1st Edition

Buryat Intellectuals in Empire and Revolution

Edited By Melissa Chakars, Nikolay Tsyrempilov Copyright 2026
244 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

244 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book takes a deeper look at the history of the Russian Empire and the USSR from the perspective of ethno-national minorities. It focuses on Buryat intellectuals who traveled and worked across Eurasia, sometimes crossing international borders into Europe, China, Mongolia, and Tibet. The chapters cover a wide geographic space and address broad themes such as nationalism, identity, modernity,... Read more

Introduction.  I. Scholars, Explorers, and Literati  1. Orientologists, Countrymen, and Lamas: The Many Lives of Gombozhab Tsybikov’s Tibetan Photographs  2. Soldier, Explorer, Merchant, Spy?: The Lifeworlds of Tsogto Badmazhapov and the Challenges of Knowledge Production in the Imperial Situation  3. Buryat Identity, Buddhism, and Cultural Pan-Mongolism in Agvan Dorzhiev’s New-Script Buryat Writings  4. Skillful Means, Romantic Visions: Petr Dambinov  Maps and Photographs  II. Political Activists  5. Buryat Deputies and the Imperial Transformations of 1905–1918: Bato-Dalai Ochirov, Mikhail Bogdanov, and Bayarto Vampilon  6. Mikhail Bogdanov among the Khakas of Southern Siberia  7. Buryat Intellectuals and a “New Mongolia”: Representatives of the Mongolian Government in Germany from 1925 to 1930  8. Elbek-Dorji Rinchino and the Buryat-Mongolian National Revolutionary Project  9. Unrooted, But Grounded: Trajectories of the Indigenous Cosmopolitanism of Maria Sakhyanova

Biography

Melissa Chakars is a professor of History at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, USA. She specializes in Eurasian history with a focus on the Mongolian and Siberian peoples of Russia. She has published numerous articles, an edited volume, and the monograph The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia in English with Central European Press (2014) and in Russian with Academic Studies Press (2022).

Nikolay Tsyrempilov is an associate professor of History at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan and a historian of Inner Asia, specializing in the religious and political history of the Russian and Qing empires. He is the author of numerous works, including Under the Shadow of White Tara: Buriat Buddhists in Imperial Russia (Brill 2021). His research explores Buddhism, empire, and identity among Buryat, Mongolian, and Tibetan communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

"This monograph is an excellent contribution to the history of Buddhism and Inner Asia, with specific attention to Mongol and Buryat studies. Its significance in re-thinking empires and colonial practices also elevates it into the category of a well-written volume valuable for comparative colonial and post-colonial studies. Students and scholars alike will treasure it."

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Georgetown University