The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia

Introduction

Introduction Speaking in 1978 on the local Ulan-Ude radio program The Socialist Way of Life, a Buryat woman named Darizhap Zham’ianova described how her life was very different than that of her mother. Her mother was orphaned at age seven and had been forced to work for kulaks, a label applied to supposed wealthier herders. At one point her mother had given birth to a son, but her grandmother “gave him to the datsan,” the Buddhist monastery, and she “never got him back.”1 Her mother had lived in the Siberian countryside, was very poor, and had struggled just in order to survive. Zham’ianova, however, was able to escape that fate because she came of age after World War II. Therefore, she had the opportunity to gain a good education, become a successful scientist, live in a modern apartment building in Ulan-Ude, and work in a laboratory. She could follow intellectual pursuits rather than occupying herself with day-to-day issues of survival as her mother had done. It is possible to interpret this story as propaganda aired on government -controlled radio that typically and repeatedly depicted a positive picture of the Soviet Union. This is true in some regards; however, it is also too simplistic. Zham’ianova’s experience reflects real and profound changes in Buryat and Soviet society. It shows that most people in the Soviet Union lived as best as they could like 1 Sotsialisticheskii obraz zhizni in Russian. The transcript for this show can be found in the Natsional’nyi arkhiv Respubliki Buriatii (NARB), f. R-1051, op. 1, d. 1617, ll. 17–26. 2 The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia anywhere else and at any other time. The choices people made, the stories they told, and the activities they engaged in were subject to circumstance. Zham’ianova, like many Buryats of her generation and those that followed, sought out the advantages that Soviet modernizing policies and institutions could bring. There is no reason to believe that she was disingenuous in her professional pride or discontented with her urban lifestyle. The Socialist Way of Life may have been propagandistic, but that does not mean that Zham’ianova was simply brainwashed. During an interview on her local radio station, she plainly described the life that she lived. This book is about people like Zham’ianova, a Buryat woman living in eastern Siberia in the second half of the twentieth century. It examines how the Buryats, a Mongolian people who make up Siberia’s largest indigenous population, engaged life in the Soviet Union and the culture of progress it promoted.2 It argues that the Buryats’ pre-Soviet history, the availability and attractiveness of educational and professional opportunities in Soviet Buryatia, and institutions that encouraged Buryats to follow a prescribed model of Soviet success produced widespread participation and appreciation for what one local radio program called “The Socialist Way of Life.” This history of the Buryats in the late Soviet period demonstrates that the majority of Buryats were neither downtrodden nor oppositional. Instead, the Buryats rose up the social ladder, not as quislings, but as ordinary citizens who sought to manipulate their situation to their advantage. Zham’ianova’s story is therefore illustrative of a rapid transformation in which the Buryats made swift and striking advancements in education levels and social mobility from the 1950s to the breakup of the Soviet Union. By 1991, the Buryats were overrepresented in nearly every profession in their autonomous republic despite the fact that they made up only around 25 percent of its population.3 The Buryats dominated important political positions and the local 2 In 2010 there were approximately 500,000 Buryats living in Russia, Mongolia, and China. The majority (around 450,000) resides in the Russian Federation. 3 This is based on an analysis of statistical data from NARB from the 1940s to the 1980s. See Chapter 3. In the early 2000s, Buryats came to represent closer to 30 percent of the Republic of Buryatia. Introduction 3 administration. They created, ran, and participated in cultural and educational institutions in very large numbers. They had a welldeveloped publishing house, literature, press, and broadcast media. In addition, the Buryats had very high levels of education—the third highest in the Soviet Union by 1979 and well above ethnic Russians.4 Scholars of Soviet nationalities policies such as Gerhard Simon called it “a surprise” when describing...