Soviet ideology and culture in the 1920s and 1930s: upbringing a «new man»

The article considers the period of 1920-1930s as the time of building the Soviet society and the state, which took place under the influence of ideological foundations on the political, economic and social life of the country on the example of Buryat-Mongolian ASSR. The main attention paid to the analysis of education as one of the important means of statehood formation, which initiates the process of personality’s spiritual development. The research source base consists of the materials of central and regional archives. Among them legislative and normative acts in the sphere of culture, art, enlightenment and education of the USSR and BMASSR; official documents and materials reflecting the activity of ministries, departments and structures of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks; analytical materials on the problems of ideological foundations of education in the 1920-1930s, as well as the works of representatives of the authorities and reminiscences of contemporaries. On the basis of archival materials, it is shown how extremely difficult tasks were solved: elimination of illiteracy, creation of the system of public education, formation of new intelligentsia staff, creation of conditions for development of humanities, literature and art, use of scientific achievements for socialist transformations. In order to analyze the conditions in which these processes took place, a set of scientific methods - general scientific (theoretical analysis and conceptualization) and special (historical and comparative, structural and functional, retrospective and historical and cultural methods) - was involved. The authors have identified the specifics of the cultural revolution of the national region, carried out on the basis of common patterns that took place in the country. First of all, Buryat-Mongolia has made a transition to socialism, bypassing the capitalist stage of development, which created additional difficulties - here for the first time were created national script and literary language, school, cultural institutions, literature and professional art. Territorial dispersion of the population due to nomadic and semi-nomadic ways of life, the presence of several socio-economic patterns were among the difficulties of a specific nature. In the course of the anti-religious campaign in the 1930s, the Datsan school, which was the basis of national education, was destroyed. The article traces the process of liquidation of traditional society institutions and their replacement with new ones, which determine the social context of a person’s everyday life. It revealed that the general Soviet ideology in the national region served as a mobilization project for building a new society and growing a “new” person.

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