The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia

Chapter 5. Buryat Literature for a New Society

CHAPTER 5 Buryat Literature for a New Society Local authorities in Buryatia relied on cultural and educational institutions for creating skilled workers and professionals, as well as altering the behavior and attitudes of society. Literature was a key part of this and authorities assigned great prestige to the written word. They considered printed matter a central symbol of Soviet culture, crucial for nation building, necessary for raising the cultural level of ordinary citizens, and a critical method for communication .1 For these reasons, officials across the country devoted many resources to developing literature both in Russian and non-Russian languages. For all Soviet peoples, literature became a marker of cultural distinction, a defining feature of a Soviet nationality, and at the same time a means of homogenization. National language, perhaps the most important cultural trait in the Soviet definition of a nation, was promoted through native language publishing. For nations that lacked Western traditions of literature and print culture, developing such materials were important parts of the Soviet modernization project. Although the Buryats had a literary past, the creation of new forms of literature in Buryat, such as novels and literary journals like Baikal, were proof that officially mandated elements of Soviet high culture were emerging in a new Buryat society in the postwar decades. 1 For a discussion on the value authorities placed upon reading and literature in the Soviet Union, see Lovell, The Russian Reading Revolution. 160 The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia Literature in the Soviet Union was shaped by ideological, political , cultural, economic, and professional circumstance. Writers, as well as censors, editors, Party officials, and other intellectuals worked together to produce acceptable genres and themes. They carefully scrutinized literary works and debated their meaning and value for society. In particular, they expressed certain messages such as the value of modernization, the friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union, and the idea that Buryatia naturally belongs in Russia. These messages were intended to convince the Buryats that their lives in the USSR were improved and that any alternative would be much worse. Writers in Buryatia were limited to a prescribed framework and researchers have found no alternative literature or local samizdat (self-published underground works). Instead, officially produced local and national literature was widely available . It was regularly taught in schools, found in bookstores and libraries, and aggressively promoted throughout the republic. Producing High Culture Through Literature Central authorities viewed the development of national literatures as part of the successful transition of many of the Soviet Union’s peoples to socialist modernity. The development of national literatures showed how under Soviet modernization the more supposedly “primitive” peoples had learned to embrace civilization. In praise for the creation of the genre of the novel among national literatures, a Soviet literary critic in 1974 wrote that, “the most backwards people of old Russia … are emerging with their novel on the high road of the world artistic advance, merging with the mainstream of world literature” and “striving with the help of the novel to examine and understand artistically their place in the advance of peoples to communism.”2 It did not matter whether these “backward” people had an oral tradition or even a literary one before the revolution. The point was that they now had a modern, Western, literary tradi2 M. Parkhomenko, “The Birth of the New Epos,” in L. Terakopian (ed.), Unity: Collected Articles on Multi-National Soviet Literature (Moscow: Progress Publishers , 1975), 84. Buryat Literature for a New Society 161 tion—in a Soviet style—based on the genres of poetry, plays, short stories, and novels.3 Such praiseworthy Soviet literature was a status symbol for nations within the Soviet Union. For the Buryats, it showed that they were a modern people and not “backward Siberians.” In particular, works of Buryat literature published in Russian in Moscow for an all-union audience, such as the 1974 almanac of Buryat literature and the Buryat contribution to the 1977 four-volume Poetry of the People of the USSR, received much praise and promotion.4 These works showed how, as N. M. Damdinov, the chairman of the Buryat Writer’s Union explained, the Buryats had progressed from producing one book of poems by the highly celebrated Buryat writer, Khotsa Namsaraev, in 1924 to contributing to all-union works such as the ones mentioned above.5 Literature was also important in the Soviet Union because authorities believed it...