SUMMARY:

Tatiana Skrynnikova’s article explores identity formation among the Buryats. Skrynnikova begins with an historical survey of the Buryats’ construction of the image of Russia (the monarchy and the state), tracing the history of Buryats contacts and coexistence with the Russian empire. Basing her conclusions on the analysis of chronicles and folkloristic sources, the author traces the terms in which Buryats depicted the “White Tsar” and accepted his rule. The Russian tsar was depicted by the Buryats as a protector of Buddhism, a religion that spread throughout the Buryat society beginning towards the end of the 17th century. The author argues that identity formation among the Buryats was influenced by their historic position on the empire’s Far Eastern borderland . On the one hand, there existed a cultural affinity with the Mongols living outside the territory of the Russian empire (up until the 20th century, Buryats and Mongol was used interchangeably to refer to themselves); yet, on the other hand, there existed a political identification with Russia not least because the empire’s protection of Buddhism from the Chinese was seen as beneficial to the religious community. Having surveyed the historical background of Buryat identity formation through the early Soviet period, Skrynnikova investigates cultural politics and the construction of the image of Byryatia and Russia in the discourse of the contemporary Buryat intelligentsia. The author notes that alongside the revival of forbidden or sidelined canons (a rediscovery of the ancient identification with Mongol and Buddhist civilization) there remains an active political identification of Buryats with the Russian Federation and a chance to build a multicultural nation in Buryatia if the conventional conceptual map of the relationship between ethnicity and nation-building is amended to accommodate the phenomena of political identification and loyalty.