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Donald J. Raleigh’s book Soviet Baby Boomers provides a fascinating social and cultural oral history of America’s generation equivalent. The book, through conducting over 60 interviews with graduating classes from school No. 42 in Saratov and from No. 20 in Moscow, outlines and describes how they lived “Soviet” and what that meant to them personally. The interviewees themselves are fascinating, but Raleigh provides than just their testimony. Raleigh takes a global historical perspective, situating his interviewees’ domestic social and cultural histories, responses, and articulations into the wider context of global, Soviet, and Russian dynamics. The book is likewise astoundingly well-researched into each interviewee’s own personal history, their parents, and their grandparents. As a result, Soviet Baby Boomers covers the entire history of the Soviet Union from 1950 and into Russia until 2004.

A particular strength of this book is how Raleigh uncovers attitudes and perceptions of the state during the Cold War, the threat of nuclear war, academic competition with the United States, their slow disillusionment with the Soviet “dream” after Khrushchev’s speech, introduction into the workforce, and economic troubles with the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union. The sections on Soviet consumerism are particularly relevant in the current Soviet cultural and social historiography. Raleigh even dedicates a behemoth of a chapter, in quality rather than quantity, to the unfortunately under-researched 1991-2001 Russian “Troubles” epoch.

Structure and Method

Raleigh interweaves every interview beautifully into the book so that it never breaks the book’s flow, narration, or writing style. Raleigh’s inclusion of when interviewees decline to comment, seemingly omit, or ignore certain periods of time or events, is handled with tact and respect. Raleigh nonetheless comments on these omissions or lapses, provides an analysis, and incorporates them into a wider historical context. Equally commendable is Raleigh’s explicit clarification, in the introduction and conclusion, about the issues of memory and narrativization when conducting Oral History, and elaborates that these interviews illustrate how these Russians viewed and interpreted their own history rather than treating them as absolute fact. 

Despite these accomplishments, there are various structural and methodological inconsistencies within the book that clash with contemporary Oral Historian practices. Most notable is the lack of information on when these interviews were conducted, where, or how. Equally unfortunate is any information on where, or if, these interviews were archived or are currently available. In lieu of this fact, a rather discomforting silence persists throughout the book. As Irina Vizgalova’s father told her and Raleigh laments: “ ‘Don’t poke your nose in politics, because they’re good at rewriting our history.’ But so are we.” Perhaps a more transparent and accessible Oral History could have changed my perception of this end-of-the-book quote.

Raleigh, Donald J. Soviet Baby Boomers. Oxford University Press, 2012.

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Hurricane Sandy on New Jersey’s Forgotten Shore is a fascinating and impressive Oral History project. However depressing and sobering its effect, it nonetheless testifies to the power that Oral history can provide in historical research. There is more color, depth, emotion, and commentary on the human condition and spirit within Perkiss’ book than in a number of histories I’ve read previously. This book places New Jerseyans front and center in their own history, in their own lives, vividly illustrating the tragic nature of those who never expected to be center stage.

Perkiss’ and her students, who interviewed an impressive number of New Jerseyans, completed most of the interviews within ten to fourteen months, and the remaining just shy of two years, of when Sandy made its initial landfall on October 29th, 2012. The research, planning, outreach, and processing of such information would have been an immense task to complete within those two years. Perkiss’ research, planning, and organizational process to complete the majority of her interviews within the ten-month time frame raises several questions, however. Not simply that this would require an intense workload, but rather for the rigorous research process that is supposed to accompany an Oral History. For many of those featured prominently within the book, the time it would take to research them, their own history, their town’s history, and Sandy’s impact upon their future, would be hard to complete within two years, let alone ten months. This raised a myriad of questions while reading the book, that I would have liked to have seen included within the text, but ones that I do not, in any way, think detract from the effectiveness, nor the importance, of the history provided. The first set of questions therefore comes from the quality of research that can and could be conducted within such a short period of time. But this is not to say that the research within the book itself is rushed or misleading.

