, and the most harmful people lead the country for the people." I had to repeatedly notice that Shlyakhtin said: “There is not even bread in the Soviet Union, everything is selected from the peasants. But our worker is starving, and nothing can be said. But you will say it”. ” “In early September, I walked with Korovkin. On the way, Korovkin started a conversation about the preparation of elections to the Supreme Council of the USSR Union and said: "Communists put forward only those candidates that are beneficial to them, but not to the people". "

Anna Aksyuticheva (Kaluga region, city of Kirov)
"The case of the counter -revolutionary group"

From the memoirs of the great -great -grandmother: “The Socialist -Revolutionaries of the Universities of Petrograd organized a meeting dedicated to the memory of Herzen. It was held at the forest institute. Together with other Bestuzhevki I went. The meeting was not allowed. The administration of the institute demanded that the audience leave the hall. No one left. They introduced a detachment of the armed police and led everyone to the station. It turned out a large procession. They walked fun, joked, laughed. Suddenly, a solid student came up to me and my friend and asked which course we were from and were we not seen in anything at the police? If not, then he asked to warn his friends about where he was and that he could be detained. The address forced us to remember by heart. We were released from the site in the early morning, and we both went to the address. Climbing the empty stairs, I looked at the door, which was on the safety chain. And there a policeman sits in the hallway - apparently, a search is being searched. We have gone soon. ”

Anastasia Serbskaya (city Tver)
"From school notebooks: return to descendants"

Khrushchev also appreciated our sources differently. Kovalev, for example, complained: “By the way, when in 1960 the then first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev proclaimed that the current generation of Soviet people would live under communism, I sincerely believed it.”

Popkov as a whole praised Khrushchev: “To wrap sweets in the store - Khrushchev did. He in Leningrad asked 200 grams of sweets. The saleswoman hung. “What are you?” He praises his hat: in a hat. And how he gave the Minister of Trade! In our Kurlak, a roll of paper immediately appeared in the store. And then it was not - wrap what you want. Khrushchev, he still-well, maybe they ate each other in power-but he did a lot for culture. I’m following this business. ”

Indeed, Popkov vigilantly followed, and now he is following politics.

Daria Galtsova and Sofya Karaborcheva
(Voronezh region, village of Novy Kurlak)
"Affairs of the long time"

Grandmother recalls: “In the spring, children, and adults also had no rubber boots, so everyone continued to walk in boots, to which wooden pads were tied. They looked like small benches. We went to them and knocked. ” Since 1952, instead of the pads, they began to use home -made rubber galoshes that glued themselves. To do this, they took the used automobile cameras that they bought from rural drivers, they widen rubber in special patterns. Rubber glue, in bottles with a brown lid of wax, bought in a store. Grandmother cut out a pattern from the newspaper and explained in detail to me how to properly glue the galosh. In the early 1950s, the family was engaged in the fact that she glued galoshes. The finished goods were sold at the bazaar in the village of Yelniki. They were quickly sold out. There was always demand for them, since factory galoshes were not sold then in the village then.

Oksana Elisova (Mordovia, Saransk)
"From the unproven ... (Features of the life of some Tatar villages in the Yelnikovsky district of the Republic of Mordovia)"

At the end of August 1918, Alexander Vasilievich almost lost his life in Kazan. White entered the city, searched for the Red Army, suspicious. In a word, they did not better better than the red before. Alexander Vasilievich was captured on the street. They shot right against the wall of one of the stone buildings. Under the muzzle of weapons, the soldiers led him to this wall, Lisa shouted to the group of officers who was at a distance and fell to her knees directly in the dust. And a miracle happened: one of the stood in surprise exclaimed: “Lisa? What's happened? Get up! " It turned out that this officer was the brother of Lizina's friend at the Institute of Noble Maidens. And she only could shout: "There Sasha, my husband!" The sharp "set aside!" And Alexander Vasilyevich, without any checks, was removed from the crowd of doomed. Probably the worst thing that can be in any civil war is that people are drawn into a deadly massacre for some mystical happiness.

Maria Yambikova (Republic of Mari El, Yoshkar-Ola city)
"Drama without anthraxes"