Everyday Life at a Provincial School in the 1930s: The Stalinist Way Newspaper in the Town of Taiga, West Siberia

Abstract

The article describes the school education in the town of Taiga, West Siberia, during the accelerated construction of socialism in the 1930s. The research relied on a local newspaper called The Stalinist Way. The author used the historical and anthropological approach based on the principles of total history. The key task was to reconstruct the everyday life of the local community in the context of the Soviet cultural revolution. The analysis made it possible to summarize the unique testimonies of ordinary people about various aspects of school life, teachers, their role in the community, and relations with the local authorities. The findings expand the understanding of the regional history of Western Siberia in the XX century and the all-Russian processes at the local level. This article contributes to the domestic theory and methodology of everyday life studies. It also adds a new, heuristic value to the Soviet periodical press as a historical source, as well as reveals new prospects for anthropological criticism.

Keywords

• everyday life history
• school education
• microhistory
• periodical press
• ussr
• western siberia