The second set of questions comes from considering Oral History’s often close relationship in dealing with trauma. The author’s voice and narration cover all the aspects and conditions of trauma throughout the book, in the hurricane’s physical destruction, financial destruction, emotional and physical fatigue, but it is never the center of the dialogue. It is inferred and depicted throughout, in the many forms listed above, but is never in active voice or directly engaged in dialogue. 

The third set of questions centers around its approach to the interviewee. The book’s focus, interestingly, is focused more on the individual, personal, human history of these individuals. The main character, Sandy herself, is treated as a secondary character. New Jerseyans’ lives and histories are affected by Sandy rather than vice versa. The central focus of the book is on these New Jerseyans, whose lives are uprooted and disrupted by the storm, rather than treating Sandy as the principal agent. This flips the narrative in quite an effective way and makes the book a history of the Human condition, and in many cases, spirit, rather than on the hurricane. While reading, I thought of Swing Shift and how the books differ in their focus and approach. Swing Shift’s approaches to the interviewees as both main characters and supplements to the history of all women’s jazz bands in the 1940s. Yet, in many chapters, though certainly not all, the lack of quotes and direct narration from the interviewees themselves transforms them into footnotes, research to supplement the history. Perkiss flips this and puts the interviewees themselves front and center and relegates Sandy to the footnotes. Research on the storm is merely secondary to the research on the personal, very alive, colorful history of New Jerseyans living through this tragic period.

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Oral history is an extremely dynamic process. In its dynamism, beyond its many layers of subjectivity, there is a fundamental issue of structure. Specifically, a solid, stable, continuous structure of memory. To substitute an analogy of the brain for a tree, we can see that an interview comprises the structure that is above ground, but also a vast and complex subterranean structure. Its structure is dependent on its type, family grouping, environment, collective organism, and/or whether it responds adeptly to external stimuli. Below the obvious above-ground structure of the tree, we encounter the roots and their intricate layers of memory, meaning, and purpose. Each cannot live without the other, and an analysis of each is likewise incomplete. In this daft analogy, I seek the source that sustains and nurtures these roots, the deep subterranean groundwater, steeped in dirt, memories, and minerals, meaning and purpose. This groundwater, through an arbitrary and seemingly random process, irrespective of consciousness, decides which roots to nourish and which to let die away. These roots, which grow stronger by the season, combine both the narrative and the performative nature of Oral History. Its above-ground structure is only visible. 

It is therefore important to understand that Oral Historians are not aware of the roots, which ones are stronger than the others, nor which ones lead to the underground reservoir. The Oral Historian must excavate as tactfully, morally, and ethically as possible to observe the root’s structure. Our job is neither to de-root nor de-forest. 

As all people do, the interviewee has an irresistible inclination to narrate and perform. They have an interested and invested audience to explain such a narration: an understandable, chronological, delineated account of all major areas of their life. They have created, or perhaps manufactured, their own history. They have collected a multitude of sources, battled dissent, found like-minded individuals, reinforced their idea of self through trials and tribulations, and have constantly annotated and revised their story throughout their entire lives. The history they were witness to, or directly involved in, is directly transfused to their sense of self.

The introduction of the interview is akin to an examination. They have to perform. For the deepest, often traumatic, most integral memories and moments in their life, sexual assault survivors, war veterans, and survivors of genocide, the interview can inadvertently become a larger examination of their lives. Whether that is an examination with or without apparent judgment depends on the skill, tact, and ethical construction of the Historian.

But what if we conduct oral history on a seemingly mundane point in an interviewee’s life? On a time period that is neither particularly relevant in their life-story, ethos of self, or performative narrative? Does the sudden interest of two researchers co-opt an individual to perform, to narrate, to construct their interview in the context of their life? Can their roots even be observed in a seemingly less important part of their life? Is an interviewee not interested in the history we seek to research, a more reliable source? Do we seek out a senior employee or a relatively new one? Can interns provide more reliable information about the interworkings of a company, as opposed to their boss, or even their CEO? They will have less to lose, fewer inhibitions even. Surely, the issue of guarded language and the performance is the fulcrum on which the truth teeters for the Oral historian. What does are tree look like really?

