Formation of the Historical Memory on Russian Universities in the 1990s: Evidences and Their Interpretation

Abstract. The article focuses on the formation of the historical memory about the life of the Russian universities in 1990s. Dissertations, magazines and newspaper articles, statistical reports, as well as enactments fix the crisis of the Russian universities. However, none of historical sources allow studying deeply ideas and feelings of the Russian academic community. Dissertations reproduce stereotypes, journalists are interested in the most sweeping changes, and legislation and statistical statements are contradictory and inconsistent. The present study is based on the interviews of professors. Interviews were collected by volunteers of the Center of University Studies in the Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (the National Research University Higher School of Economics). The authors show the information capacity of the interviews. The simultaneous appeals to the individual memories, the statistical collections and regulatory framework have revealed the gaps between the “official version” of the memory and descriptions of the eyewitnesses. The study of 153 interviews led to the conclusion that the contemporary historian makes a point of reconstructing many versions of the past. This allows the creation of the human-oriented narrative of the university past.

Keywords: the higher education, university, interview, collective memory, academic life.