Battlefield diary as a source for war-anthropological research (based on the ego-documents of submarine sailor G.I. Sennikov)

Abstract

The research is relevant due to the fact that historical, anthropological and psychological study of new ego-documents provides a significant resource for understanding the present time and social forecasting. The purpose of the article is to study ego-documents written during the Great Patriotic War by G.I. Sennikov, the submarine sailor of the Northern Fleet, with the help of contemporary historical, anthropological and psychological approaches. The research of this source of private origin was proven to be productive in the context of principal directions and key issues of war-historical anthropology: psychology of combat and combatants, soldiers’ fatalism, the psychology of the interpersonal interactions of service members, psychology of the war-time daily routine, history of emotions. The biographical method allowed to reconstruct the life story of Georgiy Sennikov, his comrades-in-arms and commanding officers back, and moreover, to present the events of the Great Patriotic War as a defining moment of his life and creative work.