Changes in Urban Everyday Life Under Collectivization Conditions (By the Example of the Stalin Collective Farm in the City of Stavropol in the North Caucasus Krai)

Introduction. The understanding of urban everyday life during Soviet modernization is deepened in contemporary studies with an account of Stavropol’s experience of daily routine. The relevance of the topic stems from active development of such fields as the history of urban everyday life and intellectual history, as well as new local history, which allows us to understand the regional dimension of Soviet history. Methods and materials. The paper aims to study the process of transformation of everyday life in the city of Stavropol under the influence of collectivization at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. For the first time, a set of archival materials dedicated to the creation of the Stalin collective farm and stored in collection 329 of the State Archives of the Stavropol Krai is introduced into scientific circulation. The basic approach, along with traditional methods of history, was new local history. The main sources were official documents: applications for membership and withdrawal from the collective farm, as well as minutes of board meetings of the artel or individual sectors. Analysis. With the launch of collectivization, the main trend in urban everyday life was the outflow of peasants to cities. The case was different in Stavropol. Here, the urban socio-cultural space was traditionally intertwined with the features of rural life. Therefore, under the conditions of collectivization, three collective farms emerged in the urban area. One of them is the Stalin collective farm, which existed from 1929 to 1957. Different aspects of the everyday life of city dwellers, motives for joining and leaving the collective farm, and various domestic difficulties have been studied. Collective farm establishment was carried out under the guidance of the city council, from the decision to use city property, city land, and city premises. In addition, not only city farmers joined the collective farm but also city residents: workers and employees. Results. In terms of everyday life, collectivization had a specific manifestation in Stavropol. The city demonstrated a special way of Soviet urban everyday life as the urban population became collective farmers with their own unique way of life. Authors’ contribution. K. Ambartsumyan studied the peculiarities of collective farm construction in the city of Stavropol with reference to archival material. T. Bulygina identified the features of the socio-cultural space of Stavropol and studied its transformation during collectivization. The empirical material was collected and processed collaboratively. Funding. The reported study was funded by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. (№ 24-18-20073), https://rscf.ru/project/24-18-20073/