The Need for Educational Leisure Activities

Since the foundation of the Soviet Union, authorities had believed leisure was an important and valuable component of modern life. Joseph Stalin later enshrined it as a right in Article 119 of his 1936 constitution. This was renewed in the upgraded 1977 edition implemented under Brezhnev (Kraus Reference Kraus and Ruskin1984; Prudenski Reference Prudenski1962). However, officials had always designed leisure activities for the proletariat that were meant to benefit the collective. Individuals were supposed to elevate themselves through enlightening and educational leisure activities that would improve society as a whole. Even rest was seen as a collective effort to improve health and increase productivity (Kraus Reference Kraus and Ruskin1984; White Reference White1990). Brezhnev explained this succinctly in 1972, when he stated, “Free time is not time free of responsibilities to society” (Brine Reference Brine1980, 241). Officials also believed that leisure could be harnessed to help create the New Soviet Person, and therefore, as David L. Hoffmann explains, free time was intended to “transform not only people’s daily habits and culture but their modes of thinking and human qualities as well” (Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2003, 45).

The promotion of educational leisure activities was important on both an international and a domestic level. The chair of a committee on expanding cultural-educational institutions in the Buryat Republic in the 1960s, Damdin Zhalsabon, explained in a letter to the head of the republic, Modogoev, that “Buryatia is an example of the socialist system of economy and culture for the people of Asia. Buryatia, as many say, is an outpost of Soviet culture.”Footnote ¹ It was therefore imperative for Zhalsabon and other local authorities that residents have access to a wide range of educational, high cultural activities. This was particularly true in the context of the Cold War. Kristen Roth-Ey and David Caute both argue that Soviet authorities dedicated much attention to cultural-educational institutions at that time in order to present to the world that the USSR was more culturally and technologically advanced than the capitalist West (Caute Reference Caute2003; Roth-Ey Reference Roth-Ey2011). By providing the Buryats, one of the Soviet Union’s Asian minorities and Siberia’s largest indigenous group, with such institutions, officials hoped to gain influence in Asia. This was especially true in terms of Mongolia. For example, Mongolian students regularly studied in Buryatia and each year a month-long celebration of Soviet-Mongolian Friendship took place in Buryatia that involved numerous types of cultural exchange (Gershtein and Naidakov Reference Gershtein and Naidakov1983).

Exemplary cultural-educational institutions in the Buryat Republic were places like museums and theaters where people could learn about high culture or places like clubhouses and houses of culture where people could learn to produce high culture. These institutions were spaces where one could join a choir, watch musical and theater performances, take an art lesson, or play chess. They were organizations where one could attend ceremonies to honor the birthdays of important literary and political figures, learn to play the piano, participate in dances, watch movies, and hear lectures. These institutions had reading materials and many offered the opportunity to listen to the radio and watch television. By providing these types of activities, authorities hoped to alter people’s behavior and beliefs and create a new, Soviet culture (White Reference White1990).

At the same time that authorities were devoting serious resources to these cultural-educational institutions, the government in Moscow introduced new policies that affected people’s time. In the 1960s, wages in Buryatia and across the country went up and the forty-hour, five-day work week replaced a six-day week with longer hours. Soviet researchers showed that in some places this shift had increased the average worker’s free time by as much as 17 percent (Bushnell Reference Bushnell, Thompson and Sheldon1988; Moskoff Reference Moskoff1984). Most people in Buryatia therefore had more time to devote to bettering themselves through new educational leisure activities, and many did just that. However, authorities also discovered that despite these advancements and opportunities, there were still people who were not making what they considered to be good use of their newfound free time. For officials, this indicated a very serious need to continue to provide and promote useful and educational leisure activities as alternatives to behavior that was perceived as unnecessary or even subversive.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet scholars conducted time budget sociological studies across the Soviet Union that showed that people spent a great deal of their free time watching television, hanging out with friends, and drinking—time that could have been spent involving themselves in more cultured activities. Research conducted on television viewership showed that men watched around ten to twelve hours a week while women watched about half as much (Hollander Reference Hollander1972; Moskoff Reference Moskoff1984; Mickiewicz Reference Mickiewicz1981; Roth-Ey Reference Roth-Ey2007). Because women generally did the lion’s share of the domestic work, one can imagine that they simply had less free time than did men. Other studies showed that people also spent a lot of time hanging out in parks, in front of apartment buildings, and with friends in their homes. What officials found even more troubling, though, was the research that revealed that alcohol consumption had risen rapidly among Soviet citizens under Brezhnev, coinciding with increases in people’s free time. From their perspective, these activities held little value and were replacing self-enhancing ones, such as reading literature, visiting museums, or attending lectures and concerts (Bushnell Reference Bushnell, Thompson and Sheldon1988; Moskoff Reference Moskoff1984).

