Soviet City of the NEP Era as a Leisure Space

The 1920s are known in Russian history as a time of attempts to implement unique social experiments, total revisionism of established norms and values. Leisure culture has also undergone its transformations, the attention to which on the part of the authorities was explained by the desire to use the rest time of workers for educational, ideological and cultural work. The main space for it was cities, which during the period of the new economic policy were places of amazing neighborhood of old and new culture, aesthetics, everyday images and types. In this article, the Soviet city of the 1920s is considered as a leisure space in which a new Soviet man was to be formed. It shows how, for what and by whom it was created, and how it changed the city and the life of its population. The methodological guidelines for the preparation of the article were the ideas of the “new urban history”, which allowed, unlike classical historical urban studies, to look at the city from an original perspective, in particular, as a communicative and leisure space. In addition, a set of special historical methods, traditional for historical works, was used: historical-comparative, problem-chronological, synchronization, etc. The source base of the study was made up of unpublished materials of propaganda and cultural and educational work in various regions of the country. Periodicals, journalism, and fiction were also actively involved. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the Soviet government, recognizing the backwardness of the vast masses of the population, assumed the role of a cultural trader, colonizing and improving, according to its ideas, the urban space and its inhabitants. It was leisure that was given a significant role in this: the free time of a Soviet citizen had to be filled exclusively with cultural, reasonable leisure. Holidays made it possible to symbolically “conquer” the space of the center, previously inaccessible to a resident of the factory outskirts, excursions were introduced to cultural heritage, gardens and parks were touted with the opportunity to relax in the fresh air, etc. At the same time, as before the revolution, the city remained a dangerous testing place for yesterday’s peasants. It was still opposed to the countryside, but from now on it not only threatened poverty, disease, moral decline and marginalization, but could also save from the networks of philistinism and foster class consciousness, including through cultural leisure.