Rediscovery of the Idea of 'Soviet Society' at the End of 1930 - the Second Half of the 1950s[Переоткрытие Идеи «Советской Общественности» В Конце 1930-Х – Второй Половине 1950-Х Годов]

The article is focused on difficulties, boundaries and new approaches in the study of the institutional history of the USSR. It demonstrates applicability and usefulness of microhistory and history of ideas and concepts for this work. It is based on a micro-historical study. Analyzing the documents from the personal archival collection of a social activist, pedagogue and military expert Boris Ivanovitch Zhurin (1890-1964), the authors demonstrate that the 1939 turned to be very important in his career. It was just in 1939 when Zhurin changed his previous “modest” profession of engineer-constructor specializing in concrete buildings for a profession of military expert and for the role of social activist and publicist. As a military expert, Zhurin spent the years 1939 and 1940 writing a monograph about interaction of different combat arms, including artillery and reconnaissance aviation, during the advance of Russian troops in June, 1917. He was convinced that this experience would be vital during the next war. As a social activist and publicist, in 1939 Zhurin elaborated a program of mobilization of the so called “parental public” (roditelskaya obshestvennost) for the purposes of supporting Soviet school. Zhurin invented, described and promoted a new social institute which he called “parents’ committees in multiple dwellings,” insisting that this would have been the best instrument to control and improve family education. This second “know-how” was also based on the idea of interaction, as the parents’ committees had to establish close relationship with district executive committees (ispolkom), school administration and school parents’ committees, local Komsomol departments, and house management as well. This program was partly implemented in the 1950s. Zhurin’s program greatly anticipated the new notion of “public” (obschestvennost) and new social politics promoted by N. Khruschev on the XXth Party Congress in 1956. Thorough observation of Zhurin’s archive and publications and reconstruction of the historical context of both 1939 and the “Thaw” years bring the author to the conclusion that Zhurin perceived Soviet society after the Great Terror as being completely atomized, demoralized by low competence of higher command (in army) and state bureaucrats and lacking the channels of knowledge and experience transmission, and strived to invent new models to rebuild and intensify “horizontal” social ties.