Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2023 16 (12)

Authors

Nikulin, Daniil O.

Contact information

Nikulin, Daniil O.: The Institute of History SB RAS Novosibirsk, Russian Federation;

Keywords

World War I; volunteer; personal account; test; essay; perception of war

Abstract

The article deals with examinations for the rank of volunteer, II category, written in Novonikolaevsk during the First World War. As part of the exams, applicants wrote essays describing their personal experience on a given topic. Some topics had a direct connection to the war, such as “The first day in the barracks”, “The first days of the war with Germany”, etc. Due to being dedicated to different topics, they touch upon a wide range of aspects of the War, such as the perception of the war and the enemies of Russia by the population, barracks life. The essays have some distinct qualities as a historical source, as, not unlike letters or memoirs, they describe personal experience in a free style. Nevertheless, they remain written for assessment by examiners and on a given topic, limiting the applicants in their sincerity, making the essays similar to a degree, while at the same time making a comparison of views of different people on the same topic possible. The texts of the essays do not contain any information that might be impossible to obtain from other sources. However, they still constitute a significant addition to other, more widespread and widely used sources on the history of the First World War. The results is grounded on the principles of historicism and objectivity, and its results present value for the future historical study on the Russian army, allowing to diversify historical sources commonly used for that purpose

Pages

2086–2096

EDN

XDNLDX

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/152369

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).