"All in hand": images of power and communicative practices of regional elites in later years of the USSR through the prism of spoken history

Abstract

Oral history data, which were obtained during interviews with representatives of the Soviet regional elite of the second half of the 1960s to 1980s, were analysed as part of the study of the processes of interaction between the Upper Volga regions' local authorities and Moscow. The main attention of the authors of the article is focused on images of power and on communicative practices of regional elites in the later period of existence of the USSR. An attempt to reconstruct the mechanisms and strategies of the regional elite of the Soviet province, including bureaucratic procedures and communicative practices, images and scenarios of power in the local authority functioning in the 1960s to 1980s, is undertaken in terms of oral history. The theoretical-methodological basis of the work is related to the ideas of Viktor Mokhov about regional elites; of Paul Thompson and Marina Sokolova, about the functionality of oral history; to Alexei Yurchak's concept about the last days of socialism; to Richard S. Wortman's scenarius of power.