ОСОБЕННОСТИ ПЕРЕЖИВАНИЯ ЭПИДЕМИИ В УСЛОВИЯХ СЕЛЬСКОЙ ЖИЗНИ: ВЛИЯНИЕ СУВЕРЕННОСТИ И ИСТОРИЧЕСКИЕ АСПЕКТЫ

Abstract

The lifeworld of former townspeople escaping megalopolises and moving to the countryside obtains a special significance in the context of isolation and epidemic. Our goal is to describe the structure of this world, to identify its ontological features that are not determined by the historical context. Substantial autonomy and psychological sovereignty are, in our opinion, a significant part of the lifeworld of a suburban/rural resident and come to the fore when we consider their coping with critical situations. In this paper, based on the literature evidence of personal experience, we examine the specific characteristics of the experience of the epidemic as a critical situation, conditioned by the structure of the lifeworld of a suburban/rural resident. Central to our research was the autobiographical text of A. T. Bolotov about his experience of the plague epidemic of 1770–1772. It was compared with autobiographical notes of later authors and current reports of megalopolis and rural residents about their personal experience of COVID-19 pandemic. Phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis of textual data shows that the experience of a critical situation in rural life differs from the experience in a large city; the differences are associated with the sovereignty and simplicity of the lifeworld of suburban/rural residents.