SUMMARY:

This article examines how the Buddhist clergy successfully led a massive patriotic mobilization of the Buryat people during World War I. While secular Buryat nationalists struggled to unite the population, the Bandido Khambo Lama utilized the existing monastic infrastructure to collect unprecedented donations and establish the All-Buryat Committee – a pioneering organization that bridged diverse regional and religious groups of Buryats through the language of imperial loyalty. This clerical leadership was not merely a tool for the state; it provided a self-sufficient political logic that allowed Buryats to enhance their status as subjects while building a foundation for national consolidation. The article argues that these religious networks created the institutional framework and collective solidarity that the secular national movement would later inherit after the 1917 Revolution.