Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T16:44:34.221Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Free Time Is Not Meant to Be Wasted: Educational, Political, and Taboo Leisure Activities among the Soviet Buryats of Eastern Siberia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2019

Melissa Chakars
Melissa Chakars*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: mchakars@sju.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article details how an increasingly educated and urban Buryat population became both the creators and consumers of new leisure activities in the late Soviet period. It argues that central and local authorities believed that leisure activities could help them to impress upon the Buryats that there were great benefits to living in the Soviet Union and to adopting a more pan-Soviet identity within the brotherhood of nations. They also presumed that leisure activities could aid in the building of a culture that was Buryat, Soviet, and more modern. This article examines why authorities assigned great importance to leisure and how they used and created cultural-educational institutions and mass media content to implement, direct, and promote cultural development. It analyzes various institutions such as museums, clubs, and theaters, as well as the production and consumption of local newspapers and television and radio programming that promoted educational leisure activities. In addition, it explores authorities’ concerns about the rise, especially among youth, of more taboo leisure activities that deviated from the official ones that they encouraged.

Keywords

BuryatiaSoviet Unionhistoryleisureculture
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 660 - 673
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Afanas’eva, Irina Pavlovna. 2004. “Osobennosti sotsial’no-demograficheskikh protessov v gorodskom naselenii Buriatii v 60–80-e gg. xx v.” PhD. diss., Buriatskii gosudarstvenyi universitet.Google Scholar
Asalkhanov, I. A., ed. 1983. Ocherki istorii Buriatskoi ASSR perioda razvitogo sotsializma. Novosibirsk: Izdatel’stvo “Nauk.” Google Scholar
Badmaev, A. Z. 2006. Molodezhnye organizatsii Buriatii (1985–1995). Ulan-Ude: Izdatel’stvo Buriatskogo gosuniversiteta.Google Scholar
Bal’khaeva, I. Kh. 2001. Formirovanie kadrovogo potentsiala Respubliki VUZami Buriatii (1932–1996 gg.). Ulan-Ude: Buriatskii gosudarstvennyi universitet.Google Scholar
Belikov, V. V. 1980. Povyshenie kul’turno-tekhnicheskogo urovnia rabochego klassa Buriatii v period razvitogo sotsializma (1959–1975 g.g.). Ulan-Ude: Buriatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo.Google Scholar
Bocheev, Aleksandr Innokent’evich. 2002. “Osobennosti protsessa stanovleniia i razvitie sel’skoi obshcheobrazovatel’noi shkoly v 1970–1980 gody (na primere shkol Respubliki Buriatiia).” PhD. diss., Buriatskii gosudarstvennyi universitet.Google Scholar
Brine, Jenny. 1980. “Reading as a Leisure Pursuit in the USSR.” In Home, School, and Leisure in the Soviet Union, edited by Jenny Brine, Maureen Perrie, Andrew Sutton, 239–269. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Bushnell, John. 1988. “Urban Leisure Culture in Post-Stalin Russia: Stability as a Social Problem?” In Soviet Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Vera S. Dunham, edited by Thompson, Terry L. and Sheldon, Richard, 58–86. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Caute, David. 2003. The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chakars, Melissa. 2014. The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia. Budapest: Central European University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Katerina. 2000. The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual. 3rd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Dobrenko, Evgeny. 1997. The Making of the State Reader: Social and Aesthetic Contexts of the Reception of Soviet Literature. Translated by Jesse M. Savage. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Dondukov, Ts. 1965. Ulan-Ude: Istoriko-kraevedcheskii ocherk. Ulan-Ude: n.p.Google Scholar
Dudko, Nikolai. 2011. Buddiiskoe iskusstvo Tanka: Khudozhnik Nikolai Dudko/Buddhist Art of Thangka Painted by Nick Dudko. Ulan-Ude: n.p.Google Scholar
Duncan, Carol. 1995. Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gershtein, A. M. and Naidakov, Vasilii Tsyrenovich. 1983. Kul’tura Buriatii v usloviiakh razvitogo sotsializma: v protsesse vzaimodeistviia s kul’turami drugikh sovetskikh narodov. Novosibirsk: Izdatel’stvo “Nauka.”Google Scholar
