Palace of Culture (Russian : Дворец культуры, romanized: dvorets kultury, Chinese :文化宫, wénhuà gōng, German : Kulturpalast) or House of Culture (Polish: dom kultury) is a common name (generic term) for major club-houses (community centres) in the former Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern bloc.
In the Soviet Union, the system of House of Cultures was based on already existing Imperial Russian system of People's House that was established back in 1880s. It has several variations such as Palace of Arts, Palace of Sports, Palace of Pioneers, Palace of Metallurgists, House of the Red Army and others.
As an establishment for all kinds of recreational activities and hobbies: sports, collecting, arts, etc., the Palace of Culture was designed to have room for multiple uses. A typical Palace contained one or several cinema halls, concert hall(s), dance studios (folk dance, ballet, ballroom dance), various do-it-yourself hobby groups, amateur-radio groups, amateur-theatre studios, amateur musical studios and bands, lectoriums (lecture halls), and many more. Groups were also subdivided by age of participants, from children to retirees. A public library may sometimes have been housed in the Palace of Culture as well. All hobby groups were free of charge until most recent times, when many hobbies with less official recognition were housed based on "self-repayment". A Palace of Culture was sometimes called a "club", but this did not mean that it was membership-based.
In official rhetoric, all these were supposed to aid the "cultural leisure" of Soviet workers and children and to fight "cultureless leisure", such as drinking and hooliganism.
Palaces or Houses of Culture were introduced in the early days of the Soviet Union, inheriting the role that was earlier fulfilled by so-called "People's Houses". Below is an excerpt from John Dewey's Impressions of Soviet Russia and the revolutionary world (1929). [1]
The other impression I would record came from a non-official visit to a House of Popular Culture. Here was a fine new building in the factory quarter, surrounded by recreation grounds, provided with one large theater, four smaller assembly halls, fifty rooms for club meetings, recreation and games, headquarters for trade unions, costing two million dollars, frequented daily—or rather, nightly—by five thousand persons as a daily average. Built and controlled, perhaps, by the government? No, but by the voluntary efforts of the trade unions, who tax themselves two percent of their wages to afford their collective life these facilities. The House is staffed and managed by its own elected officers. The contrast with the comparative inactivity of our own working men and with the quasi-philanthropic quality of similar enterprises in my own country left a painful impression. It is true that this House—there is already another similar one in Leningrad—has no intrinsic and necessary connection with communistic theory and practice. The like of it might exist in any large modern industrial center. But there is the fact that the like of it does not exist in the other and more highly developed industrial centers. There it is in Leningrad, as it is not there in Chicago or New York...
There were two basic categories of Palaces of Culture: those owned by the state and those owned by the [enterprise]]. Every town, kolkhoz and sovkhoz had a central Palace or House of Culture. Major industrial enterprises had their own Palaces of Culture, managed by the corresponding trade unions.
Palaces of Culture served another important purpose: they housed local congresses and conferences of the regional divisions of the Communist Party, the Komsomol, etc.
In smaller rural settlements similar establishments of lesser scope were known as "clubs", with main activities there being dance nights and cinema.
In 1988 there were over 137,000 club establishments in the Soviet Union.
In the People's Republic of China, the best-known, and most centrally located, Palace of Culture is perhaps the "Workers' Palace of Culture" located in the former Imperial Ancestral Temple just outside the Forbidden City in Beijing.
The concept and the name of a "House of Culture" also appears in (for example) France (Maison de la culture ), Belgium and Quebec.
Most Palaces of Culture continue to exist after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but their status, especially the financial one, changed significantly, for various reasons.
A hobby is considered to be a regular activity that is done for enjoyment, typically during one's leisure time. Hobbies include collecting themed items and objects, engaging in creative and artistic pursuits, playing sports, or pursuing other amusements. Participation in hobbies encourages acquiring substantial skills and knowledge in that area. A list of hobbies changes with renewed interests and developing fashions, making it diverse and lengthy. Hobbies tend to follow trends in society. For example, stamp collecting was popular during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as postal systems were the main means of communication; as of 2023, video games became more popular following technological advances. The advancing production and technology of the nineteenth century provided workers with more leisure time to engage in hobbies. Because of this, the efforts of people investing in hobbies has increased with time.
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The year 1923 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.
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The year 1933 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.
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The fine art of Leningrad is an important component of Russian Soviet art—in the opinion of the art historians Vladimir Gusev and Vladimir Leniashin, "one of its most powerful currents". This widely used term embraces the creative lives and the achievements of several generations of Leningrad painters, sculptors, graphic artists and creators of decorative and applied art from 1917 to the early 1990s.
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A House of Officers, sometimes officially referred to as the Central House of Officers or Officer Houses, is a military and cultural institution originating in the Soviet Army and present today in the Russian Armed Forces and the militaries of many Post-Soviet states. Being the Russian/Soviet equivalent to military officers' clubs in the United States, it effectively serves as cultural center serving to represent the military and to improve civil–military relations. It can be an independent formation in the national defence ministry or a public entity like a club-houses. In the early days of the Soviet Union the institution was called the House of the Red Army. The head of the building is a senior officer, usually with the rank of a Major or above.
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