New life of the Old Believers of Transbaikalia: towards the “Soviet person” (late 1920s)

Abstract

In the 1920s, throughout the USSR, there were well-known processes of unification of a heterogeneous social structure, ultimately designed to create a unified Soviet society. The attitude of the Old Believers of Buryat-Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Chita District of the Far Eastern Territory to what was happening during this period became one of the most problematic in terms of the introduction of Communist principles. This was recognised by almost all local Party officials and cultural workers. Formally reproducing the structures of Soviet political and economic institutions, adopting technical innovations and the specifics of the "cultural revolution" in their lives – in reality, the Semeiskie Old Believers often did not seek to change their views on the world, religious identity for the sake of forming the Soviet type of personality. The purpose of the work is to analyse the relationship between the authorities and the Old Believers, as well as the everyday perception of the Communist ideology by the latter. Hence, the main problem can be considered the identification of the reaction of the Semeiskie (including the Communists) to the intensified in their community anti-religious propaganda by the late 1920s – the main condition for changing the paradigm of the worldview. Another problem is to research the ideological (educational) aspect of the new way of life and people's attitudes towards it. As a brief conclusion it should be noted that the process of the formation of the Soviet type of personality in the Old Believers’ environment of Transbaikalia by the early 1930s had a formal character of development: the ideologisation of the population with atheistic propaganda were not tied in the minds of people as an indispensable prerequisite for their new cultural life.