Although such specific time-budget studies were not conducted in Buryatia, local authorities discovered that many people there, too, were occupying themselves with questionably valuable activities. One of these was television. Although the local government had supported the spread of the new technology across the republic, there was also worry that too much television watching was unproductive and hindered quality family time.Footnote ² Television first became available in Buryatia in 1961, and by 1980 most people were able to regularly watch it—either the one local channel or one from Moscow (Golubev Reference Golubev1974). With more time and money in their pockets, by 1972 residents of Buryatia were buying as many as 20,000 television sets a year (Sanzhiev, et al. Reference Sanzhiev1983). Thus, it is easy to imagine that eastern Siberians were also watching plenty of television.

Locally produced broadcasting provided much educational programming, and therefore watching television could be considered a worthwhile activity. Still, it was an action that replaced other ones, especially depending on how much one watched. However, from the perspective of authorities, people in Buryatia could also waste their time in public spaces as well. For example, a report from the Chikoia village clubhouse complains that people were misusing the facility. Instead of involving themselves in the educational leisure opportunities there, too many people were only using the club to “simply play billiards and smoke.” The report explains that even those who should be exemplary citizens such as teachers, commonly “show up at the clubhouse drunk.” In another example, when administrators from the city of Gusinozersk discussed the idea of opening a restaurant in the main hotel, one official argued against it. He explained that, “there are enough drunks in the city without a restaurant,” and that instead, the money should be spent on libraries.Footnote ³

Local officials in Buryatia were most alarmed, however, by how the republic’s young people were spending their time.Footnote ⁴ In 1966, Modogoev expressed concern that Buryatia’s youth were lacking in patriotism and morality and that instead they subscribed to only individualism (Kolmakov Reference Kolmakov2004). A report from the republic’s Ministry of Education outlined this argument further by explaining that, “In recent years a new widespread development has occurred whereby young people are most concerned with satisfying their individual demands through watching television and listening to music on the radio or on tapes. They are not occupying themselves with more social forms of activities. Many young people also don’t read newspapers, journals, and political books.” The ministry’s solution: “Young people should be kept busy with school, clubs, and work.”Footnote ⁵

Other government documents point to even more serious problems among the republic’s youth. A report from the city of Selenginsk shows that there was a sharp rise in crime from 1967 to 1968, and that two thirds of all crimes were committed by those under 25. The report’s authors blamed the situation on an increase in youth drinking.Footnote ⁶ A lengthier report from the republic’s Ministry of Education about rising rates of crimes committed by young people in the 1970s explains that in most cases they committed criminal offenses in groups while consuming alcohol.Footnote ⁷ Other evidence shows that in Ulan-Ude, many of these groups were in fact youth gangs based in certain neighborhoods. These gangs, with their own names, colors, and slogans, often participated in criminal activities that included regularly fighting one another (Badmaev Reference Badmaev2006). Officials blamed not only parents for these problems but also “the government administrations in various regions for not teaching teenagers correct behavior.”Footnote ⁸ The solution again was to offer young people alternatives by engaging them in educational leisure activities.

