LIFE AFTER REFORMS: THE SURVIVAL PRACTICES IN THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST AT THE TURN OF XX-XXI CENTURIES IN THE MIRROR OF FICTION

Abstract

Following the current trends in the development of historical science, the author considers fiction as an important source for the study of the post-Soviet period, allowing recreating the socio- historical types of behavior, way of thinking and public mood, to track the transformation of the structures of everyday life. The article is based on the fiction published from the early 1990s to the present day and reflected the Far Eastern realities of the 1990s-2000s. The main attention is paid to the ways of adaptation to the new socio-economic conditions, such as inflation and the fall in real money incomes, massive cuts and wage delays, privatization, the collapse of industrial enterprises, the destruction of social infrastructure, the income differentiation, and an increasing gap between more and less developed territories. Art works show how in crisis the Far East inhabitants are looking for opportunities for part- time work, change professions, working for hire, opening their own business or falling into the category of self-employed, use deviant and destructive forms of employment. Many people in the conditions of continuous growth of prices, delays in wages or lack of a permanent, well-paid place of work are accustomed to live without money, making purchases rarely, but using subsistence farming in dacha or vegetable garden, the interchange of goods and services, engaged in gathering, hunting, fishing (the aboriginal population returns to traditional marine mammal hunting). In addition, the Far East inhabitants react to the modified conditions by changing their demographic behavior. Horizontal public relations are being strengthened, mutual assistance are widely used in the circle of relatives and friends.