The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia

Chapter 3. The New Buryats

CHAPTER 3 The New Buryats The growth of industry in eastern Siberia, starting in the 1930s and continuing into the 1980s, brought thousands of immigrants from the European regions of the Soviet Union to the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR).1 This diminished Buryat representation in the republic, but also created opportunities for social mobility through job creation, particularly in the postwar years. Both local and national leaders sought to bring economic development to Buryatia through the construction of such industries as an electric engine plant, a wool-manufacturing factory, an appliances plant, and many others.2 In the 1970s, authorities also started two new major industrial projects with far-reaching social, demographic , and economic consequences. Between 1971 and 1975 the large Gusinoozerskii power station was built south of Ulan-Ude and in 1974 the construction of the Baikal–Amur Mainline railway (BAM) began in northern Buryatia.3 Both projects received republi1 The name “Mongolian” was dropped from the republic’s title in 1958. This event is discussed at the end of this chapter. 2 A. B. Imetkhenov and E. M. Egorov (eds.), Ulan-Ude: Istoriia i sovremannost’ (Ulan-Ude: Buriatskii nauchnyi tsentr SO RAN), 160, 172–3, 180; M. M. Khalbaeva -Boronova, Buriatiia: Problemy kompleksnogo razvitiia regiona (UlanUde : Buriatskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2005), 88, 99. 3 V. V. Belikov, Povyshenie kul’turno-tekhnicheskogo urovnia rabochego klassa Buriatii v period razvitogo sotsializma (1959–1975 gg.) (Ulan-Ude: Buriatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1980), 18; M. M. Khalbaeva, Buriatiia v 1960–1990 gg.: Tendentsii i protivorechiia sotsial’no-ekonomicheskogo razvitiia (Ulan-Ude: Buriatskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1999), 54–5, 58; Ts. Ts. Dorzhieva, “Is- 90 The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia can and national support and were coupled with recruiting campaigns that continued to bring workers to Buryatia from other parts of the country. In particular, BAM attracted many newcomers. Several towns grew up along the railroad, leading the urban population in northern Buryatia to double between 1979 and 1989.4 Significantly, this economic development also led to the creation of a wide range of educational and employment opportunities for the Buryats. Authorities built an entire new infrastructure to go along with the growth of factories and the spread of railroad tracks. In the second half of the twentieth century, there was an enormous expansion in education, media, government administration, cultural institutions, and everyday services. In the 1970s for example, administrators oversaw the construction of 14 settlements, 80 stores, 45 cafeterias, 30 clubhouses, and 29 libraries for BAM workers alone.5 Buryats helped to create, staff, and direct this economic and social advancement and their participation in it allowed many of them to exploit these developments for their own gain. Buryatia’s rapidly changing economic and demographic circumstances also led to a tremendous shift in the occupations of many Buryats. While it was the ethnic Russians who continually dominated industry in the republic as workers, managers, engineers, and technicians throughout the entire Soviet period, the Buryats increasingly came to occupy large numbers of cultural, educational, media, and political jobs. The Buryats became proportionally overrepresented in many professions in these areas and this allowed them to greatly influence decisions in the republic despite their minority status of between 20 and 25 percent. Postwar trends also show great leaps in the urbanization of the Buryats, their educational levels, tochniki formirovanie gorodskogo naselenie Buriatii (1970–1990-e gg.),” Vestnik Buriatskogo Universiteta 5 (2001), 172. 4 Between 1979 and 1989, the urban population in the republic almost doubled from 48,700 to 93,700 thanks to BAM. Irina Pavlovna Afanas’eva, “Osobennosti sotsial’no-demograficheskikh protsessov v gorodskom naselenii Buriatii v 60-80e gg. xx v.” (PhD diss., Buriatskii gosudarstvenyi universitet, 2004), 78. Also, see Christopher Ward, Brezhnev’s Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). 5 Afans’eva, “Osobennosti sotsial’no-demograficheskikh,” 57, 65–8, 77; Belikov, Povyshenie kul’turno-tekhnicheskogo urovnia, 18. The New Buryats 91 and the overall growth in the Buryat population in the 1960s and 1970s. This chapter provides a demographic analysis of Buryat social mobility from World War II to the fall of the Soviet Union based on statistical data largely from the National Archives of the Republic of Buryatia. It illustrates how in the decades after the war a transformation took place that allowed for a new, urban, educated Buryat class to gain leadership positions and direct...