Doing Local History, or From Social History to Oral History: Some Autobiographical Reflections on Studying Russia’s Saratov Region

The author of this article, an early practitioner of local history in the field, takes an autobiographical approach in tracing his evolving views on, and the practice of, local history. The piece outlines how the changes that have come to local history since the early 1970s reflect broader transformations in the historical profession and intellectual life, as well as in the sociohistorical context. It discusses the emergence of local history in the field of Russian studies at the time that social history and social science models invigorated the writing of history, and how the genre remained in its infancy until Russia’s opening and the opening of its archives, when it fell under the influence of sister disciplines and of the cultural turn. Until the late 1990s, the dearth of distinguished works of local history written by Russian scholars constrained the research agendas of foreign scholars because the latter could not enter into dialogue with scholarship by Russia-based historians. This has changed as Russian historians have rejoined the larger historical community and as they have made efforts at distinguishing the more popular genre of kraevedenie from professional and academic work on local history that welcomes interdisciplinary currents.