Complementarity of Sources in Studying Adaptation: An Oral History Viewpoint

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to elucidate the complementary nature of two types of sources: First, an autobiographical narrative about the Soviet period written in 2005, 14 years after the period described. Second, a court file created by the representatives of Soviet authority from their point of view and containing material from the period 1945-1994. Both documents represent very different genres, are temporally different, have different purposes, and different viewpoints. Inspired by the work of Alessandro Portelli, particularly by his model of multilayered history-telling, the method of separating texts in three layers, institutional, communal, and personal, is used. The central ques- tion about the possibility of complementary treatment of diverse sources in oral history is posed against the background of researching adaptation to the Soviet regime. Asking a direct question will not offer the researcher very much infor- mation about actual adaptation or inadaptability because the respondents will be affected by their attitude towards, and the act of remembering, the Soviet regime. Therefore, in the present study the language of written texts is chosen for analysis pointing out that two contrary concepts characterise adaptation to Soviet authority: opposition that disputes the authority's point of view, and the inability to phrase phenomena in the 'non-Soviet language'. Additionally, the problem of individual agency in encountering the repressive ideological and societal system as expressed in the sources both diachronically and synchro- nically is discussed.