SUMMARY:

The introduction to the forum “Imperial Legacies as a Resource for Nation-Building: The Case of Chinggis Khan” situates the discourses of Buryat national identity in the context of the post-Soviet identity crisis and the search for a new sense of belonging. The authors argue that the Buryat case is distinguished from other post-Soviet cases by the trend to ground Buryat identity in the past of a distinctly cosmopolitan and imperial polity, the Mongol empire. The constructed memory about this past provides a sense of association with a historic and heroic statehood (the empire of Chinggis Khan), a rich culture (Buddhism), and the entire region of Eurasia. In the course of constructing a new historical memory, the imperial past gets formatted and imbued with the modern concepts of ethnogenesis and exclusive ethnic identity. The authors of the introduction also situate the construction and actualization of historical memory of the Mongol empire in the context of the forthcoming 800th anniversary of the foundation of the Mongol empire. The introduction surveys a series of cultural activities (theater festivals, publications, etc.) that have been launched as part of the preparation for the anniversary and that have contributed to the politically-charged and mythology-loaded process of redefining the canon of Buryat national identity.