Throughout the last years of the Soviet state, along with their concerns about crime, drinking, watching television, and other bad habits, authorities in Buryatia also continued to worry that too many people were occupying their time with religious activities—behavior that the government considered to be deviant in the officially atheist Soviet Union. Local government reports bemoaned the fact that people were still regularly visiting lamas and attending ceremonies at the Ivolginsky Datsan, the center of Buddhism in Russia located just outside of Ulan-Ude (datsan is the Buryat word for monastery). For example, in 1979 officials estimated that 5,200 people attended Sagaalgan, the Buryat lunar New Year, ceremonies there. Authorities considered this disturbing even if most of the reported attendants were “elderly women.” Other reports showed that Shamanic ceremonies were still being conducted in the countryside on collective farms and in small villages and it was not only old women in attendance. For example, an official from the Dzhidinskii region reported that on June 28, 1978, a large ceremony was held on the Lenin kolkhoz at an ovoo (a Shamanistic cairn). Many young people participated at the ceremony where eight sheep were sacrificed. An official from the republic’s Propaganda and Agitation Department explained, “Especially problematic are young people who can take part in the Komsomol [communist youth organization] on the one hand and an ovoo rite on the other. Some young people do not see the contradiction in this.”Footnote ⁹

The people who participated in these various reportedly unworthy activities were generally not making some kind of anti-Soviet statement in their actions. Most of them were simply living their lives. As in the quote above, perhaps they did not see or did not care about a contradiction in participating in both officially sanctioned and unofficial activities.Footnote ¹⁰ However, government documents from this period reveal a great deal of frustration from officials over the continued existence of religion especially given the enormous amount of time, resources, and energy that they had put into curbing it over the years. Cultural-educational institutions had also originally been designed in part as substitutes for religious ones such as Buddhist monasteries and Russian Orthodox churches. Places such as kolkhoz clubhouses and houses of culture became spaces for celebrating holidays such as New Year based on the Julian calendar instead of Sagaalgan, based on the lunar calendar. They were places for people to get married, register births, and celebrate the Soviet rites of passage such as receiving one’s first internal passport and signing up for the army.Footnote ¹¹ Cultural-educational institutions promoted the celebration of new Soviet holidays such as International Women’s Day, Red Army Day, and important dates such as the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth. These secular ceremonies were meant to replace the need for religious ones. Many of the new cultural-educational institutions were even located in former religious buildings. For example, numerous small countryside churches and Buddhist temples became village clubhouses, part of the Gusinoozerskii Datsan became the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, and a church in Kiakhta was turned into the Museum of the Opening of Central Asia by Russian Geographers.Footnote ¹²

Authorities across the republic reacted similarly to the numerous reports of taboo activities described above that ranged from petty crimes to Shamanic ceremonies. Treating them as surmountable obstacles, they chose to combat them by providing cultural-educational institutions and using propaganda to denounce unauthorized activities and promote alternatives. While it is unclear as to what exactly the consequences would have been for inaction on the part of officials to these reports—perhaps only the loss of one’s position—it is clear that government administrators, educators, propagandists, and those in media and cultural professions took their task seriously and worked to limit unsanctioned behavior in society. Authorities therefore devoted much effort to creating institutions that could supply acceptable entertainment, ideological instruction, personal enhancement, high culture, and education for the modern Buryat Soviet citizen to enjoy in her or his free time.

Creating Institutions that Provided Educational Leisure Activities

From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, local authorities in Buryatia built more museums, libraries, theaters, clubhouses, and houses of culture than they had ever done before in such a short period of time. Hundreds of new clubhouses were created, numerous new museums, and the number of libraries in the republic almost doubled, reaching around six hundred in total (Asalkhanov Reference Asalkhanov1983; Gershtein and Naidakov Reference Gershtein and Naidakov1983). Many of the already existing cultural-educational institutions also received upgrades that included new buildings or additions on previous ones. These new cultural-educational institutions were built in Ulan-Ude and in smaller towns and villages across Buryatia.

