Socio-Cultural Appearance of Employees of the Lower Soviet Administrative Apparatus of Eastern Siberia in the First Half of the 1920s

Abstract

The study tested members of volost executive committees, deputies, chairmen and secretaries of village Soviets that served in the Yeniseisk and Irkutsk Governates from 1921 till 1925. Village Soviets were meetings of deputies elected to fulfill people’s right to power. Volost executive committees were administrative and executive public service for village Soviets. In accordance with archival materials, we determined that 1,357 village Soviets worked in the Yenisesk Governate in 1923 (including Achinsk, Yeniseisk, Kansk, Krasnoyarsk, Minusinsk, Turukhansk uyezds). 782 inhabitants and 1.9 villages formed one village Soviet in the Yeniseisk Governate of several members. On average, one village Soviet included 4–5 members. The number of residents in one village of the Yeniseisk Governate was 404, and 7,071 people lived in one volost. Moreover, 9 village Soviets formed one volost executive committee of 41 members. 460 village Soviets were located in the Irkutsk Governate in 1923(including sparsely populated Balagansky, Selenginsky, Kirensky, Ziminsky, Verkholensky, Irkutsk, Tulunsky uyezds). Therefore, one volost Executive Committee included 32 members. 256 people lived in one village in the Irkutsk Governate; 6,839 inhabitants lived in one volost. Socio-cultural image of employees in the Yeniseisk Governate’s volost Executive Committees was not an elite image: 64 % communists; 83 % peasants; 17 % workers and intellectuals; 2.4 % had a higher education level; 67 % had secondary education level; 30 % had primary education level; 0.6 % had a home education level; however, there weren’t any illiterates. The Irkutsk Governate’s volost Executive Committees included: 37 % communists; 85 % peasants; 15 % workers and intellectuals; 99 % had higher, secondary and primary education levels. However, members of village Soviets were more democratic than members of volost Executive Committees. For example, 15 % of village Soviets’ deputies were illiterate in the Yeniseisk Governate. Moreover, 16 % of deputies were illiterate in the Irkutsk Governate. Other deputies had lower and home education level. Only 11 % of village Soviets’ deputies were communists in the Yeniseisk Governate. 9 % of deputies were communists in the village Soviets in the Irkutsk Governate. Importantly, 99 % were men among local administrators in Eastern Siberia. Although gender equality was proclaimed in Soviet Russia, it was absent in the Yeniseisk and Irkutsk Governates in the first half of the 1920s. As a result, members of the volost executive committees and village Soviets in Eastern Siberia were ordinary people. They did not have any professional experience; and they had a low level of work ethics. To analyze the information about members of volost Executive Committees, deputies, chairmen and secretaries of village Soviets we used archival materials of the Fund No. 393 «People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR» from the State Archives of the Russian Federation (Moscow)