The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia

Chapter 1. The Buryats of Siberia: From Imperial Russia to the Soviet State

CHAPTER 1 The Buryats of Siberia: From Imperial Russia to the Soviet State Before the turn of the twentieth century, the Buryats and the Russian government had settled into a relationship that was generally peaceful and worked fairly well for both parties. The Buryats had certain tax and administrative obligations to the government and as long as these were met, the state interfered little in their everyday lives. Although individual officials could be cruel and occasional disputes sometimes interrupted that stability, in many cases Buryats could easily overcome their grievances by employing traditional nomadic strategies such as moving away. However, European Russian immigration to Siberia, which began in great numbers toward the end of the nineteenth century, as well as war, revolution, and regime change, dramatically altered this situation. The Buryats were increasingly forced to engage regularly with new European peasants, government officials, and factory workers. This chapter provides a general historical background of the Buryats from the seventeenth century to the 1920s. It focuses on Buryat interaction and experiences with the Russian imperial government and the early Bolshevik state before Stalin’s ascension to power. Over the course of several centuries, numerous Buryat leaders and government officials offered a variety of different ways to manage the Buryats within the empire. Their competing ideas and plans for how best to do this were based on a wide range of ideological beliefs and economic goals. Some of their proposals were implemented and long lasting. Others were not. However, by the 26 The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia end of the 1920s and the rise to power of Stalin, the opportunities for carrying out different visions became seriously constricted. Stalin ’s government prioritized rapid modernization over all else. Everyone in the entire country, including the Buryats, was required to focus their attention on industrializing, maximizing economic output , and creating a new culture devoted to a more narrow vision of progress. The Mongols of Siberia and Russian Expansion Mongolian people have lived around Lake Baikal in southern Siberia since as far back as the fifth century. Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan), the world’s most famous Mongol, was born in Siberia’s southeastern borderlands between today’s Russian Federation and the modern country of Mongolia. Over the centuries, the Mongols of this region of Inner Asia developed into distinct groups of which one became the Buryats. Although the borders between Russia, Mongolia, and China often remained fluid even into the early twentieth century, the establishment of an official border in the eighteenth century between the expanding Russian and Chinese empires helped to more precisely define the Buryats as a separate group among the Mongols. The Buryats became then one of the Mongolian peoples on the Russian side of the border.1 The Buryats’ subsequent history in the Russian Empire, their interactions with authorities , and their shared land and culture, contributed to the creation of a common Buryat identity by the nineteenth century. 2 Although the Buryats came to designate a single ethnic group within the Russian Empire, there were and are divisions among the 1 The other major Mongolian people in the Russian Federation today are the Kalmyks who live in the southwestern part of the country. 2 Larry Moses and Stephen A. Halkovic, Jr., Introduction to Mongolian History and Culture (Bloomington, IN: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies at Indiana University, 1985), 121–5; Jesse D. Murray, “Building Empire among the Buryats: Conversion Encounters in Russia’s Baikal Region, 1860s–1917” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012), 4–6; D. D. Nimaev, “Etnogenez i etnicheskaia istoriia,” in L. L. Abaeva and N. L. Zhukovskaya (eds.), Buriaty (Moscow: Nauka, 2004), 13–43. The Buryats of Siberia 27 Buryats. There are different clans, various dialects of the Buryat language (part of the Mongolic language family), and economic and cultural differences. The greatest division within the Buryats exists between those living on the west side of Lake Baikal and those living on the east side. In part, this has to do with the landscape. The western side of Lake Baikal is better suited for agriculture and Buryats have practiced farming there along with pastoral nomadism for centuries. Western Buryats thus nomadized less than the eastern Buryats and tended to use wooden homes. Eastern Buryats, who practiced nomadism regularly and farmed little, more commonly resided in moveable felt yurts. Another important difference that arose between the eastern and western Buryats was...