‘My Life for the State’ –Autobiographies Soviet Citizens had to Write Important Historical Source

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 6 – Whenever a Soviet citizen applied for a job, sought to register his place of residence or otherwise interacted with officialdom, he or she almost always had to write an autobiographic sketch more or less detailed depending on the issue involved. These essays provide important insights about the identities of those who composed them, Yury Zaretsky says.

            In the current issue of Novoye Literaturnoye obozreniye, the Higher School of Economics professor reports on his investigation of such autobiographies written by Soviet people from the 1950s through the 1980s (“My Life for the State” (in Russian), NLO, 157: 3 (2019): 107-127 at publications.hse.ru/articles/267935830; summarized at iq.hse.ru/news/293168856.html).

            According to the rules, Soviet citizens were supposed to write these autobiographical sketches free form, but in practice, Zaretsky says that people included “one and the same things: social origin, education, party status, participation in the Great Fatherland War, time abroad, criminal convictions, and social activities.”

            Over time, he continues, filling out such forms had the effect of strengthening the Soviet identity of people by suggesting that their identity was ineluctably linked to that of the USSR. But of course, this identity was “not frozen.” In the 1930s, people stressed their loyalty to the regime, while later when the struggle with class enemies was less, they stressed their utility to it.

            “From the end of the 1960s, points about social origin, party status and time abroad remained,” but they declined in important to information about professional qualities like education, work achievements and the like, Zaretsky says his examinations of the archives shows.

            “In the autobiographies of the 1950s through the 1980s,” he continues, people “almost always highlighted their social origin, mentioned their role in the war and in public activities, but “rarely mentioned their nationality,” given that the authorities constantly stressed that ethnicity was becoming less important.

            When people had something to hide, they typically adopted one of the following strategies – not mentioning social origin if one’s parents were other than workers or peasants, offering half truths by suggesting that one’s parents worked in a factory when before 1917 they owned it, or stressing how much one had supported the party or even apologizing for mistakes.

            Zaretsky concludes that these Soviet autobiographies “have much in common with the practice of Christian confessions;” and like the latter, they must be true, they must admit error, and they must contain repentance when that is required.  There was always the chance that officials could check and identify departures from the truth.

            At the same time, the result of having Soviet citizens constantly compile such autobiographies was to internalize in them the values of the system and thus promote obedience even though that was never the declared purpose of such documents.