Putting Buryatia on the map

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: "Putting Buryatia on the Map : by Janis Cakars : 7 September 2005 : Barely noticed either in Russia or abroad, Buryat intellectuals are calling for the re-unification of Buryats into one republic. : Over the past year, President Vladimir Putin’s government has been harried by a series of public protests that indicate that even if Russians’ voting rights are being reduced, they are still willing to vote with their feet. : So far, these protests have been largely confined – with some exceptions – to bread-and-butter issues (such as pensioners’ benefits, gas prices and teachers’ salaries) or to attempts to take local grievances directly to the president (seen primarily in demonstrations in Moscow by Bashkirs protesting against their president). Even the cancellation of elections for regional governors met with only relatively mild resistance. But now, from Russia’s border with Mongolia, comes a new grassroots protest that directly questions Putin’s federal plans and demonstrates that the Kremlin’s efforts to centralize power – or, in its terminology, to strengthen the “vertical of power” – may reawaken old discontent with the way the Soviet Union’s and Russia’s administrative borders divided indigenous peoples. : At issue is a proposed merger of the Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous Okrug (district) and Irkutsk Oblast (region) and a fear that there may be other mergers that might make Buryats a smaller minority in their traditional lands. At points in the 20th century the Buryats have asserted their national identity, but this is the first instance of a campaign aimed at mobilizing ordinary Buryats to defend indigenous interests at the national level. : TO UNITE OR AGAIN DIVIDE THE BURYATS? : The possibility of reducing the number of Russia’s regions, from 89, for the sake of greater administrative and economic efficiency has been an issue for years, and there is still no definite timetable or final plan for this regional reconfiguration. But in the Republic of Buryatia, an ethnic republic and the center of the Buryat people, there is now a sense of urgency as local critics have been alarmed at the annulment of elections for regional governors (or, in Buryatia’s case, for a president) and changes that require political parties to have broad cross-country representation and larger memberships than previously demanded. In these, and in the administrative restructuring, they see an attack on their ethnic and regional autonomy. : These concerns prompted nearly 2,000 young Buryats to send an open letter to the Russian president in May. Nikolai Tsyrempilov, the leader of the letter-writers, agrees that Buryatia and Siberia as a whole face administrative and economic challenges, but argues that a far-reaching vertical reorganization of power is not the solution. “It is like amputating a hand because there is a cut on one finger,” he said. : The wording of the letter was settled on only after months of discussion on the website (buryatia.org) of the Regional Union of Young Scholars and Scientists. “Every sentence of that letter was criticized,” says Tsyrempilov, who heads the organization. : The effect at home in Buryatia has already been felt. Print and broadcast media covered the story, causing enough of a stir for the government to organize a roundtable discussion on the issue and invite representatives from the Union of Young Scholars and Scientists. : Zhargal, a signatory to the letter who asked only to be identified by his first name, thinks this is a step in the right direction. “We need a dialogue. We should talk about such problems,” says Zhargal. “We shouldn’t be silent because problems can only be solved when people talk about them.” : The Buryat campaigners are not separatists and the region is well-known for its peaceful ethnic relations. Nor are their objections particularly radical: the petitioners are not against redrawing the map of Siberia per se (indeed, they would like it redrawn). However, with a population of around 400,000, the Buryats are Siberia’s largest indigenous people. The authorities therefore have good reason to listen. : What the campaigners are anxious about is the threat to their indigenous culture posed by the reforms. They believe the state has an obligation both to protect their culture and to ensure they enjoy some political power because, as they argue in their letter, “to ensure the preservation of Buryat language and culture without autonomy from the national government is practically impossible.” : They have coupled their concern at the possible further dilution of Buryat communities outside the Republic of Buryatia with a proposal to return to the pre-1937 borders of the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. (The Buryats are a Mongol people living on the north side of the border with Mongolia.) That would, they believe, redress what they perceive as past wrongs committed against them. They argue that in 1937, at the height of Josef Stalin’s purges, the Buryat people were “forcibly divided” when Ust-Orda, Aginsk and other traditionally Buryat lands were carved out of the republic. The letter calls on President Putin “to come forward in the defense of our people to exist within the borders of a united Republic of Buryatia.” In their view, that would be a “victory of historical justice.” : The sense that Buryat culture is under threat partly reflects the fact that the Buryats are a minority even in their own republic – Buryats make up only about 30 percent of the republic’s population. As even smaller minorities and without the political power accorded to ethnic groups in an ethnic republic, Buryats living outside the Republic of Buryatia have only limited opportunities to nurture Buryat culture. : The challenges to the ideas of the Buryat campaigners come not just from Moscow’s potential plans, but from a diametrically different proposal supported by many residents in Buryatia, including some Buryats: that Buryatia should merge with the Irkutsk oblast. A merger with Buryatia’s richer neighbor on the other side of Lake Baikal would, they argue, bring significant economic benefits. Oddly, even the republic’s aging president, Leonid Potapov, has said in the past that he favors the creation of a broad new east Siberian region, although with room for the Republic of Buryatia to be preserved in some form. : For the Buryat campaigners, the experience of the early Soviet era shows why that should not happen and what could happen if other Buryat-populated areas were merged with Irkutsk rather than with Buryatia. When the Republic of Buryatia was created in the 1920s, many Buryats moved there from Irkutsk. The community that remained is viewed as being significantly more assimilated with the Russian majority. : READING, BUT NOT HEEDING? : Erdem Dagbaev, head of the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Buryat State University, is skeptical both about the economic advantages that would come from joining Irkutsk and about the letter campaign. “Young scholars are not a very large segment of society,” he says, adding that their proposal has to compete both with a strong and long tradition of centralized authority in Russia and with modern Russia’s attempt to create a new brand of federalism. : So far, the more powerful segments of society have been noncommittal or have shown a preference for a merger with Irkutsk. Sympathy for Tsyrempilov’s position comes mainly from the grassroots as well as parts of the academic community. : Tsyrempilov, though, believes that the letter-writing campaign has some hopes of being heeded. “Putin may not read the letter, but someone in his administration will.” : The letter is also very much about putting down a marker. “We want our views to be on the record,” Tsyrempilov says. “Besides, we cannot be indifferent to what happens to our people.” : ‘Someone’ has at least now read the letter. In late July, Tsyrempilov received word from the federal government, but not the presidential administration, that uniting Buryatia, Ust-Orda and Aginsk would be unconstitutional since they do not all share a common border. : For Tsyrempilov, that argument means little. “We are talking about re-unification, not unification.” : The issue of “the territorial rehabilitation of the Buryat people,” as the letter writers call it, remains unresolved. Nor will it go away – or that, at least, is the hope of the campaign’s leaders. Only those younger than 40 were allowed to sign the letter, a decision made to show the Kremlin that, whatever the results of this particular campaign, the issue will literally not die anytime soon."