Some of the largest projects during this building frenzy involved new or improved museums. Carol Duncan and Nick Prior both argue that museums contribute to the development of national identity, provide a sense of unity, and are part of the process of institutionalizing high culture. They explain that museums—both the buildings and the content inside—are impressive and therefore make the state appear modern, progressive, and concerned for society (Duncan Reference Duncan1995; Prior Reference Prior2002). Maria Taganaeva explains that when officials provided people like the Buryats with spaces to exhibit their art, they could fulfill one of the goals of Soviet nationalities policies, which was to demonstrate how people, especially from places like Siberia and Central Asia, could evolve under Soviet tutelage (Taganaeva Reference Taganaeva2017). In Buryatia, the building of museums and the exhibitions that they housed showed that the Soviet government and the Communist Party were the providers of a developed and modern infrastructure for the Buryats, which had improved intellectual, cultural, and social life. Additionally, the existence of museums also demonstrated that the Buryats were now a people with leisure time freed from the burdens of toiling for mere survival and that this, too, was due to the modern life granted by Soviet policies (Koshar Reference Koshar and Koshar2002).

In the summer of 1973, local authorities opened the outdoor Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of Transbaikalia to showcase the traditional lives of eastern Siberians.Footnote ¹³ Located on a large tract of land not far from the republic’s capital of Ulan-Ude, the museum sought to display what life was like before the advent of Soviet power. It featured former religious and residential structures of ethnic Buryats, Evenki, and Russians. Two years later in 1975, officials in Ulan-Ude opened another large museum: a significantly upgraded version of the Tsyrenzhap Sampilov Fine Art Museum.Footnote ¹⁴ The new manifestation was much larger, constructed in a contemporary architectural style, and equipped with wide galleries to display both a permanent collection and traveling exhibitions of modern art (Gershtein and Naidakov Reference Gershtein and Naidakov1983). Together, the Ethnographic Museum that served to teach visitors about the pre-Soviet past and the Tsyrenzhap Sampilov Fine Art Museum that exposed visitors to both locally and nationally produced modern art, presented the idea that Soviet leadership brought positive development. The museums demonstrated with tangible evidence that the Buryats had transitioned by the 1970s from being religious, nomadic, and rural, to modern, educated, and urban. For communist officials, this was a shift that marked the passage of the stages of history from “backward” and “feudal” to “modern” and “socialist.” The Ethnographic Museum promoted the idea that a life of surviving off of one’s herds, visiting Buddhist temples, or consulting shamans was a part of the past and the Sampilov Fine Art Museum showed that alternatively, the Buryats now had examples of high, modern culture based on Western traditions of fine art rather than Buryat traditional crafts and Buddhist Thangka paintings.

Much consideration was also given to constructing museums in smaller towns, many of which had never had such institutions before. A number of these museums served to emphasize Buryatia’s important historical role and contribution to building socialism and developing a modern state. For example, officials opened several new museums to honor important revolutionaries who had spent time in Buraytia. In the late 1960s, two museums were created in the city of Kiakhta, located on the Soviet border with Mongolia, to honor Damdin Sukhbaatar, the hero of the 1921 Mongolian Revolution. The Damdin Sukhbaatar Memorial Museum was dedicated to Soviet-Mongolian friendship and presents the history of the Mongolian Revolution and the Bolsheviks’ role in it. The Damdin Sukhbaatar House Museum was the house where Sukhbaatar had stayed in Kiakhta in 1921 in order to request Bolshevik support for his cause. In 1975, officials opened two more similarly themed museums. One was created in Novoselenginsk to highlight the lives of former Decembrists who had lived there and a second was built to honor the early Bolshevik revolutionary, Ivan Babushkin, in the town named after him. The city of Severobaikal’sk built a museum in 1981 dedicated to the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline railroad that runs through the northern part of the republic (Gershtein and Naidakov Reference Gershtein and Naidakov1983; Sanzhiev Reference Sanzhiev1983). The museum presented Buryatia as a central part of the Soviet Union by helping to connect the country from west to east with not just one, but two railway lines.

