Being Buryat: Sovietization in Siberia

This dissertation argues that the Buryats, a Mongolian people who live around Lake Baikal in Siberia, rather than simply being victims of top down policies from Moscow that eroded their language and culture, instead participated and gave their creative energy to the Soviet project of modernization during the decades following World War II. This work explores educational, media-related, and cultural institutions, which were increasingly staffed and directed by a large class of educated professional Buryats. These institutions were crucial to carrying out Soviet modernizing policies. They created a new culture for Buryat society that produced new lived experiences quite different than those of previous generations. Increased social mobility, ubiquitous messages promoting Soviet progress, and practical choices by the Buryat elite created a situation where many Buryats were not alienated by the Soviet system in a way that some other Soviet peoples were. Instead, widespread upward social mobility that led to large scale participation in local institutions, including local government, developed into a culture of progress in Buryatia that allowed the Buryats to make Soviet modernization work for them.