1.
2. The Buryats and their Surrounding
The Buryats and other ethnic groups in Buryatiya
 The Buryats are a people of Mongolian language, physical
type, and cultural traditions.
 Living in Southeast Siberia and Northern Mongolia.
 This book is about the ones who live in the Soviet Union.
 Originally seven tribes.
 In 1979, there were 353,000 in the USSR.
1. 90.2% counted Buryat as their native tongue.
 Buryats have a Mongol appearance.
1. “Western Buryats” look European.
 By 1970, outnumbered by Russians in their territory.
 After the Revolution, the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR was
formed.
 Territory cut substantially in 1937.
 The Russians did not have a conquerors-conquered relation
with the Buryats.
 Buryats voluntarily took up citizenship with the Tsarist
Empire in the 18th Century.
 The heads of the clans taken into the Tsarist administration
as rulers of Buryat population.
 Over time, the Buryats became visibly affected by Russian
culture.
 1918 Trans-Baikal area was divided into Russian and Buryat
parts.
 Russians then began to overtake the Buryat parts.
 The Buryats responded with military action.
 During the Civil War, some Buryats fought on either side.
 Most however stayed out of the conflict all together.
 War took harmful tolls on the economy, and affected the
main religion.
 Communism called for an end of the Buryat religion.
 Monasteries had long become centers of armed resistance
to soviet policies.
 Closure came as general policy of securing the border zone.
 Destroying the church did not only destroy religion.
 In addition, the center of Buryat culture was annihilated.
 This is the background of present relations.
 Does not matter however, as people of the Soviet Union
were no longer considered individual, but as a large group.
 The “bringing together of the people”.
Ethnic relations and Inter-marriage in Buryatiya
 Soviet Sociologists commonly dived the population into three
‘classes’:
 Workers
 Employees
 Peasants
 Categories do not fit as the ‘class’ ‘workers’, includes all the
people who work on the state farms.
 There economic conditions may be closer to workers on
collective farms than to those of factory-workers.
 Buryats were highly social mobile during the Soviet period.
 Buryats were classified highly as peasants in 1926.
 By 1970, half were classified as workers.
 On average, industrial workers and state employees in the
USSR earn more than that of the collective farm workers.
 Buryats occupied influential positions given the population
distribution in the employment structure of the Buryat ASSR.
 Buryats and Russians live in different areas of town.
 Due to social problems, it is unsafe for Russians to walk in
the Buryat side at night, and vice versa.
 On collective farms, Russians and Buryats live in separate
parts of the village or separate villages entirely.
 However, within a mixed population one becomes dominated
by the other.
 There is difference between the farms, as Russian wages on
average were lower than that of the Buryats on the farms.
 Buryat women are less mobile before marriage than men
are.
 Mainly due to lack of military service.
 In Buryatiya, young men do come back to their native
districts.
 Buryat women have preserved ‘national culture’.
 Russian nationality is preferred by children of mixed
marriages.
Population and Migration in Buryat Collective Farms
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Population has declined over the years.
People are moving off the farms.
People are still arriving by choice to work on the farms.
In addition, people are ordered to go work on the farms.
With all the people moving in and out of the farms, there is a
definite lack of people in there twenties.
 Must somehow be escaping to the cities.
Concept of Buryat society and Kinship
 Buryats have extensive kin relations.
 Within one generation, and expanded to the past.
 Soviet political economy has changed the form of kinship
and it’s place in society.
 Political leaders of Buryat defined by their positions in the
system of patrilineal clans.
 Chronicles written by princes, or the lamas closely
connected to them.
 Princes became tax collectors of Tsarist Empire.
 The Buryats defined into Eight Clans
 Hengeldur
 Shono
 Bayandai
 Abazai
 Galzud
 Emkhenud
 Tsegenud
 Bulagat
 Emkhenud not descended from the same ancestry.
Barguzin Valley
 When Russians arrived, the valley was divided by the
Buryats and Evenki.
 Became a trading center with the Russians and the Chinese.
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Famous for its furs and animals.
Famous among the Buryats for its unique mineral water.
Farms range from the bogs to the high mountains.
Now having problems with flooding, this has been growing
over the last thirty years.
 Also, have to combat high degree of weather change over
the seasons.
 Collective farms have grown together over the past few
decades.
Health, sexual life and childcare
 In the late 1920s, Buryats suffered from numerous diseases.
 Leprosy had died out by the end of the 19th Century, but still
invoked fear in people.
 Venereal Disease taken lightly by the Buryats.
 Did not understand transmission
 Low birth rate due to the V.D.
 In addition, widespread V.D. can be linked to the sexual
customs.