Urbanization and everyday life of Verkhneudinsk/Ulan-Ude Urbanites (late 1920s-1930s): transition from rural to urban environment
The everyday life of Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s remains an important subject of research in the Russian humanities. Particular attention to this issue is due to the fact that during this period a new type of society was being formed, centuries-old traditions and foundations were being broken, the social structure, living environment, spiritual life and everyday life of both city dwellers and rural residents were changing. In this context, there is increasing interest in regional studies of rural-urban transition, as individual territories differed in their levels of economic and social development, population composition, size, perceptions and attitudes towards the changes that were taking place. This article presents the most typical, characteristic features of the Soviet everyday life of Verkhneudinsk/Ulan-Ude residents. The focus is on the city, the capital of the Buryat-Mongolian Republic and an economic, political and cultural centre. It differed from the countryside in its dynamism and liberal morals, and was directly in the sphere of the Bolshevik leadership's reform projects. At the same time, one of the characteristic features of the autonomy’s capital was its «suburbanization» due to the influx of new citizens who brought peasant perceptions and psychology into the urban environment.