From Servants to Housekeepers: Transformations of Everyday Life in the 1920s (on the Example of Chernihiv)

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to develop the main tendencies and characteristics of the housekeepers’ life in Chernihiv during the questionable and controversial processes of the 1920s, the transformation of social and political structure, incorporation of a new value system, and creation of a new way of life in the context of the fi xed rules.

The research methodology is based on approaches and methods of social history, history of everyday life and microhistory, as well as interdisciplinary methods: statistical-analytical and historical-psychological.

Conclusion. The main elements of the new social system concerning housekeepers and the main problems of its realization are characterized. The process of evolution from the servant to the soviet housekeeper and the factors of its formation: New economic policy, the categories of employers, urbanization, and external and internal cataclysms of the early 20th century are analyzed. The regulatory environment of the discussed problem was characterized. It was proved that the implementation of the regulation played an important role and laid the ground for the transformation of the relationship between employers and their people to the relations between work gives and housekeepers. By the example of Chernihiv, it was shown that due to the unwillingness to pay of the insurance fee, which served as an additional source of expenses, the employers in every way tried to avoid hiring housekeepers through Unemployment Benefit Offices. Th at was a complicating factor of the offi cial employment of the housekeepers, which caused the high level of unemployment and incompatibility between the powers of Unemployment Benefit Offices and trade unions during the realization of the social policy in the 1920s and the real situation. According to the statistics, the reasons of impossibility of finding out the factual number of housekeepers were defi ned. Social structure of the housekeepers and their material goods were discovered. It was shown that the overtime of the housekeepers was modified due to the soviet policy, the main point of which was to order the right view and support on the new party line.