Усна історія революції, війни і волонтерства в Україні: як працювати з незавершеним минулим

The article analyzes the key points of the technique of recording interviews from the unfinished past (when interviewing participants of the Revolution of Dignity, the Russian-Ukrainian war, volunteers) and working with traumatic experiences, the importance of research self-reflection is considered. The initiatives of recording «here and now» arose almost immediately in 2014, and in a few years the first experience of such interviews was gained and considerable (admittedly heterogeneous) source material was collected, which qualitatively distinguishes oral history in Ukraine against the background of the region. Discussions about the methodology, expediency and risks of such records, (not) delineating them as oral history unfolded just in 2022, after the full-scale invasion of Russian troops. It is claimed that in records about the recent it is important to be guided by the internal willingness of witnesses to tell, to understand the different potential of biographical and thematic narrative (semi-structured) interviews, the slightly changed categories of both co-creators of oral history − the narrator and the interviewer, the problematic nature of comprehensiveness and compliance with the sample, the greater importance of the interaction of researchers and narrators at the preparatory stage and after the interview than at the recording itself. Conducting such interviews is a difficult and careful balancing act between supporting the witnesses’ narrativization of what they experienced and keeping them from excessively immersing themselves in difficult memories. From research practice, we can talk about the importance of the «successful» moment of interviewing: not immediately after the experience, but not too late, when the trauma is denarrativized and becomes an «absent» experience. An interview can have a positive or negative emotional impact on the narrators, there is no such thing as a neutral impact. Even though the interview process itself may seem therapeutic, oral history is not therapy. Oral history studies of the unfinished past actualize the issues of self-reflexivity and self-ethics of researchers, in particular the need for them to be aware of risks (moral and physical) in relation to narrators, interviewers and third parties, different positions of insider and outsider researchers, the problematic nature of the research analysis of such records and their accessibility.