[BRIEF NOTE] On federalisms and Buryats
May. 20th, 2010 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldJ. Lee Jacobson's Transitions Online article Siberian Buryats Struggle With Loss of Autonomy"--an expanded version of his Huffington Post entry "Buryats Worried by Future in Newly Merged Territory"--examines how the Buryat of the Agin Buryat Autonomous Okrug are reacting to their territory's merger the much larger Chita Oblast that surrounded it to form the new Zabaykalsky Krai. The Buryats, an indigenous Buddhist people related to the Mongols living in central Siberia are Lake Baikal, face serious threats as their autonomous decrease in number.
The loss of specifically Buryat structures and policies--budgets, funding, education, employment--has hit the inhabitants of both assimilated Buryat enclaves hard.
One source has argued that the ongoing assimilation of smaller enclaves with high proportions of indigenous populations--like the Buryat enclaves, say, or like the northern indigenous peoples' into Krasnoyarsk Krai that I blogged about in 2005--are part of a policy centered on assimilating these peoples, on reversing the Soviet-era trend to create the infrastructure for nations in the form of autonomous government and to revert to a more traditional and perhaps more centralized government. Maybe. Then again, it might also be the case that the merger of these small territories with their larger neighbours was actually a significant money-saver--Agin-Buryat okrug was entirely surrounded by Chita, and a small fraction its size--notwithstanding the Russian government's pressure. Why subsidize small and independently unviable polities, the thinking might go, when they could be passed onto their larger neighbours? Similar processes have occurred in other continental federations, where in Canada there has been a long-standing desire among some British Columbians to annex the much smaller and rather poorer Yukon Territory, while up until 1911 Australia's Northern Territory was part of the state of South Australia and lost it only when failed to develop the territory.
The Buryats aren't in an enviable position. With their two autonomous territories gone, the Buryats only have the republic of Buryatia on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal left as a specifically Buryat polity, but the population of even this polity is less than 30% Buryat. Barring unlikely population changes--the sharp rise in the share of ethnic Yakuts in the population of the Sakha Republic is a consequence of the collapse of Soviet-era migrant populations in northern Siberia, something not relevant to southern Siberia--the future for an autonomous Buryat territory will depend on what the Russian government thinks about this territory's costs and benefits.
Since 1937 the Buryats, Siberia’s most populous indigenous group, have given their name to three administrative regions of Russia. But in recent years that number has been reduced to one. In 2008, the Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous Area merged with the surrounding Irkutsk Region, melding the Buryats into a large Russian population. In 2007, just as the region was celebrating 70 years of autonomy, a referendum decided a similar fate for the Aginsk Buryats. This January marked the end of the transition period, when the Aginsk Buryat Autonomous Region officially lost its autonomy and became part of the new Zabaikal Region. Now, the Buryat Republic is resisting pressure to merge, and Buryats across Russia struggle to maintain their culture.
Though home to a small fraction of Russia’s 400,000 Buryats, Aginsk Buryat was the only administrative region where the Buryats formed a majority. Of Russia’s 89 regions prior to 2005, it was one of only two in Siberia where natives outnumbered Russians. The Buryats, a formerly nomadic people of Mongol origin, with their own language and strong ties to Buddhism and shamanism, have a culture distinct from the Russians who form the majority in the surrounding region. With the loss of the funding and legislative decision-making that came with autonomy, this unique culture now faces additional challenges to its survival.
The loss of specifically Buryat structures and policies--budgets, funding, education, employment--has hit the inhabitants of both assimilated Buryat enclaves hard.
[R]esidents try to adapt to the changed circumstances. Some leave Aginsk for the civil service jobs that have been transferred to Chita or seek opportunities in Buryatia. Tsyrempilov notes an increased migration of Buryats from both Ust-Orda and Aginsk. “People don’t see enough opportunities for themselves in regions without their own budgets,” he said. “Buryatia is the last region where Buryats can have a career.” Others seek advice and comfort from local monks and shamans. Cultural workers – from artists to Buryat language teachers – continue with their work, hoping for the best.
“We have the assignment to save and protect our national culture,” said Bazar Damdinov, director of the Buryat music and dance group Amar-Saan.
Group member and throat singer Leonid Babalaev said he feels some responsibility to maintain his culture. “Since we’ve merged with Chita we’ve had difficulties with finances,” he said, as he worked on a costume on his home sewing machine. “It becomes hard to do a new program, we have to sew our own costumes and we buy our own material. Before, the district would give us 5 million rubles for the year and we were able to work with that. Everything we made working we could use for gas and other expenses.”
Cultural activists in Buryatia, such as Tsyrempilov, are focusing their attention on maintaining the republic’s autonomy through influencing public opinion via the media and the Internet. “Since the Republic of Buryatia is all we have now, we have the duty to [work to preserve it]. We are a small nation and there are not so many scholars among Buryats,” he said. “Buryats look at us and say, ‘We gave you education, please do something to protect our rights.’ ”
One source has argued that the ongoing assimilation of smaller enclaves with high proportions of indigenous populations--like the Buryat enclaves, say, or like the northern indigenous peoples' into Krasnoyarsk Krai that I blogged about in 2005--are part of a policy centered on assimilating these peoples, on reversing the Soviet-era trend to create the infrastructure for nations in the form of autonomous government and to revert to a more traditional and perhaps more centralized government. Maybe. Then again, it might also be the case that the merger of these small territories with their larger neighbours was actually a significant money-saver--Agin-Buryat okrug was entirely surrounded by Chita, and a small fraction its size--notwithstanding the Russian government's pressure. Why subsidize small and independently unviable polities, the thinking might go, when they could be passed onto their larger neighbours? Similar processes have occurred in other continental federations, where in Canada there has been a long-standing desire among some British Columbians to annex the much smaller and rather poorer Yukon Territory, while up until 1911 Australia's Northern Territory was part of the state of South Australia and lost it only when failed to develop the territory.
The Buryats aren't in an enviable position. With their two autonomous territories gone, the Buryats only have the republic of Buryatia on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal left as a specifically Buryat polity, but the population of even this polity is less than 30% Buryat. Barring unlikely population changes--the sharp rise in the share of ethnic Yakuts in the population of the Sakha Republic is a consequence of the collapse of Soviet-era migrant populations in northern Siberia, something not relevant to southern Siberia--the future for an autonomous Buryat territory will depend on what the Russian government thinks about this territory's costs and benefits.
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