IVth Summer Academy for Adults (by a participant from Tajikistan)

This year I was lucky to participate in the Summer Academy on the oral history methodology for adults. The training was delivered at a resort at Lake Issyk Kul. It was a good time when training was combined with recreation.

One can say that this Academy brought together people sharing the same ideas. Although the Academy participants came from different countries (representatives of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Bulgaria participated in the IV-th Summer Academy), we became good friends from the very first day, and took an active part in discussions almost all sessions. Presentations of each delegation were very interesting. Each presentation aroused animated discussions and raised numerous questions. The first three sessions on oral history were carried out by Olga Agapova from St. Petersburg. I really liked her method of group work that encouraged active participation of all the trainees.

Then the sessions were delivered by experts in oral history - Leyla Neyzi from Turkey and Vanya Ivanova from Bulgaria. We familiarized ourselves with wide experience in holding oral history classes in their countries.

Thanks to the knowledge acquired at the Summer Academy I reached a conclusion that oral history reflects ongoing events more objectively than official history. The example of the USSR clearly demonstrates that each head of the state adjusted history to his ideology. I am confident that if during the origin of the USSR there had been an opportunity to develop oral history, there might have been no sad events associated with numerous repressed people. During sessions at the Summer Academy we were shown informative documentaries on those events in our history. I am sure that one can speak about genuine democracy in a country only if oral history is highly developed in that country.

I am thinking about the experiment conducted by Aristotle with his trainees. He asked them to put a small ball on the palm and rotate it with two crossed fingers. Everyone performing this experiment was sure that there were two balls on his palm (this information comes though tactile analyzer), however, if we look at the palm (that is, add visual analyzer to the tactile one), we will see only one ball. This experiment suggests that we will be able to obtain objective reality if we use various sources of information.

Oral history is mosaic of objective reality which is formed by lots of opinions on this reality. I am going to inform my students on the oral history elements. I might succeed in organizing a group of students-volunteers who will make such a mosaic of different people’ opinions on some controversial issues in our diverse life. I would like to tell my students about the outstanding films that I could watch during the Summer Academy sessions.

I would like to express my profound gratitude to organizers of this Academy. I think that oral history should be developed. I believe that oral history has better prospects as it reflects events in a more objective way. On the other hand, the oral history methods are “live” and enhance motivation to do research work. Also, I would like to mention the very interesting party of friends where the Summer Academy participants could get acquainted with each country’s cultural diversity.

Prof. Firuz Shukurov, Doctor of Medicine

Deputy Director, Center for Anthropology