Similar to museums, theater also offered opportunities for residents to learn about Buryatia’s history and importance in relation to Russia and the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, there was a great push to create theaters in all of the regional centers in Buryatia and many auditoriums were built or added on to clubhouses or houses of culture (Gershtein and Naidakov Reference Gershtein and Naidakov1983). Additionally, in Ulan-Ude the Khotsa Namsaraev Buryat State Academic Theater of Drama received an expensive and enormous new auditorium in 1982.Footnote ¹⁵ The new structure was built in a Brutalist architectural style and included artwork by local artists who created murals in the foyer depicting the “land of Geser” (Geser is the hero of the Buryat national epic), a large chandelier decorated with elements found in Buryat jewelry, a horsehair tapestry, and reliefs of Buryat figures on the outside concrete walls. This theater regularly produced plays that promoted contemporary Soviet values in the Buryat language on a Western-style stage. For example, it presented a series of historical plays in the 1970s that included works by Nikolai Damdinov on tales of heroic Buryat partisans in the Russian Civil War and those by Khotsa Namsaraev—the theater’s namesake and one of Buryatia’s most celebrated writers—on the development of socialism in Buryatia in the 1920s. To combat religion, officials also instructed directors to put on plays with atheistic themes (Gerstein and Naidakov Reference Gershtein and Naidakov1983; Sanzhiev Reference Sanzhiev1983).

Authorities also assigned greater importance to improving libraries, clubhouses, and houses of culture throughout the republic. Local inspectors’ reports made from the 1950s to the 1980s about these institutions demonstrate this well. For example, inspectors in the 1950s, describe rather poorly run facilities that lacked resources. They reported that libraries and clubhouses were located in old buildings without heat, furniture, or visual aids. One inspector in the Bichurskii region complained that the kolkhoz clubhouse called The Dawn of Communism was located in a former church that was in disrepair. There were no tables and it was “cold and dirty.” In the Mukhorshibirskii region, inspectors reported that cultural directors did not provide enough activities for workers at many of the tractor stations during the spring sowing period. They pointed out that there were few newspapers, no radio, and no lectures, and for that reason “the workers had nothing to do.”Footnote ¹⁶

Starting in the 1960s, efforts were made to build newer and larger clubhouses and houses of culture. Many of these buildings now held children’s libraries, music schools, theaters, and galleries to display traveling or locally created exhibitions on a variety of subjects (Gershtein and Naidakov Reference Gershtein and Naidakov1983). Local inspector reports from this period indicated that there were many more facilities and that they were better run and more equipped than those in existence in the 1950s. A 1977 inspector report from the Bichurskii region explains that now there were more visual aids, newspapers, and journals available for cultural-educational use. For example, it explained that reading material was widely available at regional cultural-educational institutions and that residents were provided with lectures—“at least one every week”—on a wide variety of themes. Another report highlighted one house of culture in the Mukhorshibirskii region that had held a well-attended conference, “The USSR—A Family of Brotherly Nations,” where there were lectures, many visual aids, and musical concerts. Another report on winter agricultural preparations in the Khorinskii region noted that there were a sufficient number of clubs, concerts, lectures, visual aids, and agitation provided for workers.Footnote ¹⁷

The greater availability of the many new cultural-educational institutions, as well as their improved quality, most likely helped to draw more visitors. By 1980, the residents of Buryatia reportedly were checking out 13 million books annually from libraries and clubhouses and attending an activity at a clubhouse or house of culture at least seven times a year, a rate higher than the average for the Russian Republic as a whole, which was only five (Gershtein and Naidakov Reference Gershtein and Naidakov1983). Even if officials exaggerated the numbers, it is still clear that many in Buryatia were regularly involved in educational leisure activities.

Educational Leisure Activities for Work, School, and Life

Buryats both participated in the rising number of educational leisure activities and also increasingly staffed and created the cultural-educational institutions that ran them. Since the growth of these organizations coincided with the rapid rise of social mobility that occurred across the republic in the late Soviet period, the new or expanded institutions provided employment opportunities for many educated Buryats who sought careers in cultural fields. In such work, Buryats could present, promote, and preserve certain aspects of contemporary and traditional culture. These institutions were also a part of the educational process in Buryatia for adults, teens, and children. Many of these institutions offered activities and events that became a regular part of the extracurricular programs in schools and higher educational institutes.

