Diary of a (non)ordinary woman: dialogues with time and search for yourself

The article attempts at detecting different meanings of the personal diary of Tatiana Rozhkova, a resident of post-war Tyumen, and various manifestations of the social and the individual reflected in it. It considers the ways of the author’s self-image construction and correlation of its facets in the space of the diary text. It is shown how the diarist’s addiction to propagandistic rhetoric of “culturalness”, transferred to the sphere of everyday life, was combined with her own understanding of culture. Rozhkova’s speculations on the mission of the Soviet intelligentsia and her attitude towards the representatives of the “uncultured” strata of the population testified that her social ideas were hierarchical. It is noted that the facade and “behind the facade” components of Soviet reality did not come into conflict in the text of the diary, which points to the diarist’s apolitical character. It is shown that the theme of labor / work, which was understood in two ways: as a collective feat and as individual creativity, became a borderline theme for the diary, where the socially conditioned and the individually significant overlapped and came into contact with each other. The creation of an autonomous private home space isolated from the outside world was especially significant for the diarist. The achievement of this goal was facilitated by the arrangement of Rozhkova’s apartment in accordance with the values of the nascent Soviet middle class with its passion for homeliness and comfort. It is concluded that the epoch in Tatiana Rozhkova’s diary manifested itself primarily in those rhetorical models and figurative patterns that were relevant at the time and served as models for the diarist.