Houses of Culture for the Oirots Women: early Soviet modernity in Oirotskiy (Gorno-Altaiskiy) Autonomous Region

Not much has been written about the activities of the Houses of Culture for the Oirot Women or Houses of for the Altaians Women, as they were abbreviated both in documents and literature, and in oral speech. The study of scientific literature and published extracts from archives that store documents on the activities of party (ideological authorities) and Soviet (executive authorities) organizations clearly demonstrate a black-and-white picture of the early Soviet history of the Oirot region. Everything was bad - everything became good. It is absolutely clear that such an approach was conditioned by the ideological tasks facing both the employees of the power structures and the researchers who worked during the Soviet period. The study of research papers, especially devoted, first of all, to the history of enlightenment and education, health care and culture in the modern Altai Republic, which appeared in the current century, unfortunately, shows the continued use of the above approach. Such a method, it seems to me, not only narrows the research field, but also gives an incomplete and sometimes distorted idea of the history of the period of the establishment of Soviet power in the region and the activities of people. At the same time, it should be noted that it was in the current century, a century after those events that were previously called the period of Soviet and party building that works began to appear that comprehensively cover the issues of the first steps of Soviet power, civil war and banditry, repressions. The author's task is to try to find other, not black and white, colors in the picture of the early Soviet history of Oirotia, incl. based on field materials, by using the theory of modernity. With all the existing variety of methodologies and approaches that explain modernity, I am of the opinion that modernity refers to a society in which new forms of social order massively dominate traditional forms. And, accordingly, I consider the activities of the Houses of Culture for the Oirot Women as one of the brightest projects of early Soviet modernity. An important role in formulating the author's approach to the analysis of materials was played by the works of M. David-Fox «Crossing Borders ...» and the discussion on the topic «Modernity in Russia and the USSR ...», as well as L.B. Chetyrova and N.M. Sergeeva «Soviet modernity ...». The article attempts to consider the House of Culture for the Oirot Woman as one of the aspects of modernity implemented by the Soviet authorities. Some of these inspirations were indeed rational and necessary requirements of the times. The piece was important as a symbolic act of «renunciation of the old world», but nothing more. The visual result was, for example, the disappearance of the special clothing of a married woman, chegedek. However, at the same time, emancipating and transforming the Oi-rot/Altay woman into a «new person», ideologically stigmatizing her traditional clothes, the Soviet government left the idiom uy kizhi, woman, in the plural uy ulus, women as a literary norm. Literally, idioms are translated as «dwellings human» and in the plural «dwellings people» and in this sense, they clearly, in the opinion of the author, have discriminatory connotations.

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