The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia

Chapter 6. A Means to Modernity: Newspapers, Radio, and Television

CHAPTER 6 A Means to Modernity: Newspapers, Radio, and Television In 1961 officials launched Buryatia’s first TV station, bringing moving and speaking pictures to people in a way that had never existed before. Television was twentieth century modernity in a tangible form available in one’s own home. In Buryatia, the content of local television also told the story of the contemporary era and helped to define society in new ways. The new medium spread quickly across the republic and by 1976, officials announced that 80 percent of the population had the opportunity to watch TV—either at home or at a local clubhouse. That same year authorities also declared that all residents now had access to the radio.1 These developments in broadcast media provided new methods for disseminating and consuming information, as well as new leisure activities for most of the republic’s residents. Now, instead of attending the theater, hearing a lecture, or participating in a reading group at one’s local library for entertainment, people could choose to stay home and listen to the radio or watch TV. The development of broadcast media however, did not mean the abandonment of one form of media for another. In fact, officials were initially slow at developing radio and television programming because of the greater prestige assigned to the written word. In particular , authorities saw newspapers as the most important method 1 E. A. Golubev, Aktivizatsiia sotsial’noi roli radio (Ulan-Ude: Buriatskoie knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1989), 34; NARB, f. P-1, op. 1, d. 10823, l. 11; NARB, f. P-1, op. 1, d. 8391, l. 11. 194 The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia for regularly communicating with republican residents. They also persisted in their belief that higher forms of print media such as literature were most valuable for society. Therefore, authorities continued to devote many resources to newspapers and the book publishing industry despite advances in broadcast media in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapter 6 provides a history of the development of mass media in Buryatia, as well as surveys newspapers and radio and television programming from the postwar years to the 1980s. It shows how television and radio programs during this period were similar to newspaper articles or even to stories found in Buryat literature. The themes were close to identical even if the form was different. Such media highlighted model Soviet citizens, explained correct ideology, illustrated new industrial and agricultural methods, pushed high culture, and emphasized that Soviet institutions were beneficial. They overwhelmingly promoted the idea that life for the Buryats was better in the Soviet Union than it had been in the past, and that Buryatia was a valued part of the union. As mass media developed widely in the late Soviet period, these messages became more widespread, accessible, as well as simply a fixture of everyday life. Local newspapers and broadcast media, like Buryat literature, was a distinguishing feature of Buryatia’s status as a national region within the USSR. They provided material in both Russian and Buryat. As a marker of nationality, Buryat language media were especially intended to help create a sense of national identity—both a Buryat identity and a Soviet one. Mass media in the republic was meant to work, as Benedict Anderson has famously argued, to create a sense of shared community.2 One could open up the newspaper , listen to the radio, or turn on the television and find ordinary and extraordinary residents of Buryatia. On occasion, those people were even in fact actual neighbors, colleagues, relatives, and friends. Officials in Buryatia also sought to use media to present the representation of a model community within a Soviet context. Individual consumers of mass media could also be its participants 2 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983). A Means to Modernity 195 through letters to editors, writing articles, and being featured on shows and in the press. From the 1920s to the early postwar years, local media focused on the building of a new Buryat Soviet nation. Media presented society as an increasingly modern space where vestiges of the past were being cast off. For instance, journalists, scholars, and Party leaders alike during this period touted the advantages of collectivized farms over pastoral nomadism in the pages of the press. They also debated the necessity of traditional markers of Buryat culture such as the...