Ethnic Buryats came to dominate many of the cultural professions even though they were a minority in their own republic. In 1979, for example, Buryats held almost 40 percent of all of the republic’s jobs as librarians, artists, composers, and museum, club, and theater directors. They held 60 percent of the jobs as writers, editors, journalists, and propagandists (Chakars Reference Chakars2014). Cultural work offered professional advancements and the number of such jobs doubled in the republic between 1971 and 1984 (Bal’khaeva Reference Bal’khaeva2001). The proportional overrepresentation of Buryats in these jobs can be attributed in part to their high levels of education—the third highest in the Soviet Union by 1979 (Kaiser Reference Kaiser1994). However, the demands of the local government that needed Buryats as representatives of the titular nationality to work in professions that required producing official presentations of Buryat culture in both the Buryat and Russian languages was also a major contributor. This type of work, for example, could have included painting a mural about Buryat rural life or putting together a museum display on Buryat history. Because many of the cultural jobs required Buryats, a window into these professions was opened. However, Buryats may have also gravitated to these jobs because they offered the chance to work for the preservation of forms of Buryat culture. Museums held Buryat artifacts and houses of culture, clubhouses, and theaters became places to perform Buryat songs, plays, and dances. Cultural workers helped to decide the content of performances and exhibitions.

Cultural work could also involve propagandists, as well as rural and urban professionals who gave lectures regularly at libraries, clubhouses, and houses of culture. Many of these were politically themed and contained messages specifically for the Buryat people. A report from the Buryat Department of Propaganda and Agitation explains that propagandists and professional volunteers gave 1,600 lectures in 1979, and many of the topics included such themes as “The Buryat Socialist Nation—Offspring of the Great October,” “The Great Conquest of Lenin’s Nationality Policy,” and “The October Revolution and the Decision of the National Question in the USSR.” Like the messages provided by museums and plays, lectures could also highlight how Soviet policies helped Buryatia. Many lecturers also promoted atheism and worked with administrators of clubhouses and houses of culture to organize “atheistic evenings” filled with events to denounce religion. In one example, the principal of a middle school in the Mukhorshibirskii region along with a teacher organized a series of atheistic lectures to combat reported religious activities in nearby villages.Footnote ¹⁸

In addition to going to hear political lectures, local residents could also spend their free time participating in politically active clubs such as the All-Russian Society for the Defense of Historical and Cultural Monuments. In 1967, there were reportedly 5,405 local members of this club who worked to preserve and maintain the 230 such monuments in Buryatia. Members conducted expeditions to assess monuments around the republic, gave lectures, wrote articles, and organized clean-ups and repairs.Footnote ¹⁹ Clubs could also be organized for political holidays. In preparation for Lenin’s 100th birthday in 1970, cultural-educational institutions prepared exhibitions, concerts, and lectures. Additionally, hundreds of amateur choirs, dance groups, theater troops, and orchestras performed for this anniversary around the republic (Belikov Reference Belikov1980; Sanzhiev Reference Sanzhiev1983). In another example, many clubs widely participated in celebrating a republican-wide festival in 1980 called “My Address—the Soviet Union” about Buryatia’s position in the USSR and its friendship with the various other Soviet nations.Footnote ²⁰

Although joining a club could have political meaning, it was also an opportunity for ordinary people to sing, act, dance, and perform. Local officials bragged in 1971 that there were 511 amateur choirs, 1,316 amateur artist clubs, and hundreds more who participated in amateur theaters across Buryatia (Sanzhiev Reference Sanzhiev1998). Many of these people performed regularly on a local level, as well as took trips to clubhouses and houses of culture around the country to show off their skills. Regions around the republic also often held their own cultural events to promote and present such activities. For example, in 1981, the Zaigraevskii region held a celebration called “Days of Literature and Art,” where both amateur author and artist clubs participated in workshops, exhibitions, and concerts alongside professionals.Footnote ²¹ This showed that high culture was not just for passive observation, but one could create it too. Thus, people were encouraged to join amateur art, music, and author clubs and participate actively in conferences, workshops, and festivals.

