Allemann, L. The sami of the Kola Peninsula : about the life of an ethnic minority in the Soviet Union / Lukas Allemann ; [transl. by Michael Lomax]. - Rovaniemi : University of Lapland Printing Centre, 2013. - 151 p. : ill., map, portr. ; 25 см. - (Senter for samiske studier, Skriftserie ; 19).

The Sami of the Kola Peninsula and reconstruct how far the interviewee sees or represents this or that episode today differently from how he did at the time of the event. 2.2.3 Memory as giver of meaning and assurance of identity As we have seen, life history interviews are sources, "in which an individual inten­ tionally or unintentionally reveals or conceals himself" .57 This is the lowest common denominator of all the specimens of this type of source. Every ego is constantly evolving, trying to adapt constantly to the changing environment and, if necessary, explaining itself anew. Narrative biographical interviews "explain, so to speak, the current social situation and the personal state of the narrator. Life history narration serves to secure the social and personal identity and cultural tradition "58 i.e. it serves the narrator by enabling him to explain himself and give meaning to his past action. That is why never in any interview is it only facts that are enumerated; facts alone possess no identity-anchoring function. It is precisely these 'soft facts' lying behind the 'hard facts' that the research ap­ proach applied here seeks to bring to the surface. Edmund Husserl already expressed this concern: "In the dire situation in which we find ourselves [...] this science [positivist- quantitative methods, L.A.] has nothing to say to us. It excludes on principle pre­ cisely those most burning questions asked in our unhappy times by people abandoned to major and highly fatal changes: the questions of the meaning or futility of the whole of human existence. "59 Sense and meaning-giving constructions are a central part of this work, which of course does not mean that the 'hard facts' are not considered. The two go hand in hand and are mutually conditioned. The collapse of the Soviet Union probably occa­ sioned, for most of its citizens, more or less substantial revisions of their own view­ 57Quoted from Schulze 1992, 428. 58Gerbel/Sieder 1988, 207. 59Husserl 1977, 4 f. Senterfor samiske studier, Skriftserie nr. 19 21