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Ivolginsky Datsan (Russian: Иволгинский Дацан) is the Buddhist monastery, Buryatia, 23 km from Ulan Ude, near Verkhnyaya Ivolga village.At the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 18th centuries, Buddhism spread throughout the Transbaikal region. The highest development period for Buryatian Buddhism has been considered from the second half of the 19Th century until the 1930s. After communist revolution in 1917, between 1927 and 1938, all 47 datsans that existed in Buryatia and Transbaikalia were closed or destroyed. Highly learned lamas were sent to prison or were simply shot to death without any trial. Shortly after the world war II, Stalin allowed a host of Buryat lamas, those who survived the purges of the 1930s, to resume the performance of Buddhist rites though on a very limited scale, under the strict control of the state officials and, of course, under constant KGB surveillance. In 1945, the Ivolginsky Datsan was opened as the only Buddhist Spiritual centre of USSR. Several years later the Aginsky datsan resumed operations. According to the Soviet legislation, it was only in these two places that the Russian Buddhists were allowed to practice their religion, and any religious propaganda was officially forbidden. In my presentation I will focus on two decades of the Ivolginsky Datsan (the 70s and 80s). How was given permission to build a Buddhist Datsan and how was selected the place for Datsan; who were these old generation Buryat lamas who had survived from prisons and came to Ivolga and started to build up Buddhist Sangha again. An Estonian Buddhist, Vello Vaartnou, studied from 1976-1987 under the guidance of a number of teachers of Ivolga monastery including a famous doctor-lama Ven Munko Tsybikov and Ven Zhimba Erdineev, and is a rare example of a non-Buryat student at this period. In my proposed article, I introduce the life stories of two Hambo lamas, Ven Zhimba Erdineev and Ven Munko Tsybikov. My interview with Vello Vaartnou casts a brief glance at everyday life and studies in Ivolginsky Datsan, and the old-time events/stories told by the elder lamas to Vaartnou.
The period from the second half of the 19 th through the first third of the 20 th century marks the highest development of Buryat Buddhism. Once a derivative and integral part of the Tibetan-Mongol Buddhist world, by the end of the 19 th century Buddhism in Transbaikalia was subject to conditions that differed sharply from those in the remaining Tibetan Buddhist world. Accelerating modernization and the development of capitalist relations during this period of Russian history, resulted in a revision of the center's politics towards its national minorities, thereby exacerbating internal contradictions within the centralized Siberian Buddhist monastic institution. In 1918, the former head of the Kudun datsan, Sandan Tsydenov, finding himself in the eastern regions of Transbaikalia after 20 years of solitary mediation, laid the foundation for one of the most surprising movements in the history of Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism by founding an independent theocratic government. Despite the fact that this Buddhist theocracy was crushed, and its leader arrested by the authorities within a few months, followers of the Balagat (supporters of Tsydenov’s theocracy) movement opposed the Soviet government until the middle of the 1930's. In addition, indirectly, Sandan Tsydenov's ideas continue to influence members of the Russian intelligentsia to the present day: I am referring to followers of the Buryat Tibetologist, Bidya Dandaron, who founded a religio-philosophical school of neo-Buddhism, and considered himself Tsydenov's spiritual son and successor. Despite the considerable and long-reaching consequences of Sandan Tsydenov's actions, scholars still know very little about the theocratic government founded in the Kudun valleys and even less about the religio-philosophical views of its founder. An extensive legendary tradition has developed around the figure of Tsydenov, further obscuring his true portrait. Until recently, Sandan Tsydenov's personal archive, confiscated by the Buryat People's Duma, was considered lost. Recently, files were found in the Buryat History Museum archives, containing an entire series of valuable materials written in Tibetan and Mongolian, which reveal the philosophical foundations of the Balagat theocratic movement and its historical development. One of these documents is Sandan Tsydenov's diary during his trip to Moscow, as a member of a delegation of Buddhist monks invited to the coronation of Nicholas II in 1896, where Tsydenov grounded arguments for the future theocracy in ideas about the essence of monarchy and the sacredness of this governmental form. Among other materials, the most interesting is Tsydenov's philosophical notebook, completely devoted to his conceptions of power, government, monarchic privileges and theocratic forms of government supported by quotes from canonical and non-canonical Buddhist texts. The reasons for the rise of the theocratic movement, headed by Tsydenov, can be found in the clash between conservative and modernist models for Buryat ethnic development in the first third of the 20 th century. The so-called Volost reforms sparked processes of political nation-building, leading to the preeminence of a new generation of young Buryat intellectuals, who based their goals for the national rebirth of the Buryats on progressive European values. To this end, they united with a faction of Buddhist clergy, gathered around the official Buddhist administration, who advocated radical liberal reforms in administrative and economic spheres of the Buddhist church. Although officially part of the conservative Buddhist movement opposed to these liberal reforms, the Balagat leaders suggested an alternative form of government, sharply differing from the conservative movement's ideology of monarchic restoration. With the fall of the Romanovs, Tsydenov's piety for the monarchy, emotionally expressed in all his essays, transformed into the idea of theocracy. The sacred character of the Russian emperors, who in the eyes of Buddhists were the incarnations of White Tara, denied legitimacy to any form of power not endowed with religious blessing. The fall of the monarchy created a vacuum in the perception of thousands of believers which Tsydenov offered to fill with a local Buddhist form of government, declaring himself Dharmaraja of the three worlds. However, the use of traditional Buddhist terminology should not be taken as evidence of an archaic form of government. Preserved official administrative documents of the Balagat government (meeting protocols, decrees, materials from nomenclature commissions, etc.) demonstrate its debt to European governmental traditions and their inherent parliamentarianism. The theocratic movement reveals fundamental contradictions among the ranks of the Buryat Buddhist clergy, related to the administrative system of the Buddhist church in Russia – the institution of the Pandito Khambo-Lama. Tsydenov's attempt to secure the preeminence of his power by establishing a line of reincarnations (the first of which is supposed to have been Bidya Dandaron) demonstrated a crisis in the system of electing monastic leadership. Despite the fact that this opposition ended after the destruction of the Buddhist church in the 1930's, Buryatia is once again undergoing a new phase of Buddhist development and Tsydenov's ideas are again evoking interest in modern Buryat society.
