Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village

by Margaret Paxson

In a small village beside a reed-lined lake in the Russian north, a cluster of farmers has lived for centuries―in 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.

Genres: Russia, Anthropology

Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret Paxson's book deals with the issue of collective memory and folk traditions—including a strong and even now still-extant belief in the supernatural—in rural villages of Russia. Taking an ethnographic approach and using the scientific modalities of anthropology, Paxson takes the village Solovyovo—a very remote, small, and traditional locality—as her example and notes how even in post-Soviet times many lingering conventions of both Orthodoxy and communism have remained. Overall, the book is well-written and Paxson's fluency in Russian combined with her professional understanding of anthropology allow her a very nuanced view of social life in this village and she is able to write about it in an engaging, detailed, manner. It should be noted this is not only a book about rural Russia, but about a very specific type of small village and does not provide a sweeping overview of contemporary Russian life at all, but isn't meant to and should be of a lot of interest to scholars and others interested in the "old ways" and traditions of Russian life from the times of the tsars to today.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Portrait of the decline of the Russian countryside and its traditions