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Cambridge conversations: what can we learn from diaries?

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What do you imagine life was like for teenagers in Stalin's Soviet Union? PhD student Ekaterina Zadirko found that even in a period of massive upheaval, the diaries of teenage boys focused on exams, career plans, finding the right wife, and the mundane realities of everyday life. She sat down with Dr Ally Louks to discuss the value of studying diaries and what it tells us about being a teenager in a time of totalitarianism.

Read more about Ekaterina's research in this accompanying article, which features some of the original sources: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/teenage-boys-diaries-from-stalins-russia


Timings for video

01:25 Why study teenage diaries?
03:10 Methodology
04:30 Descendants of people Ekaterina studied
05:50 What did teenagers write about in the 1930s Soviet Union
09:15 How relatable are these Soviet teenagers to teenagers today?
13:30 Pressure of being a teenager
14:00 Why focus only on male diarists?
21:00 Why we keep diaries
22:00 Why did these Soviet teenagers keep diaries?
27:40 Was it risky to write diaries under Stalin?
31:10 Love in the USSR?
35:40 Preconceptions when reading diaries
36:40 Benefits of reading boring diaries
45:20 Getting to know teenagers eighty years on
Category
Academic
Tags
Cambridge University, Cambridge research, USSR
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