Autobiographical data in the personal record of a citizen who has applied for the restoration of electoral rights deprived for trading

The aim of the article is to scrutinise autobiography as part of a 'lishenets' [a disenfranchised person] personal record, to identify its specific traits typical of such kind of records management autobiographies. The sources for the research are personal records of citizens who appealed for electoral rights reinstatement after being deprived of such for trading reasons, and legal documents specifying the revocation and reinstatement of electoral rights. Unpublished materials of the Regional Election Commission of Sverdlovsk Regional Executive Committee are stored in Sverdlovsk Oblast State Archive. By using methods of source analysis, the author determines the place and role of autobiography in a 'lishenets' personal record. The author draws a conclusion that a citizen's appeal containing autobiographic details can be attributed to mass sources, while autobiographies as a separate document are not mass documents. The structure and the content of record management autobiographies were predisposed by administrative procedures under which they were created. The structure was determined not only by chronology (historical, biographic or plot lines), but also by legal acts regulating the process of reinstatement. The content of the text was oriented onto the members of the Election Commission and as such had to coordinate with their expectations and class orientation. Applicants' argumentation of life events was based on both rational and emotional bases (appeal to the sense of justice, revolutionary consciousness and common sense). The following conclusion related to the specification of autobiographies of former merchants can be drawn based on the analysis of the texts. The defining characteristics are: autobiography could be both a separate document and part of an appeal document; it always contained facts that were viewed as the basis for electoral rights reinstatement; it was not balanced as it showed in detail the aspects of life connected with trade and revocation of electoral rights; omissions and partial disclosures were present in the texts; biographies contained links to legal acts and facts supporting the truthfulness of the information presented by the applicant; at times it is evident that the texts had 'co-authors' as they could have been written by a third party; autobiographies are written in an emotionally coloured style as sometimes they contained very judgemental statements, which is not typical of records management. Investigating into the meaning of autobiographies in the process of electoral rights reinstatement, the author draws a conclusion that these documents were the core elements both for the formation of a 'lishenets' personal record and for the reinstatement procedure itself.

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