Libraries, reading rooms and the Red Chum

Cultural construction in the North

The main attention in the early years was paid to cultural construction in the North. It all started with national schools. The first Soviet schools for Northerners opened in the 1920/21 academic year, in 1926 the first seven-year Mansi school appeared. In 1927, the first boarding school in the region was opened at the school in the village of Polnovat, where four Komi and eight Khanty children began to study together with Russian children in the first year of its operation. In 1930, boarding schools were opened in the Kazymsky, Uyut-Yugansky and Tazovsky national districts. In 1930, the first primer in the Khanty language was created. Soon there were textbooks in the native languages of the Nenets, Selkups and Mansi.

In the early 1930s, the activity of cultural bases and red plague began in the North. Sosvinskaya, Tazovskaya, Yamal, and Kazym cultural bases appeared. They were usually located in areas of traditional sites and on the pilgrimage routes of the indigenous population to holy places. Such a complex had a boarding school with educational workshops, a medical center, including an outpatient clinic, a hospital, a pharmacy, a bathhouse, a veterinary and zootechnical center, a shop, a house for nomads, a club with a cinema installation.

The Red Chum appeared in the North in 1930. They were mobile cultural and social institutions, where teachers, paramedics, lecturers and projectionists worked. The main purpose of the red Chum was to eliminate illiteracy. The Red Chum had their own reindeer sleds. The staff of the institutions taught literacy to the adult population, provided medical and veterinary care, engaged in political education; organized readings of newspapers, magazines, books; showed films. In 1933 The number of cultural institutions in the Ostyako-Vogul National District was: 47 reading rooms, 6 libraries, 5 native houses, 5 red chums and, in addition, one club, one cultural base, 3 Houses of the Peoples of the North and 73 red corners. In the late 1960s, the industrial development of our region took place and mobile Red Plagues were replaced by inpatient medical centers, clubs and libraries.

Libraries, reading rooms

The years of the revolution and the Civil war, as well as the early years of the young Soviet state, were not replete with facts about the activities of libraries. It was only in November 1929 that the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) "On reading huts" was published. Then the widespread fight against illiteracy began. This work was assigned to school teachers. Often, the approach to an important matter was purely formal: a citizen who learned letters and put words together from syllables, as well as who could put his signature, was already considered literate.

In no case can a reading room be equated with the activities of a library. Its functional duties are much simpler: to provide access to books and newspapers collected without a special system for those who can read, and to arrange loud readings on topical topics for illiterate people.

The library has its own tasks, it consists of collections of literature on various branches of knowledge collected according to the system, catalogs and card files. For a library, the reader needs the most prepared, with diverse interests. If the reading room worked at the expense of public figures, then a qualified specialist is needed to work in the library.

The issue of training and education of professional personnel has become one of the most important. In addition, it was time to move away from loud readings to an equal conversation-discussing the contents of the book. There was a need to transfer the reading rooms and libraries to the departments of culture of the district executive committees. This transfer was carried out in 1940. The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War slowed down the process of reorganizing libraries. The old forms of work were preserved everywhere.

In the post-war period, reading huts were still preserved in rural areas. Their functions have been expanded in many ways, they have become closer to club forms of work. In addition to book production, the leisure of the population was filled with political, dramatic and musical circles. Wall newspapers and battle sheets on current topics were produced.

Yamal cultural base

The Yamal cultural base has settled in the village of Yar-Sale. Its teams had to serve more than 3.5 thousand Nenets reindeer herders, who led a nomadic lifestyle in the vast tundra. The construction of the base began in August 1932 in the area of the Yar-Salinsky trading post. The first head of the Yamal cultural base was B. I. Shmyrev, who took up his duties on August 19, 1932. The opening of the cultural base took place on November 7, 1932. It was under the jurisdiction of the Committee of the North under the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee. In 1935, M.M. Brodnev became the head of the base. The first leaders faced a difficult task to build a base from scratch. And they successfully coped with it. In 5 years, a cultural and economic complex has grown in the desert tundra: a construction office, a fish farm, a power plant, residential buildings, a sauna and a laundry, a hospital, a shop, a canteen, a veterinary center, a boarding school, workshops, a Nenets house, a film transmission and a radio station.

The success of the case was decided by personnel capable of working in difficult conditions. The North cruelly tested people for strength, rejecting dubious temporary workers. Specialists from Moscow, Leningrad, Omsk, Sverdlovsk, and Tobolsk came to Yamal. The first employees of the cultural base were P. P. Korolev (head of the zootechnical point), L. A. Lutsenko (head of the veterinary point), A. S. Kartovchenko (head of the boarding school), T. F. Evseeva (teacher-educator). The House of the Native (later the House of the Peoples of the North) was headed by V. S. Tokhoy, the hospital was headed by S.I. Bushmarin. In the process of communicating with the Nenets, they sought to learn their native language, lifestyle and traditions, and gain their trust.

The base was home to the first hospital in the Yamal region with three departments: therapeutic, surgical and maternity. For a long time, the Nenets shunned medical care and turned to shamans. Rumors spread that Russian doctors only know how to stab and cut patients, take their blood, poison them with medicines. The chief physician of the hospital, V.I. Konstantinov, and his staff spent a lot of time to overcome the erroneous views of local residents, teach them hygiene, and ensure disease prevention. The fact that Nenka Maria Khudi, violating an ancient custom, gave birth to a child in the hospital was perceived as a sensation.

There were also big problems in the boarding school with the education of Nenets children. Parents did not want to let their children go to school, fearing for their future. But gradually the number of students began to grow. If only three people studied in the first year, then 35 in the second, 55 in the third.

The acquaintance of the tundra population with electricity, radio and cinema contributed to the renewal of worldview. A real sensation for the indigenous population was the screening of the films "Battleship Potemkin", "Chapaev", "Lenin in October".

Thus, the beginning of the Yamal cultural Base was marked by amazing creative successes.

In 1939, the Yamal cultural base, like many others, was liquidated.