Astafyev Ilya Ivanovich (1925 - 1985): personal story of the principal of the Soviet school

The article reflects the results of a study of the personal history of Ilya Ivanovich Astafyev, the director and teacher of the history of the Soviet rural school. The author, relying on various historical sources, presents in the work the main stages of the life path and biography of I. I. Astafyev. The study of the personal history of I. I. Astafyev is based on the application of microhistorical, biographical, historical and anthropological approaches. The source base of the study consists of sources of personal origin and unpublished archival documents. Turning to the personal history of Soviet teachers, school directors will allow us to expand our understanding of the state of public education, the daily life of the Soviet school, and to understand how the theories of Soviet pedagogy were put into practice on the example of specific educational institutions. The Soviet school is an object of close attention of researchers in various scientific fields, however, we note that studies of its daily life, the personal history of «ordinary» pedagogical workers are not often found among modern scientific publications. This circumstance determined the relevance of the author's appeal to this topic. The application of the biographical approach gives us the opportunity to study the influence of the Soviet era on its individual representatives, as well as to see the formation of personality depending on the attitudes and meanings existing in a certain period. The paper reflects the key milestones in the biography of I. I. Astafyev: studying at the school and the 2nd Moscow military aviation school for aircraft mechanics of the special services of the Red Army Air Force; participation in the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945; labor activity as director and teacher of history at school. The personality of the teacher and director is presented, including through the prism of the memories of members of the teaching staff who worked with Ilya Ivanovich in different years. An attempt is made to determine the main elements of the everyday life of the director of the Soviet school. The results of I. I. Astafyev as director of the Troitskaya secondary school of the Buzuluk district of the Orenburg region. It is emphasized that pedagogical activity has become a tradition in the Astafyev family, laid down and brought up by Ilya Ivanovich. The author believes that works of this kind should become an integral part of modern research in the field of studying the history of Russian education and pedagogy.