"Children of perestroika": life-worlds of schoolchildren in the 1980-1990s

The article examines history of the late Soviet and post-Soviet childhood. The basis of the author's conviction is the appearance of a new generation of children - "the generation of perestroika" in the 1980s. The formation of a new school children’s worldview is recognized as one of the key problems. The social and historical context of childhood of the 1980s – 1990s is reconstructed through the lens of children's texts. Some personal documents created by children themselves and therefore able to preserve natural language and children’s way of thinking are under investigation, such as school compositions, children’s letters to the newspaper "The Pioneer Truth", handwritten diaries of schoolgirls. The author uses sources from the collection of the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (Materials of School Department of the Youth Komsomol Central Committee and of the Central Council of the All-Union Pioneer Lenin Organization). Another group of sources are the series of in-depth interviews with the informants of 1975-1985 years of birth. Based on the analysis of children's texts the article reveals the diversity of individual practices of inculturation of pupils, shows changes in the attitude to the Pioneers and Komsomol in children's community, the emergence of new idols, the formation of new reading interests. The author pays attention to the emergence of new preferences, gaming practices, elements of everyday language of communication, formed under the influence of social and cultural changes of the 1990s.