“Let the text just be…”: methodological principles of research of ego-documents in the works of N.N. Kozlova

Abstract

The paper presents N.N. Kozlova’s research experience of the study of ego-documents, who worked with diaries and memoirs of the ordinary Soviet people considered as mass and created biographical narratives. These documents were kept at the documentary center ‘Folk archive’. The theoretical and methodological position of the researcher is considered in the context of the history of social and human sciences in the 1990s, as well in the context of understanding the Soviet society and Soviet people. The particularities of the researcher’s approach are interpreted as empirical; growing interest in the ego-documents is interpreted as an attempt to create experienced knowledge. It is considered the problem of the gap between abstract theory and empirical data in the humanities. An attempt is made to demonstrate the dependence of the method and the choice of terminology on the ethical beliefs of the researcher. As result of studying the scientific heritage of N.N. Kozlova I extract the set of methodological principles of the studying of ego-documents which are relevant for a contemporary researcher: the concern of reflectivity, the empirical attitude to the object, asserting the value of private life, interdisciplinary openness and pluralism. Particular attention is paid to how Kozlova’s biographical texts express these principles, for example, in relationship between quotations from sources and narrative of researcher.