Reading and celebrating literature was also a highly publicized educational leisure activity. Reading books, however, was not meant to be only a quiet event done at home. Librarians were supposed to actively talk with their readers and make sure that people correctly understood what they read (Dobrenko Reference Dobrenko1997). A March 25, 1974, television interview with the head librarian from the small eastern Buryat town of Khorinsk explained how this could be done. He described that it was the job of the countryside librarian to connect rural readers to the world through literature by facilitating readers’ groups and conferences to discuss and debate various literary works.Footnote ²² Librarians and cultural workers also designed republican-wide reading festivals and a series of events to mark the 80th anniversary of the birth of the Buryat writer, Khotsa Namsaraev. Reading and joining book clubs exemplified the type of collective educational leisure activities that authorities found to be ideal (Gershtein and Naidakov Reference Gershtein and Naidakov1983; Sanzhiev Reference Sanzhiev1983).

Many cultural workers also dedicated their time to the uplift of the republic’s youth. This became increasingly important as leaders across the Soviet Union in the late Soviet period expressed concern that the younger generation was losing the collective, revolutionary spirit.Footnote ²³ Local officials in Buryatia therefore encouraged young people to participate in a wide variety of extracurricular activities and join youth groups such as the Komsomol and Pioneers. In 1970, there were reportedly over 2,000 clubs for youth in Buryatia and a 1973 report from the Pribaikal’skii region, for example, claims that 77 percent of its youth were active in clubs and sports.Footnote ²⁴ Clubhouses and houses of culture had options to join a wide variety of activities. There were clubs for young “political propagandists,” “chemists,” and “movie projectionists.” There were chess clubs and airplane model clubs and photo clubs. It was common for members in these many organizations to create exhibitions, displays, and “museums” in their clubs and schools on topics such as the nature and history of Buryatia, local revolutionaries, World War II, military themes, and internationalism (Bocheev Reference Bocheev2002; Dondukov Reference Dondukov1965; Nomtoev Reference Nomtoev1971).

Students also held art competitions and festivals. For example, in 1968 a club made up of students from the Novo-Brianskaia middle school in the Zaigraevskii region held a festival called “Friendship” to mark “fifty years of Soviet power.” Students displayed pictures of local heroes, information about the history of their village, and held ceremonies at local monuments.Footnote ²⁵ In addition to keeping kids off the street, these extracurricular opportunities were meant to support historical and political lessons and to teach young people the importance of work, the need to behave morally, and the value of community service.

The study of one’s local region, kraevedenie, was also an important part of extracurricular activities for youth. Through clubs and youth organizations, students had the opportunity to travel around their republic to visit regional museums and take advantage of the educational material that they provided. Kraevedenie trips were also organized for special anniversaries such as the 50th anniversary of the Pioneers in 1970 that took them around the republic to learn more about their region. In 1972, in conjunction with the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the USSR, around 42,000 children and teenagers from Buryatia reportedly participated in trips around the republic and the Soviet Union.Footnote ²⁶ Educators and cultural workers hoped educational leisure activities would create “patriotic feelings” and help young people feel connected to the rest of their region and country. As one Buryat educator put it, “Our children and youth are raised to be patriots and internationalists” (Bocheev Reference Bocheev2002; Nomtoev Reference Nomtoev1971).

Promoting Educational Leisure Activities in the Media

Newspapers, radio, and television provided the main method for the promotion of educational leisure activities. These media could also be a form of leisure with educational benefits in and of themselves. Such media both taught people about high culture and highlighted individuals who were enlightening themselves and their communities through participation in cultural-educational institutions. Media also told people how to productively spend their free time and condemned what Soviet officials deemed to be harmful behavior. They also yielded opportunities to showcase modern Buryat, Soviet, high culture at its best. In the media of the late Soviet period, these messages were ubiquitous.

