Book Launch -- <i>Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village</i>

At a recent Kennan Institute talk, Margaret Paxson, Senior Associate, Kennan Institute, discussed her book Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village. The book is based on Paxson's experiences in the village of Solovyovo (Paxson changed the name of the village to protect the identity of the individuals portrayed in the book), a tiny rural community in Vologda oblast, some 300 miles north of Moscow. Paxson explained that in her research, she attempted to understand how the people of Solovyovo see their place in the world around them, how they remember their past and how this past colors the present and the future. An understanding of social memory in rural Russia, Paxson said, can help to answer larger questions about post-Soviet Russian society.

Life in a Russian village is hard, and sometimes brutal, Paxson said. Solovyovo has dirt roads and no running water. There are almost no machines to help with farm work. Each day is a constant struggle to tend to the animals, cut and haul firewood, put food on the table, and finish the planting and harvesting in the region's very short growing season. With the collapse of the village's Soviet-era collective farm, the primary economy shifted to subsistence farming. While proponents of capitalism see this as a negative development, Paxson argued, their withdrawal from the money economy has insulated villagers from the economic upheavals of the post-Soviet period, and allowed them to support family living in cities, providing an important social safety net.

According to Paxson, there are two common ways of thinking about Russia. The first assumes that the right kind of political and economic reforms will turn Russia into a rational capitalist country—just like the West, with only a few regional accents. The second assumes that Russia is trapped by its history and culture in unending tyranny and backwardness. Both views are flawed, Paxson concluded. Both Marxist revolutionaries and capitalist reformers have urged Russians to shake off the burden of history, but the past is not so easily forgotten. At the same time, remembering the past does not prevent a society from changing. Paxson noted that she had certainly witnessed change over the course of 11 years of regular visits to Solovyovo.

Discussant Michele Rivkin-Fish, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, argued that Paxson's debunking of the myth of rural Russia as backward and unchanging is one of the most valuable contributions of Solovyovo. Also important, Rivkin-Fish said, is the book's exploration of how villagers remember the Stalin era. According to Paxson, there are two distinct types of narrative about Stalin. Older villagers remember the repression that occurred under Stalin, and they generally describe it as a source of fear, uncertainty, and sorrow. However, in the second type of narrative, Paxson explained, villagers describe Stalin as part of an idealized, glorious past. In these narratives, Stalin is a powerful leader who oversaw a period of order and morality. Similarly, Paxson noted, villagers--such as her host, Mikhail Alekseevich-—staunchly supported the Communist Party as a source of order and education, yet practiced local traditions that Party doctrine deemed backward.

Rivkin-Fish concluded by noting that many of the insights into social memory that Paxson found in the village of Solovyovo are applicable to Russia as a whole. The villagers' memories of Stalin and Communism, she said, helps explain the strong but mixed feelings that many Russians have about the Soviet past, and which are often perplexing to Westerners. Rivkin-Fish added that Paxson's descriptions of religious practice and understandings of personal and collective belonging in Solovyovo have also helped her to gain a better understanding of Russia as a whole.