Elena Alexandrovna Bakhtina: an Attempt to Verify Biographical Information (On the Problem of Creating a Scientific Biography of M. M. Bakhtin)

Abstract

Introduction. The creation of a scientific biography of M. M. Bakhtin (1895–1975) is an urgent task of the modern humanities. There are many “blank spots” and inaccuracies in the biographies of the thinker. One of the most noticeable gaps is the extremely scarce and contradictory biographical information about his wife, E. A. Bakhtina (nee Okolovich). The article sets the task of verifying the biographical information about her given by other researchers by comparing already known sources and introducing new ones into scientific circulation. Materials and Methods. The study is of a historical-biographical nature. Research material: unpublished documents from the personal archive of M. M. Bakhtin; printed historical sources of the XX century (“Commemorative books” and other reference publications of the Vitebsk province); oral memoirs of people who communicated with E. A. Bakhtina during the Saransk period of her life recorded by the author in the 1990s – 2000s; scientific and popular science publications of a biographical nature about M. M. Bakhtin and representatives of his Circle. Basic methods and approaches: historical-and-cultural approach, comparative historical method (including comparative and correlative analysis). Results. It was revealed that many of the widely disseminated data about E. A. Bakhtina are inaccurate or generally do not correspond to reality. The introduction of new sources into scientific circulation made it possible to correct the date (year, day, month) and place of her birth, to determine the places of her study and work in different periods, to clarify and expand information about her parents (full name, place of residence and work, position, rank, estate, property status). Discussion and Conclusion. The results obtained contribute to solving the complex problem of creating a scientific biography of M. M. Bakhtin, in particular, they make adjustments to the ideas that have developed in science about the Vitebsk, Leningrad and Kustanai periods of his life, about the sequence of some events which happened to him at that time and about cause-and-effect connections between them.