House of Officers

a cultural and educational institution of the Soviet armed forces that provides communist education and meets the intellectual, cultural, and recreational needs of servicemen, members of their families, and workers and employees of the Soviet Army and Navy.

Houses of officers (called houses of the Red Army until 1946) appeared in the 1920’s. (The first one was set up in 1921 in Ekaterinburg, now Sverdlovsk.) They worked mainly among the command staff of the army and navy and the most active men in the Red Army. On the basis of the 1927 Statute on the House of the Red Army, they broadened the range of their activity, began enlisting in it members of servicemen’s families, and gradually became important institutions in the cultural and political life of military garrisons. The Central House of the Red Army was opened in Moscow in February 1928. There are garrison and district (fleet) houses of officers.

Houses of officers provide lectures, reports, and talks on political and military subjects, exhibitions, contests, excursions, concerts, parties, and films. They hold evening courses on the university level on Marxism and Leninism, military science societies and libraries operate under their supervision, museums on the history of military units and people’s universities are formed, and centers of amateur art and a variety of circles are organized. The political organs of the Soviet Army and Navy direct the practical activity of the houses of officers on the basis of the Regulations on Houses of Officers (ratified in 1947).