Understanding the daily life: the heuristic potential of the concept in the studies of the Soviet era

The article deals with the heuristic potential of the concept of everyday life in historical research and indicates its place in the historiographic tradition. Everyday life, in terms of the philosophical paradigm of E. Husserl, is considered as a category of humanitarian, in particular, historical knowledge, describing available, accustomed, not needing reflection, value-oriented images of reality, of the self, of distinguishing oneself and others, i.e. everything that forms the vital world and the concrete community of people in a certain space-time continuum and the corresponding practices. Husserl formulated the problem: why do the same subjects of experience have the same meaning for different people and why are they denoted by the same predicates? The article formulates the research principles: reduction, individuation, and dense description. The relationship between the concept of everyday life and microhistory is described. Working in the paradigm of the study of everyday life does not pretend to generalize. But, firstly, correctly interpreting those testimonies, we can understand the situation in which they become possible, we can see the "big story" from below, through the eyes of its real participants. Further, we can explain their actions, at first glance looking "wrong", absurd and irrational, and we can understand their counter-institutional content. The concept of everyday life opens the prospect for a more correct identification of the nature of the crisis of the Soviet system. It means revealing the degree of discrepancy between institutional logic and private practices of specific actors, as there is no other possibility to "peep into their heads".