Solovyovo The Story of Memory in a Russian Village [Paperback]

In a small village beside a reed-lined lake in the Russian north, a cluster of farmers has lived for centuriesin the time of tsars and feudal landlords; Bolsheviks and civil wars; collectivization and socialism; perestroika and open markets. Solovyovo is about the place and power of social memory. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork in that single village, it shows how villagers configure, transmit, and enact social memory through narrative genres, religious practice, social organization, commemoration, and the symbolism of space. Margaret Paxson relates present-day beliefs, rituals, and practices to the remembered traditions articulated by her informants. She brings to life the everyday social and agricultural routines of the villagers as well as holiday observances, religious practices, cosmology, beliefs and practices surrounding health and illness, the melding of Orthodox and communist traditions and their post-Soviet evolution, and the role of the yearly calendar in regulating village lives. The result is a compelling ethnography of a Russian village, the first of its kind in modern, North American anthropology.

What is the opposite of ivory tower? The black earth of Solovyovo, perhaps? Margaret Paxson, a brilliant anthropologist, has gotten her handsand a lot else besidesdirty in the mud of a Russian village, to the enormous benefit of the readers of her new book. Paxson makes a huge contribution to our knowledge of the Russian village, an ancient human institution whose uniqueness has survived wars and revolutions for centuries. One's sense of Russia will never be quite the same after reading her book.

Preface
Iuliia's Hands

Chapter 1: Memory's Topography
Memories as Social Acts
Continuity and Change
Memory as Landscape

Chapter 2: Setting the Village in Space and Time
The Village Question
Solovyovo in Space and Time

Chapter 3: Being One's Own in Solovyovo
Introduction: Social Circles
Solovyovo'slC$