LIFE EVENTS IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES OF RUSSIANS AND BULGARIANS

The article presents the results of a comparative study of life events in autobiographical texts of contemporary adult Russians and Bulgarians, including four series: content analysis of an autobiographical essay; analysis of life events distributed over five-year time intervals with their emotional and associative characteristics; analysis of self-description of life events compressed to one sentence “My life is...”; analysis of the choice of semantics (from the list of words) for describing senses of life events. It has been established that there are differences in the set and order of events included in the description of the life path, associated with differently directed trends in modern socialization in Russia and Bulgaria (maintenance of traditional values in Russia and orientation toward individualistic European values in Bulgaria). It is shown that Bulgarians are more focused on events related to emphasizing their significance as an autonomous unit, their assertion in society and career development (personal initiatives, finding a hobby, determining a personal type of employment, construction of new relationships), while Russians still reflect in their autobiographies more events traditionally associated with spiritual development, functioning in a team and relationships with other people (creating a family, strengthening old communicative connections and creating new ones, participating in collective activities, finding “personal meanings”, striving to develop spiritual qualities). It was found that for Bulgarians, the greatest concentration of life events is in the age ranges of 15–20 and 20–25 (phase of young adulthood), whereas for Russian respondents it is within the ranges of 25–30 and 35–40 years of age (phase of maturity).