Space and time in the socialist countryside: all-Union anniversaries in Vologda rural schools during the 1960s and 1970s

ABSTRACT In this article, the author examines how all-Union anniversaries during the 1960s–70s were used propagandistically to disseminate Soviet values as well as modern spatio-temporal ideas to rural communities. As part of the program to build communism, announced at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party in 1961, anniversaries were employed to help minimize differences between city and countryside and to bring the way urban and rural people understood time and space into closer alignment. The author argues that the memory of the Soviet past, as propagated through anniversaries, created a memory framework that infused local history with Soviet notions of space and time.