Entangled Religion. Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Religious Contact and Transfer
From the Faith of Lamas to Global Buddhism. The Construction of Buddhist Tradition in Russian Trans-Baikal from the Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century2019 •
The article invites readers to reconsider the history of Buddhism in Russian Trans-Baikal as a gradual process of negotiation and redefinition that involved different actors: lamas, Russian imperial officials of various levels, Orthodox missionaries, Buriat national activists, Saint Petersburg Orientologists, modern Buddhist reformers and conservatives. The process involved the construction of the centralized and subordinated confessional group out of scattered communities of lamas in the course of the nineteenth century, Irkutsk Orthodox Diocese’s attempts first to downgrade the faith of lamas to idol-worship and then to normalize ‘corrupted Buddhism’, and the ‘discovery’ of the larger Buddhist world by some Buriat lamas and their attempts to bring it back to ‘authentic forms’. The article shows what exactly had brought Russian officials and then Buriat Buddhists themselves to the idea that their religious tradition, which historically was labeled merely as Lamaistvo, is a part of the emerging conception of global Buddhism.
Mongolians after Socialism
Buddhism in the Russian Republic of Buryatia: History and Contemporary Developments2012 •
History of Religions
Buddhism and the Siberian Buryat Chronicles: Stories of Origin, Rivalry, and Negotiation in the Russian Empire2020 •
This article analyzes chronicles by Buryat Mongolian lamas and clan leaders that present a history of the introduction and development of Buddhism in Siberia in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Buddhism helped the Buryats to create a powerful social and political infrastructure for their society as they negotiated a place for themselves in the expanding Russian Empire. The chronicles trace this story by describing how the religion came to Siberia, the competition between Buryat lamas over leadership, and the increasingly important relationship between Buddhism and the Russian imperial government during that time that helped to legitimize and strengthen certain Buddhist leaders and institutions. The article argues that Buryat chroniclers emphasized these topics as a way to support Buddhism in its competition with Russian Orthodoxy, Shamanism, and political ideologies common in the Russian Empire at that time.
The Early 20th Century Resurgence of the Tibetan Buddhist World. Amsterdam University press.
Russian Archival Documents on the Revitalization of Buddhism Among the Kalmyks in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries2022 •
Baatr Kitinov’s paper uses Russian archival documents to examine the late nineteenth century revitalisation of Buddhism among the Russian Kalmyk population. He identifies three stages in this process: 1. 1860–1880, when Mongols wanted to “find” an incarnation of the Seventh Jebtsundamba Khutughtu among the Kalmyks (“Turgut”) in Russia or Olüts in Chinese Xinjiang; 2. 1880–1904, when the Dalai Lama was in Mongolia and Kalmyks traveled to Tibet; and 3. from 1904 to the first years of Soviet power, during which they maintained close contacts with the Dalai Lama. He also identifies three internal factors for the revitalization of Buddhism amongst the Kalmyks: 1. the revival of Tantrism in khurul practices; 2. the presence of Buddhists from other lands among Kalmyks; 3. and the Russian authorities permitting Kalmyks to visit the Dalai Lama in Urga.
2022 •
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a native intelligentsia took shape among Siberia's Buryat Mongols that, combining indigenous and Russian influences, pursued cultural survival alongside social, political, and economic modernization. One of its significant, yet relatively unsung, members was Bato-Dalai Ochirov (1874 or 1875-1913). He is best known as the only Buryat ever to serve in the Russian State Duma (in the short-lived Second Duma in 1907). Yet over the course of his short life, Ochirov also was an administrator, political activist, author, philanthropist, and supporter of culture and science. This article provides an overview of Ochirov's life and seeks to elucidate his worldview, which stressed the defense of Buryat interests using the possibilities available within the existing autocratic order.
2016 •
The paper discusses political importance of religious identity in the context of competition between Orthodoxy and Buddhism in the Buryat spiritual space. Christianization of Buryats, who are one of the biggest Siberian indigenous ethnic groups, as well as other non-Russians in the remote regions of Russia, seemed a necessary tool for strengthening the borders of the Empire under threat from Qing China. While Christianization of Pre-Baikal (Western) Buryats-shamanists was quite successful at least formally, the Trans-Baikal Buryats remained largely steadfast Buddhists. Considering this fact, the secular authorities built relationships with the Buddhist clergy in the framework of the existed legal regulations. However, the relation of the Orthodoxy towards Buddhism was irreconcilable overall the imperial history. The situation worsened at the end of the XIX century, when in connection with the Buryat ethnonational movements Buddhism began to spread among Western Buryats causing serio...
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