Russischer Alltag: Eine Geschichte in neun Zeitbildern vom Frühmittelalter bis zur Gegewart, 3 vols. Vol. 1: Die Vormoderne, Vol. 2: Auf dem Weg in die Moderne, Vol. 3: Sowjetische Moderne und Umbruch (review)

"Everyday history," long a significant sphere of European historiography, has belatedly come to Russian historical scholarship.¹ Western historians, to be sure, are cautious about invoking this descriptor,² but Russian researchers have been far more wont to do so, with the term povsednevnaia zhizn´ having become firmly entrenched in Russian national historiography.³ In large measure, of course, the interest in "everyday history" reflects a shift long underway, with the emphasis moving from elitist political history to the lesser social strata, with particular attention to their living conditions and culture. Quantity, however, does not necessarily mean quality; a focus on the quotidian can mean anything from "pots and pans" to a sophisticated theoretical conception with a clear definition of goals, methods, and parameters. Far too often, it is tempting to invoke the mantra of "everyday history" but without an explicit formulation of what this means.

Carsten Goehrke makes here a major contribution to the theory and praxis of Alltagsgeschichte, with a three-volume application to the entire course of Russian history. Trained as a specialist in early and medieval Russian history, Goehrke had earlier produced solid scholarship on the "material" dimension of the Russian historical experience—the way of life (byt), social and economic development, settlement patterns, and historical geography.⁴ Even while conducting this pioneering research, Goehrke began to develop a complex conception of Alltagsgeschichte that embraces not only material existence but also the corresponding culture—the conception of the world, the pattern of social relations, and the values and norms that constitute the cultural counterpart to the material. It is this goal—to illuminate the interplay of matter and meaning, the real and the represented—that has shaped Goehrke's work, which he has aptly called Alltagskulturgeschichte. In a cursory introduction to this three-volume study, but in greater detail in a separate essay,⁵ Goehrke identifies the intellectual roots of Alltagsgeschichte (Edmund Husserl and others), prominent practitioners,⁶ and seminal theoreticians, chiefly from anthropology (especially Martin Dinges).⁷ Goehrke seeks to examine the development and interaction of two dimensions: Lebenswelt, or the lived experience of everyday material reality that encompasses everything from food and housing to work and wealth; and Vorstellungswelt, or perceived experiences—how actors decode and understand their lived experiences. The emphasis here is on the concrete, the individual, and the local, not for its own sake but as a way to understand the larger world; the narrative thus focuses on the micro as an effective literary device and as a means to cast light on the macro. That enables the author to avoid the pitfalls both of a simplistic "basis–superstructure" model such as prevailed in crude Marxist historiography, and of the immaterialist claims of a radical postmodernism that treats extant documents as "texts" and not data to reconstruct material reality.⁸ In Goehrke's view, the task is to link these two worlds—matter and meaning—in what he and Martin Dinges call "everyday/cultural history" (Alltagskulturgeschichte).

To bridge those worlds, Goehrke transcends the boundaries of traditional historical scholarship. That means, in the first instance, an interdisciplinary work that draws...