Kudryashev Aleksey

Chewing gum in context of everyday life of soviet schoolchildren (on materials of periodicals of the 1960s — 1970s)

Abstract

Following the historical and pedagogical line of studying everyday life of children that has been developing in recent years, an attempt was made to reconstruct the changes in lives of Soviet schoolchildren associated with the spread of chewing gum in the 1960s and 1970s. On the example of chewing gum, we can see such historical trends as the global “consumer revolution”, fl uctuation in the offi cial discourse under the pressure of social realities, the cold war. Children’s magazines and pedagogical periodicals actually refl ected several layers of reality, i.e. everyday life of teenagers (purchase and use of chewing gum), educational practices as a reaction to changes in everyday life, and offi cial educational discourse. The main source of reconstruction of everyday life was publications of the Soviet periodical press (the newspaper Pionerskaya pravda and the magazine Sem’ya i shkola). The research method in the article implies viewing the newspaper and the magazine issue-by-issue from 1961 to 1979 with a subsequent selection of materials about teenagers’ life in connection with getting and consuming foreign chewing gum. Materials of the periodicals are supplemented by memoirs of contemporaries, testimonies from journalism and fi ction. Based on the analysis and interpretation of texts of the newspaper “Pionerskaya pravda” and the magazine “Family and school”, the functions of chewing gum in everyday life of Soviet teenagers are formulated; these are consuming the gum as it is designed, gamerelated function, collecting and sharing, inducing cognitive interest, dreams about a different reality, identifi cation with a reference group, and improving the social status of a teenager. Among the socio-cultural practices, the article allows one to register the purchase of chewing gum as part of an illegal trade or exchange, begging for chewing gum from foreigners or from Soviet sailors, the persecution of illegal traders by pioneer activists, educational practices. Analysis of texts from selected articles makes it possible to identify specific speech practices: words that arose to denote cultural practices and a specific speech practice of using deliberate Americanisms, a special educational discourse; urban legends.

Keywords

historical anthropology of childhood, history of education in USSR, everyday life of Soviet teenagers in 1960s and 1970s, consumer society, periodicals as historical and pedagogical source, Pionerskaya Pravda

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Information about the author

Kudryashev Aleksey

Academic Degree: Candidate of Sciences* in Education;
Academic Degree: Candidate of Sciences* in Education;
Academic Rank: Associate Professor;
Place of work: Moscow city pedagogical University; 4 Vtoroi Sel'skohozyaystvennyi proezd, Moscow, 129226, Russian Federation;
Post: associate professor of department of the pedagogy;
ORCID: 0000-0003-0338-2940;
Email: Kud.al@mail.ru.

*According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011, the degree of Candidate of Sciences (Cand.Sc.) belongs to ISCED level 8 — "doctoral or equivalent", together with PhD, DPhil, D.Lit, D.Sc, LL.D, Doctorate or similar.

Acknowledgments

This article was financially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project № 18-013-00890a.