Reading Huts as Centers of Enlightenment for the Rural Population of the South Urals in the 1930s

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the 1930s, the Soviet government undertook great efforts to promote literacy and awareness in the countryside. Workers at cultural and educational institutions were entrusted with carrying out this task. The article analyzes the condition and historical development of izby-chital’ny [known in English as village “reading huts”] in the regions of the South Urals as centers of education and propaganda in rural areas. Little attention has been paid to this topic in the regional historiography. It is shown that there was a more extensive network of reading huts in the Chelyabinsk Region than in the Orenburg Region. The article explores how these reading huts mainly functioned throughout the region and what activities were commonly practiced at this institution. These included, among others, reading aloud newspapers and fiction that were intended for illiterate and minimally literate audiences, hosting reader conferences, and providing knigonoshestvo [a service of book delivery]. The article uncovers the main problems that faced reading huts in the region: insufficient funding, the expropriation of club buildings in a number of towns for purposes of grain storage, lack of equipment and furnishings, etc. Finding staff was perhaps the biggest problem that these institutions faced. Nevertheless, the mass popularization of this political and ideological institution was decisive to the formation of the Soviet citizen.