Buryatia’s two main newspapers, the Russian-language Pravda Buriatii and the Buryat-language Buriaad Unen, were important sources for learning about high culture, acquiring information on where to find it, and reading and viewing examples of it.Footnote ²⁷ Both newspapers regularly featured articles, pictures, and other sorts of information on national and local literature, art exhibitions, and theater, ballet, philharmonic, and opera performances. In the 1960s and 1970s, Buriaad Unen featured a regular section under the heading “Mirror” and Pravda Buriatii under one titled, “A Chronicle of Cultural Life,” that served as typical art and entertainment sections not unlike those commonly found in newspapers elsewhere.Footnote ²⁸ For example, on the same day in 1970, Pravda Buriatii published an article with accompanying photographs about a local art exhibit of Buryat jewelry by the Buryat artist, Sonsor Sanzhiev, and Buriaad Unen offered one about the exchange of art exhibitions between Buryatia and Mongolia.Footnote ²⁹ In another example from 1980, both papers celebrated the Leningrad Ballet’s visit to Ulan-Ude with articles and photographs, including one with the head of the republic, Modogoev, standing with a group of the troop’s dancers.Footnote ³⁰ Both newspapers also regularly featured poetry and short stories by local writers in both Buryat and Russian along with listings of local art exhibits and theatrical performances.

Local radio and television broadcasting offered similar ways to promote high culture on such shows as Steppe Melodies, Theater Encounters, Literary Buryatia, and Artistic Works of Youth. Footnote ³¹ For example, the host of the December 2, 1982, television program Artistic Works of Youth interviewed a local painter named Nikolai Dudko.Footnote ³² The host explained how Dudko had received criticism from a recent exhibition that his artwork was too difficult to understand. Dudko defended his art, allowing viewers to form their own opinions. There were also many programs dedicated to promoting local literature in both Buryat and Russian such as the television show, Literary Buryatia, and the radio shows, New Stories by Buryat Writers and Radio Libraries. Footnote ³³ On these programs hosts read poetry, short stories, and excerpts from novels. They invited writers, professors of literature, and others to regularly appear on the shows to discuss and debate literary works. In addition, the programs promoted upcoming literary events such as readers’ conferences, author talks, and new works available from the Buryat Book Publishing House.Footnote ³⁴ In another example, the 1969 Buryat television show Selenge featured an interview with the director of the Buryat Drama Theater, Fedor Semenovich Sakhirov, who spoke about the theater’s plans for the 1970 upcoming centennial of Lenin’s birth.Footnote ³⁵

In addition to supplying a space for discussing and promoting high culture, Buryatia’s media also provided examples of good and bad behavior in terms of how one should spend their free time. Articles in Pravda Buriatii and Buriaad Unen commonly attacked alcoholism, crime, and wasteful behavior while highlighting examples of people who used their time wisely. An article from the Sunday, June 8, 1980, issue of Pravda Buriatii, for example, was dedicated to the value of useful leisure activities, while one from February of that same year described efforts to curb alcoholism and “hooliganism.”Footnote ³⁶ Broadcast media was also a space to exhibit exemplary behavior. For instance, on January 31, 1974, the television program A Conversation for Parents was devoted to explaining how Soviet children should attend music classes at their local clubs and houses of culture. A musical education—based on Western classical music—would help them grow up to be cultured Soviet citizens.Footnote ³⁷ On the February 4, 1974, show, the host described how good parents take their children to museums, encourage them to join extracurricular activities, and learn about their interests. An example of this was described on September 30, 1974, on the radio show Stories about Communists. The host spoke highly about an exemplary communist factory worker who in his spare time enjoyed music and taking his children to clubs and museums.Footnote ³⁸

Local broadcasting designed programs for children that also regularly promoted educational leisure activities. The children’s television show Gorn and the similar radio program titled, Pioneer of Buryatia, were about the Pioneer organization and its many extracurricular activities.Footnote ³⁹ A survey of programming from the 1970s and early 1980s available in the state archives in Buryatia reveals subjects such as pioneers working on a research project about World War II, urban pioneers’ plans to visit a collective farm, children helping elderly neighbors, and a letter campaign to thank war veterans for their service. By promoting such extracurricular activities, these types of programs sought to teach children about what was considered proper leisure activities.