Notes on the Development of the Official Biography in the Russian Tradition

Abstract

This article covers the principles of the formation of the data that constituted the basis for the official curriculum vitae in the Russian tradition. There is reason to believe that this data had been worked out mainly within the bureaucratic institutions. The data was identified by analyzing the available documents, which describe the official portrait and the life path of a person. The research issue can be formulated as follows: what kind of data about the person, his or her social characteristics and life events were considered necessary by the authorities to be registered in various documents? To answer this question, it was necessary to study parish registers, passports from different time periods, service records, family lists, Soviet questionaries filled out by newly hired employees, and other documents. Since the time of Peter the Great, the following data have been gradually included in the official portrait of a person: name (first name, patronymic, family name), social estate (social standing), age, place of residence, religion (nationality), marital status, military status. In the description of the life path, it was necessary to provide information about close relatives, education, employment history, awards and penalties. Soviet questionaries always included questions about a person’s involvement with the Komsomol (Young Communist League) or the Communist Party and participation in social work. As a result, an individual’s life story presented in the official curriculum vitae consisted not of events, but of his various social statuses. The bureaucratic apparatus required information not so much of the individual himself as of his social environment. The change in the type of information required was determined by aspects of the political and social system in which the respective person existed.