Free Time Is Not Meant to Be Wasted: Educational, Political, and Taboo Leisure Activities among the Soviet Buryats of Eastern Siberia

This article details how an increasingly educated and urban Buryat population became both the creators and consumers of new leisure activities in the late Soviet period. It argues that central and local authorities believed that leisure activities could help them to impress upon the Buryats that there were great benefits to living in the Soviet Union and to adopting a more pan-Soviet identity within the brotherhood of nations. They also presumed that leisure activities could aid in the building of a culture that was Buryat, Soviet, and more modern. This article examines why authorities assigned great importance to leisure and how they used and created cultural-educational institutions and mass media content to implement, direct, and promote cultural development. It analyzes various institutions such as museums, clubs, and theaters, as well as the production and consumption of local newspapers and television and radio programming that promoted educational leisure activities. In addition, it explores authorities’ concerns about the rise, especially among youth, of more taboo leisure activities that deviated from the official ones that they encouraged.