Location: participants live in Russia, Khabarovsk. Connected via Skype (recorded by Zoom).
Participants: my mother (77 years old) and my dad (75 years old)
Wow, this was almost impromptu. I had to seize the moment: yesterday I spoke with my parents on Skype and asked them if they would be interested in telling me about some of their memories from the Soviet era. They asked me bluntly: “like what?” and I blurted out “The day Stalin died” because this was the first thing that popped into my head that I knew will not be too touchy. The current political relationship between the U.S. and Russia has left a sticky, smelly, uncomfortable divide in our recent conversations, and I often feel caught in between my husband’s feelings about Russia’s behavior in the international arena and my parents’ comments. Truly, we live in entirely different worlds, and I am unwilling to take sides. Why do I have to take sides anyway? And yet, somehow, I get emotionally involved against my will. To my parents, I am an “American;” to my husband, I am “Russian…”
My parents wanted to start the conversation immediately, and I was afraid that if I wait until mid-June, they will lose interest, or that their account will be recalled and processed through the lens of modern times, so I decided to do this project sooner. We agreed to Skype the next morning (their night).
…So Stalin it is–back in my day, he was a god turned villain, and I know that the controversy over his role in my parents’ lives (and in my childhood) is actually a point of convergence, not divide. At the very least, it is ambiguous and therefore, does not immediately throw red flags for heated debates. I Skyped in the next day, and they had an entire day to think about our conversation.
My preparation was limited to quickly choosing the topic and recalling why the death of Stalin came up. Three years ago I took my kids to visit my parents, and my mom accompanied us to a local history museum. There, in the halls dedicated to the WWII era, I remember having a conversation with the curator about the day Stalin died. The curator was my mom’s age, and what I did not expect was that she reflected on the event with sadness. My mom jumped into our conversation, and I realized how complex Soviet people’s relationship with their leadership had been. So I have been itching to ask my parents more about their experiences, and I invited both of them to participate in my interview.
I tried to begin the recording with a formal statement about why I am recording our conversation and how I plan to use it, but I struggled with words–my Russian is getting rusty. They laughed, and I wondered if I can learn much about interviewing from talking to my parents. But the topic was simply too interesting to abandon. Although the conversation itself was fascinating, the purpose of this post to reflect on the process, and with this in mind, here is what stood out to me:
Things that did not work for me:
- Interviewing via Skype or Zoom inevitably leads to technical issues.
Specifically, I could not figure out how to record our conversation using Skype app on my tablet, so I opened Zoom, sent the invite to my parents, but that was not good either because (a) my mom could not get Zoom going on the account of being unfamiliar with the application and installation process or even IP conflicts and (b) I still could not figure how to record it on my tablet. So I ended up speaking to them via Skype on my tablet and recording our conversation by Zoom on my laptop. This actually ended up being a blessing in disguise because I ended up being the focal point of the recording, and I was later able to see my body language and facial expressions. - Speaking via Skype produced a lag. My father would complain that my lips are moving, but there was no sound. In other words, our “real” time was not that real because what I saw and heard was possibly perceived differently by them. In other words, while I was concentrating on our conversation, they were potentially concentrating on our Internet connection, and thank God I was speaking with my parents because we had no problem asking to repeat the bits either of us could not hear or understand. Had this interview been with a less familiar person, I would be worried about the dynamic–the interviewee being too shy to ask, or me not wanting to interrupt an account in hope to make sense of the misunderstood pieces in the recording, later.
- I should have prepared more concrete questions to serve as guides. The conversation ended up being amazing, but I recall at least three different times when I could have taken a new direction. For example, when I asked them to tell me about the day Stalin died, my mother had an almost mocking facial expression when she talked about her grief. She was 12, and her mood was “I am not going to button my coat because it does not matter if I get sick–Stalin is dead!” I asked whether her grimace was a gesture of disapproval of her then-disposition or whether it was because she was uncomfortable discussing her feelings. I could definitely see myself straying into a topic “Soviet identity,” for example, had I not been resolute to keep questioning her about the events. Similarly, with my dad, I asked him about newspapers and media as the main mode of news dissemination, and I almost got sidetracked into discussing propaganda and trust. I suppose this would work for exploratory interviews, but in this particular case lack of preparation caused a distraction.
Things that worked:
- Interviewing two people at the same time worked well–I felt that they led the conversation, bracketed each other’s accounts, and added extra dimensions to my data through disagreements. I do not think this would work well for most interviews, especially if two people are not familiar with each other. Oral history was a perfect genre for this particular dynamic, and I feel that it was a good conversation for all of us.
- Familiarity with each other put us all at ease, and I feel it elicited frank and sincere responses.
- I thought my eye contact, body language, and energy were good, although I can see how this might be debatable if I interviewed a person from another culture.
- I loved the experience!