The Memory of the Material: Family Life and Household of an Arabists’ Family Described in V. A. Krachkovskaya Memoirs

Based on the ego-documents of researcher V. A. Krachkovskaya, the article reconstructs the daily life practices of a family of scientists in the early 1910s: the study examines the home workspace of Orientalists, time budget, daily routine, distribution of household duties and forms of leisure. The article focuses on the private everyday life of scientists and their family relationships, through the prism of which it becomes possible to analyze the global process of national scientific cultures’ formation in the historical context. The memoirs of V. A. Krachkovskaya demonstrate how family relationships become the basis for professional cooperation and self-realization of a woman. The author considers home space and family life as factors that influenced the choice of V. A. Krachkovskaya’s scientific career. The family relations of I. Yu. and V. A. Krachkovsky are analyzed as a professional collaboration in which the wife learns the methods of scientific research under the supervision and with the help of husband and his colleagues.