The Fate of Harbin Repatriate in the Mirror of Anthropology: Liudmila Abramova (1914-2002)

Abstract

The research is devoted to repatriate Lyudmila Maksimilianovna Abramova (1914-2002) who was born in Harbin, lived in China for 40 years and moved to the USSR during the mass repatriation of the Russian population of Manchuria in the 1950s. Through the fate of Liudmila Abramova the authors attempt to reflect the peculiarities of the life of the emigrants in Northern Manchuria in the interwar period. They include the involvement of young people in fascist organizations, work in the Manchukuo authorities, survival strategies, repatriation motives, adaptation practices of repatriates, gender aspects - such as the role of a politician's wife, the participation of women in public organizations. The appeal to the personalized history is due to the fact that in the history of Russian emigration in Manchuria there are many mythologemes that distort the idea of the life and activities of emigrants. In addition, the authors had to face the problem of reconstructing the biography of a “little” person in the absence of ego documents (memoirs, letters, diaries); therefore, the research task was the use of the anthropological approach, microand macroanalysis, historical-biographical and historical-comparative methods. The article is based on unpublished archival documents involving memoirs and diaries of former Harbin residents and oral history materials.