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I recently read Sherrie Tucker’s Swing Shift, a book about all-girl bands of the 1940s, and a chapter When Subjects Don’t Come Out in a separate publication, Queer Episodes. Her article complements and expands upon her book quite well. For its illuminating story, Dr. Tucker’s article provides an interesting question: What if the people you’re interviewing don’t tell you what you know is true? And what if they explicitly ask you not to mention it despite all the facts pointing to it? The question, as Tucker suggests, was already quite obvious: what was the sexuality of these all-girl bands? Tucker laments her inability to use any material on this subject because her interviewees were neither comfortable nor interested in having their stories connected directly to their sexuality. While I understand Tucker’s frustrations, as this was, in part, one of her main curiosities to uncover while writing the book, I believe Tucker may have missed her own point made in the book. These women, through incredible obstacles, had immense courage to pursue their dreams of music. They fought for that freedom their whole lives. They did not let any obstacle, let alone their skin color or gender, restrict them from that realization. 

The topic of sexuality was a step too far in their eyes. Tucker duly documents the incredible number of made-up and preposterous reasons and theories as to why women shouldn’t be able to play music. Or shouldn’t be able to play the trumpet, or drums, or travel on their own, or have a job. Everything from their supposed inferior intellect to stealing jobs from men, stood in their way. Even now, it surprises Tucker that none of these women “came out” to her during their interviews, so long after these supposed prejudices had gone by the wayside. Perhaps these women were still afraid of these prejudices affecting them even now, which doesn’t seem to occur to Tucker in her article, although I’m sure, in actuality, it did.

Perhaps this article is of most importance to Tucker’s book because it acutely articulates that this was not how these women wished to be remembered. They did not wish height, looks, or hair color, least of all their sexuality, to repaint in their eyes what was most important to them: women who loved music and knew how to play it well. Despite adding a fascinating and colorful shade to Tucker’s book, it would be a shade too strong, too open to prejudice, too diversionary. Gay marriage, after all, did not become legalized until 15+ years after these interviews took place.

Unfortunately, I think Tucker oversteps here in her quest. Quite contrary to what she states, she does very much incorporate her interviewee’s sexuality into the book through this chapter addendum, almost an epilogue, really. Very much against the wishes of her interviewees, and despite honoring their request not to mention their names, Tucker nonetheless includes quotes from many of these women explicitly confirming many of their fellow musicians as lesbian. Tucker’s desire to “fill in” her book clouds her vision. I think Tucker recognized this, but couldn’t stop herself from including it anyway. These are still real people who generously gave Tucker their stories, their experiences, their history, and in many cases, their lives, for her book. There is a significant ethical concern here. They are now forever recast, not solely in their musical ability and womanhood, but also in their sexuality. 

But the frustration that Tucker exhibits is quite relevant for someone wishing, perhaps desperately, to uncover a story they know is there somewhere, just waiting to be spoken aloud. My quest for information on the Philadelphia Athenaeum delivers to me equally dubious ethical concerns. I am particularly interested in how the Athenaeum manages to survive, financially, when most other museums across the greater Philadelphia area have, quite resoundingly, failed. I have an inherent bias, a strong suspicion, that there is something to uncover financially. I am not entirely sure what that may be, but that will not stop me from inquiring about it through any means possible. My own background in business management has taught me a lot about the “out of the box” activities of management to cut corners, acquire funding, all in the name of their organization’s success, and in many cases, their own. There is always the question of legacy hiding behind most actions. In business, the ends very much justify the means. But Tucker’s case serves as a good example that I am not just dealing with just a story, just a source, but a human being who may not want their words construed or used against them. There are many young employees, past and present, who work at the Athenaeum. No one wants their past opinions used against their future self. Especially when starting out on a bright career. We all have said things that misconstrue what we believe is our true self. And we have all said things that we no longer believe. Least of all, we do not want our words to repaint who we believe we are now. 

