THE ECSTASY OF INVOLVEMENT. CHELYUSKIN’S DIARY OF A GEOGRAPHY TEACHER

Abstract

In the article, the interconnection of modern subject with temporality is considered through the source of the historical present – the diary that the Moscow geography teacher and one of the Soviet leading supervisor in geography, Vera Rausch, kept in the first days after the sinking of the Chelyuskin steamer in the Arctic (around February 1934). Presenting a unique ego-document of the Soviet era, the researcher solves three problems. First, he describes the indirect, confusing, and incomplete relations between Rausch's biography and her archive, writing and curation in terms of the archival self. Second, he analyzes the diary, focusing in its multiple temporality. After revealing three layers of heterochronic corrections, recycling of the diary entry into a scholarly fiction becomes visible and localized in the biographical timescape. Finally, he explores the discursive and affective background that allowed the geography teacher to carry out a special kind of mediation through rejecting her “self”. Rausch shortens the distance to the Arctic event and shares the experience with her pupils. She uses school physical geography as a resource for mastering the position of the Soviet subject. Her experience of participation is described in the article against the background of the diaries of contemporaries, reflecting the Chelyuskin epic.