Sources for the reconstruction of the "parade" and "non-parade" portraits of students of the state labor reserves (1904–1950s)

Abstract

The socio-cultural appearance of students in the system of state labor reserves has not been the subject of special study by specialists. At the same time, the creation in 1940 of the system of state labor reserves of the USSR was accompanied by the formation of a specific social group, the study of the socio-cultural characteristics of which will complement the already existing ideas about the working youth of the Soviet period. The subject of the study are documents as historical sources. The object is students of the system of state labor reserves as a separate social group. The purpose of the article is to present a corpus of official documents and documents of personal origin, which are historical sources for the reconstruction of stable, integral images of students, forming the basis of "ceremonial" and "non–parade" portraits as a set of characteristics (markers) aimed at highlighting socio-demographic features, cultural values and mental characteristics, behavioral practices and appearance of representatives of this social group. The methodological basis of the research is the methods of source analysis and synthesis, which allow to reveal the content component of documents for the study of the declared topic. The results of the study are: 1) the allocation of six types of historical sources from the official records of the central and regional labor reserves management bodies to fiction, allowing to reconstruct the "parade" and "non-parade" portraits of students of the state labor reserves system as a separate social group; 2) disclosure of the information potential of these six types of historical sources, taking into account their source-study features for the reconstruction of the socio-cultural appearance of students.