_{Tucker, Sherrie. Swing Shift : “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s. Durham, Nc: Duke University Press, 2001.}

_{Tucker, Sherrie. “When Subjects Don’t Come Out.” In Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity. Editorial: Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press ; Chesham, 2008.}

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Gladys Okada was born in Eleele on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Both of her parents emigrated from the Japanese mainland not long before her birth. She graciously took part in the Oral History Center’s project “Rosie the Riveter WWII American Home Front Oral History Project” in 2014 and recounted her life in Hawaii during WWII and the post-war era. Most prominent throughout the interview were her memories of working at the McBryde sugar plantation and how her life progressed after Pearl Harbor. Gladys goes into great detail about her parents’ Japanese history and culture, as well as her neighbors throughout the village. It is surprising then that the American government interned neither her family nor her neighbors, especially since her parents still had relatives in Japan. Gladys does mention that some relatives of hers on the mainland were interned, but neither she nor her interviewers go into further detail about this. Despite this unfortunate departure from one of the more interesting accounts of Gladys’ unique experience, the interview is quite fascinating. Her story is so rich, and one that helps to voice the usually softened or silenced history of Japanese Americans during WWII.

Yet, there are a couple of aspects of the interview procedure that hampered the otherwise fascinating history that Gladys recounts. Although not immediately obvious if just listening to the interview, the video accompaniment illustrates friction between Gladys and one of the interviewers, David Dunham. Contrasting this, Candice Fukumoto, the other interviewer, demonstrates an obviously good rapport with Gladys as she laughs with Gladys’s smiles and small instances of humor. Dunham is often silent during these more casual, conversational-like aspects of the interview, which is a shame because this is when Gladys shows her personality and opens up the most. Dunham was also prone to interject during the latter half of the interview, presumably to direct Gladys or divert her to a specific topic he is most interested in capturing. From my perception, these do a disservice to the entire interview and to Gladys. In these cases, Gladys’ train of thought falters; she has to lean in to hear Dunham, who often has to repeat his question, and then has to reorient her memory to answer Dunham’s question. There are trace amounts of frustration in both Dunham’s and Gladys’ voices throughout these interactions. Gladys is usually re-telling an important, humorous, or fond memory when she has to re-orient herself to these interrupting questions, resulting in her welcoming smile dropping, brows furrowing, and short one or two-word replies. She then has to pivot to a topic she is less interested in talking about. 

I think some of these, quite surface-level issues, could have been alleviated by improving the interviewing process. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, would be to diminish the distance between Gladys and Dunham. Dunham appears to be a good distance from Gladys, and certainly much further away than his colleague Fukumoto who is only a foot or so away from Gladys. This also causes Dunham’s voice to be barely picked up by the microphone attached to Gladys’ shirt, which causes Gladys to have to lean in to hear Dunham’s questions. Fukumoto’s rapport with Gladys is much stronger, kinder, and less forceful, and it would have been nice to have them interact more than with Dunham. Fukumoto lets Gladys speak and only rarely directs her to an adjacent topic. Fukumoto does ask some follow-up questions, albeit much less than Dunham, but they are always more directly relevant to what Gladys is already talking about. 

Another aspect, although perhaps much less important, is the decision to have Gladys in the corner of the room. I don’t think this affects the interview too much, as Gladys appears quite comfortable when speaking with Fukumoto, whom she looks at for the vast majority of the interview. But placing an interviewee in the corner of any room seems to be poor judgment. Police detectives, when interviewing a suspect, often employ the Reid technique, where one of its less controversial tactics is to place the interviewee in the corner of the room and have the interviewer block their path to the door. This, according to the technique’s advocates, makes the interviewee uncomfortable and more susceptible to mistakes and inconsistencies in their account. Whether these might have any tangible effects in a non-interrogatory interview, like Gladys, is unknown. Yet, placing an interviewee in the corner of the room nonetheless makes for a much less welcoming or comfortable environment. Jeremy Brecher, in How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Community History, outlines many of his initial struggles in his Oral history project in creating a welcoming atmosphere for interviewees. Brecher also notes how video recording often turned people away from an interviewer. These are important things to consider, and one of which physical distance between an interviewer and interviewee, hearing ability, tone of questions, or placement in the room, can all make a huge difference in the final product and quality of the interview. 

