Public Patterns in Private Writing: Computational Insights into Russophone Diaries

Abstract Diaries seem to contain almost anything; how could it be otherwise, given the diversity of their authors, the variety of contexts in which they are authored, and the range of reasons for authoring them? But examining diaries en masse , using computationally assisted reading, discloses large‐scale commonalities obscured by the local variance. The Russophone diarists we examine appear to have a strong (if perhaps tacit) sense of the kind of reflections that belong in the diary, and in what proportions. Despite the tempestuous twentieth century during which these diaries were written, from before the Revolution to after Perestroika, a small set of common themes emerge, and we see in our archive little change over time in the proportion of entries devoted to each of them. The thematic pattern we uncover points to an aspect of the diary that has thus far been overlooked—the way it functions as a genre.