Representation of Soviet manuals in self-made books-anthologies of a rural teacher of the Trans-Baikal region

Abstract

The homemade anthology book is a little-studied didactic genre today, although it represents an important source of empirical material for studying cross-sections of the era, the availability of information and its selectivity in the context of local and general social history. One of the relevant resources for searching for materials may be a Soviet textbook – it represents social and normative positions on issues of history and culture. During the expedition of the Higher School of Economics “Local history in Schools of Trans-Baikal region” in June 2023, 9 selfmade books were found in the school museum of the village of Kalinino in the Nerchinsky district of the Trans-Baikal Territory. The books were created in the second half of the twentieth century by Matvey Petrovich Koptelov, a history teacher at the Kalinin School. He probably created them to collect and structure information about history, literature, art, and prominent personalities. Topic, personalities, and historical events selection analysis in comparison with textbooks сonten from different years provides foundation to judge the views and reading horizons of the rural intelligentsia representative in the second half of the 20th century.