_{Brecher, Jeremy. “How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Community History: A ‘Pet Outsiders’ Report on the Brass Workers History Project.” Radical History Review 28-30 (1984): 187–201.}

_{Gladys  Okada, “Rosie the Riveter WWII American Home Front Oral History Project” conducted by David Dunham and Candice Fukumoto in 2014, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prlvOXwjlVI&t=5138s}

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I read several pieces this week on the origins of modern Oral History. I use the term modern here because it is, indeed, very much a new thing. It is not like the oral history of medieval chronicles commissioned by and for lords to detail and brag about their own achievements in life and reign. Nor is it Herodotus, aptly named Histories, who travelled the Mediterranean collecting myths, postulations, and his own skepticisms. No, indeed, oral history is very much new and has bitterly fought to prove that it is a respectable method of researching and collecting history. Its most ardent critics? The people who should love it most, historians.

Allan Nevins, the “Father of Oral History,” helped form the auditory new medium by establishing methods and best practices. It is not simply recording someone talking about their life experiences, which suddenly makes it history. The multi-stage approach requires a trained historian to thoroughly research the topic and interviewee for whom they are about to engage, and later archive such work. Therefore, oral history is born from modern technology: the tape recorder. Various historians, even oral historians, have argued that recording is not a requirement, but I, like Nevins and Louis Starr, would argue that it is vital that the listener hear the source’s inflections, pitch, and tone to understand what is actually being conveyed.¹ Rick Halpern mentions in Oral History and Labor History how, in some cases, transcripts of audio recordings were questionably edited to present a certain narrative.²

Alessandro Portelli’s The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories documents the now-famous death of Trastulli, whose exact date was misremembered by fellow villagers, highlighting the important need for well-researched historians.³ Without oral history, the interesting phenomenon it disclosed would never have entered modern discourse. Additionally, Portelli notes that: “. . oral sources give us information about illiterate people or social groups whose written history is either missing or distorted.”⁴ Louis Starr similarly writes how the digital age has made hand-written letters, notes, diaries, and paper documents as a whole almost entirely obsolete for the historian to discover. Oral history is a new way to fill in such gaps that our modern age has made more difficult.⁵

It is quite paradoxical, then, how oral history, perhaps the most basic form of all histories, has been battled at most every turn. What could be a more archaic and arbitrary mode of thinking than “History is not a recording, it’s a dusty old book in the back of the archives!” Or a blog for that matter. Yet these fears stem from conducting oral history without Nevins’ or Starr’s guidelines, as noted by Rick Halpern’s comments on the Lynd tradition “[which were conducted in a] haphazard manner, their silence on the editing process, and their apparent obliviousness to issues of hindsight and memory.”⁶ For all these concerns, the invention of the tape recorder has allowed more voices to be heard across various, previously nearly silent, socio-economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. It has helped democratize history. Portelli succinctly noted: “Oral sources are a necessary (not a sufficient) condition for a history of the non-hegemonic classes.”⁷ It provides the source’s thought processes, narrative, opinions, line of thinking, fears, confidences, and even lies. Its range is complex and so likewise requires a robust historian to situate its significance correctly within their research. All three of my images showcase history at different points throughout time, but all still require an experience and a well-researched historian to understand and interpret their significance (and authenticity or absence) in history. Oral history is likewise no different than these old methods.

1. Allan Nevins, “Oral History: How and Why It Was Born,” in Oral History : An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 1996), 35. ↩︎
2. Rick Halpern, “Oral History and Labor History: A Historiographic Assessment after Twenty- Five Years,” The Journal of American History 85, no. 2 (September 1998): 601,605, https://doi.org/10.2307/2567754. ↩︎
3. Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories : Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1991), 45–58. ↩︎
4. Portelli, What Makes Oral History Different, 47. ↩︎
5. Louis Starr, “Oral History,” in Oral History : An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 1996), 41. ↩︎
6. Halpern, Oral History and Labor History, 597. ↩︎
7. Portelli, What Makes Oral History Different, 56. ↩︎

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