SUMMARY:

This article explores different projects aimed at constructing a modern Buriat national identity in the second half of the 1920s. Having won the Civil War with the support or indifference of the local elites, the Bolsheviks granted these elites a degree of autonomy. In the Buriat case, two autonomous regions were organized, one in the framework of the Russian Federation and one in the framework of the Far Eastern Republic. The author argues that despite the autonomy granted to the local elites, the Buriat intelligentsia had a limited impact on the political and economic sphere. Hence it focused on cultural and educational institutions in order to pursue its own project of constructing an ethnic Buriat national consciousness. At the same time, the needs of Communist ideology often took precedence over the local elites’ projects, modifying policies in the sphere of language and culture (regarding the use of a pan-Mongol alphabet). Therefore, the result was the creation of a multiethnic autonomous republic within the RSFSR, which was vertically integrated into structures of Bolshevik control, while displaying a degree of culturally colored nationalism.