Buddhists, Marxists, and Nationalists: Buryat-Mongol Intellectuals in History

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores Buryat intellectuals who occupied prominent positions in political, cultural, and religious spheres during the late Russian Empire and the early years of the USSR, an intense period of Russification, Christianization, colonization, and modernization. Using unique primary sources, our authors investigate how Buryat intellectuals responded to these transformative forces. Buryat intellectuals, from diplomats to scholars to Buddhist lamas, created narratives that drew upon their own history, Mongolian-Tibetan written culture, and the Russian-European intellectual tradition. They grappled with questions about their identity and role in a larger and rapidly changing Russian/Soviet state. Some focused on how to preserve their traditional culture, others sought to create experimental hybrid forms of identity, and others joined the process of creating a new socialist nation that rejected the past. All, however, considered liberation’s spectrum of meanings ranging from equal rights to freedom to release from social stereotyping as outlined in the 2024 ASEEES Convention theme.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Melissa Andrea Chakars, Saint Joseph's U

Papers

• Buryat Deputies and the Imperial Transformations: Bato-Dalai Ochirov, Mikhail Bogdanov, and Baiarto Vampilon - Ivan Sablin, Heidelberg U (Germany)

• Soldier, Explorer, Merchant, Spy?: The Lifeworlds of Tsogto Badmazhapov (1871–1937) and the Challenges of Knowledge Production in the Imperial Situation - Ismael Biyashev, U of Michigan

• Mongolia in the Writings of Elbek Dorji Rinchino - Tatiana Linkhoeva, New York U

• Skillful Means, Romantic Visions: Piotr Dambinov - Tristra Yeager, Independent Scholar

Discussants

• Nikolay Tsyrempilov, Nazarbayev U (Kazakhstan)

• Ivan Peshkov, Adam Mickiewicz U (Poland)