Semiotics of Self-identification in the 1930s Ego-documents (the Example of Isabella Grinevskaya’s Archive)

The present paper aims to explore the development of the personal, literary and civil self-identification of the writer Isabella Grinevskaya in her ego-documents. The research material was the correspondence of Grinevskaya with the director of the Central Literary Museum Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich and her memoirs she transferred to the museum, which for the most part were written simultaneously with the discussion of transferring them to the museum in the 1930s. In the article, for the first time, documents transferred to the museum are examined from the point of view of the semiotic mechanism of building self-identification as a result of the collision of the personal will of the owner and the state system on the part of the museum. The study revealed differences in the perception of personal documents by the museum director and the writer. Grinevskaya saw her special role in literature as a witness to outstanding contemporaries, while Bonch-Bruevich equated her with other owners of archives, demanded that she serve the state cause of building a museum, civil consciousness, the manifestation of which he considered the act of transferring personal papers to the museum. As shown in the article, in the transmitted memoirs the writer tried to reconcile civil and personal identity not only at the level of content, where signs of devotion to the state and reflection on literary work can be outlined, but also in the structure and composition of the narrative.