Political Enlightenment in the Context of the Soviet Identity Project Based on Materials of Altai Krai (1945–1955)

Abstract

This article examines the communicative strategies of the formation of civic identity by the system of political education institutions in Altai in the ideological space of 1945–1955 based on regional materials. The authors employ the concept of constructing the phenomenon of Soviet society relevant to the modern neoclassical model of science. The source base consists of normative documents of the Central Committee and the Altai Krai Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, office materials of the propaganda and agitation bodies of the region from the funds of the State Archive of Altai Krai. The authors compare the reports of party committees with the information and analytical data of inspections of political and educational work in Altai. Materials of the All-Union and regional educational and instructional and methodical literature, and regional press were used to analyse discursive propaganda practices. Based on the theoretical and methodological approaches of social design and intellectual history, the article identifies the goals of creation, ideological and semantic motifs, symbolic components, and examples of normative behaviour spread among citizens. It is demonstrated that the production of standards of collective identification of the inhabitants of the region was based on the national-state narrative that rehabilitated the “Homeland” chronotope. The implementation of the all-Union project of social consolidation and support of the Soviet government in Altai Krai focused on the consistent inclusion of the official version of the past in the individual life experience by teaching political literacy, oral, and visual propaganda in schools and school clubs. A feature of the rear region was the construction, first of all, of identification samples of labour heroism. An important technology for involving the population in large-scale activities to restore the economic and socio-cultural potential of the USSR after the Great Patriotic War was the motivation of the feat as a mechanism for personal perpetuation in the memory of descendants.