Golubev, E. A. 1974. Radio i ego auditoriia. Ulan-Ude: Buriatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, David L. 2000. “European Modernity and Soviet Socialism,” in Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices, edited by Hoffmann, David L. and Kotsonis, Yanni. 245–260. London: Macmillan Press.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, David L. 2003. Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hollander, Gayle Durham. 1972. Soviet Political Indoctrination: Developments in Mass Media and Propaganda since Stalin. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Humphrey, Caroline. 1998. Marx Went Away but Karl Stayed Behind. Updated ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Kaiser, Robert J. 1994. The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kangaspuro, Markku. 2006. “The Bolshevik Modernisation Project.” In Modernisation in Russia since 1900, edited by Kangaspuro, Markku and Smith, Jeremy, 38–51. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.Google Scholar
Kolmakov, D. V. 2004. “Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia zhizn’ BASSR vo vtoroi polovine 1960-x–1970-x gg.” PhD. diss., Buriatskii nauchnyi tsentr SO RAN.Google Scholar
Koshar, Rudy. 2002. “Introduction.” In Histories of Leisure, edited by Koshar, Rudy, 1–24. Berg: Oxford.Google Scholar
Kraus, Richard. 1984. “Changing Work and Leisure Routines: Implications for a Leisure Policy.” In Leisure: Toward a Theory and Policy, edited by Ruskin, Hillel, 166–188. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.Google Scholar
Mickiewicz, Ellen Propper. 1981. Media and the Russian Public. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Moskoff, William. 1984. Labour and Leisure in the Soviet Union: The Conflict between Public and Private Decision-Making in a Planned Economy. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Natsional’nyi arkhiv Respubliki Buriatii [National Archive of the Republic of Buryatia].Google Scholar
Nomtoev, D. G. 1971. Internatsional’noe vospitanie uchashchikhsia (iz opyta raboty shkol Buriatii). Ulan-Ude: Buriatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo.Google Scholar
Prior, Nick. 2002. “Museums: Leisure between State and Distinction.” In Histories of Leisure, edited by Rudy Koshar, 27–44. New York: Berg.Google Scholar
Prudenski, G. A. 1962. “The Concept of Leisure in the USSR.” Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 2 (1): 97–100.Google Scholar
Risch, William J. 2011. The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Roth-Ey, Kristin. 2007. “Finding a Home for Television in the USSR, 1950–1970.” Slavic Review 66 (2): 278–306.Google Scholar
Roth-Ey, Kristin. 2011. Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire That Lost the Cultural Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sanzhiev, G. L., ed. 1998. Respublika moia Buriatiia: Kratkaia khrestomatiia po istorii Respubliki 1946–1997. Ulan-Ude: Komitet po delam arkhiv Respublika Buriatii.Google Scholar
Sanzhiev, G. L. et al. 1983. Kul’turnoe stroitel’stvo v Buriatskoi ASSR, 1917–1981. Ulan Ude: Buriatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvoe.Google Scholar
Shlapentokh, Vladimir. 1989. Public and Private Life of the Soviet People: Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taganaeva, Maria. 2017. “Socialist in Content, Nationalist in Form: The Making of Soviet National Art and the Case of Buryatia,” Nationalities Papers 45 (3): 393–409.Google Scholar
White, Anne. 1990. De-Stalinization and the House of Culture: Declining State Control over Leisure in the USSR, Poland, and Hungary, 1953–89. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Yeager, Tristra Newyear. 2010. “ The Drama of Enlightenment, the Discourse of Darkness: Buryat Grassroots Theater, 1908–1930 .” PhD. diss., Indiana University.Google Scholar
Zateev, V. I. 1975. Natsional’nye otnosheniia pri sotsializme (sushchnost’, formirovanie, akonomernosti razvitiia). Ulan-Ude: Buriatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo.Google Scholar
Zhuk, Sergei I. 2010. Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.Google Scholar
Zuzanek, Jiri. 1980. Work and Leisure in the Soviet Union: A Time-Budget Analysis. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar