The Buryats and the Far Eastern Republic: An Aspect of Revolutionary Russia 1920-22

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THE BURIATS AND THE FAR EASTERN REPUBLIC: AN ASPECT OF REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA 1920-22.

A thesis presented for the degree of Ph.D. at the University of Aberdeen. Author: Cathryn Ann Brennan, M. A. Hons (University of Aberdeen). Presented: 1999.

UMI Number: U113361

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DECLARATION:

This thesis has been composed by the candidate (Cathryn Ann Brennan). This thesis has not been accepted in any previous application for a degree. The work, of which the thesis is a record, has been done by the candidate alone. All verbatim extracts have been distinguished by quotation marks and the sources of information have been specifically acknowledged by the candidate.

signed

Cathryn Ann Brennan.

SUMMARY

This thesis is a history of the treatment by the Far Eastern Republic of the problems involving its Buriat population. The Far Eastern Republic existed between April 1920 and November 1922, occupying the lands of the former Russian Empire between Lake Baikal and the Pacific Ocean. It was a state, established and run under Russian Communist control, with the appearance of a pluralist, property-owning democracy. It was the aim of Soviet Russia to exploit American-Japanese rivalry in Asia and gain American help to evict Japanese interventionists who were occupying the Russian Pacific littoral. The Buriats who came under the jurisdiction of the Far Eastern Republic were the northern-most Mongol people, nomadic livestock-herders who followed the Buddhist faith. The thesis in an essay in complexity, exploring the interactivity of policies and the difficulties of reconciling conflicting aims within the revolutionary agenda. Chapterl gives a brief outline of the changes undergone by the Transbaikal and its Buriats in the period up to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Attention is focussed upon changes affecting Buriat society as a whole; its fragmentation with polarisation of rich and poor and the emergence of an intelligentsia. But special attention is given to changes within the two main institutions of Buriat culture; its nomadic livestock rearing economy and its religious system. These changes originated in pressures from central government policy and from modernisation. Chapter 2 gives a history of Buriat attempts to achieve autonomous self-government during the Russian Revolution, which culminated in its being granted by the Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic. However, establishment of the autonomous administration was highly problematic. Communists would not tolerate this being run by ‘bourgeois nationalists’ of doubtful loyalty, while deep-seated inter-ethnic problems over land allocation and use prevented delineation of an autonomous Buriat territory. Chapter 3 addresses the major problems between Russians and Buriats concerning land holdings. There was land hunger in the Transbaikal. The Buriats sought the return of lands taken from them by the Tsarist government some years earlier. Meanwhile Russian peasant immigration had exacerbated the jealousy of the Russian arable farmer for the comparatively large land holdings of the Buriat nomads and the resentment of the Buriat herder who had lost his lands to the immigrants. These problems hindered the establishment of a defined area over which the Buriats could practise

iv

autonomous self-rule, as well as the elaboration of effective land laws, since alienation of the huge Russian peasant majority would rebound on communist control over the democratic processes of the republic. Chapter 4 gives a detailed account of the practical steps taken to solve these inter-ethnic problems over land, and in so-doing exposes structural weaknesses and inter-ethnic tensions within population, government and communist party. Chapter 5 deals with the attempts made by the republic to repatriate a large population of Buriats, who had fled abroad with their huge and valuable herds to escape the chaos of civil war. The steps taken disclose communist fears over Buriat loyalty, Buriat fears over forced conscription into the army and a whole wealth of problems concerning food supply and animal health. Chapter 6 picks up the theme of Buriat religious objections to conscription, and explores the theocratic movement which these fears helped to foster. There was massive support for the Buddhist church and its many lamas in the Transbaikal and revolution brought the chance to attempt the establishment of a theocratic regime, following the other Buddhist examples of Tibet and Autonomous Outer Mongolia. The communists saw the theocratic movement as essentially counter-revolutionary, led by ‘parasitic’ lamas who did no work but lived off the poor masses. The theocratic movement directly challenged the autonomous self-government which the republic had granted its Buriats, so all possible steps were taken to eradicate it. Chapter 7 presents a different view of the theocratic movement, as essentially a movement of poor people rebelling against rule by their traditional exploiters who had donned the mask of ‘autonomy’ and found niches within the revolutionary regime. The Buriat Autonomous Administration was very short of manpower and many Buriats who had achieved wealth and power under the old regime now found a role in administering the new one. The Buriat poor were suffering in the throws of a major economic crisis and could not pay the large and unfairly apportioned taxes which were levied to pay for the autonomous administration, so they rebelled, and fell in behind the banner of the theocratic movement. The communists, who might have seen these poor and exploited Buriats as their comrades, instead saw them as the allies of counter-revolution. But other Buriats, who did not come under the influence of the theocratic movement, but who voiced the very same objections to ‘autonomy’, became lionised as revolutionary heroes.

V

For my father, A. R. Berry, who set me on this long road in the summer of 1961 and for Lida and her people: may the future bring the Buriats all they hope for.

vi

CONTENTS Title

p. i

Declaration

p. ii

Summary

p. iii

Dedication

p. v

Contents

p. vi

Preface

p. vii

Glossary

p. ix

Map 1 - Russia and her Neighbours.

p. xiii

Map 2 - The Far Eastern Republic in 1922.

p. xiv

Introduction

p. 1.

Chapter 1: The Transbaikal and its Buriats before 1917

p. 11.

Chapter 2: Autonomy

p. 55.

Chapter 3: Land Problems: Theory and Law

p. 108.

Chapter 4: Practical Solutions to Land Problems

p. 144.

Chapter 5: Food Crisis and Amnesty

p. 178.

Chapter 6: Lamas and Theocrats

p. 229.

Chapter 7: The B alagady: an Alternative View of the Theocratic Movement

p. 280.

Conclusion

p. 333.

Bibliography

p. 354.

PREFACE

This thesis is based almost exclusively on Russian-language sources. In transliterating, the author has used the Library of Congress system, somewhat amended so that: Cyrillic e, e and 3 are all represented by roman ‘e’; cyrillic 'M by roman ‘zh’; cyrillic x by roman ‘kh’; cyrillic q by roman ‘ts’; cyrillic u by roman ‘ch’, cyrillic m by roman ‘sh’; cyrillic m by roman ‘shch’; cyrillic h is omitted from word ends, but represented by ” within words; cyrillic h by roman ‘y’; cyrillic l by roman ’; cyrillic

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by roman ‘iu’ and cyrillic n by roman ‘ia’.

There are many Buriat and Mongolian as well as Russian and a few Chinese, words used in this thesis. These are explained in a glossary which also includes abbreviations and other special terms. The glossary offers an explanation of the difficulties encountered in rendering Buriat and Mongolian terms into other alphabets and the variety of renderings which result. Because of the wide ranging origins of words appearing in the thesis, the author has avoided applying the many and varied plural versions correct for each language. Such words appear in italics, and where they are required to express a plural, the author has anglicised this process, simply adding the letter ‘s’ to the singular form. Because most of the footnotes given are of a numerical form, from an archival catalogue, or from Soviet history books with titles which are often formulaic and repetitious, the author had avoided the use of terms such as ibid., op. cit. and loc. cit. These seem to offer endless opportunities for error in such circumstances, so the author has preferred to give a full, and therefore accurate, reference instead of an abbreviated one. Footnotes referring to archival documents which have a complete numerical reference have had their titles rendered into English. Such documents often have an actual title which has little content, for example: ‘Report’, with no indication of subject matter, and date and author left to the end. In such cases a fuller title has been synthesised for the document, to include its subject (for example ‘On the theocratic movement’), the date and the author. This has been done since the numerical reference is enough to locate the document in the archive, and so that all elements useful in describing the document are assembled in a title, rather than using a title which has little content, leaving important details scattered thoughout the document. Documents from published sources, such as sbomiki, have had their titles transliterated from that source rather than translated or synthesised. Articles and books which were originally published in cyrillic have been referred to in the

westen manner: articles have their titles in roman type and within single quotation marks, while book titles are italicised. The thesis is based upon primary source material, from the recently-opened Russian archives and from Russian material published during the period under discussion. The author has leant heavily upon the perceptions of figures most closely involved in the events described. These two factors have made it seem appropriate to allow the sources to ‘speak for themselves’, thus there are many direct quotations. This sometimes leads to a confusion of verbal tenses, as the historian, using the past tense, lets the source speak in the present tense. The author hopes that the stylistic price exacted by this practice will not prove too high to pay for the immediacy it is meant to achieve. Many friends and colleagues deserve warm thanks for the help they gave me during work on this thesis. In Aberdeen these include my mother, Mary Berry; the staff and postgraduates of Aberdeen University History Department; the staff of the Queen Mother Library, especially those involved with Inter-Library Loans; Josephine Forsyth, who valiently struggled with the shortcomings of my linguistic skills; James Forsyth, who gave insight into the history of the native peoples of Siberia, and inspired this field as an approach to the history of the Far Eastern Republic; and my great friends Colin Christie and Murray Frame, whose affections seem to have survived the stresses to which they were subjected. But my deepest gratitude is to my supervisor and mentor, Professor Paul Dukes, who, while patiently and consistently providing the best advice and guidance (and struggling with so many of my translations), gave me the freedom to pursue my own interests in my own way. Many friends in Russia helped and encouraged the work. Prime amongst these are the Ostapenko family, Sasha Barsenkov, Lena Burmina, Boris Starkov, Nona Tarkhova, Artem Ulunian, Dima Fedosov and the staffs of the RTsKhlDNI and the ‘Lenin’ Library. A special appreciation is reserved for Lena Zorina and her family, who helped me to travel to the Transbaikal where I made more friends, especially among Lena’s extended family and Irina Kurennaia of the Pushkin Library in Chita. My deepest gratitude is to my good friend Lida Iril’deeva, who made Buriat life and tradition real and immediate for me and put me in contact with a wealth of modern Buriat historical scholarship. I must also thank my examiners, Dr. Alan Wood, of Lancaster University, and Professor James Thrower, of Aberdeen University. Lastly, I should like to thank Brian Pearce for his inspirational example and for galvanizing my interest in the Far Eastern Republic with a chance remark some years ago.

GLOSSARY of foreign words, abbreviations and special terms: A note on Buriat names and special terms The language of most Transbaikal Buriats at the time under consideration was a dialect of Mongolian, written in Mongolian script. However, literacy rates among the Transbaikal Buriats, although high compared to those of many peoples of the Russian Empire,1 were low enough to mean that the vast majority only spoke rather than wrote their language. Thus, the task of rendering special culture-specific Buriat terms or names, into Russian (and eventually into English), turns into one of phonetic representation. It was only with the establishment of Soviet rule that effective attempts were made to create a written form of Buriat, first using the Latin alphabet, and later Cyrillic.2 This means that many Buriat names and terms which we shall meet in the thesis have a variety of spellings. There are patterns discernable in such confusion, for example ‘B’ and ‘P’ are often confused, as are ‘O’ and ‘A’, ‘D’ a n d ‘T ’, and ‘O’ and ‘U’. Additionally, confusion arose in the transcription of the minutes of meetings, either due to poor handwriting or pronunciation, and this was compounded when Buriat terms were used in exchanges involving Russians or russified Buriats. The justification for such confusion is evidenced by the adoption of several special symbols to augment the Cyrillic letters in modern written Buriat.3 With this in mind the author hopes the reader will tolerate and understand the variety of spellings encountered, as renderings originating in phonetic confusion are reproduced as they occur in the documents and literature. This has been done so that words which are wrongly

1 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 42: gives a general literacy rate for the Transbaikal Buriats in 1897 of 8.4% (16.4% for men and 0.6% for women) rising to 14% in the Aga region in 1908, this figure indicates the predominance of literacy in Mongolian over literacy in Russian (2,863, as against 2,194 - probably lamas - whose first language was Tibetan and only 416 whose first language was Russian). In 1897 the all-Siberian literacy rate, which included Russians and Ukrainians was 11.5%. 2 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), pp. 42-3. Here we also find discussion of earlier attempts to create a modern rendering of Buriat, such as that by Agvan Dorzhiev, and the political implications of language reform - some modernising Buriats thought the language should be abandoned in favour of Russian, while arch conservative Buddhist lamas preferred Tibetan. 3 See Kratkii RussJco-Buriatskii Slovar ’, compiled by Ts. B, Tsydendambaev and M. N. Imekhenov, (Moscow, 1962).

interpreted as being the same concept (or even as a single person’s name) with different spellings can be spotted by readers with superior knowledge, and thus any flaws this injects into the argument may be brought to light. Terms found in the text

ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS (in increasing order of size): ULUS: a veiy small Buriat settlement, territorial unit or community SOMON: Buriat equivalent to the

Russian SELO...a village

KHOSHUN: Buriat equivalent to the

Russian VOLOST’...a small rural district

AIMAK: Buriat equivalent to the

Russian UEZD...a district Russian OBLAST’...a province Russian GUBERNIIA...a ‘government’

MEASUREMENTS: I desiatina

= 2.7 acres

1 font

= 1 pound weight

1 pood (pud)

= 16.38 kilograms or 36 pounds weight

1 sazhen’

=2.13 metres

1 verst

=1.06 kilometres

Burmonavtupr

Abbreviation of Buriat-Mongol ’shoe Avtonomnoe Upravlenie, the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Administration of the DVR.

Bumarrevkom

Buriat People’s Revolutionary Committee.

CC

Central Committee

ChER

Chinese Eastern Railway

Cheka

State Security Organ (RSFSR 20 December 1917- 6 February 1922)

CHON

Special Purpose Units

Dal ’biuro

Far Eastern Bureau of the CentralCommittee of the RKP(b), 1920-25

Dal 'revkom

F ar Eastern Revolutionary Committee

D al’sovnarkom People’s Commissariat of the Far Eastern Soviets (1917-18)

xi

Datsan

Buddhist (Lamaist) Monastery

DVGU

Far Eastern State University (1920-39 and 1956-)

DVR

Far Eastern Republic (April 1920-November 1922)

GPO

Far Eastern Branch of the Cheka/GPU (1920-22)

GPU

State Security Organ of the RSFSR (6 February 1922-1 November 1923)

iasak

Tribute paid by the Siberian natives to the Russian state

inorodets

A non-Russian native

iurt

Buriat dwelling made of felt hung on a trellis frame.

Kabinet lands

Land owned by the Imperial Romanovs - the largest landowners in Russia

khuvaraki

Students or novices in the Datsan

kraikom

Regional Communist Party committee

kraiispolkom

Regional Communist Executive committee

kumirny

Buriat Temples (Probably from the russian word kumir, meaning ‘idol’)

mandala

Offerings from the Buddhist faithful for the upkeep of lamas.

Narkomindel

The RSFSR’s People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.

Narkomnats

The RSFSR’s People’s Commissariat of National Affairs.

NEP

New Economic Policy (1921-1928)

noenat

Group name for Buriat clan or tribal leaders, or Noions, sometimes described as the Buriat ‘princelings’. (Compare with our ‘aristocracy’ as a collective noun.)

noion

Buriat clan or tribal leader

NRA

People’s Revolutionary Army (of the DVR)

obkom

District Party committee

RKP(b)

Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) (1918-25)

RSDRP

Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (1898-1917)

RSDRP(b)

Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Bolshevik) (April 1917-March 1918)

RSFSR

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic

semeiskie

‘Family’ Old Believers, sent to settle the Transbaikal in the eighteenth century.

shiretui

The abbot of a Datsan

Sibbiuro

Siberian Bureau of the RKP(b) (1918-24)

Sibrevkom

Siberian Revolutionary Committee

SR

Socialist Revolutionary

stanitsa

A cossack settlement.

starozhily

Russian settlers long-established in Siberia

taisha

Chinese-derived term for a Buriat tribal chief.

Tsagda

Buriat word for Army

Tsentrosibir

Central Executive Committee of Siberian Soviets (1917-18)

Ulaan Tsagda

The Buriat Red Army which Rinchino tried to create in 1918

Voenpur

Abbreviation of Voenno-politicheskoe upravlenie, the Military-political administration of the NRA, established 4 December 1920.

VTsIK

All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party

Zaisan

Chinese-derived term for a Buriat tribal chief

Terms found in the footnotes Many more archives than are listed here are mentioned in the secondary sources, most archives named in Soviet-era books have now changed their titles, but not their catalogue numbering. D.

Delo - a file within an Opis’ (Op.)

F.

Fond - a collection of documents within an archive

GARF

State Archive of the Russian Federation (Formerly TsGAOR)

L.

List - a single leaf or sheet of a document

ob.

the back, or reverse side of a list (L)

Op.

Opis’ - subsection of a fond (F)

RTsKhlDNI

Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of the Documents of Modern History (Formerly TsPA IML)

Sob. Uzak.

Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazheniipravitel’stva D al’ne-Vostochnoi Respubliki the calendar of laws of the Far Eastern Republic

TsGAOR

Central State Archive of the October Revolution (now GARF)

TsPA IML

Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism(now RTsKhlDNI)

US Microcopy

United States National Archives, Microcopies 316 and 333 (see Bibliography)

FINLAND

M u rm an sk

— BERING SEA

PO LA N D

S t P e te r s b u r g

K Y RG YZSTAN w

Key: 1 2 3

A FG H A N ISTA N

TADZHIKISTAN

Map 1: Russia and her Neighbours.

B altic S e a = 3 K a lin in g r a d

4

LITHUANIA LATVIA E ST O N IA M OLD OV A

5 6 7

G E O R G IA ARM ENIA AZERBAIDZH AN

400

8 0 0 km

X

Map 2: The Far Eastern Republic in 1922.

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INTRODUCTION THE THESIS AND THE FAR EASTERN REPUBLIC The aims of the thesis

Although the author hopes that this thesis will make a contribution to the study of Russian and Soviet nationality policy and to the study of the Russian revolution as a whole, but not least as a cultural revolution, the thesis was undertaken as a first step towards writing the history of the Far Eastern Republic [Dal’nevostochnaia Respublika, hereafter DVR], This means that the thesis is essentially an empirical study. Although the DVR has received some attention in western historiography, the intricacies of its history remain largely unknown in the west. This thesis sets out to throw light on some of them. The study of problems centred on the DVR’s Buriat population serves as a starting point for such a project, as a more generalised and comprehensive work can only emerge from detailed study. Investigation of the relationship between the DVR and its Buriats opens a window on the nature of the republic and the aims and methods of groups within it. The focus

011

attempts to tackle real problems

which occurred in the DVR not only promotes some understanding of them but also suggests issues for future research. This thesis is concerned almost exclusively with the Transbaikal Buriats; those living east of Lake Baikal, who came under the jurisdiction of the DVR between April 1920 and November 1922, rather than the Buriat people as a whole. But it must be remembered that they had strong links not only with the western Buriats of the RSFSR, but also with fellow Mongols, including a substantial Buriat population, living to the south in Outer and Inner Mongolia and in the Barga district of Manchuria. The elucidation of the Buriat experience of the revolutionary years is worthwhile as a contribution to the establishment of the bigger picture of the Russian revolution. Many sections of Buriat society had aspirations which they hoped to fulfil given the apparently open future presented by the downfall of Tsarism, but these represent just a sample of the scope of such aspirations within the wider Russian society. The range, variety and fate of these models for the future is a large part of the fascination of studying the Russian revolution, while the huge differences between Transbaikalian

2

Buriat culture and other cultures of the Russian empire, especially that of the dominant Great Russians, make this a particularly interesting study. The thesis is a study in complexity, in the interaction of factors, particularly in the field of policy generation and implementation. Before the revolution, and during its early phases, many political theorists developed special interests in particular areas of life. Given the opportunity the revolution provided, many of these found themselves in positions to exercise their expertise in the formulation of policy. But there is a saying, running approximately thus: ‘Revolution is a period when untested theory must rapidly be turned into effective policy’. In creating a new world the test of the novel and untried is in turning it into the acceptable and successful. With each revolutionary specialist pursuing his own vision, and forging Iris own career, in his chosen area, there could be very few individuals able both to take an overview of all fields and to direct matters towards an all-encompassing goal. Lenin and Trotskii were probably the most effective of such characters, but over the great expanses of Russia, the influence of such individuals had to be mediated through middle men. As in Chinese whispers, the message was liable to distortion. Besides, given the pace of events during those tempestuous years and the all-encompassing range of matters to deal with, any leader, theorist or visionary would be hard-put to take such an all-embracing overview, or take effective action on its basis. In addition, powerful leaders at the centre depended on local agents and go-betweens not only to effect decisions, but also for the information on which to base these in the first place. So, especially in a situation like the DVR’s, where specific conditions brought not only opportunity for leeway and flexibility, but also a distinct lack of local political coherence exacerbated by intense inter-personal rivalries, policy would often be generated and implemented with less than complete regard for a ‘party line’ or the requirements of other considerations, especially if those considerations were the province of a rival. But aspects of life are not sealed off from one another: the economic affects the political, the cultural affects the military and so on in an ever-widening network. This thesis is intended to illustrate the extent and power of the inter-relation of such a network of factors, mutually modifying and limiting policy generation and implementation. The thesis will address such interactions involving national territorial and cultural autonomy, food supply, land use,

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modernisation theory, the building of political allegiance, the generation of political elites, social control and belief systems competing with communism. Besides consideration of the practical resolution of problems caused by such interactions, special attention will be given to the effects of fundamental communist ideology on the treatment of national cultural autonomy. The underlying question to be considered is: ‘If, as official ideology dictated, culture was the superstructure which sprang from the economic base, and if the Russian revolution was a modernising process leading to the fulfilment of the proletariat’s historical role in building and controlling a modern industrial society, what would be the nature of “autonomy” for a culture, the fundamental components of which (its mode of production and its belief system) were seen as anti-modern and counter-revolutionary?’ Sources and methods Because of the comparative lack of material relating specifically to the Buriats, and because the thesis is concerned with the interactivity of policies, the approach has been pan-disciplinary. Attention has been spread around as many relevant spheres of life as possible, from the more obvious civil war issues of politics, economy and armed struggle, through culture, religion, human and animal health, education and administration, to psychology, mythology and issues of self and other. One very obvious question to ask in a history of the DVR would be ‘How did it compare with Soviet Russia?’ This is a huge question, and while the thesis is concerned with it, it does not address that problem specifically, for, as was mentioned above, this is essentially an empirical study. Rather, comparisons are made between the two states in selected, significant areas of policy, for example, regarding Buriat autonomy and land use, although insights revealed by the thesis elucidate related comparisons. A closely related question, which the thesis addresses, again only with regard to specific policies, is ‘How, and to what extent, did the communists retain control of this pluralist democracy?’ Again, it is hoped that the thesis contributes to an understanding of this problem. To reiterate, this thesis is presented as a first step towards a history of the DVR, which holds many fascinating problems for future scholarship. Until recently restrictions on access to Soviet archives and regions, and ideological constraints upon Soviet historians, would have rendered this study impossible. The opening of the archives, freer travel for foreigners within the former Soviet Union and the renaissance of

4

historiography in the post-Soviet world all contribute to the irresistible challenge which scholars of the Russian revolution, and much more besides, now face. The main source of information for this thesis has been the documentary record of the Far Eastern Bureau [the D al’biuro, 1920-25,] of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, held at the former Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow. The author was also able to travel to Chita, formerly capital of the DVR, and make contact with modern Buriat scholars and the new work they are producing. Also crucial to the study have been many publications produced by agencies of the Russian Empire, the Communist Party and the DVR’s government during, or immediately after, the period under consideration. As an occasional counter-point to the Russian and Buriat sources, material from the archives of the Department of State of the United States has been included. The author has tried as much as possible to base arguments on the primary source material and to let this speak for itself: thus there are many quotations in the thesis. This practice has led to a certain confusion of verbal tenses in the quotes, translations tend to be rather literal and somewhat stilted, while paraphrasing adheres closely to the original wording: in all these matters the author begs the indulgence of the reader, since style has been sacrificed in the interests of accuracy. Particular attention has been given to the perceptions of figures active in the events described, as perceptions are the basis for action. Whether these perceptions always related closely to the truth of a situation could mean the difference between success or failure for a form of action, but a fundamental dislocation existed between the views of problems held by people of different cultural backgrounds and different political aspirations. All these factors add to the complexity mentioned above. With so little knowledge of the subject in the west, and having gained access to such a rich untapped source of primary material, the author has not been able to give very much attention to western historiography, and only a little to that from Soviet writers. Soviet historiography on the DVR falls into several periods. The period from the end of the civil war to the rise of Stalin was very productive in memoir material, and while this is largely concerned with military events and offers little on the Buriats and their problems, it has proved useful. Only a little work was done on the subject during the Stalin period, but a flood of books appeared with the Krushchev era and the fortieth

5

anniversary of the revolution. The latter include comprehensive histories of the Buriats and their lands and have been very useful. Several Soviet scholars of note and talent have studied the DVR since the 1960s. However, while their work has proved informative and stimulating, most have given little attention to Buriat-centred problems. The very small amount of work by Soviet scholars devoted to the Buriats during the period under consideration includes one article openly hostile to a key aspect of Buriat culture (the Lamaist church) and one article which catalogues the contribution of one group of Buriats to the revolutionary struggle. Since the fall of Soviet power, the Buriat people are trying, despite desperate economic conditions, to find an appropriate identity for themselves and establish an appropriate political system, and this process has echoes of the revolutionary years. One aspect of this contemporary upheaval is a cultural renaissance which includes the appearance of several exciting new works pertinent to the period discussed in this thesis. The DVR had several institutions, notably a Constituent Assembly and a Buriat Autonomous Oblast’, which shared names with more famous institutions in Russia as a whole. In using these names throughout the thesis the author will be referring to the DVR’s institution of that name. Where mention of an All-Russian or Soviet namesake is made this will be explicitly identified as such. However, communists were members of the same Bolshevik Party or RKP(b) as their fellows in the RSFSR, and so the term ‘Central Committee’ refers to the Moscow-based institution. As very few of the Buriat-centred problems to be scrutinised in the thesis originated during the time of the DVR, the first chapter of this thesis will briefly outline the history of the Transbaikal and its Buriats before the Russian revolution. The thesis is concerned with the DVR, but the history of the revolutionary years preceding the republic’s foundation is crucial to understanding the problems it had to address. Also, the communist leaders of the DVR were always aware of events which had occurred during the brief period of Soviet rule in the region during 1918, and they used Soviet policy from that era as a reference point for their later actions. Thus, each theme in the thesis will be introduced by a brief outline of relevant issues and events from the period 1917-20. But first it is necessary to give the briefest explanation of the origins, form and functions of the DVR.

6

The Far Eastern Republic

The DVR existed from April 1920 until November 1922. It encompassed the lands of the former Russian Empire lying between Lake Baikal and the Pacific Ocean, claiming the Chinese Eastern Railway lands, but excluding Iakutiia (now the Republic of Sakha) and returning Kamchatka to the RSFSR in 1921. It inherited a multi-ethnic population of just under two million and an infrastructure shattered by civil war and foreign intervention. The DVR was conceived, at the time of the fall of Kolchak, on the initiative of a pan-socialist alliance, the Irkutsk ‘Political Centre’, with the participation of local communists and the agreement of the Fifth Red Army command and leaders of the Communist Party in Moscow. Control of the project very soon passed into communist hands and the republic, declared on 6 April 1920, was effectively controlled by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, through its Far Eastern Bureau, the D al’biuro.1 However, the republic had a pluralist democratic form, which involved the participation of many parties other than the communists, even at ministerial level, until the coalition government was dissolved at the end of 1921. The DVR had its own Constituent Assembly with a very interesting and significant political make-up. Communists took 92 seats; the ‘Peasant Majority’, who were mostly former Red partisans and who fully supported the communists, took 183 seats; the ‘Peasant Minority’, labelled ‘kulaks’, took 44 seats; the Mensheviks took 13 seats; the SRs took 18 seats; the Siberian Union of SRs took 6 seats; the Kadets took 9 seats; the People’s Socialists took 3 seats and the Buriats took 13 seats. It is plain that as long as the communists kept the loyalty of the ‘Peasant Majority’, won during Transbaikalia’s partisan war, they could control the Constituent Assembly, and its successor, the People’s Assembly. The problem would be in maintaining this loyalty, especially over questions crucial to peasant life, such as land allotment.2

1 Other parties had Far Eastern Bureaux, but in this thesis the name ''Dal’biuro' will refer to that organ of the Communist Party. If the name is used relating to any other party, the fact will be made quite clear. 2 B. M. Shereshevskii, Vbitvakh za Dal ’nii Vostolc (1920-1922 gg.) (Novosibirsk, 1974), p. 61. This is an excellent book dealing with most aspects of the DVR’s history. On the Constituent Assembly see pp. 60-7.

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The Constituent Assembly met and deliberated between 12 February and 27 April 1921, and adopted a Constitution which enshrined principles of democratic pluralism, governmental accountability, private property and a largely free market. The supreme legislative body was also to be a freely elected People’s Assembly which created legislation and had the final say over that generated by government. The first People’s Assembly, which met in November and December 1921, was the Constituent Assembly, somewhat scaled down, but reconvened without new elections. The DVR was created and constructed in this form as a buffer between Soviet Russia, which extended its rule to Lake Baikal on the fall of Kolchak, and the Japanese interventionist forces. The discussions held at its conception in Tomsk and Krasnoiarsk (19-24 January 1920), involving the Irkutsk Political Centre, the Irkutsk RKP(b) and the Militaiy-Revolutionary Council of the Fifth Red Army, illuminate the strategy. Akhmatov, the menshevik chairman of the Political Centre’s delegation stated the purpose of creating the buffer republic: ‘to utilise the antagonism between Japan and America’.3 Smirnov,4 speaking for the Soviet authorities, agreed that America’s interests in the Far East dictated an understanding with Russia.5 Creating a buffer state in the Far East would ‘untie America’s hands with regard to Japan’ and provide a ‘counter-balance to [Japan’s] imperialistic plans’.6 Kolosov, the SR zemstvo representative, agreed and extrapolated: Japan needed not only territory on the Russian Pacific littoral and the Chinese Eastern Railway, but also Zabaikalia, the

3 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, p. 401. 4 Smirnov was chairman of Sibrevkom, which governed the activities of Dal 'biuro in its early stages. 5 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, p. 408. 6 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, pp. 406 and 408.

Zabaikal Railway and the coal mines of Cheremkhovo,7 which fueled rail transport as far as Harbin.8 Smirnov added that despite the recent lifting of the Allied blockade and Red Army success against Kolchak and Denikin, the Soviet authorites still felt it necessary to prepare for war in the west, and so sought stability in the east to keep Japan out of any future armed struggle.9 Fearing that other powers might revive their interventionist activities if the Red Army were to meet the Japanese directly, especially as Soviet Russia’s western regions were unstable at the time, the Moscow leadership realised that a democratic, property owning state would allow them to exploit American-Japanese rivalry to assist in evicting the Japanese interventionists. In the process it was hoped to attract American aid in the form of loans and investment, as well as on the world diplomatic front. The DVR also provided a legitimate base for Russian military activity, in defence of ‘democracy’, effectively against the Japanese and overtly against the counter-revolutionary White Russian warlords whose presence Japan exploited. These warlords, the infamous Ataman Grigorii

7 The Cheremkhovo coal mines are west of Irkutsk, and a long way west of the boundary eventually established for the buffer state. But at this early stage of discussion the River Oka, west of Cheremkhovo, was proposed as the DVR’s western border. The Red Army’s swift progress eastwards and the declaration of Soviet Power in Irkutsk intervened to make it feasible to establish the border much further east, along the Selenga River. Although the Transbaikal had its own coal mines, the documents make it plain that the over-riding fear was of a Japanese breakthrough to the west of Baikal, through the Buriat lands south of the lake, giving them access to the riches of Eastern Siberia, including Cheremkhovo’s coal. 8 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, p. 403. 9 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, p. 407. The lifting of the Allied blockade against Soviet Russia had been announced by radio just 3 days before this meeting of the Political Centre and the Soviet authorities in Tomsk, see: Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R.

(Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal

ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, p. 407, footnote 14.

Mikhailovich Semenov (1890-1946) and Baron Roman Fedorovich Ungern von Sternberg (18861921),10 would be the main military opponents of the DVR until late 1921, and the fact that they had the support of important sections of Buriat society has great significance for this thesis. The DVR’s efforts gradually yielded success; Japan’s occupation became untenable and she was eventually persuaded to evacuate from the Russian mainland, while the DVR’s People’s Revolutionary Army (NRA), directed and assisted from Moscow, defeated the various Japanese-backed White-Russian forces, taking Vladivostok on 26 October 1922. The second People’s Assembly met in November 1922, after elections in that summer. It dissolved the DVR and took the region into the RSFSR, but the manner in which this was achieved involved mass deportation, and perhaps even murder, of elected members of the Assembly by the communists, but by that time there was no longer a need to maintain the democratic pretence, as the Japanese had withdrawn.11 Obviously the special tasks assigned to the DVR gave it a particular set of problems, especially in disguising, but at the same time maintaining, communist control over the institutions of power. If the republic had been created largely for American eyes, it was expected to be subject to scrutiny, therefore its internal workings, which could legitimise or unmask its claim to be a propertyowning democracy, were crucial to its status and success. This, and the climate dominating the postWorld War One world, where the Wilsonian principle of the self-determination of peoples was uppermost on the public agenda, meant that the fate of the Buriats, and their aspirations for autonomy, mattered. For communists to be seen to crush, subvert or pervert these or the democratically generated

10 There are very many works dealing with the activity of these two famous figures, any history of the civil war in the Far East includes material on them. Two specialist works are: B. M. Shereshevskii, Razgrom Semenovshchiny (aprel ’ - noiabr' 1920) (Novosibirsk, 1966); and B. Tsibikov, Razgrom Ungemovshchiny (Ulan-Ude, 1947); Semenov’s own version is in his biography: Ataman Semenov, O sebe (Dairen, 1938). 11 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), Doc. No. 101, pp. 501-7 gives an account of communist elimination of SRs before the Assembly; U.S. Microcopy 316, roll 175, frame 0061 (dated 6 November 1922) confirms the deportation of SRs to Moscow and the illegal suspension of articles 12 and 22 of the DVR’s Constitution, which guaranteed a court hearing under the laws of the DVR to those accused of crimes, and the right of those arrested to demand the immediate bringing of a charge or immediate release.

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mechanisms which the republic’s Constitution granted the Buriats in pursuance of their ends, would be a disaster for international perceptions of the DVR. Such action could also rebound onto the plans of Soviet agencies, such as Comintern, to export revolution to the peoples of the east, including other Mongol and Buddhist peoples. In the very first discussions on setting up the DVR,12 very deep distrust and fear were expressed about Buriat loyalty. Japan was ‘striving to create a buffer in the shape of a Mongolo-Buriat Republic, headed by Ataman Semenov under a protectorate of Japan herself.13 Such a state could be expected to include, or aspire to include, the Buriat lands between the southern shore of the lake and the Mongolian border, and thus, the Japanese would have a through-route into Soviet Siberia. The Buriats were already perceived as supplying the power base for Semenov’s Japanese-backed ‘Provisional Government of Zabaikalia’, the brutal anti-soviet regime which had dominated the Transbaikal, only a little to the east of the most sensitive south Baikal region, since summer 1918. So the communists, or anyone wishing to prevent Japanese domination of Siberia, had to deal with the Buriats and their aspirations.

12 Documents and commentary relating to this period and the Political Centre can be found in Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), pp. 373-426. The discussions are also dealt with in J. D. Smele, Civil War in Siberia (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 651-3. 13 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, p. 408.

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CHAPTER 1 THE TRANSBAIKAL AND ITS BURIATS BEFORE 1917

This chapter can only be a brief sketch of the pre-revolutionary history of the Transbaikal and its Buriats. Almost all of the Buriat-centred problems which the DVR had to face had originated long before the revolution and so their histories must be outlined. Attention will be focussed upon the history of the two main pillars of the Buriats’ culture, their nomadic livestock-rearing economy and their religious beliefs.14 The Tsarist government’s treatment of the Buriats and growth of a Buriat intelligentsia will figure in the context of the fragmentation of Buriat society in the period leading up to the Russian revolution. Origins

The famous ethnographer, V. K. Arsenev, believed that the Buriats were a Turko-Tatar group of Mongol origin, who took shape as an ethnic unit no earlier than the second half of the fourteenth century, eventually settling in southwestern Zabaikalia, along the Selenga river and south of Chita in the region of Aksha and Aga.15 B. B. Batuev, while acknowledging that most historical literature

14 As well as archival material, the author has consulted many works to form this brief outline and the bibliography at the end of this thesis may be useful to those most interested. At key points in the text relevant works will be mentioned, but for those seeking a starting point to study the pre-revolutionary history of the Buriats or the Transbaikal she recommends two basic texts: R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964) [this has extensive notes and references, and its early chapters deal extensively with Buriats and the pre- and revolutionary period. The separate Part II is a vast and impressive whole-volume bibliography]; also Istoriict Buriat-Mongol’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954). Unfortunately, although the latter has useful references, they are rather few in number, the volume has no bibliography, but the companion volume, Istoriia Buriatskoi ASSR, tom II (Ulan-Ude, 1959), despite dealing with the period from 1917, contains a very good bibliography inclusive of extensive material on the earlier period. Very useful and informative on pre-revolutionary Siberia, as a whole and in extensive detail, is the 2-volume reprint of the famous work by the Tsarist government’s Migration Department: G. V. GLINKA, (Ed.), Aziatskaia Rossiia, tom pervyi, liudi i poriadlci za Uralom (St Petersburg, 1914. Republished Cambridge, 1974); and G. V. GLINKA, (Ed.), Aziatskaia Rossiia, tom vtoroi, zemlia i khoziaistvo, and tom tretii, prilozheniia, (St Petersburg, 1914. Republished in one volume, Cambridge, 1974). 15 V. K. Arsenev and E. I. Titov, Byt i kharakter narodnostei Dal 'nevostochnogo Kraia (Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, 1928), pp. 45-6.

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holds that the Buriats only began to form as an ethnic whole in the seventeenth century, sets out to explore their deeper roots, using folklore and myth.16 Batuev recalls the work of G. F. Muller (17051752), a German who was interested from his youth in Russian and Siberian history, and who lived in Siberia for about ten years. In Muller’s great work The History o f Siberia he lists the Buriats as one of the four tribes of the Kalmyks, alongside the Eliuts (or Uirats) the Kalmyks themselves, Khoshots and Tergets (or Targouts). The Russian name for the Buriats was bratskie, the brothers, and tradition held that two brothers, Buriat and Eluit, had argued and that Buriat had moved to live near Baikal.17 Muller’s contemporary, I. Fischer, along with several other writers gave similar origins for the Buriats among the Kalmyks. I-G. Georgi wrote that Buriat traditions and language confirmed their Mongol origins and that they were of the same tribe as the Kalmyks. They did not remain long under the Mongol autocracy, and when Russians arrived in the seventeenth century, they moved further west.18 Buriat mythology places their origin in a magical world, but locates them in a world firmly rooted to the natural and the spiritual. In a south Baikal version the divine figure, Bukha-noiow babai, changed into an ox, by day fighting a rival ox and by night transforming himself into a beautiful young man who courted the daughter of the local khan. This girl unwittingly helped the rival to beat Bukha-noz'on babai, who, stripped of his status, was compelled to remain on earth rather than return to heaven. Meanwhile the girl bore a child, and, fearing her father’s anger, she had an archer dispatch the child, in an iron cradle, over the Saian mountains, where Buklia-nozon babai lived. He raised his child, who was to be the father of the Buriat people.19 A north Baikal variant of this tells of two female shamans who were childless. One day they saw the ox, Bukha-woz'on babai, in the mountains with the child in its cradle hanging at his chest. They made a sacrifice to the ox and took the baby, calling him Bulagat. He often played on the shores of Baikal, where he met a boy and his sister, whom the shamanesses tempted with tarasun (milky

16B. B. Batuev, Buriaty v XVIJ-XVIII vv. (Ulan-Ude, 1996), p. 15. 17 B. B. Batuev, Buriaty v XVII-XV11I vv. (Ulan-Ude, 1996), p. 15. Quoting G. F. Muller, lstoriia Sibiri, tom I (Leningrad, 1937), pp. 179-80. 18 B. B. Batuev, Buriaty v XVII-XVIII vv. (Ulan-Ude, 1996), p. 16. Quoting I. G. Georgi, Opisanie vsekh narodov, obitaiushchikh v Rossiiskom gosudarstve, Ch. 4 (St Petersburg, 1799), p. 24. 19B. B. Batuev, Buriaty v XVII-XVIII vv. (Ulan-Ude, 1996), p. 17.

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vodka). The shamanesses took the drunken boys home and the g irl, who had been unable to wake her brother, who was to bear the name Ekhirit, threw herself into the lake, becoming a nerpa (ffesh-water seal, only found in Baikal). Thus originated the Bulagat and Ekhirit tribes of Buriats.20 Another variant has one of the shamanesses bearing the two sons of a bull, and these founded tribes. More tribes took their origins from swans who turned into girls and were unable to resist the cunning of one of these sons, while others believed their founder had been a hunter, who, cheated by his fellows, left to live south of Baikal where he married a swan. She had no children, and told the man that children would only come if they moved south, and after doing this they had a large family. But the mother regained her swan form and flew away.21 There are many more such foundation myths in the rich Buriat oral tradition. Each tribe had several clans, which accounted for their origins in continuations of these myths of bulls, swans, maidens and sons. But more scientific sources placed the ethnic roots of the Buriat clans in the migration of tribes from Mongolia and the assimilation of local Tungus clans.22 Other Tungus also remained distinct from the Buriats, and were most numerous along the Onon river, south of Aga,23 but by the time of the revolution the degree of assimiliation led the Buriat leaders to include the Tungus in their plans and to speak on their behalf.24 East and West of Lake Baikal By the start of the twentieth century the Buriats were a very fragmented people, and the most striking fracture in their society was between those living to the east of Baikal, with whom this thesis

20 B. B. Batuev, Buriaty v XVII-XVIII vv. (Ulan-Ude, 1996), pp. 17-18. Quoting P. T. Khaptaev, Kratkii ocherlc istorii buriat-mongol’skogo naroda (Ulan-Ude, 1942), pp. 9-10. 21 B. B. Batuev, Buriaty v XVII-XVIII vv. (Ulan-Ude, 1996), pp. 18-19. Quoting G. N. Rumiantsev, Proiskhozhdenie khorinskikh buriat (Ulan-Ude, 1962), pp. 148-51. 22 B. B. Batuev, Buriaty v XVII-XVIII vv. (Ulan-Ude, 1996), pp. 19-20. The more modern name for the Tungus is the Evenks. 23 Zh. D. Dorzhiev, ‘Trudiashchiesia Aginskogo Buriatskogo natsional’nogo okruga - v bor’be za vlast’ Sovetov v gody grazhdanskoi voiny’, 50 let osvobozhdeniia Zabaikal’ia ot belogvardeitsev i inostrannykh interventov (Materialy nauchnoi

konferentsii) Chita, 24-25 iiunia 1971 g. (Chita,

1972), p. 232. 24 See especially: Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Doc. No. 15, pp. 15-21.

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is concerned, and their kinsmen living west of the lake. Awareness of these differences is important in understanding developments under the DVR. The western Buriats consisted of two tribes, the Ekhirit and the Bulagat, who called themselves ‘Buriats’. Under Russian influence, from the seventeenth century, their traditional shamanism became mixed with, or replaced by, Orthodox Christianity, under church pressure. With exposure to russifying influences they gradually accepted a settled, agricultural way of life, built static, wooden versions of the traditional felt iurt, adopted the Russian language and lost their links with Mongolia. As modernisation and russification intensified in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Buddhism began to spread west, partly as a more humane alternative to shamanism, and partly as a gesture against russification and enforced conversion to Orthodoxy. Although this thesis is concerned with the Transbaikal Buriats, links with their western relatives were important, especially for the differences in the two economies and for the rise of Buddhism in the west with its inferred antiRussian identity. The 1897 census revealed 400,000 Russians and 105,000 Buriats in Irkutsk region. Of the Buriats 51,892 were Shamanists, 11,526 Buddhist and 45,489 Orthodox, at least in name.25 The eastern Buriats, occupying the Transbaikal, with whom this thesis is concerned, were mostly from one tribe, the Khori, to whom the name ‘Buriat’ was applied by the Russians. As the result of a missionary campaign against shamanism, initiated by Tibetan lamas, Buddhism had become established among them in the eighteenth century. They were russified but little, maintaining their Mongolian links and traditions, as well as their nomadic, livestock-rearing economy, using felt iurts and the Buriat variant of the Mongolian language and some Tibetan. From immigrant Russians very few took language or religion, but a small minority began to raise crops and practise agriculture. By 1897 Transbaikalia had 460,000 Russians and 180,000 Buriats. Of the Buriats 165,215 were Buddhists, 11,954 Orthodox and 2,680 Shamanist.26 The area least affected by russification was the Aga steppe, to the east of the city of Chita, and this became the stronghold of traditional Buriat culture and a centre for resistance to russification.

25 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), pp. 8-9. 26 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), pp. 8-9.

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In 1908 the Aga region held about 38,784 Buriat Buddhists (including over 1,400 Buddhist lamas), plus only 296 Orthodox Buriats, but only 86 Russians.27 Russian settlement east of Baikal Ever since the first Russians crossed the Urals in the sixteenth century the native peoples of Siberia had had increasingly to come to terms with their very different world view. The Russians sought tribute, land, obedience and ultimately cultural conformity from the tribes they came to dominate. While in some periods russification was an active policy, even when this was not the case, the very presence of the Russians amongst them brought changes to the natives’ way of life. Buriats came under Russian rule in the seventeenth century, with the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk. There were several especially significant phases during the centuries of Russian colonisation. One commentator, writing in the time of the DVR, saw Russian colonisation of the Buriat lands as sparse before the Treaty of Nerchinsk, but significantly raised by Russians involved in drawing it up staying on. Some exiles were sent to join them but ‘most numerous’ were immigrants escaping serfdom, taxation, disorder and the persecution of the Old Believers in European Russia. These incomers ‘push[ed] aside the Buriats and the Tungus from the more important river valleys, which became the main centres of agricultural cultivation’, while ‘service people received plots of land in substitution for the grain allowance due to them.28 The Buriats were denied the best land, and the settlers’ plots, with their stands of grain, stood in the way of the free movement of the nomads’ livestock. Bread has traditionally been a very important staple in the Russian diet, and few would willingly do without it. So, by withholding the grain allowance from its service people, the state forced them to grow their own. This may well have been a crucial step in beginning the radical structural changes which, as was suggested by the DVR commentator, were already having an effect upon all the inhabitants of the area before the end of the seventeenth century. But in the mid-eighteenth century the process was to be pushed further, when:

the number of the Pribaikalian peasantry was significantly increased thanks to the immigration into Pribaikalia of the Semeiskie Old Believers [footnote in text: ‘the name

27 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 35. 28 Po rodnomu leraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), pp. 38-9.

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Semeiskie comes from the fact that the Old Believers were sent to Pribaikalia as families’].29 Until the ‘Nikon Innovations’30 [these]...had lived in the Oblast’s to the south of Moscow...Persecutions in the schism during the reigns of Aleksei Mikhailovich and of Peter the First forced a part of this population to flee abroad, into Poland.... Catherine the Second, wishing to colonise the vast expanses on the then edges of European Russia and in Siberia, with a special manifesto, invited the Old Believers who had fled abroad to come back to Russia and settle in the Volga region and in Siberia, promising them various privileges and all kinds of government assistance for getting established in the new places. A section of these Old Believers who had been living in Poland, migrated to Pribaikalia....31

These invited and willing settlers would soon be joined by a group of their co-religionists who arrived in less auspicious circumstances. ‘[On] liquidation of the Pugachev rebellion which had rocked the entire state, in 1775 many Iaik (Ural) cossacks, who had taken part in the rebellion, were banished beyond Baikal...’.32 Among Pugachev’s cossack and peasant supporters there had been many Old Believers, indeed, he was one himself. Thus, three waves of settlers consolidated a large concentration of Old Believers in the area immediately to the east of Baikal, the traditional lands of the Buriats in what would become the DVR. The Old Believers were opposed to state power and its interference in their lives, an attitude common amongst Russian peasants, but particularly firm among this minority on account of their group origins. Oppressed and marginalised since their refusal to fall in line with the church reforms of the seventeenth century, they had come to see the state as the embodiment of evil. For Orthodox and Semeiskie settlers, the mode of production was the family farm, which involved enclosing land and engaging in settled agriculture. This put them in direct conflict with the Buriats, upon whose lands they tried to pursue such practices. Archival information from 1797 gives

29 A modern work on the Semeislde Old Believers is: F. F. Bolonev, Semeiskie: istorikoetnograflcheskie ocherki (Ulan-Ude, 1992). 30 The schism in the Russian Orthodox church during the seventeenth century. 31 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 42. 32 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 42.

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10,228 Russian males (including 2,382 Semeiskie) living in Pribaikalia, which, doubled, would give a population of about 20,000 Russians in all.33 Such conflicts were to become more common with each wave of Russian and later Ukrainian settlement. The later nineteenth and early twentieth century were especially difficult years for the many traditional native cultures of Siberia and the Far East as the Tsarist government turned from using the areas for dumping exiles to seeing them as areas for colonisation by the troublesome and land-hungry peasants of the overcrowded European regions. Legislation from the 1880s initiated this movement of peoples and the Stolypin reforms which followed the revolution of 1905 greatly accelerated the process. An additional complication was the bad feeling which came to exist between the longestablished Russian settlers (starozhily) and the newcomers. In competition with these two Russian communities for the best land, it was inevitable that the Buriats, like other natives elsewhere, would come off badly. Not only did they lose land to the Europeans, but increasingly they came into contact with European culture and disease. This led the Buriats into cultural erosion, the adoption of European ways, including a nascent agriculture, and a widespread health crisis. Cossacks From 1727 Buriats and Tungus were involved in defending the Russo-Chinese border, and rapidly earned a reputation for courage, courtesy, reliability and good-heartedness. By 1731 there were 5,000 inorodtsy in the force and the detachments were granted their own banners in 1735. In the 1760s these detachments were reformed as 1 Tungus and 4 Buriat special cossack regiments, each with 600 men who were exempted from iasak. In the 1850s these regiments became full members of the Zabaikal Cossack Host.34 Such troops were sent to Urga to defend Russian interests: in 1873 against Chinese Muslims, and in 1900 during the Boxer rebellion.35

33 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 44. 34 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 83; and Istoriia Buriat-Mongol’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 137-9: there are very slight differences in these two versions, the latter is the fuller. A volume dedicated to the history of cossacks east of Baikal is: O. I. Sergeev, Kazachestvo na Russkom D al’nem Vostoke vXVII-XIX vv. (Moscow, 1983). 35 R. Rupen, How Mongolia is Really Ruled (Stanford, 1979), p. 7.

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By 1897, 15% (26,782) of Transbaikal Buriats were cossacks, concentrated in the stanitsas of the south western borderlands, near Selenginsk and Troitskosavsk. Due to their constant contact with Russian officers, the privilege of a right to Russian education, which they enjoyed by being classified as cossacks rather than inorodtsy, and the activity of Orthodox missionaries and Russian intellectuals, they were the most russified Buriat community east of Baikal.36 They had lost their clan identities and their traditional clan-based land holding system and lived under military rule and the cossack social order, with group interests distinct from those of other Buriats. This more intense russification became manifest in the early appearance of western ideas among them. ‘The first Buriat scholar’, Dorzhi Banzarov 1822-55, was the son of such a cossack,37 and Tserempil Tserempilovich Ranzhurov (18821918) is described by Rupen as ‘a Cossack and the first Buryat Bolshevik’.38 The Speranskii Statute From the seventeenth century, in return for loyalty and iasak, the Russian govermnent allowed Buriats a great degree of autonomy in their internal administration. This attitude was formalised in the 1822 Speranskii Statute,39 which guaranteed the Buriats, whom it classified as ‘nomads’ rather than ‘settled’ or ‘wandering’, wide self-rule under their customary law, with land tenure on a clan basis according to the traditional model. This self-administration was achieved through ‘steppe durnas’ and ‘native boards’ in sympathy with traditional institutions. Upholding customary law and the system of clans and tribes, the regime forged an alliance with the tribal leaders, the taishas. Zhamtsarano, one of the leading lights of Buriat society at the time of the Russian

36 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), pp. 11-12, tells us that from the 18th century Kiaklita-Troitskosavsk was a centre of intellectual activity, visited by numerous Russian orientalists, one of whom opened a Russo-Mongol school there. Stallybrass and Swan, from Britain, were missionaries nearby, Decembrist intellectuals were exiled there. From 1859 the Russian Geographical Society had a base there and a regional museum soon followed. 37 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 11. 38 R. Rupen, How Mongolia is Really Ruled (Stanford, 1979), p. 141. 39 Ustav ob upravlenii inorodtsev, written by Mikhail Mikhailovich Speranskii (1772-1839), who was appointed Governor-General of Siberia in 1819. Detailed discussion of this legislation is to be found in: M. Raeff, Siberia and the Reforms o f 1822 (Seattle, 1956), where, on p. 89, Raeff refers to the statute itself being found in Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii s 1649 g., 48 Vols (St Petersburg, 1830), Vol. 29, p. 126.

19

revolution judged that the

Speranskii

statute

had given the Buriats

‘substantial

self-

government... entirely favourable to Buriat development...Under [its] protection the inorodtsy were left to themselves in their economic and spiritual development. There was amost no guardianship’.'10 But the leader of the DVR’s Buriat Autonomous Oblast’, Amagaev,41 saw this union between the state and the clan and tribal leaders as turning the latter into oppressors of their fellows: ‘thanks to union with the Tsarist administration, [the noenat]42 monopolised public posts and kept the Buriat people in political servitude’, they ‘appropriated the surplus product created by the labour of individual farm labourers’ and ‘exploited the Buriat masses as a whole’. Thus the noenat enjoyed power ‘without limits, they dealt out justice and punishment and under their rule administrative and judicial arbitrariness prevailed’. Amagaev labelled them as essentially ‘the local princelings’, one of three powerful groups in Buriat society,43 who existed solely by exploiting their fellow Buriats by the imposition of fixed obligations of obrok and barshchina.AAThe scale of such obligations was fixed by the noions themselves and the people traditionally had no rights of protest or refusal.45 Originally the noions had passed on their power through inheritance only in very isolated cases. Amagaev believed that ‘the electoral principle prevailed until the elimination of the Buriats’ clan self-government’. This introduced a partisan spirit between families and clans, with great

40 Ts. Zh. Zhamtsarano, ‘O pravosoznanii buriat’, Sibirskie Voprosy, No. 2 (St Petersburg, 1906), pp. 167-84. Quoted in R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 5. 41M. I. Amagaev was the Buriat communist brought in from west of Baikal to head the administration of the DVR’s Buriat Autonomous Oblast’. Reports and perceptions front him and his colleagues will form a crucial part of this thesis. 42 The collective noun for the noions, or tribal and clan leaders of the Buriats. 43 The noions were Amagaev’s second most powerful group in Buriat society. We shall find he placed the Buddhist lamas first and the intelligentsia third. 44 Obrok is the payment of quitrent, a financial or ‘in kind’ obligatory payment, barshchina is the performance corvee, or obligatory labour duties. Both were traditional ways for Russian serfs to fulfil their obligations to a landlord and traditional Buriat society used the same methods to support its ruling group. 45 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 3 ob.

20

competition to be elected to the profitable position of noion. A man would be elected not so much for his qualities and abilities, but rather by manipulation: ‘the sympathy or antipathy of the electors was gained, [or] more correctly it was bought, by way of sops and feasts’. Amagaev noted that this ‘corrupted and demoralised’ the Buriats and encouraged regionalism, with extreme and corrupt locally-based partisan allegiances developing. So the noenat did not form a unified or cohesive social group. Rather ‘they produced a multiplicity of small party groups’ conducting a ‘desperate struggle for a share of power and profit’.46 But Speranskii’s legislation did not survive into the twentieth century.47 The first years of the twentieth century saw unprecedented upheavals in Buriat life. The central Tsarist government was pursuing policies of modernisation, unification, russification and assimilation. Central institutions and practices were replacing local variants, including the Speranskii statute, which was sorely missed by many sections of Buriat society, and a long, but unsuccessful, campaign to reinstate these regulations dominated the early years of the century. These legislative changes touched all areas of Buriat life, but primarily those concerning land tenure and administration. Administrative change

On 23 April 1901 the Tsarist government promulgated the Temporary Statute ‘On the system of public administration and justice of the nomadic native peoples of Zabaikal Oblast ”, which ended the Speranskii system of Buriat self-administration via the clan-based ‘steppe dumas’ and ‘native boards’, instituting Russian-style local government reforms.48 There was a gesture toward Buriat customary law in the legislation, but its process was to be supervised by the state and it was only to cover domestic and petty matters. Matters involving offences against the Christian faith, the state,

46 RTsKliIDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 3 ob. 47 Many Buriats, perhaps those who had done well under it, as Amagaev pointed out, wanted little more than its return at the time of the Russian revolution The benefits of Speranskii’s statute, and the hardship caused by its repeal, were recognised by the Zabaikal Soviet in July 1918. This body deemed its ratification of the mechanisms of such Buriat self rule ‘a simple act of justice and a duty of the Russian Soviet Republic with regard to the Buriat people’. See: Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Document No. 138, pp. 136-7. 48 Istoriia Buriat-Mongolskoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 383.

21

public order, public service or duties and any other such problem came under non-Buriat jurisdiction. As Russians took charge the leading role of the clan and tribal leaders was undermined, creating an oppositional movement among them, and the idea that the ‘return of Speranskii’ would solve the problems which now beset the Buriats. Problems came not just on the administrative front, for this legislation had a twin in legislation on land reform. Land reform

Historically land holding in Transbaikalia had been established by seizure and use, a kind of ‘squatters’ rights’. This gave rise to an extremely complex web of land relations, with higgledypiggledy juxtapositions of Buriat and Russian communities, often tainted by dispute and resentment within and between social and ethnic groups.49 Although the Buriats had been pushed off the best land by Russian immigrants, they still had vast land holdings until 1900. But in 1896 a review of land law in Zabaikalia was instituted by Imperial command. This dispatched the ‘Kulomzin Commission’ to investigate matters in 1897, and it gathered a wealth of information on the history, economy and cultures of the area,50 following the pattern set by a similar commission to Irkutsk and Enisei Guberniias in the 1880s. On the basis of Kulomzin’s evidence a law, ‘The principal foundations of the land system of the peasants and native peoples of Zabaikal Oblast ”, was issued in 1900. This made land allotments for Russian peasants, Buriats and Tungus ‘proportionate to existing use but not more than 15 desiatinas per [male] head’; raising the allotment above this norm was allowed only in exceptional circumstances such as unfavourable land type or the ‘special...way of life of the people’.51 This last provision seems largely to have gone unused, and when it was used this resulted in a Buriat’s allotment being ‘around 15 - 30 desiatinas per soul’.52 The scale of the devastation this restructuring caused to the Buriats’ economy can be shown best by the simple statement that under the new law they lost around 5,000,000 desiatinas out of the 6,780,676 they had traditionally used. The land seized

49 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 55. 50 The work was published in 16 instalments which began to appear in 1898 as: Vysochaishe uchrezhdennaia pod predsedatel ’stvom stats-sekretaria Kulomzina Komissiia dlia issledovaniia zemlevladeniia i zemlepol ’zovaniia v Zabaikal ’skoi Oblasti. 51 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 56. 52 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 57.

22

from them went to form ‘re-settlement plots’ for immigrants or was absorbed into the Kabinet lands,53 the personal property of the Tsar, as chief landlord of Russia.54 By 1913 the Nerchinsk Kabinet lands amounted to over 24,000,000 desiatinas, and much of this was designated as cossack migration lands and allotments for peasants, but apart from these, 10,000,000 desiatinas were still at the Tsar’s personal disposal. This vast tract occupied the four eastern-most Uezds of Zabaikal Oblast’-. Chita, Aksha, Nerchinsk and Nerchinskii-Zavod, as well as all the eastern part of Verkhne-Udinsk Uezd and a further section in its west. It held great mineral wealth in gold, silver, lead, iron, tin, copper, mercury, platinum, gemstones, brown coal, salt and soda lakes, all the property of the Tsar.55 The Zabaikal land reform, with its seizure of traditional Buriat lands, added to the threat to the status of the traditional Buriat leaders and wrought havoc throughout the Buriat economy. The B uriat economy The immigrant Russian settlers of the eighteenth century had taken the best land from the Buriats for growing grain and this had forced a reduction in their herds.55 From 1819 officials dealing with taxation and levies felt able to delineate 4 Buriat groups in terms of wealth. These they labelled ‘richest’, ‘properous’, ‘those having only small numbers of machines or animals’ and ‘the utterly poor, the old, sick and orphan children’. The richest might own thousands of animals, bringing in thousands of rubles, and sow up to 100 desiatinas of grain. In 1838 the leader of the Khorinsk57 Buriats ordered that the rich and prosperous were to assist the poor by ‘loaning’ them grain, horses

53 For information on the Kabinet lands see: G. V. Glinka, (Ed.), Aziatskaia Rossiia, tom pervyi, liudi i poriadki za Uralom (St Petersburg, 1914. Republished Cambridge, 1974), pp. 388-439. This is mostly concerned with the major holding in the Altai, but for information on the Zabaikal (Nerchinsk) Kabinet lands see ibid pp. 430-9. 54 Istoriia Buriat-Mongolskoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), pp. 382-3. Here we also find that Soviet historiography puts this massive change in land allotment down to Tsarist fears over a rising peasant movement in European Russia threatening the landlord classes in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. 55 G. V. Glinka, (Ed.), Aziatskaia Rossiia, tom pervyi, liudi i poriadki za Uralom (St Petersburg, 1914. Republished Cambridge, 1974), p. 430-2. 55 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 81. 57 The Khorinsk region will play a large part in the problems which the DVR had to address, so examples of how its socio-economic structure emerged are important here.

23

and equipment to sow small plots of land. In return the poor were obliged to work for their benfactors, and so a form of tied labour emerged among the Khorinsk Buriats.58 By 1897 the gap between rich and poor in the Khorinsk region was pronounced. The poor, owning either no cattle or less than 14 head, accounted for 32.7% of all the households; 22.8% of households were considered ‘prosperous’, having 40 or more cattle, and between 50%-70% of these hired labourers. But the poor declared themselves unable to grow grain due to their poverty; rather they had to hire out their plots and work on the farms of others, for wages, purchasing bread for their families.59 This pattern of economic polarisation emerged throughout the Buriat regions. The very rich might own several thousand animals, hire several workers and lend money at up to 60% interest. By 1897 48% of even ‘prosperous’ farms in the Aga region employed hired labour from among the ‘poor’ group. The poor were in despair, and went to work as gold miners and carriers but mostly on the farms of their rich neighbours. Among a whole list of tragic examples there are several from the Dogoi region of Aga.60 In 1897 one poor Buriat with a family of 5, owning very few animals, was forced to work by the month for wages, while another, with a family of 6 and even fewer animals, had to send his son out to work for wages, while he himself had worked for 9 years in a cossack settlement 200 versts from home.61 Tilings in Aga would worsen, for in 1908 20.7 % (1,617) of all Buriat farms (7,754) were labelled as poor, while 444 had no livestock compared to 27 in 1897.62 DVR sources throw light on the changing Buriat economy around the start of the twentieth century. Amagaev characterised the Buriats as being livestock-breeders and to a ‘very insignificant degree’ partial livestock-breeders, meaning that a very few had begun to raise crops.63 The 1897 work

58 Istoriia Buriat-Mongol’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), pp. 210-2. 59 Istoriia Buriat-Mongol’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 307. 60 Like the Khorinsk region, mentioned above, Dogoi will feature in the work of this thesis, and the emergent pattern of socio-economic relationships is important. 61 Istoriia Buriat-Mongol ’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 312-4. 62Istoriia Buriat-Mongol ’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 376. 63 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 24 ob. Amagaev had produced a similar report about nine months earlier and in many instances he gave the same information in both. By and large the later report was fuller and more detailed, but significant differences in data occur, which will

24

of the Kulomzin commission had categorised 97.8% of Zabaikal Oblast”s Buriats as being ‘earners’, with about one fifth occupied in agriculture, almost four fifths in livestock-rearing and only 0.1% in other trades.64 The Buriats owned 1,533,435 head of livestock which constituted 49.18% of all the livestock in Zabaikal Oblast’, at a time when other groups outnumbered Buriats by five to one.65 In 1897, out of the 26,604 Buriat ‘farms’ in Zabaikal Oblast’,66 45.4% had absolutely no plough-land, and were exclusively livestock-breeders.67 Of the remaining 58%, three-quarters had no more than

be pointed out, the most obvious of which is in statistical evidence. As a possible explanation on LL. 25-25 ob. Amagaev points out that it is necessary to adjust the statistics from pre-DVR times to account for the fact that the Selenginsk Aimak, which had formed part of the old Zabaikal Oblast’, was split in 1920 between the DVR and the RSFSR. He gives the number of head of livestock which must be excluded because of this factor as 248,340, out of the 1,333,682 which was the total for Zabaikal Oblast’ in 1916. However, as will be observed below, this does not account for all the discrepancies, as he also gives the 1916 figure as 1,337,606 head on L. 24 ob. Amagaev’s earlier version is: RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, quoting L. 1 on the point about division between livestock rearing and agriculture. 64 This was according to a 4-point scale for categorising occupation, worked out by Mendeleev. RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 24 ob.; RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 1. 65 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 24 ob.; In his earlier report Amagaev had presented a different set of figures: 1,777,089 head, constituting 50.1% of the Zabaikal total, see RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L.l. 66 The word ‘farm’ is used here to denote an economic unit, a household working and travelling together. The Buriats were traditionally nomadic, grazing their herds over clan or community lands. In Amagaev’s words their economy was ‘based on free land tenure’. See RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 1 ob. 67 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 24 ob.; Again, in his earlier report Amagaev gave different figures: 31,962 for the total number of farms, of which 42% had no ploughland, see

25

four desiatinas of ploughland per farm.68 On average one Buriat farm had 1.93 desiatinas of ploughland.69 But since 1897 profound changes had occurred at an accelerating rate, so that by the census of 1916 the Buriat economy had declined overall, but had shown a development of agriculture. Amagaev observed that by 1916 the Buriat livestock-holding had fallen to 1,337,606 head, representing a 13% fall in 19 years.70 As the overall livestock numbers in Zabaikalia had increased by 9.6%, from 3, 550,819 head to 3,890,758, the Buriat share of the Oblast’ herd was in very serious decline.71 Meanwhile, in the same period, Buriat holdings of ploughland increased from 50,513 desiatinas to 78,029, a growth of 54%, with an average holding of 2.6 desiatinas per farm.72 However,

RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 1. 68 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 24 ob.; Again, in his earlier report Amagaev gave a different percentage - 58%, see RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 1 ob. 69 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 24 ob.; The earlier report gave the figure as 0.98 desiatinas, see RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. lob. 70 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 24 ob.; Again, this figures differ from those in the earlier report which gave: 1,167,067 head in 1916, which Amagaev mis-interpreted (from his own figures) as a decline of 16.3% in nineteen years from the 1897 figure of 1,777, 089, in fact, on these figures the fall was about 34.5%, see RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 1 ob. 71 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 24 ob. 72 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 24 ob. and 25.

26

during the same period the overall sown area in relation to ploughland had decreased from 62.4% in 1897 to 47.4% in 1916.73 Amagaev calculated that whereas in 1897 there had been 1,105 head of livestock per 100 people, by 1916 this had fallen to 893, a fall of 19%.74 This fall was not uniform across all types of animal. He produced statistics to illustrate changes in the Buriats’ holdings of different livestock, pointing out the fall in number of key animals: horses, cattle and, to a lesser extent, sheep:75

1897

1916

% growth

% of distribution of live

or decline

1897

1916

Horses

217,670

165,203

-24.1

14.2

12.4

Horned cattle

643,515

551,620

- 14.3

41.9

41.4

Sheep

574,362

506,976

- 11.8

37.5

38.0

Goats

90,473

98,362

+ 8.7

5.9

7.3

Pigs

1,647

4,977

+ 202.2

0.1

0.4

Camels

5,778

6,534

+ 13.1

0.4

0.5

1,573,435

1,33,672

-13.0

100.0

100.0

This change from cattle-rearing to agriculture is spectacular in its scale, especially considering the degree of cultural upheaval and change to the Buriat lifestyle which is implied. However, this change seems even more noteworthy as, during the later part of the period under consideration, i.e. during the Great War, the Tsarist government entered into a major contract with Mongolia for the supply of meat to the Russian Army.76

73 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, quoting L. 25. 74 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ” dated November 1922, L. 25 ob. and 26. 75 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast” , dated November 1922, quoting L. 25 ob. 76 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 78, tells us that this ‘Mongolian Expedition’, led by the explorer, Kozlov, bought 63,000 animals in 1915, 175,000 in 1916 and 100,000 in 1917. This contract may have been necessitated in part by the changes in the Buriat economy, but there is the chance that the Mongolian deal was part of a Russian

27

However, these massive fluctuations in the livestock holding must be seen against a background of animal epidemics which ravaged the area. Cattle plague, or rinderpest,71 could come across the border from Mongolia, appearing first in Bichura in 1857, but sweeping all the Pribaikal region in 1870. A DVR source from 1922 tells us that in 1890 and again in 1897 it wiped out the entire Pribaikal herd. Tilings improved from 1899, with the opening of the Chita ‘anti-plague station’,

Govermnent plan to tie the emergent independent Mongolia even more closely to it, as part of Russia’s contest with China for dominance there. If this were the case, the meat contract may even have contributed to the decline in Buriat cattle-ownership by taking away the state market. Unfortunately the data presently available does not allow a close examination of the wartime statistics. However, a source from the communist administration of the DVR gives an indication that, if we believe Amagaev’s figures, the first two years of the Great War saw an increase in the rate of decline of the Buriat livestock-rearing economy, since between 1897 and 1914 the number of livestock on a Buriat farm had fallen by 20%. See: Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 55. It must be mentioned at this point that Po rodnomu kraiu... must be viewed as a source with caution, since it differs from other sources quite often, although not by much. The author quotes it often since it was an official DVR source and so indicates DVR govermnent perceptions of a variety of issues. Also, it must be pointed out that Amagaev, despite his obviously impressive intellect, was not always the very best at maths. This author has had to correct his work for tables used in the thesis, since he made simple errors in the transposition of lines of numbers. 77 A modern, western veterinary textbook tells us that rinderpest, a highly contagious viral disease still known by the alternative name of ‘cattle plague’, is still regarded very seriously, still occurs in plague form and still may have mortality rates of up to 90%. It affects swine and all ruminants, significant for the Transbaikal due to the presence of many wild and domestic deer, reindeer and marals, the Manchurian deer farmed by Russian settlers for their antlers which were valued in Chinese medicine. Rinderpest is spread via inhalation and ingestion of food contaminated with discharges from infected animals and there is also the possibility that carcase meat may spread the virus, especially to pigs. Treatment is still ineffective, and eradication must involve quarantine measures, limiting the movement of live animals and fresh animal products, as well as mass slaughter.

Vaccines are

effective, but there are problems in finding which vaccine is appropriate for the level of immunity which may already be present, and there is a risk of activating existing latent infections. Rinderpest is regarded historically as having been ‘among the most devastating of cattle diseases’ and in modern times ‘still has more influence on the world’s food supply than any other animal disease...’. See Blood, D. C., Radostits, O. M., and Henderson, J. A., Veterinary Medicine, A Textbook o f the Diseases o f Cattle, Sheep, Pigs, Goats and Horses (6th Edition: Eastbourne, 1983), pp. 746-50.

28

which succeeded in promoting a vaccination program.78 Inevitably the years of world war, revolution and civil war would disrupt efforts at control and this massive problem would recur. But, overall Amagaev felt able to comment of the Buriat economy: ‘The percentage of those without farms (those not having cattle and working implements) is extremely small. There are almost no complete proletarians as in other nationalities, and also there are none who are destitute.’79 The Russian peasant economy Russian peasants had also been given a land norm of 15 desiatinas, but this did not suffice and clashes with Buriats over land holdings were often ‘accompanied by murders and the burning of dwellings’. To ease matters attempts were made to improve yields by forming co-ops and modernising methods. Between 1904 and 1910 the number of reaping machines on peasant farms in Zabaikalia increased by 7 times, mowing machines by 8.6 times, and ploughs by 35 times.80 We learn of the results from the first Zabaikal Oblast’ rural-economic congress. Attended by 358 people, including local delegates from peasants, cossacks and inorodtsy, and specialists including co-op workers, vets, agronomists and foresters, it was held in Chita between 1 and 10 March 1912. The ‘burning’ land question, most acute in Pribaikalia, was central to its work. For some Russians land hunger had led to total collapse, so that a Russian peasant might have to leave his farm ‘for wages and abandon his children’. Many Russians saw the only solution as increasing their holdings by additions from the Buriat lands. The Buriats protested that their nomadic livestock-rearing, already suffering from loss of pasture, demanded extensive land, and that much of their land was no good for raising crops anyway. They expressed bewilderment and dread of the future in the light of the impossibility of running their economy under the new land norms, and begged to be allowed to keep and consolidate their lands, continuing as nomads, as ‘their forefathers had been, from time

78 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 75. 79 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L.2. 80 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 56; on p. 72 we learn that in 1901 [or possibly 1904 - the text is very indistinct. C.B.] Zabaikalia (including Pribaikalia) had 735 ploughs, by 1910 this reached 17,040, and by 1917 in Pribaikalia alone there were 17,996 ploughs.

29

immemorial’.81 In fact many Russians rented land from Buriats, and in such areas, like the Chikoi, Selenga and Khilok valleys, the relationship was pulling the Buriats into arable farming.82 But the picture was further complicated because Transbaikalia’s climate and geology made land use problematic. Large areas were unsuitable for ploughing, and the weather could ruin a crop in minutes.83 The region’s grain economy was in crisis. One delegate, with 80% of Iris neighbours raising grain, observed that even so, Zabaikalia was often short of grain and local ploughs would be museumpieces in other countries.84 Pribaikal’s 1897 total of 225,789.3 desiatinas of ploughland would rise to 330,431.1 by 1917, but yields varied greatly due to the unpredictable climate. In 1914 the yield of

81 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 57. 82 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 71, Here we also learn that in 1917 out of all the sown area in Pribaikal Oblast’ (169,232.3 desiatinas) the inorodtsy (cossack and non-cossack) sowed 36,764.2 desiatinas, of these the greatest area was in Verkhne-Udinsk region (13,139 desiatinas'). At this time the old settlers sowed 125,070 desiatinas, the migrating peasants 1,137 desiatinas and Russian cossacks 6,261.1 desiatinas. The Oblast’ had 46,998 farms in 1917 out of which 9,206 rented ploughland. The largest part of this was in Verkhne-Udinsk, Petrovskii-Zavod and

Bichurskii

regions, where there was most land hunger. The biggest number of farms obliged to rent land was among peasants i.e. 7,803 farms out of the 9,206 of all land-renting farms in 1917, mostly rented from inorodtsy. 83 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), pp. 68-70: Here an analysis of the climate and geography of Pribaikalia concludes: ‘Thus the climatic conditions of Pribaikalia are little favourable for agriculture’ [p. 69], Soil types were very variable with gravelly and rocky soil no good for agriculture. On the weather our source says: ‘In Pribaikalian agriculture the decisive factors are very often bad weather, floods and damage done by hail. Damage from these usually happens in the period of the ripening and harvest of the grain’ [p. 70], An irony which may emerge from this thesis is that while Russian agriculturalists envied the Buriats their land, it was often unsuitable for raising crops, and would have been no good to them. We shall see that communist modernisers wanted to turn the Buriats from livestock-rearing to settled agriculture, but perhaps the traditional Buriat ways were appropriate and efforts at modernisation would be of limited value. If we consult the internet a modern official source says of Buriatia today: ‘The region is located in a geographical zone unfavourable for agriculture...Buriatia has well developed beef and dairy farming and wool production...’. See: http: //www.bcs.ru/englisli/press/regions/bur. htm 84 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 58.

30 spring-sown grain per desiatina was 60.4 poods, but in 1917 this fell to only 38.3 poods ,85 The Russians increasingly kept livestock, but land for haymaking was in short supply. Most haymeadows belonged to the Buriats, so, lacking hay, the Russians fed their animals on straw with ‘posypka’, or threshed mildewed grain, in winter.86 But there was also a broader crisis, involving widespread drunkenness, lack of educational, health, agronomic and veterinary facilities, poor communications and a weakness of the handicraft industries. Govermnent officials were unable to assist the economy and this provoked calls for the introduction of zemstvo self-government.87 Modernisation With the intensification of economic polarisation among the Buriats, and especially after the legislative changes at the turn of the centuiy, modernisation, in the sense of industrial and waged labour, urbanisation and contact with the outside world, came in apace. Just before 1900, the building of the Zabaikal section of the Trans-Siberian Railway employed about 3,000 Buriats among its 23,000 workforce,88 and on the eve of the Great War Buriats worked alongside Russians to build its second track.89 The railway itself boosted capitalisation, extraction and manufacturing industries, urbanisation, technological innovation and immigration from the west. The government’s Resettlement Administration set out to attract European Russians to the area, especially to the extraction indutries of the Nerchinsk Kabinet lands, much of which had belonged traditionally to the Buriats.90 In Zabaikalia 49 new villages were built along the railway.91 Zabaikalia’s 1897 population of 664,071 reached 976,229 by 1914, while its urban population rose by 339%, from 5.6% of the 1897

85 Po rodnomu Jcraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), pp. 71-2 86 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), pp. 74-5. 87 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 59. On p. 73 we learn that the first body offering agricultural advice and assistance to the Zabaikalian peasants was set up in 1911. In 1914 the Resettlement Administration, and in 1916 the Cossack Administration, also set up agencies to assist the peasants with modernisation. 88 Istoriia Buriat-Mongol ’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 369. 89Istoriia Buriat-Mongol ’skoi ASSR, tom 1 (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 421. 90 The production of the 3 volumes of Glinka’s Aziatskaia Rossiia in 1913 was part of the effort by the Resettlement Administration to attract migrants to Siberia. 91 Istoriia Buriat-Mongol 'skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 374.

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total to 13.5% in 1914; this gave a huge boost to the grain market, but the crisis over land holdings prevented the rural economy from responding properly.92 Meanwhile the Russo-Japanese war brought intense military (and related supply) activity to the region.93 With all this came western ideas and the rise of a proletariat, especially on the railway and in the mines. Young Buriats might live in towns, meet industrial workers and political exiles, study in Russian schools, and even travel west to attend university. Amagaev thought industry had touched Transbaikalia but little, and its Buriats even less:

[Among the Buriats] large-scale industry is not carried on at all; light handicraft industry is at the stage of its initial conception and development, trades such as blacksmiths, gold and silversmith work, and so on, have no industrial significance and have an exclusively secondary character. In general, industry, as a differentiated branch of the national economy is absent among the Buriat population, and the capitalist system of economy, in the literal meaning of this word, still has not touched it.94

He observed that, as a Marxist would have expected, this lack of economic development had repercussions on the social and political life of the Buriats. He thought most Buriats had the ‘typically petty-bourgeois’ outlook of ‘small proprietors’. There was ‘a lack of class differentiation, of sharp and definitely marked class stratifications and consequently, of intense class struggle’. Buriat society enjoyed a ‘distinctive harmony of interests’ due to these factors and the ‘persistent “sacred traditions” of the past (the clan system)’.95 However, having decided that Buriat society was not differentiated along class lines, Amagaev could still discern three ‘separate social groups, each with its own special interests, its own

92 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922). p. 55. 93 Modernisation during this period is a vast subject, beyond the scope of this introduction. There is a very worthwhile summary in Istoriia Buriat-Mongol ’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), pp. 368-81. 94 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L.2. 95 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 2.

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ideology and playing an active role in the lives of the people’. In descending order of influence these were the Buddhist lamas, the noions (or kulaks as Amagaev called them), and the intelligentsia.96 Religion This was the second fundamental element in the culture of the Transbaikal Buriats. Athough they had not shared a mass religion in common with their western fellows during the previous two centuries, developments in Irkutsk region in the twentieth century would sharpen communist anxieties on the subject when they came to power. Shamanism This traditional belief system of the Buriats had been pushed aside to a great extent in Transbaikalia with the arrival of Buddhism, but in truth the latter had incorporated many features of the old belief. Shamanism’s emphasis on magic, and an irritation with some aspects of Buddhism, such as its use of the Tibetan language, unintelligible to many lay Buriats, led to a minor revival of the old practices in the early years of the twentieth century. The leading Buriat commentator of the day, Zhamtsarano, noted that often Buddhist lamas would offer an overt amalgam of the two faiths, or allow shamanic ritual rather than alienate the laymen.97 On an intellectual level the revival of shamanism in the Transbaikal may be seen as what Rupen calls ‘nativism’, a form of resistance against the threat of losing cultural identity under pressure from more dominant incomers.98 A parallel movement, between Christianity and Buddhism, occurred for much the same reasons, west of Baikal. Orthodoxy By the 1689 treaty, Russians were forbidden to compel Buriats to convert to Orthodoxy, but this prohibition was increasingly ignored during the nineteenth century.99 Archbishop Veniamin of Irkutsk (1873-1890), an advocate of forced conversion, saw this as a necessary part of russification: ‘a baptised Buriat is not a Buriat, but a Russian, as he himself must recognise’. Compulsion was augmented by inducement; under Veniamin only Orthodox Buriats got official posts. During his

96 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting LL. 2-4 ob. 97 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), pp. 39-40. 98 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 40-2. 99 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 9.

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tenure the number of churches in Irkutsk Gubemiia rose by a third.100 The policy continued after Veniamin’s time, but in 1898 there began signs of a Buriat backlash. Irkutsk Buriats petitioned the Transbaikal’s Bandido Khambo Lama (head of the Buddhist church in Russia), for permission to build a Buddhist Datsan. From the first years of the new century, under the pressure of intense russification, the western Buriats increasingly converted to Buddhism in part as a more spiritual and less barbaric alternative to shamanism,101 but very much as a marker of Buriat identity and a non-violent statement of anti-Russian sentiment. This tendency accelerated from 1905, in response partly to the upheaval of the revolution and partly to the Tsar’s ‘Act of Toleration’ of 17 April 1905, which granted effective freedom of religion.102 In 1913 Serafim, Archbishop of Irkutsk, reported that all the district’s baptised Buriats had turned to Buddhism.103 This great surge in Buddhism west of the lake would be a concern for those who would have to deal with Buriat issues during the time of the DVR. Buddhism Buddhism had arrived in Transbaikalia in 1712 with a missionary expedition of 50 Tibetan lamas. It was well received and in 1730 the first Lamaist monastery, or Datsan, was built at Tsongol’sk, near the Selenga river. Official figures from 1741 show 11 Datsans with 150 lamas. In that year the Russian govermnent formalised the status of these lamas, allowing them to practise their

100 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 9. 101 Given the rise of education among the western Buriats and the emergence of an educated and enlightened elite, many must have come to doubt traditional shamanic beliefs and some of the rituals must have become unpalatable. For example, on the ritual slaughter of horses, see: J. Curtin, A Journey in Southern Siberia: the Mongols, their Religion and their Myths (London, 1909), pp. 44-52 and pictures opposite pp. 50 and 54. 102 J. S. Curtiss, Church and State in Russia - The Last Years o f the Empire, 1900-1917 (New York, 1965), pp. 227-8, tells us that: The process of extending the rights of the non-Orthodox had begun in December, 1904, when the Emperor issued an ukaz in which he promised several reforms, among them religious liberty. A temporary enactment on religious liberty came on April 17, 1905. One of its provisions enabled anyone to leave the Orthodox Church in order to enter any other Christian faith, with no loss of. rights and no other penalties but the provisions also applied to Old Believers and other non-orthodox sects. During 1905-7 50,000 reverted from Orthodoxy to Mohammedanism and others reverted to Buddhism or heathenism. 103 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 9.

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teaching and granting them freedom from iasak payment. Meanwhile the Tsongol’sk Datsan was declared the Buddhist centre for Transbaikalia, with its Shiretui (abbot) as the chief lama, a post which would receive the title of Bandido-Khambo a few years later. By 1774 Transbaikalia had 16 Datsans with 617 lamas. But the Gusinoozersk Datsan challenged for leadership, and its Shiretui was given the title of Bandido-Khambo Lama in 1807, on the wishes of a majority of clan chiefs.104 In 1853, in what a commentator from the DVR saw as an attempt by the Tsarist regime to hinder the growth of Lamaism, the ‘Statute on the Lamaist Clergy’, lamas’ rights were restricted, the Bandido-Khambo Lama became subject to the authority of the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, lamas and Datsans became subject to local policing and even building or refurbishment needed permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. There was even a plan to place the lamas under the control of the local Orthodox Archimandrite, rather than the Bandido-Khambo Lama, but this was abandoned.105 However, throughout the nineteenth century Lamaism prospered, rich noions funded the building of new Datsans and before long the sons of these families were occupying the leading roles in the local Datsans. A union between lay and religious leading groups was consolidated, so that the same families often led the local society, economy and church.106 The Buddhist church could have

104 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), pp. 82-3. 105 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 84. 106 According to G. D. Natsov, lamas from rich families took key positions, including that of Shiretui (Abbot) in the Aga Datsan. Local rich men built the Aga region’s Datsans in the nineteenth century, directing religious as well as social affairs there. At the start of the twentieth century, the richest lama in the Aga Datsan owned 7,000 cows, 4,000 horses, 3,000 sheep and over 1,000 camels, while another had 13 houses and 20 bams at the Datsan, with 900 cows, 752 horses, 3,500 sheep and 140 camels. Meanwhile other lamas would spend their whole lives as servants to these rich leading lights within the Datsan. This sort of dominance of the Datsans by relatives of the leaders of Buriat social and economic life was common throughout Transbaikalia. Lamaizm v Buriatii XVIII - nachala X X veka. Struktura i sotsial’naia ro l’ kul’tovoi sistemy (Novosibirsk, 1983), pp. 72-3. Quoting RO BF SO AN SSSR [Archive of the Manuscript Department of the Buriat Filial of the Siberian Section of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR], G. D. Natsov Fond (Fond 8), Op. 3, D. 9; Tsybikov, B. D., Obychnoe pravo selenginskikh buriat (Ulan-Ude, 1970), p. 73-4; Sliashkov, S. S., Sibirskie inorodtsy v XIXstolelii - Sobranie sochinenii, Tom II (St. Petersburg, 1898), p. 587; Krol’, M., ‘Po kochev’iam Zabaikal’skikli buriat’, Novoe slovo, 1897, books 5-7, p. 120.

35

rivalled local government, with which, under the Speranskii statute it had close links through family and clan, as the most powerful institution in eastern Buriat life, but such a consolidation of power prevented rivalry between the lay and religious authorities. The Tsarist government had exempted lamas from taxation,107 and the wealth with which the sons of the rich entered the priesthood could be augmented by charges for performing religious services, prayers, spells and giving medical help to the lay population. Even rich lamas were prevented, under the tenets of Buddhism, from labouring and the faithful lay community was expected to support them. This was ensured by the imposition of “‘mandalas” (the obligatory gifts of the believers)’, which Amagaev called ‘a Datsan tax’, at the time of religious festivals. This was set by the abbot of a Datsan, and not negotiable but always forthcoming.108 Tradition demanded that the faithful send their sons for a period in the Datsan, to receive religious instruction, but perhaps one son, or more, from any family might stay to become a monk. Amagaev judged this to mean that lamas formed ‘15,000 to 17,000’, or ‘around 12%’ of the 130,000 Buriat population. Of his three powerful groups discernible in Buriat society, the lamas formed ‘the most powerful and cohesive’.109

But, celibate and unproductive, they kept the Buriats from

107 Tax exemption for lamas entered Tsarist law in the eighteenth century. The ‘Statute of 1853’ limited the privilege to only the quota of ‘established’ lamas, but as ‘non-established’ lamas lived in the Datsans and their way of life was indistinguishable from that of the ‘established’ lamas, a tradition arose that payment of taxes and performance of state duties was taken on for the lamas by the Datsan’s parishioners - the lay Buriat community. See: Lamaizm v Buriatii XVIII - nachala X X veka. Struktura i sotsial’naia rol’ kul’tovoi sistemy (Novosibirsk, 1983), p. 66. In 1774 there were 617 lamas in Zabaikalia, who paid no iasak, in 1822 - 2,502 and in 1831 - 4,637. See: Lamaizm v Buriatii XVIII - nachala X X veka. Struktura i sotsial’naia rol' kul’tovoi sistemy (Novosibirsk, 1983), p. 26. Quoting: Materialy Kommissii Kulomzina, Vol. 6, p. 132; and Tsentralnyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkliiv, F. 1264, Op. 1/54, D. 211, LL. 190-6. 108 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 2 ob. and 3, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’ presented 15 February 1922. 109 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, L. 2 ob. Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’ presented 15 February 1922.

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developing. They wasted the people’s productive power, acting as its worst parasite and setting a bad example by their very unspiritual and self-indulgent predilection for luxury.110 Buddhism is one of the world’s greatest religions, both numerically and in the power of its philosophy, but in the Transbaikal context it had attractions other than the spiritual. Buriat nomadic culture meant that they were not city dwellers. In 1897 there were only 9 urban Buriats, and even by 1913 only 50 lived in Verkhne-Udinsk, a town with 16,000 inhabitants.111 But the Buriats were not anti-social, and their social needs could be catered for by the Datsan. These were often large communities in their own right, and often served by additional communities of lay people living nearby, who supported the lamas’ day to day needs. Many young men spent some time there, being instructed in Buddhism, and a large number of these went on to become permanent residents. Meanwhile, religious ritual and the obligations of the faithful to feed and support the lamas, meant that the Datsan was a centre for community social life.112 Buddhism, like their Mongolian links, made the Buriats very important as a bridge between Russia and the Asian cultures. In the nineteenth century the Tsarist government was able to exploit these links in pursuance of its foreign policy, and this would be an example copied during the Soviet period. The role of Buddhism as a mark of non-Russianness in the early twentieth century owed a lot to its Tibetan legacy and the emergence of a Buddhist theocratic state in neighbouring Outer Mongolia. Tibet was an ancient theocracy, headed by the Dalai Lama, a reincarnate and divine, who

110 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting LL. 3 and 3 ob. 111R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, p. 17. 112 One is struck, not only in turn-of-the-century photographs, but also in modern images, by the joy and pleasure of the people attending Buddhist festivals in Buriatia. The rituals often involve drama, with masks and music (as in the ‘Tsam’ mystery plays), food, flags, statues, song and even sports seem to have a role. Such gatherings seem to hold the attractions of feast, concert, magic-show, the sports field, theatre, carnival and social club. Glimpses of these functions, both historical and contemporary, can be found in: The Buriats:Tradition and Culture (Ulan-Ude, 1995), which is visually stunning, with many photographs, old and new; and the pamphlet Discover: Buriatia (Moscow, no date, but, from the contents, 1995 or after).

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was both head of state and head of the church, and the Buriat church was an offshoot of the YellowHat sect - the reformed church of Tibet. At the turn of the century Tibet was struggling for its independence between the competing Empires of China and Britain. In 1904 the Youngliusband expedition forced the Dalai Lama to flee Lhasa and he made a tour of the northern Buddhist lands. Reaching Urga in November 1904, he was greeted by thousands of Buddhist pilgrims including many Buriats. Nicholas II revealed his attitude to this phenomenon in a telegram he dispatched to the Dalai Lama:

A large number of my subjects who profess the Buddhist faith had the happiness of being able to pay homage to their great High Priest, during his visit to northern Mongolia, which borders on the Russian Empire. As I rejoice that my subjects have had the opportunity of deriving benefit from your salutary spiritual influence, I beg you to accept the expression of my sincere thanks and regards.113

This attitude probably had a lot to do with contemporary Russian interest in Tibet, under the influence of the likes of Prince Ukhtomskii and the two famous Buriats, Badmaev and Agvan Dorzhiev. Through such agents Russia had come to flirt with the idea of spreading her influence to the Buddhist south, not least as part of the ‘Great Game’ being played in Central Asia against the British. Britain had been the formal ally of Japan since 1902, and thus in late 1904, with the Russo-Japanese war going badly, was even more the enemy than usual. At the turn of the century Agvan Dorzhiev, a highly respected lama-philosopher, gained enormous influence at the highest levels by acting as gobetween for Nicholas II and the Dalai Lama. Linked to Russian interest in Tibet was interest in Outer Mongolia. There had long been cultural and trade links across the Russo-Mongolian border, but Badmaev, who worked for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, wanted to improve these during the later years of the nineteenth century. Claiming that Russia had a historic mission to exert power in the Far East, in 1893 he encouraged Witte to push for increased commercial activity throughout the area. He proposed covert assistance to foment revolt

113 R. Rupen, How Mongolia is Really Ruled, Stanford, 1979, p. 13, quoting from P. L. Mehra, “Tibet and Russian Intrigue”, Royal Central Asian Journal, No. 45, January 1958, pp. 28-40.

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among minorities governed by China, in the hope that they would seek protection from Russia. This would increase Russia’s Empire in Asia with little expenditure. Badmaev lived for a while in Mongolia but was distrusted by the Mongols as he was an Orthodox convert. Dorzhiev had been able to persuade the Tsar to sponsor the building of a Buddhist temple in St Petersburg, against the protests of Orthodox opponents. Badmaev used his influence to open a Buriat High School in St Petersburg, where some of the rising stars of the Buriat intelligentsia would study. These two men established a precedent, to be revived in Soviet and DVR times, of Russia using Buriats to pursue her foreign policy aims in the Mongol and Buddhist worlds. If Russian investment in the Chinese Eastern Railway which ran across Manchuria, and her aspirations to become more involved in the Far East, led to her focussing on China for expansion, the same could be said of Japan, and, as we know, this rivalry brought war. But Russia’s defeat did not completely end this phase and when Mongolian autonomists sought freedom from Chinese rule they turned to Russia. In 1911 when the Jebtsun Damba Khutukhtu, leader of the Mongolian lamas, a ‘Living God’ in his eighth reincarnation, sought to establish his theocratic state in Outer Mongolia, throwing off Chinese rule, he sent a delegation and a letter to Nicholas II, seeking assistance. Perhaps the Japanese war had inspired caution, for although some arms were sent, it was not until a declaration of autonomy set up the new regime that Russia exerted pressure on China to let it be. The advent of what soviet commentators have called a ‘feudal-theocratic state’ in Mongolia would have important repercussions for the DVR.114 But the Buddhist church in Transbaikalia was in disarray. The distaste which Amagaev showed for the self-indulgence of the wealthy lamas was shared by some lamas themselves. From the start of the twentieth century a movement began to try to set Lamaism back on its spiritual rails. In part tills represented what we might now call fundamentalism, but it was also strongly influenced by modernisation. The movement wanted a modern Buddhist church, fit for the new century, stripped of corruption and spiritually renewed. The leading light of this movement was none other than the Dalai Lama’s agent Agvan Dorzhiev. He encountered stiff opposition from the conservative lamas. His

114 On the emergence of Autonomous Mongolia see: R. Rupent, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), pp. 54-71.

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campaign had received a boost with the heated debates and egalitarian and idealistic rhetoric which attended the 1905 revolution, but only the fall of Tsarism and the general atmosphere of reform which follow the February revolution would make his aims seem realisable. These goals and the conservative backlash they induced within the Buddhist church would be very important for the DVR. Medicine Amagaev acknowledged that the lamas had some positive influence in society only as conduits for literacy and as physicians, trained in Tibetan medicine, by which they rendered ‘a great service in the medical treatment of the people’.115 Buriats were accustomed to the medical use of spells, potions and herbs, while their distrust of Russian and modern culture may well have prevented them trying these alternatives. Besides, there was hardly any western medicine to be had for Buriats, especially the poor, and indeed Tibetan medicine may have been effective, as today’s recognition of ‘alternative medicine’ would suggest. Amagaev was resentful of the Tsarist regime’s inattention to Buriat public health. In 1905-8 a sum of 285,000 rubles remained unspent from the medical budget; it had been returned, unused, to the Finance Ministry. He complained that although the Buriats made up 20% of Zabaikal’s population and bore 47.5% of its taxation, no hospitals or clinics were opened for them. These were all located in Russian areas, and although the Buriats had a right to use them, this did not happen.116 Amagaev produced statistics showing the distribution of medical facilities to the various population groups:117 AMONG

HOSPITALS

BEDS

CLINICS

peasants

11

253

11

cossacks

11

340

8

Buriats

0

0

1 (Tsugol’skaia)

22

593

20

115 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 3. 116 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ” dated November 1922, L. 28. 117 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ” dated November 1922, L. 28.

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Zabaikal also had clinics of a lower grade, feldsher clinics, distributed thus:118

AMONG

FELDSHER CLINICS

peasants

40

cossacks

42

Buriats

3

85

The Resettlement Administration had built 3 clinics and four 30-bed hospitals for Russian settlers, the Kabinet administration built three 30-bed hospitals and the mining authority built 2 clinics. All of these were for use by Russians.119 Amagaev calculated the availability of medical help in terms of the numbers of the two national groups per hospital and clinic:120

HOSPITALS

POP. PER

FELDSHER

POP. PER

AMONG THEM

HOSP

CLINICS

F. CLINIC

650.000 Russians

41

15,746

87

7,000

140.000 Buriats

0

140,000

3

47,000

He concluded that the Buriats had virtually no access to European medicine before the revolution and had to use the lamas and their Tibetan medicine. It was in the face of such official neglect that he found their contribution ‘a great service’. Later Amagaev’s support for the lamas as physicians was to be frowned on, and any treatment by a lama would come to be seen as taboo for a good communist. In fact Rupen tells us of one Buriat communist, an agent of Comintern, who habitually went to a lama if he had health problems. This man recounted that after the establishment of the Soviet Union a typhus epidemic had

118 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ” dated November 1922, L. 28. 119 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. I, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ” dated November 1922, LL. 28 and 28 ob. 120 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ” dated November 1922, L. 28 ob.

41

hit the Buriats, and although some who consulted Russian doctors had survived, ALL of those who consulted the lamas had lived. So, the non-party members rushed to the lamas for help, but within the Communist Party there was a crisis of conscience for Buriat members: years of anti-religious propaganda could be undone by consulting a lama when one’s life was at stake. The conundrum was ‘to live with humiliation or have a funeral with Party orations’.121 Another Buriat communist, Amagaev’s colleague Erbanov, disagreed with him even before this change of heart. He saw Tibetan medicine and the power of the lamas preventing the Buriats from trying to obtain effective western medicine. The campaigns against tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases, which killed 500 people every year between 1897 and 1917, were hindered by the fact that Buriats only went for modern medical help if the lama’s fortune-telling dictated it. He knew that the lamas were ‘powerless’ against such diseases, and since Tibetan medicine had fallen from use in Tibet itself, only the Buriat and Mongolian lamas still practised this deceit on the people.122 Education and literacy Another positive contribution made by lamas was in the cultural development of the Buriats as a whole and the intelligentsia in particular. The Datsans were cultural centres, generating literacy, literature, philosophical discussion and a contemplative attitude. Students in the Datsan not only learned the sacred texts, but they had to grapple with abstract concepts which involved consideration of progress, the past and the future, good and evil and the living of a good life. In much the same way as the Talmudic schools raised the possibility of political debate among the Jews, Datsan educational system gave the Buriats the tools with which they could survey the alternatives which appeared to lay before them in a period of enormous social upheaval. Although this educational system was seen as an asset to the Buriats, it was not without its critics. Not only did it teach obedience, but the curriculum was restricted to religious, astrological and philosophical subjects, with added courses in Tibetan medicine. There was no attention paid to modern subjects, languages (other than Tibetan), maths, science or social and political studies. While

121R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), pp. 50-1. 122 Tainy natsional’noi politiki TsK RKP: ‘chetvertoe soveshchanie TsK RKP s otvetstvennymi rabotnikami natsional 'nykh respublik i Oblastei v g. Moskve 9-12 iiunia 1923 g. otchet (Moscow, 1992), p. 183.

stenograflcheskii

42

some wished to expand and support the system as it stood, others were set on reforming it. The reformist movement led by Agvan Dorzhiev had a faction among the younger intelligentsia which wished to augment this religious education by the addition of a modern curriculum to include scientific and social subjects with modern medicine. In some quarters this trend went so far as calls for the complete dissolution of the links between the church and education and the institution of compulsory state education with a modern curriculum. In 1897, when the All-Siberian literacy rate, including Russians and Ukrainians was 11.5%, the Buriat literacy rates were as follows:123

Irkutsk Buriats - overall 5.2% (93% in Russian and 6% in Mongolian and Tibetan) Of these: men 9,2% and women 0.8% Transbaikal Buriats - overall 8.4% (16% in Russian and 84% in Mongolian and Tibetan) Of these: men 16.4% and women 0.6%.

Meanwhile in 1908, in the Aga steppe with its predominance of Buriats and its hugely influential Datsans, the literacy rate of 14% was the highest among the Buriats and exceeded the All-Siberian rate.124 Development of an intelligentsia

The process of the development of an intelligentsia was largely a product of Buddhist education. However, it accelerated and changed its nature during the nineteenth century in response to better access to Russian and secular culture and education, to the pressures of modernisation and the arrival of modern and radical concepts from the west. These influences had begun centuries earlier, with the arrival of the Russian settlers and missionaries, been boosted by the activity of exiled Decembrists, narodnilci, anarchists and socialists, and then boosted again by opposition to changes in Tsarist policies around the turn of the century. Russian education was available to Buriats in the Transbaikal cossack communities, but other Buriats were mostly restricted to the Datsans. Amagaev observed that: ‘not one school was opened

123 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 42. 124 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 42.

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during 100 years in the Kliorinskii Aimak and 40 years in the other Aim ales’.125 Secular education for Zabaikal’s Buriats was ‘a comparatively recent phenomonon’ with the first secular school being opened in 1802 and 2 more ‘around 1880’. But these did not serve the nomads, the vast majority of eastern Buriats. They ‘were built in places settled by baptised Buriats’, where missionary centres and churches had long been established. ‘At first schools appeared among the Buriat population not as a means of enlightening the popular masses but as a means of introducing the Buriats to the Orthodox faith. Baptism was an obligatory condition for Buriat children joining the school’. But the Buriats were hostile and suspicious regarding these missionary efforts and the schools met with little success.126 However, despite the opposition of ignorant Buriats and their educated lamas, the Christian missionaries renewed their efforts, and Amagaev observed that: ‘the experience provided by the missionary schools discredited the idea of school education for a long time in the eyes of the Buriats’, so that even up to the 1905 revolution the people were suspicious of non-Datsan schooling.127 Boys who were to become officials would be educated at the expense of the Steppe Duma budget, their upkeep being catered for in the form of livestock, 4 or 5 goats or ewes per month, rising to 5 or 6 castrated rams per month for the older boys. They learned to read and write under the direction of experienced scribes, but for most Buriat boys education was not secular and limited to ‘ancestral literacy’ in the Datsan, where the holy books were studied in Tibetan, reading and writing in Mongolian being omitted by most.128 But from 1905 things changed somewhat, and the Buriats began to ask the government to provide schooling. Perhaps the social unrest of the period, which, as we shall see, extended deep into the Buriat community, made the authorities wary, for Amagaev reported that ‘the Zabaikal Directorate

125 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast", dated November 1922, Quoting L. 29 ob. 126 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast", dated November 1922, Quoting L. 29. 127 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast", dated November 1922, Quoting LL. 29 and 29 ob. 128 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast", dated November 1922, Quoting L. 29 ob.

44

of Public Schools remained deaf to the[ir] needs and requests.’ This ‘deafness’ persisted until 1910, when schools for Buriats began to be opened, but these only catered for a tiny number and the huge mass of children of school age remained outside the school gates’.129 In January 1911, a one-day census of Buriat primary schools found 610 boys and 26 girls in schools run by the Ministry of Education, with 64 boys and 8 girls in schools run by the Orthodox church. In all 674 boys and 34 girls were in non-Datsan primary education out of a school age population of about 12,600, which Amagaev calculated to represent 5.62%.130 By 1915 secular primary education was being given to 16,790 Russian boys and 1,010 Buriat boys, along with 7,500 Russian girls and 84 Buriat girls. But, for Amagaev, these schools did not achieve quality in education:

The native language, both as a subject of teaching and as a way of teaching, was completely driven out, teaching was carried out in the Russian language, alien to the children. The colossal mental energy of the children necessary for the acquisition and reinforcement of basic elementary general knowledge, was wasted on the mechanical learning of unknown words. It is to be understood that the results of such teaching must have been lamentable.131

Of course, for older children things were even worse: ‘before the beginning of the present century the doors of the middle and higher educational establishments were closed to the Buriats’. Amagaev noted that things slowly improved: ‘sometimes at an “order from on high’” a few Buriat boys would be granted access to such institutions ‘as rare examples’. But only after 1905 did this tendency become more widely available, and this was further expanded during 1912-14. Amagaev

129 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ”, dated November 1922, Quoting L. 29 ob. 130 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, Quoting LL. 29 ob. and 30. 131 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, Quoting L. 30.

45

declared that in ‘such a short interval of time it was impossible to create a completely qualified and numerous intelligentsia’.132 But some did obtain secondary and higher education. Even in the mid-nineteenth century a very small number had entered the Irkutsk Theological Seminary, sometimes going further, to the Theological Academy at Kazan. Kazan University took several Buriat students in the nineteenth century, including the ‘first Buriat intellectuals’ Dorzhi Banzarov and Galsan Gomboev. Later the talented but short-lived Buriat nationalist and revolutionary, Mikhail Bogdanov, was also a graduate. Badmaev took talented Buriats to his gymnasium in St Petersburg, but it only operated between 18957, closed down because the students refused to be taught Orthodox, rather than Buddhist, principles. A Teachers’ Seminary opened in Irkutsk in 1872, and between then and 1900, 23 Buriats attended among 304 students. In 1891, following the Tsarevich’s visit, the Transbaikal Buriats established a scholarship for one of their best young men to attend the college.133 By the early twentieth century a formidable, and, given the size of the Buriat population, quite large, group of prominent intellectuals had emerged. We may find out more about the development of the Buriat intelligentsia by considering just a few examples whose work had an effect on the Russian revolution and the DVR. Ts. Zh. Zhamtsarano (1880-1940) studied first in his native Aga, then went to Chita’s Russian gymnasium, then to Badmaev’s school in St Petersburg, then held a scholarship at the Irkutsk Teachers’ Seminary and completed his education at St Petersburg University. He was in favour of reinforcing the Buriats’ Mongolian identity. He studied history, folklore and literature, travelling and publishing widely and teaching at St Petersburg University. His influence over the generation active during the revolution was most profound in their appreciation of their Mongol heritage and this undoubtedly influenced the Pan-Mongolist movement, a key factor in the political life of the DVR.134

132 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, dated November 1922, Quoting L. 30. 133 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 10-14. 134 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), pp. 12-14 and 45-7.

46

E-D. R. Rinchino (1888-1937) was more a political animal than an academic.135 He was born in the Barguzin zh'/Ma/c of what would become the DVR. During college days he had become involved with illegal youth groups organised by exiled social-democrats. In 1905, having graduated from the Barguzin training college as a teacher, he moved to Verkhne-Udinsk. Here he joined a school run by the revolutionary I. Okuntsov, who was arrested and deported to penal servitude during Rennenkampfs clean-up of the Transbaikal following the 1905 disorders there. At the age of seventeen Rinchino was involved with social-democrats in illegal political groups, joining the Verkhne-Udinsk RSDRP group headed by Boris Shumiatskii, who would become very famous in revolutionary circles and be involved with the DVR. In his memoirs Shumiatskii recalled Rinchino, ‘who works with us now (outside the Party)’ as one of several young Buriats in the group.136 Indeed Rinchino left the RSDRP in 1907, due to disagreement over policies concerning the peasantry and the nationalities. Moving to Tomsk, he came under the influence of the famous Siberian regionalist, G. N. Potanin, and took up regionalism and SR ideas. Before long he was imprisoned. On being freed Rinchino went to St Petersburg and joined the law faculty of its university. During 1909-1913 he was a student activist and involved in the student strike of 1910-11, held by Siberian regionalists there. In 1910 he began work on alphabet reform, under the pseudonym Alamzhi-Mergen, and in 1914 he wrote article on ‘The Regionalist Movement in Siberia and Social Democracy’ seeing Siberia as a Russian colony, and supporting the regionalist stance. In 1915-16 Rinchino joined a Russian economic-statistical expedition to Outer Mongolia and from his work on the project Rinchino was able to write The Economic Regions o f Mongolia and Shamanism in Mongolia, and published a series of articles in the jounal Sibir' in defense of the independence of Mongolia. He went on in 1916 to work for the Zabaikal Union of Co-operatives as a statistician. With the revolution he would become a central figure on the left wing of the Buriat National Movement, working closely with the soviets, but, due to his belief in the emergence of the Buriats as an autonomous people separate from Russia, he

135 For his biography see: S. B. Ochirov and D.-N. T. Radnaev, ‘E. D. Rinchino; Razmyshleniia o zhizni i poslednikh dniakh’, in Neizvestnye stranitsy istorii Buriatii (iz arkhivov KGB), vyp. 1 (UlanUde, 1991), pp. 23-40.

47

was prepared to deal with whatever political reality dictated. This attitude and his efforts would be very important for the DVR.137 Agvan Dorzhiev (1853-1938) was a brilliant scholar and visionary moderniser of the Buddhist church. He attained the status of Tsanid-Khambo Lama (the title of a professor of Buddhist metaphysics). His career as diplomat, representing the Tsar in Tibet and the Dalai Lama in Russia, is legendary, and earned him great influence, and the fear of the British, whose plans for Tibet he worked hard to thwart. He wanted to modernise not only Buddhist practices within the Datsan, but also to improve its education and medicine. In 1913 he paid for a new Datsan cum medical college at Arshan in Transbaikalia and oversaw the building of St Petersburg’s Buddhist temple, which he initiated. He would become a major influence in the DVR and Soviet Union.138 Lastly, let us consider M. I. Amagaev (1897-1937) himself.139 His views and data have informed this introduction, as they will substantial parts of this thesis. This is entirely appropriate as he was the Buriat sent by the Communist Party to take charge of the DVR’s Buriat Autonomous Oblast’. But, very significantly for all that he did there, he was not a Transbaikal Buriat, but was born in 1897 quite far to the west of Irkutsk. Orphaned young he was raised by his brother who was a poor farmer, whom Amagaev helped on the farm. In early youth he fell under the influence of political exiles living in his home community. He was almost certainly raised, at least nominally, as an Orthodox Christian, because he attended the Irkutsk Seminary. Living among the Orthodox monks, and paying his fees by his labour, he learned a contempt for the ‘secret side of the life of the holy

136 S. B. Ochirov and D.-N. T. Radnaev, ‘E. D. Rinchino; Razmyshleniia o zliizni i poslednikh dniakh’, in Neizvestnye stranitsy istorii Buriatii (iz arkhivov KGB), vyp. 1 (Ulan-Ude, 1991), p. 25. Quoting: B. Z. Shumiatskii Sibir’na putiakh k Oktiabriu (Irkutsk, 1989), p. 139. 137 S. B. Ochirov and D.-N. T. Radnaev, ‘E. D. Rinchino; Razmyshleniia o zhizni i poslednikh dniakh’, in Neizvestnye stranitsy istorii Buriatii (iz arkhivov KGB), vyp. 1 (Ulan-Ude, 1991), pp. 2340. This source does not give full publication details of the various writings by Rinchino which it mentions, but a collection of Rinchino’s works has recently become available: E.-D. Rinchino, Dokumenty. Stat'i. P is’ma. (Ulan-Ude, 1994). This author has not yet seen this collection, and so cannot say whether the works mentioned are included. 138 A modern biography of this fascinating figure is: G.-N. Zaiatuev, Tsanid-Khambo Agvan Dorzhiev (1853-1938 gg.) (Ulan-Ude, 1991). 139 The best short account of Amagaev is in: N. P. Egunov, M. 1. Amagaev (Ulan-Ude, 1974).

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fathers (drunkeness, hypocrisy etc) and everything only reinforced my lack of faith and scepticism in Orthodoxy’.140 His enthusiasm for modernisation showed from an early age. Returning to the farm for holidays in 1915, aged 18, he organised groups to work for agricultural improvement through education and technology. On the advice of a prominent agronomist, Pisarev, yields were raised by sowing new strains of wheat. On leaving the Seminary in May 1917 he joined the RSDRP. He had planned to go to Petrograd to study psychology, but lack of funds prevented this. In September 1917 he became schoolteacher in western Buriatia and became further involved with the Bolsheviks.141 He had no experience of the Transbaikal until ordered there by the communists in summer 1921. As a Marxist Amagaev was fairly unusual among Buriat intellectuals, but he was oriented toward the Bolsheviks from his first contact with them in 1917. Amagaev himself observed that the Buriat intelligentsia, whom he placed third in his league of powerful groups within Buriat society,142 was ‘young. Quantitatively it is not sizeable, qualitatively it is not high and not, on the whole, well-educated’. It had arisen among the prosperous social groups, but had developed into two tendencies. The ‘old Buriats’ still maintained links with the priesthood and noenat from which they originated and thus were ‘the ideologues of the prosperous stratum of society, they express its interests and mentality’. At best this made them political moderates and ‘advocates of the “nomadic originality” of national life’ who did ‘not accept the possibility of any radical changes and reform’.143 But the ‘young Buriats’ might be a seed-bed for communist ideas. They were ‘a very recently formed intelligentsia, educated in the populist ideas of Russian literature’ who had ‘assimilated the spirit of revolutionary democracy’ and now ‘stood above the old Buriats’, the intellectuals who identified with traditional Buriat life. The ‘young Buriats’ were ‘irreconcilable opponents of the

140 N. P. Egunov, M. I. Amagaev (Ulan-Ude, 1974), p. 12. Quoting: TsGAOR, F. 5145, Op. 14, D. 21, L. 13. 141 N. P. Egunov, M. I. Amagaev (Ulan-Ude, 1974), pp. 14-16. 142 We should recall; he thought the Buddhist lamas the most coherent and powerful group in Buriat society, followed by the noions and then the intelligentsia. 143 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 4.

49

priesthood and the noenaf, and were ‘advocates of fundamental reforms in the foundations of social life’. Like other populist idealists they had no definite political credo, and were noted for ‘the absence of consistency, analysis and evaluation’.144 These factors and the very newness of this section of the Buriat intelligentsia meant for Amagaev that it could not evade an ideological pitfall. With ‘few exceptions’ the Buriat intelligentsia were propagandists for the ideology of national self-determination. He was not surprised by this, given russification policies and ‘the special legal conditions’ under which the Buriats had lived before 1917. Such factors provoked reaction and unification among Buriats for defence of their national interests. Naturally, the intelligentsia were at the head of these processes. It ‘set itself the exclusive goal of the rebirth of the people’, which led it to claim a ‘political neutralism’, meaning that the Buriat cause was of neither left nor right in the Russian context, as Buriats wished to take themselves out of the Russian context. Amagaev saw this as ‘a common phenomenon for the intelligentsia of small oppressed nationalities’. Nonetheless, he saw the intelligentsia, and especially the ‘young Buriats’ as the positive element in the people’s.social life, ‘a cultural breeding ground and the bearer of new principles and ideas’.145 Radicalisation under Tsarism Amagaev thought the changes of the first years of the century gave fertile ground for the growth of Buriat consciousness, and each of his three groups (lamas, noions and the intelligentsia) were affected. The Tsarist reforms of land holding and administration were met first with disbelief. In 1902 the upper sections of Buriat society sent a delegation to the Tsar in the Crimea to appeal for reconsideration, but it was not received and the petition had no success. Gradually enraged hostility developed among the Buriats, eventually taking a violent form. They refused to elect officials, and fought with police and the new administrators. Even the previously loyal cossacks stirred, asking, in 1901, to be allowed to resume the peasant status they had held up to 1851.146 Repression,

144 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 4. 145 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting LL. 4 and 4 ob. 146Istorii a Buriat-Mongol ’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 412.

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imprisionment and exile followed, while 16 Buriat Volost’s were declared to be in a ‘state of heightened defence’.147 The government’s attitude was expressed by Russia’s Minister of War, General Kuropatkin. Speaking in Chita in 1903 to an audience which included Zhamtsarano, he told the Buriats: ‘for the slightest manifestation of opposition, for any disobedience to the authorities, for expressing any demands, the Buriats would be wiped off the face of the earth, and there would remain neither trace nor particle’.148 The Buriats had appealed to ‘monarchical favour’ to resolve the administrative and land issues in a way more favourable to them. But by the early rumblings of revolution in 1905, the Buriat intelligentsia had lost all hope of this, and were ready for ‘the method of secret revolutionary organisation’. So, ‘the temporary atrophy of authority under the pressure of unfolding revolutionary events gave freedom of action to [these] groups and encouraged their hopes for a radical resolution’.149 The new regime began to be enforced under military conditions in 1904; soldiers met resistance and conflict ensued. But matters became much more serious in 1905; indeed Amagaev thought revolutionary ideas came to the Buriats first with the events of 1905. These did not seize the imagination of the broad masses and only slightly roused the upper levels of society, ‘the progressive element of the noenat and the intelligentsia’. 1905 saw the first Buriat congresses, which were held in Chita between 26-30 April, and in Irkutsk between 20-26 August. The concept of autonomy was raised and resolutions were passed concerning the establishment of Buriat self-rule as well as others concerning land matters, health-care, education and resistance to Tsarist migration policy.150

147 Po rodnomu leraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 85. 148 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 8. Rupen points out in notes on pp. 22-3, that there are other versions of the speech, but they are all in the same terms. The version quoted is from Zhamtsarano’s recollections in Pravo, No. 48-9 (December 1905). cols 3,885-3897, 149 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 4 ob. 150 Introduction to Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), p. 3.

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Steppe Dumas were restored without authorisation, as in the Khorinsk region, while in some areas mass Buriat action destroyed the volost’ administrative institutions which had been imposed by Tsarism, and some officials were attacked. Land confiscated in the recent reforms was retaken from the Kabinet holdings. A political organisation, The Union of Progressive Buriats of Zabaikalia, appeared with a program for radical change. Young Buriats were attracted to the socialist parties and Panmongolism and a proto-nationalist movement arose. The whole experience of the 1905 revolution in Transbaikalia was pivotal in shaping aspirations which would surface in 1917 and still be unresolved in the time of the DVR. But for the meantime the 1905 events were followed by the government sending in a punitive detachment under General Rennenkampf, which crushed the remnants of opposition and weeded out the ringleaders. Trials under military conditions imposed prison, exile and death sentences and the upheaval was over.151 As Amagaev put it: before anything could be set in motion the central authorities, aided by the reactionary section of the noenat, regained control and imposed order, putting ‘an end to the freethinking of the Buriat revolutionaries’, who lowered their profile and concentrated on educational work until 1917.152 Meanwhile the Buriats sought a political voice by official means. When the Second State Duma of 1907 allowed them representation, they were glad to participate. Bato-Dalai Ochirov, who associated himself with Miliukov and the Liberals, and translated the Kadet programme into Mongolian, was their representative. But the Duma was soon disbanded and the regulations for its successor excluded any Buriat representation.153 The lot of the people With the upheavals in their economy, their land holdings and Tsarism’s neglect of their health, Amagaev feared for the future of the Transbaikal Buriats. He observed: ‘The average natural growth of the population in various countries for the last 10 years is equal to 0.93%. For the last 2 decades from 1897 to 1916 the Buriat population of [Barguzin and Khorinsk Aimaks]...should have

151 1905 events are dealt with in detail in: Istoriia Buriat-Mongol'skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), pp. 407-17. 152 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 4 ob. 153 Istoriia Buriat-Mongol'skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 417.

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provided a natural growth of 11,438; instead of this...there has been a decline of 750’.154 He gave figures for distribution by sex and age:153

For 1000 souls of the male sex there were women:

1897

1916

% decline

1917

% decline

1022

1003

- 1.8%

978

- 2.4%

The figures of 1897 give the following distribution of the population by age: male

female

total [this must be‘average’]

Children under 1 yr

2.0

1.7

1.8

1 - 9 years

20.0

20.6

20.3

10-19

20.7

20.8

20,8

20-29

16.0

16.5

16.3 12.7

30-39

13.0

12.5

40-49

11.7

10.8

11.3

50-54

8.6

8.1

8.3

60+

8.0

9.0

8.5

Amagaev concluded that this denoted an ageing population, with production of children falling below that of other parts of the empire. He thought this indicated Tack of fruitfulness and a high percentage of child mortality’ and noted ‘natural growth sometimes does not cover mortality and the balance is destroyed’. The average Buriat family had 3.5 or 4 members. For Amagaev, this had tragic implications: ‘using the language of biology, 2 individuals, dying and replacing themselves, leave 2 or they do not replace themselves in full’.136 The whole future of the Buriats was under threat.

134 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast” dated November 1922, L. 26 ob. 133 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ” dated November 1922, LL. 26 ob. and 27. 136 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast” dated November 1922, L. 27.

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The Great W ar

In 1902, after the administrative and land reforms, the Tsarist government also raised the prospect that Buriats, and other inorodtsy, previously exempt, would have to perform military service. This was opposed due to Buddhist conscientious objection, the cruelties of army life and the obvious implications of russification, already evident among the Buriat cossacks. This was the first of their duties to the Russian state which they objected to, but even so, in 1906 Zhamtsarano had expressed the view that Buriat traditional observance of all state duties would prevail.157 This assertion would not be fully tested until the revolution, and would prove a major problem for the DVR. However, on 25 June 1916 the Tsar issued a decree mobilising Buriats, along with other inorodtsy, for work in the rear to help the military effort in the Great War.158 11,75 0 Buriats went from Zabaikalia to a situation where they found themselves subject to special laws which gave them no protection. Some dug trenches or built rail links on what westerners call the Eastern Front, while others were sent to Arkhangel’sk to build rail links and help with the supplies being landed there. Poor housing, food and work conditions, especially around Arkhangelsk, combined with lack of sanitation and medical care to result in starvation, illness and death. This led to outbreaks of unrest among the Buriats and some were attracted by Bolshevik agitation, for which the ringleaders were dealt with harshly. In February 1917 the executive committee of the Arkhangelsk Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers Deputies managed to get medical help to the sick Buriats and arranged for them to go home, but the fit remained as the war continued. Soviet historians affirm not only that Buriat noions and lamas helped willingly in the ‘requisitioning’ of their fellows, but that the Buriat bourgeoisie and nationalists who hoped for new freedoms from the Provisional Govermnent actively supported its

157 R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 6. Quoting Zhamtsarano, ‘O pravosoznanii buriat’, Sibirslcie Voprosy, No. 2 (St Petersburg, 1906), pp. 167-84. 158 Istoriia Buriat-Mongol’skoi ASSR, tom 1 (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 470. Here we are told that the decree did not use the term ‘mobilisation’ but rather ‘ requisition of inorodtsy’. The call-up applied to those aged 19 to 35, with the exception of students, public servants, lamas etc, but ‘the sons of noions and kulaks could avoid the mobilisation by various excuses: some by bribes to military officials, to doctors and by hiring others, “those who so desired” from the poor, [to stand in for] themselves’. Quoting pp. 470-1.

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continuation of the Great War, and thus the hardships of the Buriats who remained in service.159 It seems likely that the long-suffering Buriats, like so many frontoviki, would have returned home from war service radicalised and having little faith in their own national leaders.

159Istoriia Buriat-Mongol’skoi ASSR, tom 1 (Ulan-Ude, 1954), pp. 471-82.

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CHAPTER 2 AUTONOMY The early days of revolution In March 1917, with the first news of the February revolution, members of the Buriat intelligentsia gathered to begin work to safeguard Buriat interests.160 Although they supported and recognised the authority of the Provisional Government in Petrograd,161 they also decided ‘to try to secure national autonomy’ on the bases of ‘the establishment of a Seim162 with law-making functions on the questions of civil and land relations, public education and health and on religious questions’. This autonomy was to apply to Buriats east and west of Lake Baikal.163 A general congress of Buriats from east and west of Baikal met in Chita between 23-25 April 1917 and took a decision about ‘the organisation of Buriat national autonomy on the basis of uniting all the Buriat people into a single administrative unit without the inclusion of representatives of other peoples there...[and] it organised the Central Buriat National Committee [Burnatskom\ as the supreme organ of government of the Buriats in the period between all-national congresses’.164 It is very important to note that from the very outset, the Buriat nationalists sought autonomy on the basis of separation from other peoples, what

160 The best collection of documents, starting from 6 March 1917, on the Buriat National Movement during the revolutionary period is Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919 gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994). 161 ‘Protokol chastnogo soveshchaniia buriat v g. Chite Zabaikal’skoi Oblasti, 6 marta 1917’ and ‘Protokol chastnogo soveshchaniia buriat-mongol’skikh obshchestvennykli deiatelei Zabaikal’skoi Oblasti, 10 marta 1917’, Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919 gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994). Docs 1 and 3, pp. 6 and 7-8. 162 The Seim was the name of the traditional representative bodies of both Poland and Finland. We may suppose that Buriat use of the term, at this stage in their quest for autonomy, was due to the fact that these two parts of the Russian Empire had a history of, and claim to, that independent identity and political autonomy to which the Buriats aspired. However, this document is the only one known to this author in which the term is used. All other references to a Buriat parliament or supreme organ of self-rule are made in terms such as ‘National Assembly’ or ‘All-Buriat Congress’. 163 ‘Protokol chastnogo soveshchaniia buriat-mongol’sldklt obshchestvennykli deiatelei Zabaikal’skoi Oblasti, 10 marta 1917’, Natsional'noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994). Doc. 3, pp. 7-8. 164 Introduction to Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), p. 3.

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might now be called apartheid. This was a condition they continued to insist upon, and it would have repercussions for the DVR. To this end the Buriat lands were organised into Somons, Khoshuns and Aimaks and the Central National Committee passed a ‘Statute on the temporary organs for the administration of national-cultural affairs of the Buriat-Mongols and Tungus of Zabaikal Oblast’ and Irkutsk Gubemiia’} 65 The ‘Statute’ set out as one of the most important tasks before the Buriats ‘the preparation of material and the drawing up of the fundamental tenets of the national autonomy of the Mongol-Buriats and the Tungus for submission to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly...’.166 Amagaev commented that the February Revolution had ‘destroyed the rotten edifice of autocracy’ and ‘proclaimed the self-determination of the nations’, thus calling forth ‘a new, unprecedented upsurge in the social movement’. In its first stage it gave the Buriats ‘completely workable results, as regards liberating them from the bureaucratic tutelage of the Tsarist officials and apparently opened up tempting perspectives on self-determination’. But the declared principles could not be implemented due to ‘half-hearted and uncertain policies on the national question’. This was inevitable in Amagaev’s view, as this ‘revolutionary democracy reflected and expressed peasant ideology and interests, together with...great-power chauvinism’. Faced with mass implementation of self-determination, it changed policy and tried to wipe out the Ukrainian, Kazakh and Finnish accomplishments.167 Such events, and threats from the Krai Commissar, the SR Krugilov, pushed the Buriat nationalists toward ‘revolutionary democracy’ and secret organisation. They organised administrative units, Khoshuns and Aimalcs, which were intended to be ‘nationally distinct’, meaning they were for Buriats alone. But disputes broke out among the nationalists, resulting in the younger, progressive

165 Istoriia Buriat-Mongol ’skoi ASSR, tom I (Ulan-Ude, 1954), p. 482. Text of the April 1917 ‘Statute’ is to be found as Doc. No. 15 in Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), pp. 15-21. 166 Natsional’noe Dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919 gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Doc. No. 15: ‘Statut o vremennykh organakh po upravleniiu kul’turno-natsional’nymi delami buriat-mongolov i tungusov Zabaikal’skoi Oblasti i Irkutskoi gubernii’, p. 16. 167 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 Februaiy 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting L. 5.

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members of the Buriat intelligentsia taking charge. These issued a program for radical change aimed at displacing the noenat from power and eliminating oppression. Tax reform was the key to unseating the noenat, by replacing the «oe«a/-controlled poll-tax by the ‘khobi’ system, resembling a propertyincome tax. Irregular land tenure was to be eliminated by the introduction of a fair redistribution of land and fair allocation of ‘in kind’168 obligations.169 Burnatskom was dominated by PS-R members,170 who saw the chance of uniting with the SR faction of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly.171 Although the SR Party did not live up to the Buriats’ expectations,172 during preparations for the Assembly, Bogdanov, whom they would elect as a delegate, developed the demands they wished to place before it. These included the elimination, at state expense, of the troublesome intermingled land holdings, and the declaration of lands to be allotted to the Buriats and Tungus ‘as their inalienable national property’.173 The concept of national autonomy was not only well-rooted within the upper echelons of Buriat society, but it formed a fundamental part of Bolshevik policy. One of the first results of the October Revolution was the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, signed by Lenin and Stalin, which confirmed the decisions of the congresses of soviets held in June and October 1917 which had proclaimed the right of the peoples of Russia to ‘free self-determination’.174 But with the arrival of Soviet rule in Transbaikalia, the insistence of the Buriats upon separation from their Russian neighbours provoked dismay. At a congress of Soviets in Verkhne-Udinsk in March 1918, a spokeman

168 This would include duties such as carting on post roads. 169 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1197, LL. 1-9, Amagaev’s ‘Report on the theocratic movement’, presented 15 February 1922, verified 16 May 1922, Quoting LL. 5 & 5 ob. 170 Natsional’noe Dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919 gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Docs No. 31, 39, 40, pp. 35, 44-7. 171 Natsional’noe Dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Docs. No. 37, 45, pp. 41, 55. 172 Natsional’noe Dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Doc. No. 52, p. 64. 173 Natsional’noe Dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Doc. No. 78, p. 90. 174 ‘Deklaratsiia prav narodov Rossii, 2 November 1917’, Sovetskaia politika za 10 let po natsional ’nomu voprosu v RSFSR; sistematicheskii sbornik deistvuiushchikh aktov pravitel ’stv Soiuza SSR i RSFSR po delam natsional’nostei RSFSR, (oktiabr’1917 g. - noiabr’ 1927 g.) (Moscow & Leningrad, 1928). pp. 1-2.

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reiterated that Soviet power stood for the self-determination of the peoples, but added that in Transbaikalia, where history had forced Russians and Buriats to live together, ‘mixed up in one territory’, it was necessary to decide all problems jointly. The Buriat spokesman restated their policy of introducing ‘purely Buriat organisations’, but promised to meet the Russians half-way. A resolution was passed confirming adherence to the right to national self-determination and ‘even to complete separation from Russia’, but adding that in Transbaikalia administrative autonomy had to be treated ‘very carefully, since the complete separation of the Buriats might tell harmfully on the building of mutual land relations’. Thus the meeting suggested ‘to the Buriat comrades not to refuse to visit the congresses of the Russian population for the sake of joint discussion of common questions and to set up conciliatory committees on land, food and other questions’.175 On 3 July 1918 the Zabaikal Oblast’ Executive Committee of the Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies passed a resolution on the national question.176 The Buriats had begun to participate in Soviet administration and the committee heard a report on the national question from Zhamtsarano, the Buriat now Commissar for National Affairs. They considered it in the light of the declaration of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of the Russian Workers’ Federative Republic of 3 January 1918 and the decree of the Sovnarkotn No. 18 on the self-determination of the nationalities. They also took into account the spirit and meaning of the resolutions on the Buriat question of the three congresses of the Councils of Deputies of Zabaikal Oblast These factors might have been enough to make the committee approve moves towards autonomy, but the case was strengthened by consideration of the treatment of the Buriats during the last decades of Tsarism. The committee recognised that

the blessings of national self-government and legal process in accordance with the law of 1822...were forcibly abolished by the autocracy with the aim of the denationalisation and the suppression of the spirit of democratism and independence of the Buriat-Mongol working masses and that ratification of the organs of government and the legal process of the Buriat-

175 Extract from ‘Protokoly s”ezda Sovetov Verkhneudinskogo raiona, 16-21 marta 1918 g.’, B or’ba zavlast’sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc. No. 43, pp. 102-133. Quoting pp. 120-2. 176 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919 gg, (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Document No. 138, pp. 136-7. (This document is from NARB. F. 483, Op. 1, D. 28, L. 4.)

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Mongols which have been created anew in the revolutionary process is a simple act of justice and a duty of the Russian Soviet Republic with regard to the Buriat people....177

This goodwill towards the Buriats had been bolstered by their attitude to their neighbours during the revolutionary process. The previous November a Buriat All-national Congress in VerkhneUdinsk had agreed to concede any surplus land for use by needy Russian farmers, on condition that the intermingled strip farming mode of land tenure ‘which had been artificially created by the autocracy with the aim of the denationalisation of the Buriat-Mongols and the introduction of discord between them and the Russian population in accordance with the principle of “divide and rule’” be abolished, and that new territory be assigned to them ‘in accordance with the spirit of territorial-political autonomy, to which the Buriat-Mongols aspire....’178 This was a restatement of the Buriat preference for separation from the Russians, but with regard for their needs. The resolution recognised that the intermingled strip farming mode of land tenure had led, and would continue the lead, to ‘interminable clashes and disputes’ which were ‘becoming intensified by the difference of the forms of the livestock-rearing and agricultural economy...’ between the Buriats and the Russians.179 The Committee decided ‘to recognise the organs of government and the legal process of the Buriat-Mongols which were created during the process of revolutionary construction and transformation after the October Revolution, in the Somons..., the Khoshuns... and the Aimales’ with, at an Oblast' level, the Central Buriat National Committee, ‘as the public-legal institutions of Soviet power in the Buriat-Mongol territory...’.180 The boundaries of this territory and the form of autonomy were to be determined by a special committee made up from an equal number of representatives from the constituent congress of the Buriat-Mongol Council of Deputies and of those from the Zabaikal Oblast’ Executive Committee.181 The draft which this committee worked out was to be presented ‘for ratification by the central

177 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg, (Ulan-Ude,

1994),Document No. 138, p. 136.

178 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg, (Ulan-Ude,

1994),Document No. 138, p. 136.

179Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg, (Ulan-Ude, 1994),Document No. 138, p. 136. 180Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg, (Ulan-Ude,

1994),Document No. 138, p. 136,

181 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg, (Ulan-Ude, 1994),Document No. 138, p. 136.

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authorities of the Russian Workers’ Federative Republic in the name of the Oblast’ Executive Committee and the central organ of the Buriat-Mongols’.182 It is plain from the language of this resolution that local adherents to Soviet power were willing to co-operate with the Buriats, finding local solutions to local problems, as well as to try follow central Bolshevik policy as outlined in the ‘Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia’. Semenov and Buriat ‘neutrality’

But Soviet power did not last, and with the Czech rebellion, Allied intervention and the coming of the cossack Ataman Semenov’s regime, the Buriat autonomists of Transbaikalia had to find a way to survive and pursue their goal. The only way to do this was to make an accommodation with Semenov and the Japanese, the two real powers in the area. The origins of Semenov’s regime lay in his 1917 attempt, on behalf of the Provisional Government, to assemble an anti-Bolshevik army from among the Transbaikal Buriats, building on the Buriat cossacks,183 from whose stock he himself sprang. Fearing the advent of civil war on Buriat lands in January 1918 with the first flexing of Semenov’s muscles, Burnatskom had refused to take any active part for or against him.184 The Buriats then saw the possibilities for their aspirations which the Soviet regime held, but in April 1918 Semenov proclaimed his ‘Provisional Government of Zabaikal Oblast”.1*5 He had to wait for Czech and Allied assistance before gaining control of the area, but late in 1918 he was in a position to establish his government at Chita with the backing of the Japanese. In response to these events E-D. Rinchino, leading left-wing member of Burnatskom wrote to his colleague, D. Sampilon, to suggest future tactics.186 The letter is an articulate statement of Buriat ‘neutrality’, their refusal to be drawn into Russian politics except as a way to achieve their over-riding goal, separation from the Russians and self-government. This policy would have repercussions for them during the time of the DVR.

182 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg, (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Document No. 138, p. 137. 183 Ataman Semenov, Osebe, (Dairen, 1938) pp. 43-7. 184 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg, (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Doc. No. 90, p. 99. 185 Ataman Semenov, Osebe (Dairen, 1938), pp. 103-9. 186 Natsional'noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, pp. 165-8, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD.

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Rinchino made plain his admiration for, and confidence in, Sampilon, who was taking over leadership of the committee from Rinchino. He declared that they both held the same views on internal and external policy, with only a little confusion in the field of an orientation to the right. Rinchino saw this as

a complete misunderstanding. There is no right orientation whatsoever, or it is completely unnecessary. All this comes from the intermingling of questions of internal and external policies and an unclear notion of what must be understood as questions of foreign and internal policy.... In my opinion questions of internal policy are questions concerning the...way of life of the Buriats. This is our policy in the Aimaks, our purely Buriat inter­ relations. All the rest are questions of external policy.187

This differentiation made the committee’s relationships with ‘the Siberian Government, Semenov, the Japanese, the Bolsheviks and so on external policy’.188 But Rinchino also required that, while it worked in contact with organs of Russian authority, the Buriat National Committee was ‘completely autonomous in questions concerning the administration, the courts and so on of the Buriats’.189 All organs of power in the Oblast’ were to make decisions on questions concerning the Oblast’ as a whole, and the Buriat population in particular, in accordance with the opinion of the National Committee and with its consent. ‘Such a state of affairs existed under the Bolsheviks....’ and it should be ‘very easy’ to justify and defend a similar situation under the new, post-Bolshevik, conditions.190 This he went on to do:

We Buriats and only we in the whole of Russia have managed to preserve the organs which were chosen by universal suffrage. We and only we have not allowed anarchy and Bolshevik

187 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 165, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD. 188 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 166, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD. 189 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 166, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD, 190 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 166, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD.

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pandemonium in our midst. We and only we have shown our aptitude for state thinking and behaviour. The failure of the Russians and Russian parties in the sphere of state and social construction is clear and does not need commenting on. Therefore we, the Buriats, until a Constituent Assembly, until the establishment of a firm state authority which is recognised by all, are not able, do not have the right to be bound up with the Russians, and to subordinate our institutions, achieved and organised with great difficulty, to all kinds of “provisional” institutions, which have come into existence by seizure, and no-one has the moral foundation to demand that we should go into this. Let these temporary and other institutions learn from our state experience and take an example from us and build their own permanent and longlasting administration and then invite us to subordination and so on.191

Rinchino foresaw objections from the Russians, but anticipated that the Buriats could ‘lean upon the Japanese and Semenov. For this of course we must come to an agreement with them beforehand’. But this was to be done ‘with each separately’ as Semenov was ‘not be trusted completely and shown all our cards’.192 Rinchino proposed to send the envoy Dylykov to Semenov ‘for the establishment of contact’.193 Rinchino was sure that ‘the preservation of order, calm and so on’ which the Buriat National Committee was ‘always able to guarantee’ would be enough to ensure the co­ operation of Semenov and the Japanese, since ‘for them our internal business must be a matter of indifference. This concerns them not at all. These would hardly interest them...’ and he added ‘As far as I am concerned I am more than convinced that the trick will work’.194 If such a proposal were to succeed it would be unnecessary to annul recent additions to the code of laws, indeed it would be ‘pure insanity’ and a product ‘not of political wisdom and insight’. Anyway, the new members of the National Committee did not have any juridical basis for annulling

191 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 166, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD. 192 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 166, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD. 193 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 167, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD. 194 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 166, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD.

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them as they had been ‘adopted and sanctioned by all tbs Aimak congresses’.195 Rinchino struck out at his opponents:

We, whom they accuse of Bolshevism, in this case have been more consistent democrats and supporters of popular rule than our liberators, for we have turned for the sanctioning of our actions to the assemblies of Aimak councillors elected by universal suffrage and supplemented by representatives of the Somons...so that neither from a juridical point of view, nor from the point of view of expediency, does the act of annulling the new additions to the code of laws endure any criticism.196

Nor did these new laws need to be sanctioned by any other, i.e. Russian, authority. Putting them before ‘the Siberian Duma or Government is also an absurdity, this is a repudiation of our particuliarity or autonomy’. The National Committee was ‘completely autonomous’, thus it had ‘the right to send its representatives to all important internal meetings, and the right of participation in international negotiations which concern the Far East’.197 Rinchino reiterated: ‘The most important and vital thing in the implementation of the projected programme is the establishment of contact with the Japanese and Semenov. For me Semenov exists so far as the Japanese and their secret tasks and plans in the territory of Siberia, Manchuria and Mongolia exist. Semenov represents a force so far as the Japanese stand behind him’. So really it was necessary to make contact directly with the Japanese, as contact with Semenov was easier to achieve but less significant. In this way Sampilon would ‘in the long run most likely discover in general outline the intentions of Japan and from these you will.. .build further, adapting to them’.198

195 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 166, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD. 196 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 166, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD. 191 Natsional'noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 166, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD. 198 Natsional ’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 167, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD.

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The old National Committee, which Rinchino had led during the Soviet period, had ‘believed that Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia [would] come completely into the sphere of authority of Japan; southern, northern and western Mongolia, including the Buriats [would] form an independent buffer state’. Under such a scenario Rinchino anticipated major works of social engineering. The Buriats would have either to ‘migrate into Khalkha [i.e. Outer Mongolia. C.B.] or be moved towards the frontiers of Zabaikalia with an exchange of lands’. But if unification of southern and northern Mongolia were not possible, ‘then two states [were to] be formed, with the south...under a protectorate of Japan’. But in the north this would entail ‘the creation of a Central Asiatic state’ which the old National Committee deemed ‘to correspond to the interests of Japan in strategic and political respects’. However Rinchino thought the Mongols and other peoples of Central Asia too primitive and corrupted by Buddhist clericalism to be suitable material for the creation of this state. Rather, he suggested ‘we, the Buriats, by comparison a most cultured nation evidently would play and will play, a great role’. He anticipated that the Japanese had already taken this into consideration, recognising the significance and prestige of the Buriats, so that the Japanese and Semenov would ‘support our autonomist tendencies’.199 Throughout the whole letter to Sampilon, Rinchino knew he was proposing a tactic which was likely to be construed as treachery by his left wing friends and former allies among the revolutionary movement. At the end of the letter, in a P.S., he returned to the theme of adopting a rightist orientation. He pointed out that since the collapse of Soviet power Burnatskom had maintained some of the institutions, e.g. councils of deputies, and the additions to the code of laws which had been developed during the Soviet period. This echoed the way it had preserved the pre-Soviet zemstvos and similar institutions after the Bolshevik uprising. In this way the National Committee had survived but had adhered to its own democratic and revolutionary principles. With this in mind Rinchino raised the ultimate example of Bolshevik pragmatism in defence of the policy he now advocated, asserting that ‘...our agreement with Japan and Semenov..will be our “Brest”. You...spoke about the preservation of purely revolutionary principles. The “Brest” does not interfere with and in no way sullies the purity of

199 Natsional ’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 167, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD.

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the revolutionary principles...’. He also claimed that this was not simply his view: ‘Relative to our “Brest”, I have already spoken with the representatives of the Siberian Council of Deputies still in Verkhne-Udinsk. And they have nothing against it.’200 Much later, after the withdrawal of Semenov and the Japanese from Transbaikalia, Rinchino was accepted back into the Bolshevik-dominated fold of the DVR’s Buriat administration. But later still, in 1937, his actions in 1918-19 were held against him, with accusations of pan-Mongolism and bourgeois nationalism, and he died in Stalin’s purges.201 In September 1918, Bogdanov, the SR and Buriat delegate to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, chaired a meeting between the Buriat National Department of Ataman Semenov’s notorious Special Manchurian Detachment [OMO], Aimalc representatives and some members of Burnatskom. The meeting discussed the future membership of the National Committee. From the Semenovites, the Aga taisha, Dylykov, reported on the formation of the OMO’s National Department by Buriat refugees from Aga, forced into Mongolia by the civil war. Dylykov proposed amalgamation of the OMO’s National Department with Burnatskom in Chita ‘with the aim of forming a united national organ’. He saw the collapse of Soviet power marking the end of the tasks of the OMO’s National Department, which was now entitled to representation on Burnatskom . The meeting agreed; the OMO’s National Department was wound up and Burnatskom took on its affairs and its representative, Damdinov. At the same time several of the more left wing members of the old Burnatskom, who had not already fled, were forced out.202 Under Semenov Burnatskom was transformed into the Buriat National Duma, which did his bidding in many matters, including, as we shall examine later in this thesis, conscripting an army for him from among the Buriats. Many strongly anti-Soviet sentiments were expressed by Semenovite

200 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., ‘Pis’mo E-D. Rinchino D. Sampilonu, konets 1918 g.’, Doc. No. 176, p. 168, from the archive of BMSSR NKVD. 201 Rupen, R. How Mongolia is Really Ruled, a History o f the Mongolian People’s Republic, 1900-78, (Stanford, 1979), p. 132. 202 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919 gg. (Ulan-Ude 1994), Doc. No. 145, p. 141, ‘Protokol soveshchaniia predstavitelei aimakov, Natsional’nogo otdela pri grazhdanskom upravlenii Zabaikal’skoi oblasti pri shtabe Osobogo Man’chzhurskogo otriada i chlenov Tsentral’nogo Buriatskogo Natsional’nogoKomiteta, 19 sentiabria 1918’.

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Buriats, and many atrocities committed by Semenov’s regime were associated with them.203 These events and attitudes would rebound on participants and victims alike during the life of the DVR. But gradually the Buriats lost their attachment to Semenov, partly due to his attempts to conscript their young men, partly as the Buriat cossacks deserted his cause, they had wished to live under an autonomous administration rather than under military regulations, which he could not allow, and partly due to his toying with their aspirations concerning autonomy.204 As we have seen, from the very first discussions on setting up the DVR,205 communists expressed very deep distrust and fear about Buriat loyalty, which sprang from Buriat involvement with Semenov. Creating the buffer republic ‘to utilise the antagonism between Japan and America’,206 to ‘untie America’s hands with regard to Japan’ and provide a ‘counter-balance to [Japan’s] imperialistic plans’ 207 would create an alternative to the buffer which Japan was ‘striving to create...in the shape of a Mongolo-Buriat Republic, headed by Ataman Semenov under a protectorate of Japan herself.208

203 The intricacies of Buriat relations with Semenov’s regime would be a large and fascinating study. We shall deal with a small fraction of them later in the thesis, while a good overview may be gained from: Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919 gg. (Ulan-Ude 1994), from about page 132; from Istoriia Buriatskoi ASSR, tom II (Ulan-Ude, 1959), from about page 70; while Ataman Semenov’s own account can be found in O sebe (Dairen, 1938). 204 This picture of disenchantment emerges in Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude 1994), from about page 178. 203 Documents and commentary relating to this period and the Political Centre can be found in Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr ’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), pp. 373-426. The discussions are also dealt with in J. D. Smele, Civil War in Siberia (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 651-3. 206 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, pp. 401-13. 207 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, pp. 406 and 408. 208 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr'skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia

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Semenov’s ‘Buriat Republic’ also threatened the circum-Baikal rail link and the land passage between the south shore of Baikal and Mongolia and thus the Soviet heartland.209 These fears, and the apparent willingness of many Buriats who had been one-time supporters of Soviet power in Transbaikalia to try to co-exist with Semenov and even to play along with his plans for a ‘Greater Mongolia’, coloured perceptions of the Buriats by the DVR’s communists from the very start. Autonomy under the DVR A retrospective appraisal of the DVR’s Buriat Autonomous Oblast’, written after the merging of the DVR into the RSFSR, gives us the early history of the moves towards autonomy under the DVR.210 This states that the origins of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’ of the DVR lay in the first half of 1920, with the founding of the ‘buffer’ state and the declaration of a democratic system of govermnent. At that time the Buriat Mongols were led by the Buriat People’s Revolutionary Committee (.Burnarrevkom), which was ‘composed of national-democrats and nationalists’ 211 The report continued:

Burnarrevkom introduced a system of cultural-national autonomy without territorial integrity. The expectations and hopes of the working Buriat-Mongols of the Far East, who had seen all the “delights” of the rule of the various generals and White-green “democrats” in the course of 1918-1919, turned toward Soviet Russia as the defender of the oppressed nationalities. The Constituent Congress of the Buriat-Mongols of the Far East, which took place in May 1920, spoke out for the implementation of administrative-territorial autonomy and for

mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, p. 408. 209 Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr'skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R. (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), ‘Zhurnal ob”edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s rev[v]oensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom [Tomsk]’, 19 January 1920, Doc. No. 77, pp. 408-12. 210 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, LL. 15-16 ob. ‘Brief minutes on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’ of the Far East (of the former DVR)’, No date, but the content makes it plain that it was written after the merger of the DVR into the RSFSR, as on L. 15 ob. it says ‘by the day of the liquidation of the DVR the Oblast’ Administration existed with all rights and functions....’. 211 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L. 15.

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reunification with Soviet Russia. But because of the objective conditions, in which the Far East found itself, it was impossible to implement this reunification. 212

These conditions, the founding of the DVR, led to the eastern Buriats being isolated from the Buriats of the RSFSR, ‘who had received administrative-territorial autonomy’.213 But the statement is misleading. Autonomous Oblast’ status was only formalised for the RSFSR’s Buriats in 1922, and only after the Irkutsk Buriat communists, who in February 1920 had seen Buriat autonomy as ‘pointless’, had been convinced of its necessity by Stalin in December 1920 214 Autonomy came to the western Buriats via an order, dated 9 January 1922, from Kalinin, in Moscow, by which power was to pass ‘to the Autonomous Mongolo-Buriat Oblast’...no later than 1 February 1922’ 215 Meanwhile autonomy was granted to the DVR’s Buriats under:

very unfavourable circumstances. The leading organ - Burnarrevkom - which was led by national-democrats did not understand the interests and aspirations of the working masses and carried on a policy which did not correspond to the tactics of the RKP, which because of the presence of the interventionist forces and the White-guardist armies in the Far East, was trying to build a centralised and reliable apparatus, which it was then impossible to bring about with the Buriat-Mongols 216

These unfavourable conditions prevented the granting of administrative-territorial autonomy: ‘Burnarrevkom therefore did not have and could not have authority in the full sense of the word, in the territory of the Autonomous Oblast’...'’ but carried out measures ‘of an exclusively cultural character and busied itself with the preparation of materials for the Constituent Assembly of the DVR’.217 Given

212 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L 15. 213 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L. 15. 214 Istoriia Buriatskoi ASSR, tom II (Ulan-Ude, 1959), p. 154-5. 215 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op.l, D. 600, L. 9.; see also ‘Ob Avtonomnoi mongolo-buriatskoi oblasti’, Sovetskaia politika za 10 let po natsional’nomu voprosu v RSFSR; sistematicheskii sbornik deistvuiushchikh aktov pravitel ’stv Soiuza SSR i RSFSR po delam natsional ’nostei RSFSR, (oktiabr ’ 1917 g. - noiabr’ 1927 g.) (Moscow & Leningrad, 1928). pp. 65-66, 216 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L 15. 217 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L 15.

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that Burnarrevkom was dominated by ‘bourgeois nationalists’, the communists were probably glad of that. At a DVR conference of local administrations Burnarrevkom reiterated the policy of ‘neutrality’, saying it would ‘maintain complete neutrality in the political struggles of the parties at the conference and in its national politics it would be oriented exclusively towards a unified democratic front’.218 Meanwhile Agvan Dorzhiev, that formidable member of the Buriat intelligentsia who had acted as go-between during the Tsarist government’s flirtation with the Dalai-Lama and had helped the Provisional government towards creating legislation favouring religious freedom for Russia’s Buddhists, entered the campaign for autonomy. After attending the Congress of the Peoples of the East ( 1 - 8 September 1920), in Baku, he was among a group of its delegates invited to the Politbiuro meeting of 14 October 1920. He was joined in this visit by a Kalmyk colleague and his fellow-Buriat, Rinchino, who had come to Moscow to help a group of Outer Mongolian revolutionaries seeking assistance from Comintern.219 The Politbiuro meeting adopted a draft decree written by Lenin, which set out:

1) To strengthen the work of the Council of Nationalities under Narkomnats and to submit a report on this work to the next meeting of Sovnarkom. 2) To instigate the strictest examination of the abuses and violence, carried out by the local Russian population in respect of the eastern nationalities (in particular the Kalmyks, BuriatMongols and so on), and to subject the guilty to punishment. 3) To publish, in the name of the highest Soviet authority, a manifesto which would confirm the principles of the national policy of the RSFSR and establish more effective control over its full implementation. 4) To recognise as necessary the putting into practice of autonomy, in forms appropriate to the specific conditions, for all the eastern nationalities which do not already have autonomous institutions, first of all for the Kalmyks and the Buriat-Mongols, having [thus] instructed Narkomnats.220

218 Istoriia Buriatskoi ASSR, tom II (Ulan-Ude, 1959), p. 142, quoting TsGA BurASSR, F. 485, D. 1, L. 24. 219 G.-N. Zaiatuev, Tsanid-Khambo Agvan Dorzhiev (1853-1938 gg.) (Ulan-Ude, 1991), pp. 36-7; see also Istoriia Buriatii v voprosakh i otvetakh, vyp. 3 (Ulan-Ude, 1992) p. 29. 220 V. I. Lenin, ‘Proekt postanovleniia Politbiuro TsK RKP(b) po voprosu o zadachakh RKP(b) v mestnostakh, naselennykh vostochnymi narodami’ written 13 or 14 October 1920, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Tom 41 (May-November 1920), (5th Edition: Moscow, 1977), p. 342-3.

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Exactly what effect this had is not clear, for Buriat autonomy was to be partial, complicated and slow in arriving. In January 1921 the government of the DVR echoed some elements of the earlier acceptance by the Soviets of Buriat autonomy. The statute ‘On the national organs of Buriat self-government’ dated 17 January 1921, recognised theAimak, Khoshun and Somon committees ‘as the local organs of Buriat-Mongol self-government, having included them in the unified system of the administrative organs of the Republic’. National organs of Buriat self-government were not identified, but they were to be financed in the general manner ‘via the Oblast' administration and the Ministry of Finance’.221 But at this stage no mention was made of a specific territorial unit. This had to wait for the attention of the DVR’s Constituent Assembly, which, according to the retrospective analysis of Buriat communists from the administration of the RSFSR’s Buriat Autonomous Oblast’, ‘at the intercession of the Buriat-Mongol fraction’,222 wrote Buriat autonomy into the republic’s Constitution or Fundamental Law, which it adopted on 27th April 1921.223 The Constitution’s fifth section was devoted to matters concerning the rights of national minorities, stating ‘All indigenous nationalities and national minorities within the territory of the Republic shall enjoy the right of self-determination on a broad basis’.224 The activities of the bodies of national selfadministration were to be ‘guided... by the laws of the Republic’,225 while a Ministry of National Affairs with appropriate national departments was to be established to ‘control and guide the national self-administration’,226

221 Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii pravitel’stva D al’ne-Vostochnoi Respublilci [Hereafter Sob. Uzak.], No. 1 (5), (31 January 1921), Art 25, p. 46. 222 RTsKMDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L 15. 223 The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources, Trade and Industry, published by the Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, (Washington, D.C., 1922), Section VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic, p. 1. 224 ibid, Section 5, Article 1,Clause 113, p. 20. 225 ibid, Section 5, Article 1,Clause 114, p. 20. 226 ibid, Section 5, Article 1,Clause 115, p. 20.

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But the Buriats received additional attention in the Constitution in a special article: ‘The entire area inhabited by the Buriat-Mongols shall form a special territory under the name of the “Autonomous Buriat-Mongol Territory” the boundaries of which shall be fixed by law’.227 This was the first mention of autonomy in the legislation of the DVR. It separated the Buriats out from the other nationalities in that they were the only people granted autonomous territory within which they were to be ‘independent in the matter of establishing courts, economic, administrative institutions and such institutions as pertain to their national culture’ 228 Autonomy for the other national minorities was granted only ‘in matters pertaining to their national culture’.229 The Buriat autonomous territory was to be administered, and laws passed in the spheres of life where independence had been granted, by ‘its Territorial Assembly of delegates who shall elect an executive body - [the] Territorial Administration’.230 This Territorial Administration was also to enforce the DVR’s state laws within the autonomous territory.231 Very significantly the Constitution also addressed the long-term problem of the intermingling of Buriat landholdings with those of Russians. A special commission was to be set up ‘to abolish the interlocking of strips of land owned by the Bruiat-Mongols [sic] and Russians’ 232 The implications of this provision were massive, involving racially exclusive territory achieved by a huge programme of social engineering; large numbers of people would have to migrate to achieve this ‘abolition’. With this framework in place, a Buriat congress elected Burmonavtupr [Buriat-Mongolskoe Avtonomnoe Upravlenie, the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Administration], and outlined a scheme for ruling the Autonomous Oblast’ through a supreme legislative organ, the People’s National Assembly. This was to be elected on the four-fold principles [by universal, equal, direct and secret ballot], with

227 ibid, Section 5, Article 2, Clause 116, p. 20. 228 ibid, Section 5, Article 2, Clause 118, p. 20-1. 229 ibid, Section 5, Article 3, Clause 121, p. 21. 230 ibid, Section 5, Article 2, Clause 119, p. 21. 231 ibid, Section 5, Article 2, Clause 120, p. 21. 232 ibid, Section 5, Article 2, Clause 117, p. 20.

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proportional representation at the rate of 1 delegate per 2,000 electors, and was to fulfil the promises of the Constitution.233 However, as we shall see, the Constitution could not be followed word for word. A term such as ‘the entire area inhabited by the Buriat-Mongols’, could be open to many interpretations, especially as it concerned a nomadic community. Meanwhile the granting of independence in the establishing of courts, economic and administrative institutions gave fertile ground for conflict with state laws. Even at the level of national-cultural autonomy, granted to all national minorites, there was plenty of room for important problems. The Buriats’ national culture, in matters of which they had been granted independence to establish pertinent institutions, was founded upon two factors certain to bring conflict with central policies. These were the nomadic way of life with its implications for land-use, and the deep-rooted allegiance of the people to the Buddhist faith and its institutions. Indeed, barely two months had passed after the adoption of the Constitution, when Moscow received notification of unease within the DVR’s government over plans for Buriat autonomy. It seems that a scheme different from the one envisaged in the Constitution was being proposed. The DVR’s president, Krasnoshchekov, on 15 June 1921, sent a note to Chicherin, the RSFSR’s People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, expressing doubts about some basic tenets of central policy which concerned autonomy, and their application to the Buriats.234 What seems to have been under consideration was the creation of an Autonomous Buriat Republic, along the lines of others already existing in the RSFSR.235 This would have been a far cry from the model set out in the DVR’s Constitution and, as Krasnoshchekov observed, ‘To create a Buriat Republic means to break the

233 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), pp. 85-6. 234 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 235 See J. Smith, ‘The Origins of Soviet National Autonomy’, Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 10, No. 2 (December 1997), pp. 62-84, for the emergence of the Turkestan (1918), Bashkir (1919), Tatar (1920) Autonomous Soviet Republics and many autonomous regions before the Buriat Autonomous Oblast’s in 1921 and 1922.

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border of the DVR’,236 i.e. to interfere with the integrity, and hence the credibility, of the state which had been established only recently and with great difficulty. One wonders why such a plan was being mooted at this time, although it may have been associated with the establishment of revolutionary government in Outer Mongolia.237 But if the DVR was to fulfil the foreign policy functions, relating to America and Japan, for which it had been set up, it had to appear to act independently from the RSFSR and not enter into joint projects which so obviously drew their ideological inspiration from patterns already established in the communist regime. The establishment of a Buriat Republic to occupy lands from both states would completely undermine the DVR’s claims to be independent and democratic, as it would overturn the will of the people as expressed in the Constitution adopted so recently by the DVR’s Constituent Assembly. The international response to the communists’ closure of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly in January 1918, meant that communist leaders should have held no illusions about the necessity of upholding the decisions of the DVR’s Constituent Assembly. Krasnoshchekov’s note went on to reveal hints of many problems which faced the communists of the DVR. He was not a blind follower of policy for its own sake, or even of what today might be called political correctness. He was a pragmatic politician who sought to shape policy to cope with real situations and problems. He was a Chicago educated lawyer with years of experience in the American labour movement. Krasnoshchekov’s attitude towards autonomy was revealing: ‘Now a fashion prevails for autonomous republics and to create them everywhere...’ and although he

236 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 237 R. A. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century, Part I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), pp. 141-4 and 479, describes how, with the crucial help of Buriats Zhamtsarano and Rinchino (both dedicated to attaining Buriat autonomy), the Mongolian People’s Republic was established through spring and summer 1921. The success of the project was not ensured until the capture of Ungern in August 1921, despite the formation of a Provisional Government on 13 March, the use of the (Soviet) Red Army from about 7 June and the declaration of the People’s Revolutionary Government on 11 July. Perhaps the renewal of interest in the form of Buriat autonomy was a result of the key role played by many Buriats, perhaps it was even an inducement.

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continued ‘I shall not enter into an appraisal of this passion....’ the tone and vocabulary are plainly censorious.238 Getting down to the particular problem of the Buriats he continued: ‘This fashion has also reached us, a few tens of Buriats have stirred up the question about a Buriat Republic’.239 It might have been possible to ignore so small a force, but Krasnoshchekov’s note revealed another interesting aspect of political life in the DVR - the lack of unanimity within the communist party there. The communist leadership diplayed deep and wide differences over policy, and these seemed to lead to, or possibly derive from, rivalry and animosity at a personal level. Certainly Krasnoshchekov became hated by his colleagues, to the extent that a group of them demanded his removal from the Far East.240 The straws of this situation in the wind of June 1921 are discernible in his accusations against his

238 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266, Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921, “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 239 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 240 While one would expect the Whites to hate Krasnoshchekov (I. K. Artem’ev, President of the Priamur Chamber of Commerce and the Priamur Duma and Minister in Diderikhs’s Priamur Government, called him ‘...a Jew, the former landlord of a brothel in Kharbin’: see: I. K. Artem’ev, Vospominaniia, epizody revoliutsii na D al’nem” Vostoke (Tian’tszin” , no date), p. 39), his reputation among his colleagues gained mythic proportions. Krasnoshchekov’s behaviour in the DVR earned him the hatred of almost every influential communist with whom he worked. RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 61, L. 74 is the transcript of a conversation from 30 April 1921, between leading members of Dal'biuro and their superior in Sibrevkom, where they described Krasnoshchekov as usurping his authority, accusing him of locking his fellow Dal ’biuro members out of decisions and contact with the Central Committee. They accused him of running the government by his own whim and they threatened to ask the Central Committee to remove him from leadership. RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 104, LL. 3 and 4 show an exchange of correspondence from August 1921 indicating that one section of D al’biuro had requested the Central Committee to prevent Krasnoshchekov from returning to the Far East from a visit to Moscow, while another protested that the first group were telling lies. The first group talk of ‘the impossibility of joint work with Krasnoshchekov’ and anxiety over his possible return to the DVR ‘paralysing the work’.

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communist fellows in power. ‘Ianson and Shumiatskii241 have already taken them [i.e. the Buriats who were seeking a Buriat Republic, C.B.] under their patronage, have even appointed a Chairman of the Buriat Sovnarkom and he already has allocated portfolios’.242 D al’biuro's Ianson denied this accusation, insisting that his denial be noted in the meeting’s protocol.243 As far as the project for establishing an Autonomous Buriat Republic was concerned, Krasnoshchekov made his opposition very plain. ‘We in the DYR categorically speak out against this escapade as not well-timed, inappropriate and harmful to the interests of Russia and the revolution in the Far East’.244 Although it is plain he was not speaking for Ianson and Shumiatskii, there is no mention of whom he claimed to speak for. He simply regretted that his ‘...arrival in Moscow was delayed and I was deprived of the opportunity to substantiate all these questions personally’.245 This being the case, he set out to outline in brief the reasons for his opposition to the creation of a Buriat Republic. He envisaged such a move as difficult in terms of acceptance by local Russians: ‘The Buriats do not live as a compact mass; they constitute a minority of the population from Balagansk to the north, from Irkutsk right up to Manchuria Station interspersed as islands between the Russians’.246

241 Two of Krasnoshchekov’s worst enemies within the communist administration, see note above. 242 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 243 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 264 ob. 244 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 245 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 246 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’.

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But on a strategic point his opposition was firm, ‘Our situation beyond Baikal is not stable not only in military respects but also in the ethical.247 We occupy territory every arshin of winch has a strategic importance.... To create a Buriat republic means...to give back to them the Baikal tunnels and the Chita [rail]road\248 His concerns over the circum-Baikal loop resonated with those of many earlier Russian politicians. In Krasnoshchekov’s period such strategic concerns were especially acute in view of the chaos within China, the repercussions of this in Mongolia, with its emergence to autonomy in 1911 and, contemporary with Krasnoshchekov’s note, its revolution. The security and political hue of this Mongolian revolution was by no means assured at the time of Krasnoshchekov’s writing. Indeed, at exactly the time Krasnoshchekov was expressing these views, Ungern, with a counter-revolutionary army in which many Buriats served249 and which was perceived as being backed by the Japanese,250 was successfully penetrating this south Baikal area of both the DVR and the RSFSR.251 Krasnoshchekov’s anxiety was echoed in official circles throughout the summer as Ungern threatened

247 It is highly probable that ethical may be a mis-spelling of ethnic, as the omission of only the letter ‘n’ would effect this difference between the two words in Russian. Ethnic seems to make as much, if not more, sense here. C.B. 248 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the Dal'biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 249 Shli divizii vpered, 1920-1921: Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia v osvobozhdenii Zabaikal’ia (sbornik dokumentov) (Irkutsk, 1987). Doc. No. 115, p. 167; Doc. No. 129, p. 185; Doc. No. 133, p. 192; Map, p. 253; Doc. No. 209, p. 278; Doc. No. 216, pp. 286-7; Doc. No. 224, p. 295; Doc. No. 229, p. 301; Doc. No. 230, pp. 305-6; Doc. No. 245, p. 324. 250 Shli divizii vpered, 1920-1921: Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia v osvobozhdenii Zabaikal’ia (sbornik dokumentov) (Irkutsk, 1987), Doc. No. 191, p. 251; Doc. No. 204, p. 269; Doc. No. 245, p. 323-5. 251 Shli divizii vpered, 1920-1921: Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia v osvobozhdenii Zabaikal’ia (sbornik dokumentov) (Irkutsk, 1987), Maps, pp. 252-3 and 272-3; Ungern’s 1921 campaign against (and within) Russia can be traced through: Shli divizii vpered, 1920-1921: Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia v osvobozhdenii Zabaikal'ia (sbornik dokumentov) (Irkutsk, 1987), Docs 187 - 246, pp. 245 326.

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Verkhne-Udinsk252 and penetrated westward towards Irkutsk occupying the Dzhida valley, where some Buriats rose in his support.253 Given the activities of Mongolian nationalists and theocrats, the Japanese, Semenov and Ungern, Krasnoshchekov’s view of the emergence of an Autonomous Buriat Republic on the Russian side of the border as potentially catastrophic makes sense. He thought this might lead to ‘the merger of our Buriat republic with Mongolia [and] to the loss of Zabaikalia...’ and Mongolia would be much more likely to come ‘under the influence of Japan and China than of us’.254 (Indeed, months previously, Krasnoshchekov had made known his views on some of the DVR’s most prominent Buriats, particularly their erstwhile leader, Rinchino, and their assistance with the Mongolian revolution. In a telegram to Lenin in November 1920 he declared: ‘... our flirtation with Mongolia by setting on it a few bourgeois nationalists of Ranchino’s [sic] type puts us into a disgracefully erroneous position...’.255) Krasnoshchekov elaborated on the plans for autonomy: ‘Supporters of the Buriat republic, pressed...with these arguments, propose to resettle all the Buriats in a certain part of southern Zabaikalia and to create there a republic - a utopia’. But this was equally unacceptable to Krasnoshchekov. ‘You will not artificially resettle a few hundred thousand people, [and] even if this

252 Shli divizii vpered, 1920-1921: Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia v osvobozhdenii Zabaikal’ia (sbornik dokumentov) (Irkutsk, 1987), Doc. No. 232, p. 307. 253 Shli divizii vpered, 1920-1921: Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia v osvobozhdenii Zabaikal’ia (sbornik dokumentov) (Irkutsk, 1987), Doc. No. 230, pp. 302-6. Even in August, with Ungern’s forces barely 50 km southwest of Verkhne-Udinsk, Bliukher, C-in-C of the NRA described the government as ‘very nervous’ about the situation, and Bliukher’s lack of troops ‘only increase[d] this nervousness’. See: Shli divizii vpered, 1920-1921: Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia v osvobozhdenii Zabaikal’ia (sbornik dokumentov) (Irkutsk, 1987), Doc. No. 234, p. 311. 254 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 255 D al’nevostochnaia Respublika: stanovlenie, bor’ba s interventsiei (fevral’ 1920 - noiabr' 1922; dokumenty i materialy v 2-kh chastiakh. chast ’ 1: fevral' - noiabr ’ 1920 g. (Vladivostok, 1993), Doc. No. 142, p. 308-10, (Quote from p. 310). Quoting archive: TsGAOR SSSR. F. 130, Op. 4, D. 469, LL. 161-7.

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succeeded it would undoubtedly mean the loss of southern Zabaikalia, a very important strategic point, which means the loss of the Amur’. Referring to the period between late 1918 and late 1920, when Semenov based his government in Chita, Krasnoshchekov commented that it was ‘not in vain [that] the Japanese agents via Semenov achieved the autonomy of the Buriats...’.256 Thus another major factor in the history of communist involvement with the Buriats in the DVR and the RSFSR was mentioned in Krasnoshchekov’s note. It linked the autonomy that many thought the Buriats enjoyed under Semenov with what was being offered by the communists, as many of the leaders of the autonomy movement not only survived the rapid changes of regimes in Buriatiia but even prospered. ‘It is not a secret to anyone that all the Buriat intelligentsia are of the SRs and the right...’, and this went some way to explain their survival under preceeding regimes. But, if Krasnoshchekov was correct in his observation that ‘the poverty-stricken population of the Buriat Aimaks are against autonomy and isolation’, it also had implications for their relations with their own constituents.257 The implication was that Krasnoshchekov was suspicious of supporting a movement which was led by opponents of communism, and which did not represent the aspirations of the very section of Buriat society which the communists ought to support and be supported by. As we shall see later in this thesis, this problem was to have great significance for the DVR’s government, internal affairs, communists and Buriats. Observing that ‘The socialist revolution will come but has still not yet arrived’, Krasnoshchekov concluded his note with some observations and suggestions. It was necessary to send a stream of migrants to the Far East, as even ‘the most counter-revolutionary khokhol258 becomes,

256 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 257 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 258 The Russian word khokhol means top-knot and is used as slang for a Ukrainian peasant, who wore such a hairstyle.

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among us, a nationalist and a revolutionary’.259 This must refer to the reaction of Slavs and poor peasants in the face of foreign interventionists and their puppets in the White movements. Krasnoshchekov declared that it was necessary to put off the establishment of a Buriat Republic for a while as:

The DVR cannot carry it through, and to establish it only on the territory of the RSFSR would be a mockery and a provocation. We will wait, let the Buriats and Mongolians establish their Republic in Mongolia, we will do everything in order to consolidate it then perhaps we will give up Uriankhai and then we will speak also about a Buriat republic, and as it is necessary to consolidate our position in Zabaikalia we should think about the transfer of settlers.260

Returning to Iris differences with his communist colleagues, Krasnoshchekov declared; ‘I consider this question to be very important and urgent because Shumiatskii has already taken the future Chairman of the Buriat Sovnarkom to Moscow and probably is posing the question in the Central Committee and in Comintern. It is necessary to adopt a firm position, he is simply building republics for the sake of republics contrary to logic and reason’. In apparent despair he finished by declaring ‘This is futuristic poetiy and not a realistic policy but send the latter [i.e. a realistic policy. C.B.] to us here or else we will lose [our] head’.261 Although unpopular, Krasnoshchekov was successful, in that Dal ’biuro asked the Central Committee of the Party to postpone the resolution of the question of the formation of the Buriat Republic ‘until the conclusion of events in the Far East’, and ‘to consider the...formation of the Buriat

259 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 260 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’. 261 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 266. ‘Appendix to the protocol of the Dal'biuro meeting of 26 June 1921. “A copy of the note on the Buriat question passed by comrade Krasnoshchekov from Omsk to Moscow for Chicherin” dated 15 June 1921’.

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Republic in Irkutsk Guberniia as premature since such can and will harmfully influence the Buriats of Zabaikalia’.262 But things went ahead and the two Buriat Autonomous Oblast’s were to exist side by side, one in the DVR and one in the RSFSR until they were unified, emerging as the Autonomous Buriat Republic after departure of the Japanese and the merger of the DVR into the RSFSR. From a discussion amongst RSFSR Buriat communists held in Irkutsk a few days after the discussion of Krasnoshchekov’s note by Dal 'biuro, we can learn something of their assessment of the state of Buriat affairs in the DVR. Present were the secretary of the Buriat section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP bureau comrade II’in, secretaries Trubachev of Angara Aimak, Khabukhaev of Tunkinsk Aimak, Egorov of Zirit-Bulagatsk Aimak, the chairman of the Buriat-Mongol central committee, Amagaev, and the secretary of the Mongolian-Tibetan Department of the Far Eastern section of the Comintern, Danchinov. This Irkutsk group had been hostile to Buriat autonomy until convinced by Stalin about seven months earlier. The autonomy to be granted to the RSFSR’s Buriats was not based on racially exclusive territory. Their territory would include Russians, and Amagaev had been most closely involved in developing these plans,263 but now he had been sent to the DVR to investigate the progress of somewhat different plans for autonomy there. The Buriat communists’ meeting of 6 July 1921 heard his report about the situation in the DVR and the tasks of the Buriat organisation of the RKP.264 He had previously sent his comrades a telegramme in which he observed that the main problem with the DVR’s promise to its Buriats was that it involved territorial autonomy for Buriats separated from Russians: ‘the intermingling of plots is to be eliminated by way of voluntary exchanges of land and migration of the population’, but precious little else had been decided, and the DVR’s government did not trust the Buriat administration in the

262 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 264 ob. 263 N. P. Egunov, M. I. Amagaev, (Ulan-Ude, 1974), pp. 29-30, quoting PAIO, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 523, L. 63. 264 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921.’

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absence of native communists of any calibre.265 The problem facing the meeting in Irkutsk was how to step in and manage this problem child. The Irkutsk Buriats acknowledged the provisions laid down in the Constitution of the DVR for a Buriat Autonomous Oblast’ there, and that its establishment was at the stage of ‘practical resolution’. Its provisional government had been set up in April and on 20 July [i.e. just 2 weeks hence, C.B.] a Constituent congress of the Buriats of the DVR was being called.266 This had been called after the Constituent Assembly dispersed, by a gathering of its Buriat delegates.267 They had dissolved the Buriat Revkom and formed a temporaty administration for the DVR’s Autonomous Oblast’, Burmonavtupr, based on SR-orientated nationalists. The congress commissioned Burmonavtupr to ‘summon a congress of the representatives of the Buriat-Mongol working people’ by 1 July 1921, and to ‘develop a draft on the creation in the provinces of judicial, administrative-economic and national-cultural bodies,in accordance with the general constitution of the DVR’ 268 This was before the DVR’s government had passed the 18 August law on the temporary Administration of the Autonomous Oblast’?69 The Irkutsk Buriat communists understood that the ‘predominance and leading role in the revolutionary-national organs of power’ among the Buriats had ‘been captured by right-socialist and nationalist groups’ due to ‘the Buriat communists’ mistaken tactic of self-isolation in the past’.270 Thus they agreed with Krasnoshchekov as regards the political make-up of the DVR’s Buriat administration.

265 N. P. Egunov, M. I. Amagaev, (Ulan-Ude, 1974), p. 31, quoting TsGA BurASSR: F. R-260, Op. 1, D. 3, LL. 182-4. 266 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921. ’ 267 Istoriia Buriatskoi ASSR, Tom II (Ulan-Ude, 1959), p. 147. 268 Istoriia Buriatskoi ASSR, Tom II (Ulan-Ude, 1959), p. 147. Quoting:TsGA Bur ASSR: F. 278, D. 37, L. 5. 269 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (10), 8 September 1921, Art. 83, pp. 161-3. 270 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921.’

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Domination by such groups had several important consequences. They had been able to enjoy a rise in popularity and had come to increase their influence over ‘the consciousness of the working Buriat-Mongols’. This, in turn, had proved a rallying point for elements which were ‘politically unreliable’ and in part ‘counter-revolutionary’ at the centre and in the localities.271 Another factor had frustrated the aims of the communists: ‘due to the influence of violent acts which have been committed by a certain section of the Semeiskie peasantry (in respect of the Buriat population) because of land-ownership and land-tenure, mainly carried out under the flag of Bolshevism, in the beginning [the Communist Party] had almost no popularity’.272 The all-toocommon occurrence of land and livestock seizures, and other atrocities enacted by Russian peasants against their Buriat neighbours, had been going on since the early days of the revolution. Whether it was justified to lay it at the door of the Semeiskie, the so-called ‘Family’ Old-Believers who had been settled in Zabaikalia during the eighteenth century, is hard to say, but the accusation was oft repeated, at least in communist documents. The Irkutsk Buriat communists were right to judge that the perpetrators’ declarations that they committed their seizures with communist authority had caused a deep distrust of the communists among the DVR’s Buriats. The repercussions of this distrust will be discussed throughout this thesis. But one factor had helped to redeem the communists. The authors of the post-DVR report cited earlier273 were wrong to imply that the Buriat Autonomous Oblast’ had been created by the DVR’s Constituent Assembly simply ‘at the intercession of the Buriat-Mongol fraction’.274 The question of an Autonomous Oblast’ for the DVR’s Buriats had only been pushed through this Constituent Assembly ‘by the strength and support of the communist fraction’, and this had ‘raised

271 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921.’ 272 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921. ’ 273 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, LL. 15-16 ob. ‘Brief minutes on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’ of the Far East (of the former DVR)’. 274 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L 15.

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and strengthened...the prestige of the communist party in the consciousness of the nationalistically minded Buriat-Mongols’.275 In the minds of the Irkutsk Buriats, three factors combined to make Buriat affairs in the DVR take on a very grave aspect. The threat posed by Ungern, currently occupying a large tract of the sensitive south Baikal area of the RSFSR and DVR, the leading role achieved in the Autonomous Oblast ’by the right socialist and nationalist groups, and the ‘almost complete political illiteracy of the Buriat-Mongol population’, made the political situation ‘risky and clearly dangerous’ 276 With these considerations in mind they decided to approve Amagaev’s proposals. This meant firstly, criticising the Buriat communists’ tactic of keeping aloof from revolutionary and party work among the DVR’s Buriats as mistaken, and secondly, making the best of the goodwill generated by communist aid to the Buriats to press forward party work. The main practical task was ‘to secure leadership and control in the Central Administration of the Autonomous Oblast’ for the Buriat communists’ 277 There was an implication that the DVR’s Buriat communists needed some central control, since, in the light of their earlier failures, they might be useful as a facade but were not yet to be trusted fully. This was reiterated in the decision ‘to recognise as acceptable, as a temporary tactical step, the entry of the Buriat communists into the Administration on coalition principles with the retention of a guiding role behind them...due to the impossibility of creating a monolithic homogeneous communist administration of the Autonomous Oblast’ in the conditions which have developed there... ’ 278

275 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921.’ 276 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921.’ 277 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921.’ 278 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921.’

These decisions tacitly acknowledged the power of Krasnoshchekov’s arguments and the dangers he had pointed out. The men from Irkutsk decided to take active charge of the situation in the DVR and:

...dispatch the two comrades Vasilii Trubachev (Political leader of the Buriat Communist Detachment) and Kuzma Il’in (secretary of the Bureau section) for work in the Central Administration of the Autonomous Oblast’ [and]... dispatch comrade Amagaev to the town of Chita for the execution of the decisions [we have] taken through the agencies of the D al’biuro..., the government of the DVR and the Constituent congress of the BuriatMongols.279

These three men would take on leading roles not only in the DVR’s Buriat Autonomous Oblast’,230 but even in its government, with Amagaev becoming Minister of National Affairs in January 1922. But they were going to take charge of a process of separation of the Buriats from the Russians, already established under the DVR’s Constitution, with which they did not agree. Within six weeks the DVR’s government was able to produce a ‘Decree...on the Temporary Administration of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’} 31 This draft appeared on 18 August 1921 and it was published as law, virtually unchanged and bearing the same date, in the DVR’s calendar of laws issued on 8 September 1921.282 The statute brought into effect provisions made in article 119 the Constitution and granting, until elections could be held, ‘the rights and duties of Oblast’ Administrations, which have been provided for by Chapter 2 of Part 5 of Section 4 and by Chapters 1 and 2 of Part 2 of Section 4 of the Fundamental Law of the Republic, and also by the appropriate statutes and instructions about local organs of power which are obligatory for Administrations of the Oblast’s of the Republic, to the

279 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 79, L. 9. ‘Protocol of the Buriat Section of the Irkutsk organisation of the RKP, with the participation of the secretaries of the Aimak Committees and the Aimak party cells and senior officials, 6 July 1921.’ 280 Their appointments were ratified by D al’biuro on 27 July 1921, see RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 61, L. 128. 281 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, LL. 12-13. 282 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (10), 8 September 1921, Art. 83, p. 161-3.

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existing Administration of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”.283 This put the unreliable elements identified by Krasnoshchekov and the Irkutsk Buriat communists into power for the immediate future. But the territory of the Oblast’ itself had not yet been firmly delineated, and the government decreed:

Until the establishment, in line with article 116 of the Fundamental Law,284 of the permanent borders of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’, to place the territory of the following Aimaks under the Temporary Administration of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’: 1) Aga, consisting of the Aga, Onon-Khangil’, Khamngan-Buriat, Tsugol’, KharganaKhotsai and Ul’zupto-Ol’ Khoshuns. 2) Barguzin, consisting of the Argado-Murgun, Baiangol’, Dagadol’, Brak-Khan, Ikhirit, Khabapzhan and Khulganai Khoshuns. [“3)” is omitted] Khorinsk, consisting of the Batanai-Kharaganatov, Bodongut, Galzotskii, Gochit, Kubdut, Sharait, Khoatsai, Tsiagan, Khal’bin and Khodai Khoshuns. 4) Chikoi, consisting of the Sredne-Chikoi, Verkhne-Chikoi and Tabagut Khoshuns 285

By the publication of the official version, the Aga Aimak had lost Onon-Khangil’, KharganaKhaotsai and Ul’zupto-Ol’ Khoshuns, but gained Ongotsen.286 This is evidence of the problem identified by Krasnoshchekov, of the Buriat community living scattered among the Russians. The decree acknowledged that severe social problems sprang from this intermingling of Buriat and Russian lands, problems to be discussed later in this thesis. Within a week another decree was to establish a ‘Central Governmental Land Commission for the regulation of land relations

283 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L. 12. 284 Article 116 states: ‘The entire area inhabited by the Buriat-Mongols shall form a special territory under the name of the “Autonomous Buriat-Mongol Territory” the boundaries of which shall be fixed by law.’ See The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources, Trade and Industry, published by the Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, (Washington, D.C., 1922), Section VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Section 5, Article 2, Clause 116, p. 20. 285 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L. 12. 286 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (10), 8 September 1921, Art. 83, p. 161.

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between the Buriat-Mongol and Russian population’.287 The decree on the Temporary Administration declared that, unless such problems fell under the jurisdiction of this new Land Commission, they were to be resolved ‘by way of agreement between the Temporary Administration of the BuriatMongol

Autonomous

Oblast’ and

the

appropriate

Zabaikalian

or

Pribaikalian

Oblast’

Administrations’. Such decisions were to be published and held as binding upon the populations of the Oblast’s involved. Where agreement could not be reached the Buriats were to refer their problems to the Minister of National Affairs, while the local Russian authorities could call on an appropriate Minister of central govermnent to assist. Thus the required agreement could be forged between central government Ministries. All other inter-ethnic problems were to be resolved between the Ministry of National Affairs and an appropriate organ of central government.288 Decisions made at the centre were to be put into effect within the Autonomous Oblast’ by its Temporary Administration, which could refer the matter back to the centre via the Ministry of National Affairs for further examination of the issues. All decisions taken by the Buriats’ Temporary Administration having compulsory effect on the population were to be lodged with the Ministry of National Affairs, as were instructions from the Zabaikalian and Pribaikalian Oblast' Administrations concerning relations between Russians and Buriat-Mongols. In this way locally generated laws became subject to approval from the centre.289 Two very important further tasks were allotted to the Temporary Administration. It was ‘granted the management of the land fund under the control of the Minister of Agriculture’,290 which, given the importance, and nature, of the land problem, to be explored in the next chapter, could only lead to problems between Oblast’ and central governments. The Temporary Administration was also entrusted with the task of convoking ‘the Oblast’ Assembly of Representatives of the...Oblast’ in accordance with general regulations about the elections of Oblast' Assemblies of Representatives.291 If we recall the provisions of the Constitution, this body was to legislate, administer and elect a

287 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (10), 8 September 1921, Art. 82, pp. 159-61. 288 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, LL. 12 & 12 ob. 289 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L. 12 ob. 290 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L. 12 ob. 291 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L. 13.

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permanent executive - the Territorial Administration.292 In this way the Temporary Administration would pass from power and be replaced by the body which Amagaev and his colleagues aimed to control. The replacement of unreliable and counter-revolutionary elements came about as the Irkutsk men had hoped. Tn October 1921 the Buriat-Mongol people, in the shape of the National Assembly, decided to separate from the national-democrats; a new National Assembly was elected, the predominating membership of which was communist. From this moment began the actual realisation of the autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols....’293 The Irkutsk communists had vowed to ‘unmask’ the nationalist tactic of calling for ‘the unity of the Buriat people’ as well as their ‘tactic of neutrality’ and to woo them towards friendship for Russians and Soviet Russia.294 The communist view of the tendency which was voted out of power in the Buriat Autonomous Oblast’ by the October elections can be found in a security report of 2 November 1921.295 Under the heading ‘Counter-Revolutionary Groupings’ this found it ‘necessary to mention the Buriat-Mongol Autonomists, headed by Dambinov’.296 These were likened to SRs,297 but deemed to be seeking national autonomy so that they could ‘drive out and get rid of the Russian peasant’. The author saw

292 The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources, Trade and Industry, published by the Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, (Washington, D.C., 1922), Section VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Section 5, Article 2, Clause 119, p. 21. 293 RTsKhlDNI, F.372, Op. 1, D. 600, L. 15 ob. 294 N. P. Egunov, M. I. Amagaev, (Ulan-Ude, 1974), p. 34, quoting TsGA BurASSR: F. 58, Op. 1, D. 28, L. 116; D. 5, LL 87-90. 293 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. I l l , LL. 299 - 304, ‘Notes for a Report “Political Parties and the Counter-Revolutionary Groupings in the DVR’” , Dated 2 November 1921. 296 Amagaev thought Dambinov ‘a feeble-minded wind-bag’. See N. P. Egunov, M. 1. Amagaev, (Ulan-Ude, 1974), p. 39. 297 Indeed, Dambinov was a member of the PS-R. He would eventually be among 36 members of the PS-R arrested and deported by the communists on 22 October 1922, as the communists cleared the way for the DVR’s entry into the RSFSR to be passed unopposed by the People’s Assembly, meeting in mid-November 1922. See The Social-Revolutionary Party after October 1917: Documents from the P.S.-R. Archives, (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), Doc. No. 101, ‘A. I. Pogrebetskii Zagranichnoi delegatsii P. S.-R., Kharbin, 2 noiabria 1922 g.’, pp. 501-7.

autonomists such as Dambinov as ‘typical representatives of the Buriat-Mongol intelligentsia, who are trying to appropriate the lands of the peasants and the cossacks for the Buriat-Mongol landed bourgeoisie’. But this had been averted as Dambinov’s group suffered defeat in the Buriat Assembly ‘and a left-wing tendency, which stands for more organic links with the DVR and RSFSR, won’.298 As 1921 progressed the government got down to working out a ‘Law on the Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongol Oblast ” . This has a strange story in that it appears only as a well finished draft,299 but not in any calendar of laws. The draft is not dated, but a document filed with it in the archive and which discusses its provisions, is dated 7 October 1921.300 An explanatory note signed by Il’in and Amagaev, two of the Irkutsk Buriat communists sent to the DVR to take charge of preparations for the Autonomous Oblast', accompanies the archive copy of the draft bill. They stated that the draft aimed to put into effect the Constitution’s provisions for Buriat autonomy.301 After being scrutinised for approval by a Special Interdepartmental Commission under the auspices of the Ministry of National Affairs the bill was intended to be put forward for the consideration of the People’s Assembly, in its first session. This Assembly took place in November and December 1921, and passed many pieces of legislation. These appeared in the calendar of laws which appeared on 31 December 1921, but no law on Buriat autonomy was among them.302 Whether the law passed into force by some unknown route or not,303 it is helpful to see the ideas at work in the

298 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. I l l , LL. 299 - 304, ‘Notes for a Report “Political Parties and the Counter-Revolutionary Groupings in the DVR’” , Dated 2 November 1921. Quoting L. 303. 299 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, LL. 4-9. ‘A Law on the Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast". 300 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, LL. 1 & 1 ob. ‘Amendments proposed by comrade Kovrigin, the representative of the Ministry of Agriculture, who is in charge of the Central Land Department, to the draft bill “On the Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongol Oblast 301 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, LL. 2-3 ob. ‘Explanatory Note’ signed by Il’in and Amagaev. 302 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Subtitled ‘Laws adopted by the People’s Assembly of the DVR in the course of the first regular session’. 303 Although the author has an almost complete set of the Sobranie Uzakonenii i Rasporiazhenii Pravitel ’stva DVR, there are some missing, but none concerning the period under consideration. No issue, either before or after No. 10 (16), has any rendition of the law on Buriat autonomy. There are misprints and corrections, but this cannot explain the absence of an extensive piece of legislation.

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highest levels of government and it does outline many features of the future administration. The draft had been sent to interested government authorities for discussion and elements of this can be followed in the archival material. In Section 1 the draft for the ‘Law on the Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ” began by setting out some General Regulations. On these Amagaev and IT in pointed out that ‘articles 1 - 3 - 4 of section 1 have a fundamental significance in principle, both from the point of view of the interests of the republic as a whole, and of the Buriat Autonomous Oblast’ in particular....’304 Citing article 116 of the Fundamental Law, article 1 of the draft allowed for a special selfgoverning Oblast’ with the right of local law-making to be formed from the territory populated by the Buriat-Mongol people and named ‘the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”.305 But Amagaev and Il’in suggested that ‘For a more exact definition of the rights of autonomy...into article 1...after the words “with the right of local law-making” to introduce “ essentially not conflicting with the fundamental law of the Republic’” .306 This would bring the draft wording more specifically into line with the Constitution, but one wonders why they did not simply invoke its clause 118 which limited the Buriats’ autonomy to ‘the matter of establishing courts, economic, administrative institutions and such institutions as pertain to their national culture’, otherwise they were ‘subject to the general laws of the Republic’.307 Article 2 of the draft affirmed that the Oblast’ was an inseparable part of the DVR, but article 3, dealing with the land to be allotted to the Oblast ’, was more troublesome. During discussion of land

However, there was an increasing time lag between drawing up legislation and publishing it. Many laws went into effect prior to their dates of publication, often via the telegraph or newspapers. Although this might be the case here, there are strong reasons for believing the plan was shelved and not revived. These reasons should emerge during the course of the chapter and the thesis as a whole. 304 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 2. 305 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 4. 306 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 2. 307 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, its Natural Resources Trade and Industries (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic, Part IV, ‘The Government’, Section 5, Article 2, ‘Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols’, clause 118, pp. 20-1.

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issues Amagaev and Il’in, representing the Buriat administration, came into conflict with Kovrigin, from the Ministry of Agriculture and in charge of the Central Land Department. This was at a time when the Law on Land was being prepared for consideration by the same legislative body, the People’s Assembly with its Peasant Majority, as was the Draft on Buriat Autonomy. The contentious issues concerned the spatial extent of the Oblast ’, its specific location, the historical, scientific and cultural bases for decisions over this and the immutability of its territory. The size of the Oblast’ depended on the definition of ‘the entire area inhabited by the Buriat-Mongols’.308 But the Constitution also aimed to ‘abolish the interlocking strips of land owned by the BruiatMongols [sic] and the Russians’ through the work of a land commission.309 This work would inevitably take a long time, introduce racial exclusivity and could well prove unpalatable to the population, as it was envisaged to involve re-settlement on a broad scale. Additionally there were the issues of what historical precedent or scientific yardstick to use with regard to land allotment, and of whom to count as ‘the Buriat-Mongols’, only those currently resident in the DVR or should those who had been forced to flee abroad during the recent period of upheaval also be included? The traditional nomadic lifestyle called for much more land than did a static agricultural lifestyle. The question was: in an era of famine, and under a modernising regime, should autonomy concerning culture and tradition prevail over economic efficiency and scientific progress? Also, from a Marxist perspective, if culture were part of the superstructure which springs from a society’s economic base, how could cultural autonomy be meaningful if the economic base, and hence the people’s culture, were radically altered? But the Oblast' had been created and needed administration and therefore definition.

308 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, its Natural Resources Trade and Industries (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic, Part IV, ‘The Government’, Section 5, Article 2, ‘Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols’, clause 116, p. 20. 309 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, its Natural Resources Trade and Industries (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic, Part IV, ‘The Government’, Section 5, Article 2, ‘Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols’, clauses 116 & 117, p. 20.

91

While Amagaev and Il’in advocated a historical precedent which would give the Buriats enough land for their traditional nomadism, Kovrigin proposed a much smaller allotment, based on a different historical precedent. On the matter of immutability of territory, Kovrigin advocated a much greater degree of access to non-Buriat settlers, which Amagaev and Il’in saw as sure to lead to continued inter-ethnic conlict. These profound disagreements between the leading communist Buriats and a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture, which at this time was under SR leadership,310 were enough to halt the bill’s progress. The imminent meeting of the People’s Assembly, which was dominated by peasants, would not have been a suitable setting for a showdown.311 The communists had worked very hard to gain and maintain the allegiance of the ‘Peasant Majority’, but this still consisted of peasants, and nothing mattered more to them than land-holdings. Such self-interest had been the motivation for seizing Buriat lands in the previous period. With the departure of Semenov and the Japanese, the hated oppressors whose actions had pushed the peasant partisans into allegiance to the communists, and as peace became more achievable, state policy on land allocation was a crucial element in the

310 The deal struck between the PS-R and the communists on 31 May 1921, allowed PS-R members Trupp to become the DVR’s Minister of Justice and Tarasov to become Minister of Agriculture. These appointments were made on 9 July 1921. See: Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda; dokumenty iz arkhiva P.S.-R.

(Compiled by Marc Jansen),

(Amsterdam, 1989), Doc. No. 96, pp. 489-90, ‘V. M. Konogov - A. S. Medvedevu, Chita, 18 iiulia [?] 1921 g.’; and Doc. No. 95, pp. 484-8, ‘Moiseev - Primorskomu oblastnomu komitetu P. S.-R., Chita, 15 iiulia 1921g.’, quoting footnote on p. 486. 311 It is interesting to note that the Coalition Government was disbanded by the communists immediately after the People’s Assembly had dispersed (18 December 1921), having passed a raft of crucial legislation including laws on land, the state budget, taxation, education, the gold industry, commerce, Govermnent Ministries and the Political Courts. See The Social-Revolutionary Party after October 1917: Documents from the P.S.-R. Archives, (Compiled by Marc Jansen), (Amsterdam, 1989), Doc. No. 99, p. 499, ‘Predsedatel’ Soveta Ministrov D.-V.R. P. M. Nikiforov, - Dal’tsentru P.S.-D.R.P., Dal’biuro P.S.-R. i TsK Trudovoi Nar.-Sots. Partii, Chita, 19 dekabria 1921 g.’; and Doc. No. 100, p. 500, ‘D al’biuro P.S.-R. - P. M. Nikiforovu (perepechatka iz gazety Nash Golos), 21 dekabria 1921 g.’; and, for the work of the People’s Assembly: Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921.

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maintenance of popular loyalty. This applied to Russian peasant and Buriat herder alike. Government had to play down the problem and work at conciliation. Returning to the draft of the law on Buriat autonomy, Section 2 placed ‘all people living within its borders without distinction of social status, nationality or citizenship’ under the authority of the Oblast’ administration, but, inconsistently, it laid the burden of paying for the Oblast”s administration squarely ‘on the local resources of the Buriat-Mongol people’ with per capita state treasury aid for matters so aided in other Oblast’s ,312 This is almost certainly one example among many of sloppy wording by people not trained in the drafting of legislation, but, given that the task of sorting out the intermingled land holdings of Russians and Buriats was recognised as a long term endeavour, there seems to be a loophole here, whereby the Russians might hope to escape local taxation. As we shall see,313 attempts at evasion of other duties were based

011

just such legislative

confusion. Meanwhile the entire question of the Autonomous Oblast”s jurisdiction remained unclear. Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”, of November 1922, started out by stating that the Autonomous Oblast”s jurisdiction related to the Buriats on the basis of personal identity and that ‘elements of other nationalities, living intermingled with, or among, the Buriat population, do not constitute part of the Autonomous Oblast

they are attached to the nearest

administrative unit of the Russian population’.314 However, under the Constitution, the Oblast’ had been planned as ‘a special territory’ taking in ‘the entire area inhabited by the Buriat-Mongols’.315 ‘The population of the...territory’ was to be subject not only to the general laws of the republic, but also to ‘local territorial laws’ which could be passed by ‘the Territorial Assembly of

312 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 4 ob. 313 In matters concerning privileges granted to Buriats regarding exemption from military service, dealt with below during discussion of the theocratic movement and the Buriat amnesty. 314 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 24. 315 The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources, Trade and Industry, published by the Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, (Washington, D.C., 1922), Section VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Section 5, Article 2 “Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols”, clause 116, p. 20.

93

Representatives’ ,316 The language of these passages of the Constitution relate consistently to territory rather than nationality as the defining factor in jurisdiction. The October 1921 draft stated that ‘The authority of the Oblast’ Autonomous Administration extends to...all people living within its borders without distinction of social status, nationality or citizenship’.317 But the confusion was further compounded when the Oblast”s governing assembly was described in terms relating to nationality the ‘Oblast’ National Assembly of Representatives’.318 Such lack of clarity in the process of law making probably illustrates the inexperience of the law makers. This feature of the governmental process in the DVR recurs often and later chapters of this thesis will explore its repercussions in the fields of military mobilisation and the application of amnesty as they related to the Buriats. Returning to the October 1921 draft law on Buriat autonomy, the ‘Oblast ’ National Assembly of Representatives’, meeting no less than twice per year, but not in periods of peak agricultural activity, was confirmed as the Oblast”s highest authority.319 Meetings had to have a quorum of two thirds of the membership, were public unless central govermnent, or the assembly itself, ordered otherwise and took decisions by simple majority.320 However, matters concerning loans, bonds, guarantees and public enterprises required a two thirds majority. A draft signed by ten members could initiate legislation. Extraordinary Oblast ’ Assemblies might consist of any number of representatives, but taxes, duties and obligations could not be increased or imposed by them unless half the membership were present.321

316 The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources, Trade and Industry, published by the Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, (Washington, D.C., 1922), Section VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Section 5, Article 2 “Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols”, clause 119, p. 21. 317 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372,

Op.1, D. 435, L. 4 ob.

318 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372,

Op.1, D. 435, L. 4 ob.

319 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372,

Op.1, D. 435, L. 4 ob.

320 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372,

Op.1, D. 435, L. 5 and 5ob.

321 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 5 ob. and 6ob.

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Membership of the Oblast’ National Assembly brought some benefits, exemption from civil or military duty during its sessions, freedom from arrest unless caught red-handed or by order of the assembly. However, if convicted of certain crimes, representatives were stripped of membership.322 The Oblast’ National Assembly had a wide jurisdiction, but inclusion in this of the organisation of the use of land brought objections from Kovrigin, who invoked the Constitution to insist that this should be done according to the Law on Land, which operated on a state scale.323 Amagaev and IT in urged that article 31, which gave the assembly power to regulate trade and industry should be omitted, as these fell under the jurisdiction of the central state authorities.324 The Oblast’ National Assembly’s authority went unchallenged over a host of other matters. In the field of public order these included the militia, the courts, legal aid, protection of labour, use of customary and state laws and scales of punishment. In the economic field they included management of the Oblast"s capital and property, the prices of necessities, elimination of shortages, aid to the needy, organisation of co-ops, stores and shops, and the upkeep of communications and transport services; but most importantly, perhaps, taxation, the protection of resources and the raising of the economic well-being of the people. On the social front insurance, medicine (animal and human), public health, charity, social security, emergency services, education, and the gathering of statistics all fell under the authority of the assembly.325 The Oblast’ National Assembly elected and supervised the Oblast"s Administration which had the task of putting Oblast’ and state laws into effect.326 Laws resulting from violations of its powers by the Oblast’ National Assembly could be objected to by the Minister of National Affairs or the National Assembly of the DVR and the latter, or out of session, the DVR’s government had the power to repeal them.327 Although this law probably never came into force formally, nonetheless it outlined quite well the way in which the Buriat Autonomous Oblast’ would be governed. In fact this was done mostly by

322 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 6 and 6 ob. 323 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 1 and 1 ob. 324 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 3 ob. 325 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 6 ob, 7 and 8. 326 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 8. 327 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 8 ob.

95

Burmonavtupr, upon which the communists did their best to keep a firm hold. Only in the very last days of the DVR’s existence were matters clarified: ‘By the day of the liquidation of the DVR, the Oblast’ Administration existed with all the rights and functions of a Guberniia Administration.’328 It was plain that by this time the idea of a racially exclusive Buriat territory had been at least side-lined, if not completely abandoned. As Amagaev put it in November 1922:

The Autonomous Oblast’ is constructed by personal identity. Other national elements living intermingled with or among the Buriat population are not included in the composition of the Autonomous Oblast they are attached to the nearest administrative units of the Russian population. The Buriat population does not occupy one general territory on the scale of an Oblast’-, it is disseminated in fairly compact masses intermingled with the Russian population. The frontiers of the administrative units are approximately co-incident with the national boundaries of the distribution of the Buriat population.329

The spatial delineation, the territorial definition of Buriat autonomy, was not achieved until long after the demise of the DVR. Having declared its intention to unify the Autonomous Oblast’s of the RSFSR and the DVR in May 1923,330 outlined its state structures in September 1923,331 dissolved the Pribaikal Guberniia to form part of the new Buriat Autonomous Republic in October 1923,332 the

328 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 600, L. 15 ob. 329 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ” dated November 1922. Quoting L. 24. 330 ‘Ob obrazovanii Buriat-mongol’skoi avtonomnoi respubliki, 30 May 1923’, Sovetskaia politika za 10 let po natsional’nomu voprosu v RSFSR; sistematicheskii sbomik deistvuiushchikh aktov pravitel’stv Soiuza SSR i RSFSR po delam natsional’nostei RSFSR, (oktiabr’ 1917 g. - noiabr’ 1927 g.) (Moscow & Leningrad, 1928). p. 66. 331

‘Polozhenie

o

gosudarstvennom

ustroistve

Buriat-mongol’skoi

avtonomnoi

sovetskoi

sotsialisticheskoi respubliki, 12 September 1923’, Sovetskaia politika za 10 let po natsional’nomu voprosu v RSFSR; sistematicheskii sbomik deistvuiushchikh aktov pravitel’stv Soiuza SSR i RSFSR po delam natsional’nostei RSFSR, (oktiabr’ 1917g. - noiabr’ 1927g.) (Moscow & Leningrad, 1928). p. 66-67. 332 ‘Ob uprazdnenii Pribaikal’skoi gubernii, 3 October 1923,’ Sovetskaia politika za 10 let po natsional’nomu voprosu v RSFSR; sistematicheskii sbomik deistvuiushchikh aktovpravitel’stv Soiuza

96

VTsIK finally delineated the territory of the Autonomous Republic in December 1923.333 Whereas mention of the territorial make-up of the two former Autonomous Oblast’s, or of the new Autonomous Republic had, hitherto, been only in the form of listing the names of their Aimalcs, this latest piece of legislation was extremely detailed. It defined the new republic in terms of named settlements and areas, while the delineation of its borders used the lines of rivers, watersheds and the boundaries of particular (numbered) land allotments. With the inclusion of the lands of the former Pribaikal Russians, the problem of dividing lands between Russians and Buriats had been left essentially unresolved, and the nationalists’ desire for Buriat apartheid had finally been quashed. The authorities of the new Autonomous Republic were obliged to maintain the unity of the RSFSR in financial and economic matters, while they were given autonomy in agricultural matters.334 It may well be that this complex problem involving the fair allotment of land-holdings, allowing autonomy in traditional and cultural matters and modernising agriculture to raise output could not be resolved before the collectivisation of the land in another era. Life in the Autonomous Oblast ’

One imagines that in working for the establishment of a Buriat Autonomous Oblast’, the Buriat intelligentsia of all colours hoped this would lead to an improvement in the Buriats’ life. Let us examine whether this was achieved. In November 1922 Amagaev presented a report on the Oblast’ which allows us some insights.335 Among the main features to emerge from this and other documents

SSR i RSFSR po delam natsional’nostei RSFSR, (oktiabr’ 1917 g, - noiabr’ 1927 g.) (Moscow & Leningrad, 1928). p. 67. 333 ‘O sostave i granitsakh Buriat-mongol’skoi avtonomnoi sotsialisticheskoi sovetskoi respubliki, 12 December 1923’, Sovetskaia politika za 10 let po natsional’nomu voprosu v RSFSR; sistematicheskii sbomik deistvuiushchikh aktov pravitel’stv Soiuza SSR i RSFSR po delam natsional’nostei RSFSR, (oktiabr’ 1917g. - noiabr’ 1927g.) (Moscow& Leningrad, 1928). pp. 67-72. 334

‘Polozhenie

o

gosudarstvennom

ustroistve

Buriat-mongol’skoi

avtonomnoi

sovetskoi

sotsialisticheskoi respubliki, 12 September 1923’, Sovetskaia politika za 10 let po natsional’nomu voprosu v RSFSR; sistematicheskii sbomik deistvuiushchikh aktov pravitel ’stv Soiuza SSR i RSFSR po delam natsional’nostei RSFSR, (oktiabr’ 1917g. - noiabr’ 1927g.) (Moscow& Leningrad, 1928). pp. 66-67, 335 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL. 24-34, Amagaev’s ‘Short report on the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast” dated November 1922.

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is the unfairness of the division of resources between the Buriats and the Russians as well as what must be seen as a disregard for the Buriat people and their leaders, even including the Buriat communists. Amagaev asserted that Burmonavtupr’s actions had been ‘governed mostly by the principle of revolutionary aims’, but also by the laws and Constitution of the DVR. He made it plain that where ‘the demands of life’ differed from the demands of the DVR’s laws and Constitution, Burmonavtupr had not hesitated to break the latter.336 We will recall that the Tsarist government had sorely neglected Buriat public health, while catering comparatively well for the Russians. Amagaev estimated that that before the revolution the provision was one hospital per 15,746 Russians, while 140,000 Buriats had no hospital, and one clinic per 7,000 Russians with one feldsher clinic per 47,000 Buriats.337 If things improved for the Buriats under the DVR it was mostly due to their own efforts, since at first the Buriats had access to only one hospital. When the existing hospitals and clinics of Zabaikal and Pribaikal were closed and their equipment transported to Chita and Verkline-Udinsk, the Buriats received ‘no share of the rich medical property’. Burmonavtupr had to start ‘literally from nothing...to organise medical affairs anew5. By November 1922, the Autonomous Oblast' had ‘2 hospitals in the villages of Aginsk and Kul’sk, 5 clinics, of which 2 are in the Khorinskii Aimak...The clinic of the Aginsk Aimak, in the absence of appropriate accommodation on the spot, is temporarily combined with the Aginsk hospital. Apart from this, the clinic at the Garginsk hot-springs...is due to become a hospital in 1923’. Amagaev worked out that this would give one clinic per 16,300 people, and one hospital per 57,300 people. But even so, Amagaev observed that ‘the existing organisation of medical affairs in the Autonomous Oblast’ is far from reaching all the population. Certain regions are beyond all medical help’.338 The people were increasingly willing to attend the medical centres, with 30 in-patients per day at Kul’sk and 15 per day at Aginsk, and this gave rise to queues and a shortage of beds. Amagaev listed clinic visits per month:339

336 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 30 ob. 337 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 28 ob. 338 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 28 ob. and 29. 339 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 29.

98

Aginsk doctor’s clinic

900 persons

Kul’sk “

800

Sosnovo-Ozersk “

450

Chikoiskaia

400 120

Barguzinskaia Telembinskaia

“

Gorchinskaia Feldsher clinic

TOTAL

250 300

3,220

“

But the figures masked a disaster: approximately a half of these visits concerned sexually transmitted diseases, while they accounted for three quarters of all hospital places. With a population of 114,777 and the possibility of having to accommodate up to a further 18,000 who might return from exile in Mongolia,340 the Oblast’ had to cope with a disastrous public health situation. Amagaev observed that ‘social diseases have become the mass illnesses of the Buriat population’, spreading with ‘mind-boggling swiftness’ and current medical statistics indicated the spread of syphilis among the Buriats as affecting 52%, while gonorrhoea affected 32% and tuberculosis 11-12%. Comparing these figures with the 1914 rates among the whole Russian population; syphilis affected 0.7%, gonorrhoea 5% and tuberculosis 0.3%, Amagaev observed that these statistics among the Russians had called forth an outcry. They had been recognised as too high and as threatening public well-being, public opinion had demanded an organised struggle against them from social and state institutions, and these measures had been augmented by private initiatives. But the Buriats, Tost on the far off periphery, not possessing either organised public opinion nor private and social initiatives or cultural strengths and values, or even rights to these...’ had been left to suffer, and Tike the remaining native tribes of Siberia, are submissively, without a sound, being sunk in the depths of syphilis and are dying...’. Things had even worsened since Tsarist days as the incidence of venereal diseases had increased enormously with the return of Buriats who had been sent to work behind the lines during the First World War, and Amagaev thought this was due not only to

340 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 24.

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sexual contact, but to ‘everyday living, thanks to the unhygenic and insanitary conditions of Buriat life’. 341 In the field of animal health Amagaev also observed: ‘the existing republic-wide veterinary organisation has...not served the needs of the Buriat[s]\ In his report he added a footnote to the effect that: ‘in the Cliikoi Aimak a horse became sick, they took it to the vet in Troitskosavsk, who refused to cure it [saying] that the Buriats were “autonomous”’. Burmonavtupr had to organise veterinary help out of Oblast' funds, and created a central veterinary consultancy with 2 vet’s clinics and 4 vetfeldsher clinics in the localities. In the Aga Aimak a comprehensive vet’s clinic was organised.342 Amagaev saw educational provision in the Autonomous Oblast’ as ‘not brilliant’. It had 59 primary schools, but only a single secondary school, and this gave a huge shortfall. In a population of 114,777, with 10,329 children of school age, only 1,770 were being taught in school, leaving 82.8% untaught. This compared with the 1911 rate of 5.62% of Buriat children being in school, while in 1915: 1,010 Buriat boys and 84 girls had compared with 16,790 Russian boys and 7,500 girls in attending school.343 But in the DVR the Buriat schools functioned ‘abnormally’, of the 59 schools only 18 had their own buildings and equipment. Almost nothing had been achieved in ‘nationalising’ the schools, there was a huge shortage of teachers, while books, especially in the Buriat language, were almost unheard of.344 The DVR’s taxation system gave some relief to the Buriat livestock herders. Whereas in agriculture the value of a man’s labour was assessed as 10 tax units, ‘In the exclusively livestockherding region of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’, the labour force of the Buriat-Mongol male sex is assessed as 7 tax units, and in the mixed [i.e. livestock-rearing and agric] region of that Oblast’, as 8 units’.345 But Amagaev gave stark evidence of the scale of collapse undergone by the Buriat

341 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL. 27 and 27 ob. 342 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 32 ob. 343 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 30. 344 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL. 30 and 30 ob. 345 Sob. Uzak No. 8 (14), 8 December 1921, pp. 434-439. Art. 172, ‘Instruction: On the putting into effect of the Statute on money and in-kind collection of the progressive income-property tax for 1921, passed by the Constituent Assembly 28 April 1921’, clause 14 (Note), p. 436.

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economy. The total number of their livestock in 1916 had been 1,085,342, by 1921 this had plummetted to 747,988, a fall of 337,365 head or 31.18%. In explanation he remarked that he had accounted for, an so excluded from his 1916 figure, the animals held by the Selenginsk Buriats who lived within the RSFSR in 1921. He gave a statistical breakdown of the figures:346

THE BURIATS’ LIVESTOCK 1916 1921

% growth

% distribution of livestock

or decline

1916

1921

Horses

165,203

92,305

-44.13

12.38

13.19

Horned cattle

551,620

271,603

- 50.77

41.36

38.8

Sheep

506,976

38.0

Goats

98,362

331,865 [S+G]

-45.18

7.37

47.45

Pigs

4,977

354

- 92.9

0.37

0.05

Camels

6,534

3,282

- 49.78

0.49

0.47

1,333,672

699,409

-47.56

99.6

99.96

Another way he found to express the fall was that for 100 souls of both sexes there had been 893 head of livestock of all types, by 1921 this had fallen to 650, a fall of 27.2%.347 The key to the economic crisis was the crisis in land holdings. Burmonavtupr had set out to ‘preserve and strengthen the land base necessary for the development of the [Buriat] economy’, to protect it from harm and to ‘help as far as strength and means allow in the transfer to agriculture where a tendency towards this has definitely been noticed and where it is possible as far as conditions of soil and climate are concerned’. Land seizures by Russians had to be stopped or they would ‘destroy the interests of the Buriat[s] at the root’, making the people insecure and preventing any diversification of the economy. Surprisingly, for a life-long advocate of agricultural improvement,

346 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 25 ob. Amagaev is about 12 animals out in his initial calculations. In constructing his statistical table he transposed a line of figures wrongly, creating a very slight further error. The table which appears here is my correction of this, worked from the assumption that his 1921 figures are correct. The difference from the original is minimal: in the original the final total reads: 1916 total: 1,333,672. 1921 total: 699,409. Percentage decline: 54.64%. 347 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 26.

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Amagaev observed that being deprived of their lands, the Buriats had been forced to settle and take up agriculture, leaving livestock-herding for ever, which meant ‘the economic and cultural degradation of the Buriat population and its physical extinction.348 Here one must wonder if the experience of living among the eastern Buriats had changed Iris views, for he went on to indicate that although, under his direction, Burmonavtupr had tried to solve the land conflicts peacefully and by mutual compromise, these efforts ‘must go in the following directions’: voluntary surrender of lands, forcible transfer of lands and ‘obligatory re-settlement with the aim of eradicating the intermingling of land allotments’.349 He seemed to be saying that the Buriats had to live separately from the Russians in racially-exclusive consolidated land holdings. Indeed, the problems over land had been eased by ‘migration and consolidation of the Buriat[s]’. But of that ‘part of the Buriat population stuck as little islets among the Russian[s], Amagaev thought ‘their immediate fate is pre-ordained, they will be forced out and rubbed out’, to prevent this it was necessary ‘to remove and resettle them’.350 One irritation existing between the Buriats and their Russian neighbours was in the performance of duties relating to the system of post-roads or trakts. This ancient system, by which communications were assisted by public labour, and the public purse, in maintaining roads, carts, drivers and teams of horses,351 fell into chaos in the upheaval of war and revolution.352 In trying to re­ establish order and a sound economy the DVR had tried to reinstate the system, but, for example, by late 1922: ‘...the question about the maintenance of the Barguzinskii trakt ha[d] been the subject of a dispute between the Buriat and Russian population for more than two years.’353 This was a major

348 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1,D. 210, L. 31. 349 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, LL. 31 and 31 ob„ 350 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 32. 351 In 1906 Zhamtsarano had said that the Buriats regarded their duties in maintaining the roads as the hardest of their duties to the state, but that they still regarded it as ‘something bearing a great, if not almost religious, character’. See R. Rupen, Mongols o f the Twentieth Century (Bloomington, Indiana, 1964), p. 6. 352 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D.545, L. 23. 353 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D.545, L. 23.

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concern in that the area served was one where the DVR hoped to attract American investment.354 In late 1920 or early 1921 the administrations of Barguzin Aimak and the Pribaikal Oblast’ came to ‘a reciprocal agreement...by which that Aimak took upon itself the maintenance of part of the Barguzinskii trakt, but only temporarily, up to the first of June 1921, with the condition that, from this date horse transport would be carried out on another basis’.355 Thus the Buriats ‘came to the help of their Russian neighbours, and today [1922. C.B.] these neighbours are striving by all measures to turn the temporary, voluntary agreement into a permanent obligation’. Burmonavtupr had been obliged to keep the facilities in place until September 1922.356 Although the the DVR’s government passed a law about such duties on 4 February 1922,357 it was only in October 1922, when the Buriat Autonomous Oblast’ had been tacitly recognised as having jurisdiction over Buriats personally and the territory of the long established Aimaks, rather than all the lands inhabited by Buriats, was it possible to define duties. The Buriats were found to have no obligations to maintain the Barguzin trakt, which crossed Pribaikal land alone. In the confused situation over jurisdiction and responsibility, Burmonavtupr constructed its own road between Barguzin and Chita, by which it avoided confrontation with the Pribaikal Russians,

354 ‘In Zabaikal Province [in which they included Pribaikia, C.B.] at the present time there are 1691 miles (2,536 versts) of post roads, and 694 miles (1,041 versts), built by the Emigration Department. A small net of roads about 110 miles (150 versts) long, fit for automobile traffic, was built during the war by the Ministry of Ways of Communication in the district of the tungsten deposits of the Nerchinsk mining district, which made possible the development of tungsten mining....There are no macadamized roads in the Zabaikal Province. Many of the roads of the province can be quickly made fit for automobile traffic at a small expenditure of money for their repair....A plan has been prepared for the building of new roads along the entire frontier of the Zabaikal Province, with China, and the crossroads to the railroad line. Besides, plans have also been prepared for two or three roads leading to the rich gold deposits of the Bargusin and Vitim forest area.’ This passage is from ‘Trade and Industries of the Far Eastern Republic’ p. 34 & 35, from: The Special Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic (publ.), The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources, Trade and Industries, Part 1, (Washington, D.C., 1922). 355 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D.545, L. 23. 356 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D.545, L. 23 & 23 ob. 357 Sob. Uzak. No. 3 (19), 20 March 1922, Art. 46, pp. 137-9.

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and quietly stopped doing duties on the old route.358 This enraged the Pribaikal administration, which Amagaev remarked ‘still reckons that some outsider will take care of servicing its roads. In this, as in other things (the disposal of Buriat lands), there is...on the part of the Pribaikalian Oblast’ Administration, an overestimation of its rights and an underestimation of its duties’.359 But only in November 1922 did D al’biuro decide to put the overall level of Buriat road maintenance duties on a par with that imposed on the Russians.360 Throughout this brief survey of the problems of the Buriat Autonomous Oblast’, Amagaev can be sensed to be bitter at the treatment of Buriats by the Russian people and administration. He also encountered central distrust of Burmonavtupr, even after he and his communist colleagues took control. Burmonavtupr’s land department was only entrusted with a full range of responsibilities, like those of other Oblast’s , on 25 July 1922, while the Ministry of Justice delayed until October 1922 to pronounce on the judicial system and legal procedures to be followed in the Oblast \ 361 Amagaev complained that ‘there had been a definite distrust’ in Burmonavtupr’s ability to raise taxes successfully among the Buriats, and it had been suggested that this task be given to the administrations of Pribaikal and Zabaikal Oblast’s. Amagaev was proud to note that, in fact, Burmonavtupr had been the most successful Oblast’ in raising taxes.362 In January 1922 he became the DVR’s Minister for National Affairs, and so came into direct knowledge of Russian treatment of other minorities. In September 1922 a report gave graphic evidence of the hostility shown to Korean and Chinese workers by Russians fearing for their jobs under an influx of ‘Yellow Labour’. This had been compounded by the actions of official agencies. Much worse, the DVR’s militia, ‘some state organs’ and trades unions, which were controlled by communists, all worked to exclude ‘Yellow Labour’ from the work-place, even by violence. State coal mines had reduced staff at the expense of ‘Yellow’ labourers, even if they were union members, while militia and state officials persecuted them over passports and permits. Such behaviour left some

358 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D.545, LL. 23 ob. and 24. 359 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D.545, L. 24 & 24 ob. 360 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 135, L. 165. Protocol of the D al’biuro meeting of 17 Nov 1922. 361N. P. Egunov, M. I. Amagaev (Ulan-Ude, 1974), p. 41. 362 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 34.

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victims to starvation and gave a very poor impression of Russian communism to Comintern’s clients in Korea and China. All the offending bodies were made to review their actions and treat the Asiatic workers with respect, and the unions were ordered to make special efforts to draw them in to mass membership.363 With regard to treatment of the ‘Small Peoples’, the small native tribes of hunter-gatherers, mostly of paleasiatic origin, Russian attitudes ranged through exploitative and dismissive to paternalistic. They were seen as worth saving from imminent extinction since they would be useful in exploiting the riches of areas too difficult for Russian settlement, or they might be left to extinction as nature to took its course, or they were regarded as proto-communists for their socialistic life-style, untainted by internal exploitation of man by man, to be saved as noble savages from exploitation from outside.364 Interestingly, while it was politically unacceptable for the Buriats to seek racially exclusive territorial autonomy, this same idea, in the form of reservations of land where Russian settlement and traders were to be excluded, was held to be a solution to the ‘Native Question’.365 This must have been

363 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. I, D. 1094, LL. 3-7, 364 There is an extensive literature on this topic, but they key work which gives an account of all these attitudes is Amagaev’s own Ministry of National Affairs publication: M. Plotnikov, Tuzemnyi vopros v DVR (Chita, 1922). 365 Amagaev’s colleague in the DVR’s Ministry of National Affairs advocates this approach in Tuzemnyi vopros v DVR, p. 5, col. 2, as does Mer, Amagaev’s Deputy Minister, see RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 135, L. 45 ob. The greatest theoretician of policy towards the Small Peoples, Professor Bogoraz-Tan, who guided the thoughts of DVR theorists and became head of the RSFSR’s native administration, the ‘Committee of the North’, advocated this policy in Iris ‘O pervobytnykh plemenakh’, Zhizn’ Natsional’nostei, No. 1 (130), 10 January 1922, p. 1. A report ‘On the native tribes of the Far East’ of July 1923 [RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 676, LL. 21-33 ob.] also advocates racially exclusive ‘reservations’ [see L. 33 ob.]. Significantly, the DVR’s own ‘Temporary statute on the administration of the native tribes living in the terrotory of the DVR’ (published in Vestnik DVR, No. 5-6, September/October 1922, pp. 70-3), left out of this final published form a large section from its 1921 draft. There are two earlier versions of the statute, a draft and the law, in Bor'ba za vlast’ sovetov v Primore 1917-1922, Docs. 393 and 394, pp. 594-605 and 606-10 respectively. The version here called a ‘law’ has a section missing from the version called a ‘draft’ and from the published ‘Temporary Statute’ of October 1922. It had addressed issues of land, labour, trade, schools and funding. Within this, but omitted from the published version: ‘the native peoples and tribes [we]re assigned, separate from the rest of the population, to special national-territorial units’ [clause 4, p.

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confusing to Buriats who saw their people as under the same threats of exploitation and extinction as the Small Peoples. During his time as Minister of National Affairs, Amagaev increasingly expressed frustration with Russian attitudes to the other races. There was increasing pressure to bring the Buriat Autonomous Oblast’ under the central control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs rather than Amagaev’s Ministry of National Affairs.366 In August 1922 Amagaev firmly denounced attacks on the work of Burmonavtupr by a Russian colleague who was responsible for elaborating theses on the DVR’s internal policy.367 Amagaev gave his most overt condemnation of Russian racism during the elaboration of Theses on the National Policy of the DVR in summer 1922. In a draft he firmly stated that: ‘the national policy of the DVR must be in strict conformity with that of the RSFSR...determined by the programme of the Party’, but that this ‘must not mean mechanistic stereotyped transplanting of the practices of the Soviet regime’. The DVR’s communists had to work out policy appropriate to the DVR, its Constitution and the particular circumstances of its peoples, but without altering the fundamental tenets of Party policy. He made it plain that administrative-economic autonomy, such as that granted to the Buriats, was fundamentally based on territory, while land policy had to take account of ‘the way of life, stage of development and economic condition’ of the people concerned and he urged the government to complete the process of granting full Oblast ’ rights to the Autonomous Oblast’. He went on to make the point that ‘the peasant population [and] the administrative and party workers of the provinces and partly even of the centre have not completely got rid of the legacy of Tsarism and Great-Power chauvinism’ so they disregarded ‘the political importance of a correct solution to the national question and display all kinds of opposition’. He acknowledged that nationalists must be purged from the autonomous administration, but added that the creation and intensification of dissent between the nationalities, which was no less dangerous for the state, was

606], and ‘it [wa]s forbidden to Russian and Buriats, and also to foreign nationals to use and settle on the lands assigned to the natives without the authority and permission of the appropriate Native Boards’ [clause 58, p. 601], There was obviously great confusion over the issue. 366 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 135, L. 72; D. 537, LL. 42-7. 367 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 537, L. 43. Protocol of 7 August 1922.

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caused by ‘entrenched Great-Power chauvinism’ among the Russians. This had resulted in national policy adding up so far to ‘a policy of distrust and skimping’ which only provoked nationalism within the minorities and created ‘the real appearance of national inequality and oppression’, alienating the national minorites from central government, strengthening the nationalist movements and making the mass of national minorities fall under the influence of their bourgeois nationalist leaders. Thus ‘the government’s national policy must be equally free from national-chauvinism and from Great-Power mentality. These two tendencies...must be completely eliminated’.368 When the final version of the ‘Theses on the national question’,369 largely based on Amagaev’s draft, was drawn up these sentiments had not been withdrawn. As one of the ‘obstacles on the way to a resolution of the national question’, is listed:

the painful legacy of the Tsarist regime, of the education of an entire generation in an atmosphere of the supremacy of the Great Russian nation, of colonising and russifying tendencies regarding outlying areas and assimilation regarding the national minorities...the majority of Russian Soviet workers in the native outlying areas arrive there, imbued throughout with this psychology...of Great Russian chauvinism....370

Meanwhile those who had been brought up under Tsarist persecution, oppression, colonisation and russification were ‘imbued with a distrust towards other nationalities, especially the Great Russian’, thus ‘comrades from the native tribes and minorities, who in other spheres of life have completely adopted the proletarian ideology’ could not avoid reacting to being controlled by ‘reactionary chauvinism’. The immediate task was ‘elimination of these two tendencies, in particular the former - the deviation toward a Great-Power mentality and russification’.371

368 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op.l, D. 135, LL. 47-50. Amagaev’s ‘Theses on the National Policy of the DVR’, (no date, but D. 135 spans May to Novemeber 1922, and discussion of this matter was held during August). 369 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op.l, D. 135, LL. 53-65. ‘Theses on the National Question’. 370 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op.l, D. 135, L. 56. ‘Theses on the National Question’. 371 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op.l, D. 135, L. 57. ‘Theses on the National Question’.

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But the most potent source of conflict between Buriats and Russians remained the allotment of land. Around this issue chauvinism, self-interest and mutual misunderstanding would be seen at their worst.

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CHAPTER 3 LAND PROBLEMS: THEORY AND LAW The land problem in the period 1917-1920:

As we have seen problems relating to land holdings originated well before the time of the revolution, but the situation inherited by the DVR had been exacerbated during the period of revolution and civil war. As Shchagin points out,312 the Congress of the Working People of Pribaikalia (28 March - 8 April 1920), which brought the DVR into being, ratified the decisions of the Land Department of the TsIK of the Soviets of Pribaikalia about land use and norms of land distribution, which in turn referred back to decisions taken by the Congress of the Soviets of Pribaikalia (7-20 July 19 18).373 As we shall see, during the time of the DVR there were repeated references to decisions made during the period of Soviet rule. An exploration of the evolution of these decisions and the context in which they were made, i.e. the 1917-18 situation east of Baikal, is therefore necessary if we are to understand the DVR’s approach to the land problem. A major factor in the upsurge in inter-ethnic conflicts over land had been the reaction of the different population groups to the Bolsheviks’ ‘Fundamental Law on the Socialisation of Land’ of 19 February 19 18.374 G. K. Gins375 cast some light on the escalation of the land problem in Zabaikalia

372 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), pp. 279-293. 373 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 282. 374 The text of this is in: J. Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918, Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934)pp. 673-8, this law was based on the Land Decree of the Second All-Russian Congress of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of 26 October / 8 November 1917 ([Text in ibid. pp. 128-31]itself based on SR-inspired proposals, drawn from peasant petitions, first published by Izvestiia No. 88 of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants Deputies on 19 August / 1 September 1917) and meant to regulate land reform until the Constituent Assembly could pronounce on the question. In fact, after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly the Law on Land was re-written to incorporate some bolshevik policies such as the setting up of state farms with workers paid wages as proletarians. These alterations provoked SR protests, but by and large the February 1918 law was a Left-SR creature. 375 Gins was a member of all the main anti-Bolshevik governments of Siberia between 1918 and 1920. See J. Smele, Civil War in Siberia (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 680-1.

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after the revolution. Firstly lie related that bolshevism ‘captivated the peasant-Old-Settlers, who, as in many other parts of Siberia, understood it in a peculiar way. My colleague in the Cabinet, Serebrennikov, told [me] about one peasant decision in Zabaikalia, in which it was declared: the no­ man’s-land is the people’s [narodnaia], and therefore it must belong to the people [narodu] and not to the Buriats’.376 This seems to be a play on the word narod, meaning ‘people’, and its adjectival form narodnyi, meaning ‘people’s’ or ‘national’, which have their origin in the word rod, meaning ‘kin’ or ‘birth’. When the land [zemlia] was nationalised by the Bolsheviks, one way to describe it would have been as narodnaia zemlia. However, a Buriat, like any other non-Russian aborigine of Siberia, was labelled an inorodets [or by the adjective inorodnyi], a word stemming from inoi, meaning ‘other’ or ‘different’ and, as above, rod. Thus the Buriats, literally ‘people of a different kin’, were explicitly not counted among ‘the people’ or ‘nation’ but as a different one.377 As Gins observed: ‘It was natural, that such an original nationalisation of the land alienated the Buriats from Bolshevism’.378 The Buriat landholdings had been cut drastically under Tsarism, and came under increased pressure with the era of Russian peasant migration to Siberia. But with the breakdown of authority during the revolution countless violent seizures of Buriat lands were committed by Russian peasants.379 A most important Buriat response was to flee the violence and migrate into Mongolia or the Barga district of Manchuria, which was inhabited by fellow Mongols.380 But for those Buriats who remained, and for those governments which tried to establish order in the Transbaikal, there would be two persistent aspects to the land problem: how to re-establish inter-ethnic peace and an acceptable sharing of the land, and how to accommodate the two very different economies of the Russian arable farmer, who needed good quality ploughland, and the Buriat nomad, who needed large areas across which to herd his animals. The Russian saw the Buriat as wasting good land and taking much more

376 G. K. Gins, Sibir’, Soiuzniki i Kolchak”, Tom I (Pekin, 1921), p. 85. 377 Compare this concept with the way Germans have used the idea of ''das Volk?. 378 G. K. Gins, Sibir’, Soiuzniki i Kolchak”, Tom I (Pekin, 1921), p. 85. 379 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg, (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Docs. No. 40, 45, 159, 160, pp. 47, 59, 154. 380 Natsional’noe dvizhenie vBuriatii v 1917-1919gg, (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Docs. No. 145, 161 pp. 141, 155.

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than his fair share, while the Buriat saw the Russian as a land-grabber who had always had the assistance of a powerful state. Gins made a second point which helps explain the worsening of relations between the communities who had been granted unequal land-holdings under Tsarism: ‘The age-old antagonism in Zabaikalia of the Buriats and Cossacks, on the one hand, and the peasants and the Old Settlers, on the other, - an antagonism founded in the disputes over lands, suited Semenov’s purpose...Many Cossacks were also roused to indignation by it [i.e. the nationalisation of the land. C.B.]. Semenov was able to expect to gain the support of a considerable section of the population of the Oblast \ ’381 But the cossacks, despite the large number of Buriats in their ranks, were not allied with the Buriat peasantry and could turn against them too. At the Verkhne-Udinsk regional congress of soviets (16-21 March 1918), a report from the meeting (2 March 1918) of the Selenginsk A imak zemstvo assembly was discussed, concerning the ‘counter-revolutionary activities of a section of the Cossacks of Iangazhinskii and Khar’iatskii stanitsas’.382 Buriat delegates at the congress who had not yet fully developed their stance toward Soviet power, but who expressed the hope that if the Soviets really stood for the defence of the working population, the Buriats would greet their authority, verified the report and described the violence. Cossacks posing as Bolsheviks had forced the Buriats to sign prepared statements of support for the restoration of the cossack forms of administration, abolished with the revolution.383 In the interests of fostering good-neighbourly relations between Buriats and Russians the congress protested against the actions of the cossacks, who ‘under the pretext of Bolshevism, administered the old order in the stanitsas’, and resolved to send instructors to them to explain the new situation, as well as a detachment of Red Guards to ‘take measures against the hooligans’.384 This ruse of adopting a Bolshevik identity to cover inter-community violence was used repeatedly

381 G. K. Gins, Sibir’, Soiuzniki i Kolchak”, Tom I (Pekin, 1921), pp. 84-5. 382 Extract from ‘Protokoly s”ezda Sovetov Verklineudinskogo raiona, 16-21 marta 1918 g.’, Bor’ba za vlast' sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc. No. 43, p. 120-2. 383 Extract from ‘Protokoly s”ezda Sovetov Verklineudinskogo raiona, 16-21 marta 1918 g.’, B or’ba za vlast’sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc. No. 43, p. 120-1, 384 Extract from ‘Protokoly s”ezda Sovetov Verklineudinskogo raiona, 16-21 marta 1918 g.’, B or’ba za vlast’sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc. No. 43, p. 122.

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throughout the period of revolution and civil war. There were stories of ‘Bolsheviks’ stripping Buriat settlements of all their livestock, raping women and displacing the Buriats from their lands.385 Even when land seizure was not the overt aim of such raids, the Buriats were thrown into panic and left out of fear for the future.386 Amagaev had a partial explanation for the Buriats’ passivity in the face of Russian aggression. Nomadic cattle herding did not foster ‘a deep interest in, and attachment to, a given section of land’, while hereditary household land use did not create mutual interest and mutual responsibility among a community regarding its lands.387 The 1918 decisions on land holdings made by the Transbaikal Soviets, sprang from attempts to implement the Bolshevik Law on Land but were made in the context of the particular circumstances of the region. Under Tsarism land had been allocated by social group; thus cossacks, old settlers, new settlers and native peoples received shares unequal in size and quality. This posed a problem for the soviets in 1918:

A general redistribution...was not appropriate here...It satisfied no-one...The peasants were waiting for the appropriation of haymeadows from the Buriats, the Buriats demanded the restoration of lands taken from their ancestors in times gone by, the cossacks suspiciously listened to the negotiations about the military reserve funds. It was necessary to find a general unity for all of them somewhere and to bring them to a mutual understanding and compromise.388

385 Natsional’noe dvizheniev Buriatii v 1917-1919gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Doc. No. 131, pp. 129-30. (National Archive of the Republic of Buriatia: F. 483, Op. 1, D. 43, L. 1.). 386 NARB: F. 483, Op. 1, D. 43, L. 1., from Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919 gg. (Ulan-Ude, 1994), Doc. No. 131, pp. 129-30. 387 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 210, L. 32. 388 V. N. Sokolov, ‘Oktiabr’ za Baikalom (ianvar’ - fevral’ 1918 g.)’, Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia (1922), No. 10, pp. 396-7. (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927 gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 280.)

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In 1918 the Soviets in Transbaikalia and on the Amur, unlike those in European Russia, had only a very small number of rural poor to call upon for support in land redistribution. This meant they failed in sporadic attempts to equalise the landholdings of cossacks and old settlers with those of newcomers; they held back from a general redistribution of land and machinery and also from imposing a complete supply dictatorship. Attempts to redistribute land to the land-hungry relied on confiscated church, monastery, private and former Kabinet and state lands not occupied by migrants as well as the unoccupied strips between the lands of different groups. This brief period of land reform under the Soviets seems to have yielded little practical result. As Shchagin points out, reliable statistics are impossible to find for such a chaotic period, but White sources indicate that, on the Amur, peasant land use increased in 1918 by only 125,299 desiatinas, or about 3%.389 In the Verkhne-Udinsk region an Uezd Land Committee had been established in August 19

iy 39° ^ report on jts work, and that of the Oblast’ and Main (Petrograd) land committees, was

given at the region’s congress of Soviets (16-21 March 1918).391 Most of their work had been in preparation for the resolution of land question by the Constituent Assembly. But in addition to organising a professional survey of the area’s lands, it claimed to have cleared up problems over the allottment of land and settled individual disputes between Russians and Buriats. This partial solution involved leasing unused state land to the public at the rate of 2 rubles per desiatina, the proceeds going to finance the further work of the land committees.392 The report found that the Bolsheviks had cut short the work of the land committees, which had been fruitful, so that the planned practical measures could not be implemented. Nonetheless, the

389 Central State Archive of the Far East, F. R-1004, Op. 6, D. 152, L. 35. (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 281.) 390 Extract from ‘Protokoly s”ezda Sovetov Verkhneudinskogo raiona, 16-21 marta 1918 g.’, B or’ba za vlast’ sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc. No. 43, p. 118. 391 Extract from ‘Protokoly s”ezda Sovetov Verkhneudinskogo raiona, 16-21 marta 1918 g.’, Bor’ba za vlast’ sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc. No. 43, pp. 102-133. 392 Extract from ‘Protokoly s”ezda Sovetov Verkhneudinskogo raiona, 16-21 marta 1918 g.’, Bor’ba za vlast’sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc. No. 43, p. 118.

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congress decided to find ways to introduce socialisation of land according to the Sovnarkom Law, which involved re-organisation of the land committees.393 When asked how the Buriats regarded the land question, one of their Selenginsk delegates, Bimbaev, replied that:

he was not authorised to predetermine this question, but personally for himself he said that because of the historical conditions of the Buriats, as a cattle-rearing and nomadic people, they required a larger norm of allotment, that according to the conditions of their economy, the Buriats of Selenginsk A imak have less land than is needed, that in those cases, when there proved to be superfluous land in the Aimaks, the Buriats must give it up for the sake of the Russian population.394

This indicated the willingness of a section of the Buriats to test out what Soviet rule had to offer them, to present and discuss a case within the parameters of their cultural and economic needs and to co­ operate over land matters, by treating their Russian neighbours’ needs sympathetically. As the two problems were inextricably linked by the upheavals Transbaikalia had undergone during the early years of the twentieth century, it is no surprise that the land question should have come up during a discussion of the national question by the Zabaikal Oblast’ Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on 3 July 1918. This meeting resolved to order its land department to work together with Burnatskom, not only to develop an overall plan for land tenure in the Oblast’, but also to address the question of eliminating the intermingling of land allotment strips held by the Buriats and the Russians. Moreover, until a general reorganisation of land tenure arrangements could be made, the land department was to be guided in its attempts to resolve individual cases of problems over land by this principle of eliminating the intermingled strips.395 Thus the spirit of co-operation between Buriats and Russians over this crucial question was persisting.

393 Extract from ‘Protokoly s”ezda Sovetov Verkhneudinskogo raiona, 16-21 marta 1918 g.’, B or’ba za vlast’sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc. No. 43, p. 119. 394 Extract from ‘Protokoly s”ezda Sovetov Verkhneudinskogo raiona, 16-21 marta 1918 g.’, B or’ba za vlast’sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc. No. 43, p. 121. 395 NARB, F. 483, Op. 1, D. 28, L. 4, from Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii v 1917-1919gg, (UlanUde, 1994), Document No. 138, p. 136.

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But within the Buriat community there were deep divisions over land. On 28 July 1918 the Aga Aimak land department discussed the proposal of the Central Buriat National Committee of 5 March 19 18.396 This had stated that ‘all the lands of the permanent and the other lamas, provided for by the statute of 1853, pass into the jurisdiction of the Aimak land committees, and it is proposed to grant them temporarily for lease-hold use by the Khoshms and Somons which are short of land...’ with payment going to the Aimak land committees.397 The men of Aga had already nominally taken the lamas’ land under the control of their Aimak land committee in accordance with the March decree. They had delayed for four months, but now they had to act upon it as haymaking time was approaching. Thus they decided, at the rate of 25 kopeks per desiatina:

to lease the lamas’ haymaking plots...to those Khoshuns and Somons which need hayland; to entrust to the Aimak's Khoshun boards, with the exception of the Khori-Buriat [one], in the region of which there are no lamas’ plots, urgently to fix auctions for the letting out of the lamas’ plots for lease to the Khoshuns, the Somons the Uluses and to individual Buriats; widely to notify the native population about this, and if the auctions for some reason or other cannot take place, then to permit the Khoshun boards to hire out the lamas’ plots for the present year without auctions, but only to those native societies and individual Buriats who are poor in hayland....398

In such a decision we see a step which might well alienate many faithful Buddhist Buriats as well as the lamas, whom Amagaev had labelled the most powerful group in Buriat society. The decision had been taken in principle several months before, and one may surmise that the delay in enactment was due to anxiety over the public response. The Aga decision must be seen both as a gamble and a declaration of committment to Soviet principles. Later in 1918, after the Czech rebellion and allied intervention had allowed the consolidation of Semenov’s regime, Rinchino, who had been chairman of the Central Buriat National Committee

396 B or’ba za vlast’sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc 104, p. 208-209. 397 Bor ’ba za vlast ’sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc 104, p. 208. 398 B or’ba za vlast’sovetov v Buriat-Mongolii, 1917-18, Doc 104, p. 209.

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[.Bumatskom] during the Soviet period, wrote to his successor, Sampilon, who had the task of dealing with the new regime.399 Rinchino gave Sampilon lots of advice about how to tackle this daunting task. Bumatskom, on which they had both served, had dealt willingly with the Soviets in the preceeding months, a factor which might well make their dealings with Semenov difficult. Rinchino’s letter reveals that there was already, even at the beginning of winter, a serious food supply problem. He insisted that Bumatskom’s food department had the right of purchasing abroad, in Japan, China, Mongolia and America. There had been a massive failure of the hay crop and Rinchino anticipated a high death rate among the livestock. This indicates that the gamble with public opinion, taken, as at Aga, over confiscating the lamas’ haylands, had been futile, even the additional land had not helped the Buriats. Rinchino declared ‘Even now [i.e. very early in the winter C. B.] it is necessary to make arrangements for deliveries of meat’.400 Turning specifically to the land problem, Rinchino still exhibited a determination to keep the goodwill of the Russian socialists, even under Semenov’s regime. Advising Sampilon on the assignment of people to particular jobs in the National Committee, he proposed that Bogdanov,401 a

399 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., Doc. No. 176, pp. 165-8, (from the archive of BMSSRNKVD). 400 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., Doc. No. 176, p. 167, (from the archive of BMSSR NKVD). 401 Mikhail Nikolaevich Bogdanov (1878-1919), described as perhaps the best educated and most brilliant of the Buriat intelligentsia, practical rather than romantic, and interested in economics and history, came from a family of intelligentsia of the Bulagat tribe, west of Baikal. He studied at the universities of Tomsk, St Petersburg, Berlin and Zurich, wrote histororical studies of the Buriat people and translated German literary and scientific works into Mongolian. He was influenced by Marxism but belonged to the Socialist Revolutionaries. In 1905 he developed a plan for Buriat autonomy, during involvement with the Buriat congresses of that period. Between 1909 and 1913 he worked for the Tsarist govermnent on land settlement and related economic matters among the Khakass people near Minusinsk and Krasnoiarsk. Returning to Zabaikalia in 1913, he married the daughter of a revolutionary railway worker, wrote on Buriat land problems and worked in the co-operative movement. He believed that capitalism had already bound together peoples and territorial units, and that small peoples had little chance of remaining distinctive in the 20th century. However, he was troubled by Russian oppression of the Buriats and so fell more and more in with the Buriat nationalists. During 1917-18 he was a member and chairman of Bumatskom, a member of the

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famous Buriat socialist who would be murdered by Semenov very soon, be assigned to the land department, or ‘some-one from the Russians - the trustworthy ones’. 402 The DVR’s attempts to solve the land problem by legislation: The earliest attempts to tackle the land problem during the existence of the DVR had limited aims - the equalisation of land holdings among the various social groups and the curing of landhunger. The norms set by the Congress of the Soviets of Pribaikalia (28 March - 8 April 1918) had differentiated between Buriat and Russian needs in type of land but not in amount. For Russians practising agriculture the norm had been set at 2 desiatinas of ploughland, 1 of haymeadow and 4 of pasture, whereas for Buriats, who were mostly livestock-herders it was .75 of ploughland, 2.25 of haymeadow and 4 of pasture.403 These figures were adjusted at the time of the establishment of the DVR in 1920 so that the norm was set at 2 desiatinas of ploughland, 1 of haymeadow and 4 of pasture for everyone, which eliminated the 1918 special treatment of the Buriats with regard to land type.404 Such a land allotment seems completely unrealistic when we recall that pre-revolutionary norms of about 16 desiatinas, set during the Tsarist re-organisation of Transbaikalia’s landholdings, were greeted with disbelief and despair by Russians and Buriats alike. But all who had been allocated lands during the 1918 redistribution by the Soviets were allowed to keep them under the DVR. Surplus land was put into a fund for the needy and no equipment or land (other than fallow land for which arrangements had already been made for the

Constituent Assembly elected by the Zabaikalian Buriats in 1917 and then Zabaikal’s Oblast’ commissar. In 1919 he tried to find safe haven in the Barga area of Manchuria for Buriats displaced by the Russian civil war, and was killed on Semenov’s orders on his return to Chita late that year. [Information from R. A. Rupen, Mongols o f the 20th Century, Part I, pp. 18-19. and Natsional'noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., p. 194-5.] 402 Natsional’noe dvizhenie v Buriatii, 1917-19gg., Doc. No. 176, p. 167, (from the archive of BMSSR NKVD). 403 Central State Archive of the Buriat ASSR, F. R-34, Op. 1, D. 6, L. 9. (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 282.) 404 Central State Archive of the Buriat ASSR, F. R-34, Op. 1, D. 6, L. 2. (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 282.)

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1920 season) was to be leased for income. Buriats and cossacks had land taken from them which they had rented out or left empty, and state lands which had formerly been held under the quitrent [obrok\ system were freed from this and allocated, free of charge, under the system of norms. Land allotment boundaries, between villages, Somons etc, were to remain unchanged until the land tenure system had been fully worked out, so only holdings on state lands would be altered to help settlers and those short of land.405 The communists of the Far East were directed by Moscow to refrain from organising Committees of the Poor in the countryside, although the matter had been raised.406 The 1920 redistribution was virtually ignored and the old patterns of land use stayed in place. These events were interpreted in Soviet times as being due to the power of the kulaks in the village committees.407 In areas which would not become part of the DVR until the autumn of 1920, Soviet rule tried, earlier in the year, to adapt the Bolshevik Law on Land to their circumstances. On the Amur, where there was little land-hunger, they did not wish to alienate the peasants, as had happened in spring 1918, by enforcing a norm. Rather, they saw the need to guarantee the sowing, and thus the harvest, of a good crop, to this end they allowed the use of hired labour 408 Although the Amur bolsheviks agreed

405 Central State Archive of the Buriat ASSR, F. R-34, Op. 1, D. 6, LL. 2-5. (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest'ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 282-3.) 406 Amurslcaia Pravda, 17 March 1920; TsGADV: F. R-1106, Op. 2, D. 7, L. 7. (Quoted E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 286.) 407 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 283; L. S. Kler, ‘O klassovoi sushchnosti gosudarstva Dal’nevostochnoi respubliki’, 50 let osvobozhdeniia Zabaikal’ia ot belogvardeitsev i inostrannykh interventov (Materialy nauchnoi

konferentsii) Chita, 24-25 iiunia 1971 g. (Chita,

1972), p. 210-11. 408 TsGADV, F. R-1016, Op. 1, D. 223, LL. 12 ob. and 13. [Quoted E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 19171927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 284.

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with the transfer of all land to public ownership, all measures had to be geared to maximising grain yield in 1920, even if these ran counter to the fair distribution of land.409 As we shall see, this over-riding economic need would be a recurring theme in the attitude of DVR communists to the land problem. But such measures also demonstrate pragmatism in attempting to follow the decisions of the 8th Party Congress and form a union with the middle peasantry,410 an early step towards NEP. If, as was claimed, Moscow had given the DVR’s communists the job of exploring alternative economic systems, a task which we are told predated and led to the introduction of NEP in the RSFSR, such policies would have been an early part of the experiment, which was to be elaborated on throughout the evolution of the DVR’s policies.411 This claim, that the DVR was a

409 TsGADV, F. R-1952, Op. 1, D. 28, L. 33 ob., [Quoted E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927 gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 284. 410 V. I. Lenin, Collected Worlcs, Vol. 29, March - August 1919 (Moscow, 1965) has speeches from the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, see pp. 141-225, and especially ‘Resolution on the attitude to the middle peasants’, pp. 217-20, which speaks of agreement between the proletariat and the middle peasants as “one of the conditions for a painless transition to the abolition of all exploitation...”, claiming that it was an “axiom of scientific socialism that the middle peasants are not exploiters since they do not profit by the labour of others”. This statement was drawn from ‘The draft programme of the RCP(b)’, pp. 97-140, especially ‘The agrarian section of the programme’, pp. 13940, which talks of drawing the middle peasants into the work of the party, separating them from the kulaks and “winning them to the side of the working class by carefully attending to their needs”. 411 US Microcopy 316, roll 175, frames 0113-7: Trade Commissioner C. J. Mayer, Special report to US State Department (No. 19) from Harbin, Manchuria, Dated 13 October 1922 ‘Impressions of the Far Eastern Republic’, On page 1 (frame 0113) the text reads: ‘The government of the Far Eastern Republic was instructed, according to its leaders, to try out experiments to return to economic conditions as they existed before the revolution, the inference being that there was forming a well defined realization on the part of leaders in Moscow that reconstruction of the country could not possibly be brought about under communistic principles and laws. This was in 1920, and today one is told by the leaders in Chita that communistic principles as such find a wide variance of meaning among members of the Communist Party themselves, and that progressive leaders of the Party are wont to lean to what is called the right wing of the Party, that is, to less radical views towards capitalistic forms of economics and politics. Expression in Russia of this development recently found its way in the New Economic Policy of the Soviet Government, as an in[i]tial experiment.’ But Mayer heard this in August 1922, long after the advent of NEP, and offers no documentary evidence. It is this

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‘laboratory for NEP’ cannot be supported. NEP was set forth at the 10th Party Congress, which co­ incided with the adoption of the DVR’s Constitution. Although this Constitution enshrined all sorts of ideas which would produce a mixed economy, including private property and the use of hired labour, it was not in place in time to act as the inspiration for NEP. Even if we take the DVR’s policies, and those of its constituent parts (the regions of the Far East did not unite under the Verkhne-Udinsk government until October 1920) during the year between its establishment and the 10th Party Congress, there would still not be enough positive indicators to provide the impetus to introduce NEP. First steps toward a Law on Land Shchagin claims that the similaries between land relationships in Siberia and in the Far East made it possible for the DVR’s communists to use the same pattern of land legislation as had their colleagues in Siberia after the fall of Kolchak.412 In January 1921 a congress was held of the Oblast’ departments of the DVR’s Ministry of Agriculture. From the Ministry came the proposal to base the DVR’s law on land on that of the RSFSR, but with adaptations to local conditions. The draft they developed had two aims: to eliminate the land privileges of the various social groups or ‘estates’, and to guarantee land use on the principle of equality of labour.413 The congress approved the draft but urged caution and a gradual approach to its implementation, so a transitional phase was provided for, during which it would be possible to hire labour and lease land.414 This caution was due to the similarity between the middle and petty peasantry of the Amur and Primore and those of Siberia, who all made wide use of hired labour. Alienation of

writer’s opinion that the DVR’s economy never performed well enough to warrant the imitation implied in the claim. 412 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 286. 413 TsGADV: F. R-1731, Op. 1, D. 220, LL. 3-9; D. 11, LL. 35, 60, 79-100. (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 286-7. 414 TsGADV: F. R-1731, Op. 1, D. 220, L. 7. (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927 gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 287.

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these might well lead to ‘serious civil war in the countryside’, as had been noted at the first Siberian Oblast ’ Party Conference.415 Although the use of hired labour was probably not an important issue in the Buriat areas of the republic, the leasing of land most certainly was. The Russians had long maintained their standard of living by leasing surplus land from the Buriats. Seizures of such land formed a central factor in the violence between Buriats and Russians. Certainly the Russians hoped for redistribution of the surplus Buriat lands, but support for Bolshevik policy on this count may have been countered by the fear of the Old Settlers that they would lose out to the newcomers in a general redistribution. In the DVR political pluralism was a cornerstone of the democratic face which the buffer state was designed to turn to the outside world. Thus all political parties had to be seen to be active. The DVR’s Constituent Assembly, which was being elected at about the same time as the draft land law was being drawn up, included a wide range of political opinions, most important of which was the so-called ‘Peasant Majority’. It was the support of these peasants which allowed the communists to get their policies onto the statute books. They supported the communists firstly due to their perhaps rather eccentric interpretation of the redistribution of the land in 1918, as Gins reported, but also due to an alliance formed over years of bitter civil and partisan war against common enemies such as the Japanese and Semenov. But this alliance might well not have survived the imposition of land norms. As has already been pointed out, such steps provoked the ‘civil war in the countryside’, the withholding of grain from the cities in metropolitan Russia and many peasant uprisings. Thus, the Ministry of Agriculture reported to the DVR’s government that the draft law on land did not make any drastic break with current land usage, and the Ministry told the DVR’s Constituent Assembly, gathering in February 1921: ‘All the lands in actual working use remain

415 TsPA IML [Now RTsKhlDNI]: F. 17, Op. 12, Ed. Khr. 496, L. 55. (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 287.

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inviolable and are not subject to reduction’.416 Shchagin points out that this closely followed the wording of Sibrevkom’s appeal to the Siberian peasants of 2 December 1919.417 The DVR’s legal and administrative system was formally established by the Constituent Assembly which met during the period Februaiy to April 1921. Although Krasnoshchekov, the American-trained lawyer, had drawn up the Constitution, for the sake of the buffer strategy and for the sake of foreign consumption, the appearance of a property owning democracy had to be seen to emanate from the Assembly. One of the gravest political ‘crimes’ which the Bolsheviks had committed, in the eyes of both their domestic and foreign critics, had been the armed dissolution of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly in January 1918. If the buffer were to work it had to persuade its audience, at home and abroad, that democracy really held sway, and thus the very first provisions of the Constitution declared that:

1) The Far Eastern Republic is established as a democratic Republic. 2) The Far Eastern Republic shall be governed in strict accordance with the laws enacted under this Constitution which are binding, without exception, upon all institutions, officials, and citizens of the Republic and also upon citizens of foreign countries residing in the territory of the Republic. 3) The laws of the Republic shall be abrogated or altered only in the manner prescribed by this Constitution. 4).... 5) The laws of the Republic shall not conflict with provisions of this Constitution.418

The Constitution declared ‘all citizens regardless of sex, occupation, race, faith and political creed are equal before the law. Divisions of citizens into classes, all class privileges and distinctions,

416 TsGADV: F. R-1731, Op. 1, D. 66, L. 5. (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927 gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 287-8. 417 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 288. 418 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part I , ‘General Provisions’, clauses 1, 2, 3 & 5, p. 1.

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and all civil and military titles are abolished’.419 Sovereignty was ‘vested in the people of the republic, and in them only’, and they exercised this sovereignty ‘through the National Assembly and through the Government elected by the Assembly’.420 The National Assembly, in which was vested ‘the entire legislative power’, was to be elected ‘by universal, direct, equal and secret ballot on the system of proportional representation for a term of two years’ by ‘all citizens...without distinction as to sex, religion or nationality’ who were sane, over 18 and not ‘restricted in their rights by the court’.421 The National Assembly did not sit continuously, therefore provision was made that during its recesses:

...the Government shall have the right to issue provisional laws, dealing with matters which do not admit of delay until the re-assembling of the National Assembly. These laws must neither modify nor suspend this Constitution either in whole or in part. All such laws shall be submitted for the consideration and approval of the National Assembly immediately on the resumption of its sessions. The National Assembly shall have the right to suspend the application of such laws pending discussion.422

419 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part I I I , ‘Citizens and their Rights’, Section 2, ‘The Rights of Citizens’, clause 11, p. 3. 420 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII,‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV , ‘The Government’, Section 1, ‘The Central Government’, Article 1, ‘General Provisions’, clauses 1 & 2, p. 5. 421 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section 1, ‘The Central Government, Article 2, ‘The National Assembly’, clauses 33-5, p. 6. 422 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section 1, ‘The Central Government, Article 2, ‘The National Assembly’, clause 43, p. 7 & 8. This clause was used in almost all the Republic’s legislation and is referred to in the preamble to almost all legislation. In the 23 issues of the Sobranie Uzakonenii i Rasporiazhenii Pravitel’stva D al’ne-Vostochnoi Respubliki which follow the establishment of the Constitution, there are only two issues in which laws are promulgated

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As well as the Council of Ministers, the Government and all members of the National Assembly, all citizens holding electoral rights also held the right of legislative initiative, so long as the signatures of one thousand citizens endorsed the proposal.423 The DVR’s Constitution laid down a framework policy on land holding and use, siting it within other matters, such as labour, finance, taxes, the state budget, loans and currency, which were seen to make up ‘The Basis of the National Economic Organization’.424 The Constitution ‘forever abolished...private ownership of land, forests, natural resources, water-ways and their resources...’.425 Without compensation to the former owners, all land, ‘regardless of previous use or ownership’ was declared ‘the property of the working people’ and formed a national land fund.426 The ‘general and fundamental basis of the right to use land’ was to be ‘personal labour’,

by the elected body rather than by the Government under clause 43. They are issue No. 1 (7) dated 14 June 1921, carrying the laws passed by the Constituent Assembly in April 1921, and issue No. 10(16) dated 31 December 1921, carrying laws passed by the National Assembly during its session that month. Elections for a new National Assembly were repeatedly postponed during 1922, and it eventually met just in time to legitimate the DVR’s end as it became part of the RSFSR. 423 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section 1, ‘The Central Government’, Article 5, ‘Legislative Initiative’, clauses 62-5, p. 10 & 11. 424 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part V ‘The Basis of the National Economic Organization’, Sections I The Land, II Labour, III The Financial-Economic System, clauses 126-164, pp. 22-7. 425 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part V ‘The Basis of the National Economic Organization’, Section I, ‘The Land’, clause 126, p. 22. 426 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part V ‘The Basis of the National Economic Organization’, Section I, ‘The Land’, clause 127, p. 22.

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independent of ‘creed, nationality or sex’.427 The people were left to decide whether land should be used ‘collectively, by groups, or by individuals’.428 Significantly, special mention was made of the Buriats: ‘Note: The land allotment to the Buriat-Mongols for cattle breeding shall be determined in accordance with the conditions of their economic life’.429 The Constitution set out a framework which seemed to help the Buriats in their struggle with their Russian neighbours over land. As we have seen, it granted them territorial autonomy over ‘the entire area inhabited by the Buriat-Mongols’.430 It acknowledged the problems between Buriats and Russias over their intermingled strips of land and posed a solution through the action of ‘special commission for the regulation of land relations of the Buriat-Mongols and Russians...consisting of equal numbers of representatives of the interested parties.’431 The wording of this clause is loose, so are we to assume that the interested parties are the citizens of the two communities, their administrations, at local or higher level or maybe even the different Ministries of the Central Government? The regulation of land relations would surely have interested agents in the Ministries of

427 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part V ‘The Basis of the National Economic Organization’, Section I, ‘The Land’, clause 130, p. 22. 428 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part V ‘The Basis of the National Economic Organization’, Section I, ‘The Land’, clause 131, p. 22. 429 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part V ‘The Basis of the National Economic Organization’, Section I, ‘The Land’, clause 131 (Note), p. 22. 430 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section V, Article 2, ‘Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols’, clause 116, p. 20. 431 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section V, Article 2, ‘Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols’, clause 117, p. 20.

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Agriculture and Internal Affairs at least. As we shall see, these questions proved problematic when the body was eventually set up. The Buriats were to be ‘subject to the general laws of the Republic’, but within the Autonomous Territory they were to be ‘independent in the matter of establishing courts, economic, administrative institutions and such institutions as pertain to their national culture’.432 This clause would seem to guarantee the Buriats the freedom to conduct their livestock-rearing economy and culture as they would wish, but it relates to ‘establishing...institutions’, and this term is not elaborated further. Thus the degree of autonomy granted to the Buriats is indistinct. The elected administration of the Autonomous Territory was to ‘pass local territorial laws...within the independent spheres enumerated in paragraph 118’, but these were not to ‘conflict with the general laws of the Republic’. Again this must be an area for confusion. Additionally the Buriat Administration was charged with enforcing all the laws, ordinances and regulations of the Central Government within the territory.433 Thus, this body was both to try to enact the wishes of its constituents and to enforce laws which, given the strength of the Russian peasants in the National Assembly, the importance of peasant loyalty (and food supplies) to the Government, the history of inter-ethnic conflict and the growth in Buriat nationalism, the Buriats might well wish to reject. The Buriat leadership, and especially its communists, would be in a very difficult position. Besides the uncertainty over the conceptual scope of Buriat autonomy, the other main problem posed by the Constitution was in its territorial scale. Clause 116 indicated that this would be ‘the entire area inhabited by the Buriat-Mongols’, but then added ‘the boundaries of which shall be

432 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section V, Article 2, ‘Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols’, clause 118, p. 20-1. 433 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII,‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section V, Article 2, ‘Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols’, clause 119-20, p. 21.

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fixed by law’.434 Firstly, the long-stated aim of the Buriats was to unscramble the mess of interlocking Buriat and Russian land allotments in order to consolidate their territory. This would involve moving whole communities and meant that the boundaries of the Autonomous Territory could not be settled until this task was complete. Secondly, if, as it would turn out, the Buriats were to be subject to state legislation in the sphere of land law, then the norms for land holding would be set centrally. This meant a whole revision of Buriat landholding, so that they would not have an Autonomous Territory made up of the lands they inhabited traditionally, or in 1900, or in 1917 or even in 1920, but made up of the lands allotted to them after the redistribution of land which would follow the promulgation of a law on land. Because of these uncertainties over land issues the Autonomous Buriat Territory was to be a very nebulous entity, having a very indistinct nature, shape and size. But still, the Buriats were given more reason to hope by the DYR’s Constitution than any set of regulations in their history. Besides granting territorial autonomy to the Buriats, the Constitution made special provision for them in its clauses concerning land ownership and use: ‘The land allotment to the Buriat-Mongols for cattle breeding shall be determined in accordance with the conditions of their economic life’.435 Although loosely worded, this seemed to be a safeguard, not only for the Buriat economy, but also for Buriat culture, centred so firmly on nomadic livestock herding. Indeed, Buriat autonomy seemed to be accounted for in the Constitution’s treatment of land allotment:

434 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section V, Article 2, ‘Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols’, clause 116, p. 20. 435 The Constitution of the DVR established that private ownership of land was abolished, all land, regardless of previous ownership became the property of the people, without compensation, and formed a national fund. The manner of land use was to be provided for by a special law, but land was to be apportioned to the working people by allotments established by the land authorities. The basis of the right to use land was personal labour, and the people were left to decide whether they should work the land collectively, in groups or individually. Clause 131 (Note) dealt with the Buriats, [from The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part V ‘The basis of the National Economic Organisation’, Section 1, ‘The Land’, clauses 126-31, p. 22.

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‘The apportioning to the working people of land of agricultural value shall be by allotments established by the land authorities of the local administration according to climate and soil.’436 But the land law which would eventually emerge in December 1921, like its predecessor of early 1920, set the norms centrally, both for Russians and Buriats. According to Shchagin, the DVR’s Constituent Assembly gave notice of what might happen to the draft law on land when it discussed that part of the republic’s Constitution which dealt with agrarian matters. Opposition to nationalisation of the land came from many non-Bolshevik quarters, Shchagin lists ‘bourgeois groups, SRs, mensheviks and other right-socialists’.437 This statement cannot go unchallenged, however, as the policy came originally from the SR Party and direct input from peasants.438 It had been welcomed during the period of Soviet rule by the peasantry, who formed the vast majority of the DVR’s electorate. Indeed, Shchagin goes on to say that only by ‘leaning on the support of the Peasant Majority fraction’ did the communists get the Constitution, including its clauses on the nationalisation of land, passed by the Assembly.439 It would

436 The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part V ‘The basis of the National Economic Organisation’, Section 1, ‘The Land’, clause 129, p. 22.

437 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 288. 438 The Decree on Land, written by Lenin, as President of the Council of People’s Commissars, and adopted by the Congress of Soviets on 26 October 1917, states that a resolution which was “made up on the basis of 242 local peasant resolutions by the editors of the Izvestiia o f the All-Russian Soviet o f Peasant Deputies and published in number 88 of this Izvestiia (Petrograd, No. 88, August 19 1917), must everywhere serve as guidance in the realization of the great reorganisation of the land system”. The 242 resolutions had been made up by peasant gatherings and brought to a national Congress of Soviets of Peasants Deputies held in Petrograd between 17 May and 10 July 1917. This had 1,115 delegates, of whom 537 were SRs and only 14 were Bolsheviks. SRs and their thinking dominated the congress and its Executive Committee. See W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1918, from the overthrow o f the Tsar to the assumption ofpower by the Bolsheviks, Vol. 1 (Princeton, 1987 originally published 1935), pp. 248 and 474-7. 439 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 288.

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be very interesting to gain access to the archival source he quotes,440 or a record of the Assembly’s proceedings, as the policy seems unlikely to have provoked SR opposition. There was broad, longstanding peasant support for the policy. The advent of the ‘democratic’ DVR with its huge Peasant Majority in the Constituent Assembly, a body which would continue its work as the National Assembly, the legislative body, appeared to give the peasantry the whip hand in the republic.441 It seems inevitable that those peasants who did not support the communists would have been SR supporters, and their representatives would have been unlikely to vote against a policy favoured by the peasants and originated by the SRs. Nonetheless, the government decided not to put the draft law on land before the Constituent Assembly. Rather than fearing opposition to nationalisation, probably they feared opposition to the imposition of norms, even after a transitional period. The law on land was held back and worked on, being presented to the Council of Ministers in October and passed by the National Assembly in December 1921.442 The Land Commission On 18 August 1921 the Government of the DVR passed a law which set up the ‘Central Governmental Land Commission for regulating land relationships between the Buriat-Mongol and Russian population’.443 This body had been provided for in the Constitution.444 The Commission was

440 D al’nevostochnaia Respublika, 9 April 1921, (Quoted in E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927 gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 288.) 441 The Constitution stated ‘The entire legislative power is vested in the National Assembly’ which was elected by ‘universal, direct, equal and secret ballot’ by ‘all citizens...without distinction as to sex, religion or nationality’ who were sane, over 18 and not ‘restricted in their rights by the court’. [From: The Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section 1, ‘The Central Government, Article 2, ‘The National Assembly’, clauses 33-5, p. 6. 442 ‘Zakon o Zemle’, dated 14 December 1921, Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), (31 December 1921), Art. 236, p. 491. 443 Sob. Uzak., No. 4 (10), 8 September 1921, arts. 81 and 82, pp. 159-61, (also published in Nos. 19 and 20 of the newspaper Dal ’nevostochnoi Telegraf of 25 and 26 August 1921).

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to consist of government appointees: a chairman representing the Council of Ministers, and one member each from the Ministries of Agriculture, Internal Affairs and National Affairs, and one from the Administration of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’, with the addition of two representatives, at Uezd and Aimak level, from the populations concerned. Provision was made for inclusion in the Commission of experts and representatives from other Ministries as consultants.445 The tasks allotted to the commission were to examine and resolve all land disputes and conflicts between the Buriats and the Russians, and all complaints about the activities of the local organs of land administration. It was to clear up the confusion of inter-mingled farming strips in areas where Buriats and Russians held lands which were scattered amongst each other, but it was also to ‘draw up a plan for the re-settlement to new localities of individual people, groups and whole villages of Buriat-Mongols and Russians’ displaced by this consolidation of land holdings along ethnic lines, and explain about state aid and credit for this process 446 One of its most important tasks was the delineation of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’, which, according to article 118 of the Fundamental Law, was to consist of the territory occupied by the Buriat-Mongol people. This meant surveying and establishing their land holdings in terms of the land to be allocated to the Buriats according to land tenure norms and in the light of possible re-location following the elimination of farm strips inter-mingled among those held by Russians.447 The Commission was also to examine and resolve cases of illegal land seizure and bring a halt to such behaviour. Alongside this went an examination of the problems concerning the inclusion of land previously held for migrants as part of the state land fund. Such lands were to form a fund from which the needs of the dispossessed and land-hungry could be satisfied.448

444 Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural Resources Trade and Industry (Washington, D.C., 1922), Part VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part IV ‘The Government’, Section 5, Article 2, ‘Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongols’, clause 117, p. 20. 445 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (10), 8September 1921, Art. 82, p. 159-60. 446 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (10), 8September 1921, Art. 82, p. 160. 447 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (10), 8September 1921, Art. 82, p. 160. 448 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (10), 8September 1921, Art. 82, p. 160.

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To help it in its work the Central Governmental Land Commision was granted access to all necessary government and public information, files and planning documents, to experts and instruments for making surveys and to help from all authorities with both investigations and the putting into effect of its decisions. These decisions were made by simple majority votes at meetings called in proportion to the volume of work, but not less than twice per month. The most urgent cases could be decided by the chairman or his deputy, but had to be ratified by the full commission.449 Cases were to be referred to the commission from the Russian population via the Ministry of Agriculture, and from the Buriats via the Administration of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast’. The commission was to be funded centrally, out of the budget of the Council of Ministers.450 But it was not until 4 November that the salary scale for even the most senior member of the commission was set by the decision ‘To extend the action of the Law of 9 July 1921 on the establishment of the salary for the highest officials of the DVR to the post of Chairman of the Central Govt Land Commission’. With effect from 1 October 1921 he was to be paid as a member of the third category of employees.451 This meant that alongside members of the Supreme Political Court of Appeal and Ministry Department Heads he would receive 80 gold rubles.452 The DVR’s Law on Land Eventually the DVR’s Law on Land reached a stage of development deemed fit to present it for the approval of the National Assembly, which met in December 1921. Despite the fact that delegates elected to the Constitutional Assembly returned to serve as the People’s Assembly in December, the Government’s earlier fears over their reaction to a Law on Land seem to have been allayed. The People’s Assembly passed the Law on Land on 14 December 1921.453 Much of it closely

449 Sob.

Uzak.No. 4 (10), 8 September 1921, Art. 82, p. 160-1.

450 Sob.

Uzak.No. 4 (10), 8 September 1921, Art. 82, p. 161.

451 Sob.

Uzak.No. 8 (14), 8 December 1921, Art 179, p. 443.

452 Sob.Uzak. No. 2 (8), 25 July 1921, Art. 37, p. 75. 120 gold rubles went to those in the first category, such as members of the govermnent, Ministers etc, while 100 gold rubles went to those in the second category, such as Deputy Ministers and the Commander in Chief of the People’s Revolutionary Army. 453 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, pp. 491-9.

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resembled the RSFSR’s land law,454 but there were major differences in some areas, springing largely from the DVR’s need to maintain a pluralist and non-communist face to the outside world as well as to appease the peasants. The new law was was stated specifically to apply to the entire territory of the DVR, ‘not excepting the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast”,455 which meant that limits were set on the Buriats’ autonomy in the sphere of land use. Reiterating clause 127 of the Constitution and following the RSFSR’s principles,456 the law abolished all ownership of land in the DVR. Land became the property of the working people as a general land fund and all citizens, regardless of sex, religion and nationality, had the right to use land. Foreigners might use land, but only with central, as well as local, government permission.457 An important factor for the Buriats and their autonomous administration was that although the land fund was to be under the ‘direct management’ of ‘the appropriate central and local organs of authority’,458 its ‘distribution was in the hands of the Ministry of Agriculture and the appropriate local land organs, depending on the importance of these lands’.459 However, the Law on Land gave Oblast’ land organs the power of setting norms for allotting lands of agricultural significance to the working people. These norms were to be set according to soil, climate and economic circumstances.460 Thus it seems that the Buriat Autonomous Administration could allot lands within its jurisdiction, but the extent of the land from which it might make such allotments was to be subject to the approval of the Ministry of Agriculture.

454 Text of the RSFSR’s ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’ is to be found in James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918, Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), pp. 673-8 455 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 44, pp. 498. 456 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Articles 1, 2 and 4 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918, Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), Art. pp. 673. 457 Sob. Uzak. No.10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clauses 1-3, pp. 491-2, 458 Sob. Uzak. No.10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 4, pp. 492. 459 Sob. Uzak. No.10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 5, pp. 492. 460 Sob. Uzak. No.10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 6, pp. 492.

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Also, the reserve land fund was to be managed by the Ministry of Agriculture. This was made up of ‘free lands of rural-economic importance, which are not in actual use’.461 These included former state, Kabinet, private, monastery and church land, military training land and that formerly reserved for troops and cossacks, plots reserved for migrants, land lying empty between allotments, all lands thought to be surplus to the estimated norm and those set aside for an anticipated rise in population.462 As we shall discover, this potential clash between authorities, and disagreement over the estimation of land norms, had already created problems for the emergent Buriat administration behind the scenes, during the evolution of the law on land. The Buriats and the leaders of the Autonomous Oblast’ may have drawn comfort from the special provision in the Law on Land for livestock-breeders: ‘Land norms for the livestock-breeding population are determined according to its economic circumstances...’.463 But other provisions would have alarmed them. The right to use land could be taken from a person ‘in a case of clear unwillingness to use the land...’,464 an accusation which might be used where land was used only intermittently during nomadic travels. More importantly, the right to land use could be denied to people not using it in legal ways, for example if they were ‘secretly letting out lands for lease’.465 Leasing spare Buriat land had long helped Russian peasants to increase their land-holdings.466 With this provision they could expose this illegal renting to the authorities and claim the land as their own by invoking another provision of the Law on Land which gave the land to those who were actually using it.467

461 Sob. Uzak. No.

10 (16),

31 December 1921,

Art.

236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause

7, pp. 492.

462 Sob. Uzak. No.

10 (16),

31 December 1921,

Art.

236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause

7, pp. 492.

463 Sob. Uzak. No.

10 (16),

31 December 1921,

Art.

236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause

19 (Note), pp.495.

464 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 40, point ‘b’, p. 498. 465 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 40, point ‘c’, p. 498. 466 See, for example, evidence from Borovinskii, chairman of the Central Governmental Land Commission, discussing Russian leasing of Buriat lands in the Chikoi region [RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 545,1. 27 ob.] 467Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 30, pp. 496.

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Even more potent provisions, which would affect the Buriats and their traditional nomadic life, involved the improvement and modernisation of agriculture. Among the tasks alloted to the Ministry of Agriculture and the local land organs was a whole range of measures geared toward ‘the more productive use of the national wealth’. These included:

a) the creation of conditions favouring an increase in the productive forces of the country, in the sense of increasing the fertility of the land, improving the techniques and standards of the rural economy and the knowledge of the working masses of the agricultural population, b) assistance to the development of farming enterprises, such as: livestock-breeding, milk production, bee-keeping, market-gardening, horticulture and so on, c) assistance in the rapid transition from a less to a more productive system of field-crop cultivation in various regions....468

With a little variation, these provisions echoed those made in the RSFSR’s law on land.469 The emphasis on efficiency and improvement in land use must surely be seen as a threat to the nomadic, low intensity use of land by the Buriat livestock breeders. If we consider that communism was developed as a form of modernisation, of developing man and Iris enterprises to their fullest potential, and its language makes constant reference to ‘backward’ and ‘progressive’ concepts, this should come as no surprise. However, one must ask what would be the fate of autonomy in cultural matters in a society basing its structure on the principles of Marxism, if the economic base were deemed to require radical change. Marxism plainly states the dependence of the former upon the latter. Amagaev, who headed Buriat Autonomous Oblast’ of the DVR, had actively promoted agricultural improvement since his youth and came from an agricultural, rather than nomadic, background. The DVR’s view of the Buriats’ contribution to the economy was fairly plain:

Up to this time livestock-rearing in the Oblast ’ in full measure remains nomadic, and as such cannot rise out of that depressed state, in which it is now. Pribaikalian livestock-rearing is

468 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 8, pp. 492-3. 469 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Article 11 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 19171918, Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 674.

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being beaten in the competition with West-Siberian meat with the construction of the railway, it is also being beaten in the competition with Mongolian nomadic livestock-rearing. The future of Pribaikalian livestock-rearing - is in a change in the system of livestock-rearing. The nomadic forms have outlived their time, they are economically unfavourable now and are doomed to disappear....470

Even the famous ethnographer, Arsenev,471 who might have been expected to understand differences in culture between peoples, sounded puritanical in his 1928 assessment of the livestockrearing Buriats. He saw their economy as primitive: they took little care of their animals, leaving them to struggle to find their own food under the snow rather than lay in winter fodder for them. This gave ‘the Buriat a lot of leisure, which allows him to spend his time idly. This leisure, often bordering on indolence, has created a phlegmatic person out of him...’. Even though some took advantage of modern methods following the revolution, still ‘the majority of them stubbornly remain livestockrearers and resolutely refuse [to take up] agriculture’ 472 Closely related to this factor of economic efficiency was that of control. All aspects of food supply had been extremely problematic for the communists ever since the revolution, bringing famine

470 Po rodnomu kraiu (Verkhne-Udinsk, 1922), p. 78. 471 Vladimir Klavdievich Arsenev, 1872-1930, an officer in the Imperial Russian Army, explorer of the Ussuri region and author of Dersu Uzala, became the Provisional Govermnent’s Far Eastern Nationalities Commissar in 1917, but kept a low profile after the October Revolution. After the establishment of Soviet rule in the Far East he was able to continue research, his directorship of the Khabarovsk Museum of Regional Studies and his work at the Far Eastern State University. In 1928 Maxim Gorkii compared him to James Fennimore Cooper. But several of Arsenev’s former students found it advantageous to blacken their teacher’s character in order to gain advancement. These denunciations led to preparations for a trial in which Arsenev was to have been tried for espionage. Although he died in September 1930 before a trial could be started, his widow was shot as a Japanese spy. It is sad to note that Elpidifor Titov, Arsenev’s co-author of Byt i Kharakter..., the book referred to in the notes which follow, used his knowledge and criticisms of Arsenev to re-establish his own credibility with the Soviet regime when he returned from several years’ absence in Harbin in 1932. Ironically, Titov himself was shot as a Japanese spy in 1938. [Information from J. J. Stephan, The Russian Far East; A History (Stanford, 1994), pp. 170-1, 223, 312-3 and 336.] 472 V. K. Arsenev and E. I. Titov, Byt i kharakter narodnostei Dal ’nevostochnogo kraia (Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, 1928), pp. 46-8.

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on a massive scale and even forcing the radical about-face of NEP, which was forced on the regime by the peasants’ refusal to give up their produce. For centuries the Buriats had been taking their livestock herds out of Russia whenever things became difficult for them. This was easy enough with animals, which after all can move themselves, but it would be far from easy if the agricultural product were grain. It would be extremely difficult for farmers who raised grain to emigrate, and difficult enough for meat producers to slip away abroad if the open areas once used for nomadic wanderings had all been divided up and settled. Perhaps another related aspect of the problem was that the Buriats’ traditional cattleherding way of life appeared far too easy for the new regime. If communism recognised a man’s worth by his labour, those who did not labour to their full extent would be deemed unworthy. The view, articulated by Arsenev, of the Buriat as leisured, idle, indolent and phlegmatic would be damning. Such an attitude to work might be dangerous since it might be infectious. Indeed, Arsenev noted that the Buriats had, once before, had an adverse effect on early Great Russian migrants, whose livestock rearing had been ‘at a higher level while they were in their homeland’, but when they moved to Zabaikalia this had been ‘brought down to the level of the Buriats and...became just as primitive as that of their neighbours.’473 As in the RSFSR, personal labour was ‘the general and fundamental source of the right to the use of land’, but certain exceptions to this would be allowed.474 The most important of these, and here the DVR’s law differed from that of the RSFSR, was in the area of hired labour. The RSFSR limited the use of hired labour to such enterprises as model farms and experimental stations which were to be run by organs of the state on sections of the land reserve.475 But while the DVR imitated this

473 V. K. Arsenev and E. I. Titov, Byt i kharakter narodrtostei D al’nevostochnogo lcraia (Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, 1928), pp. 11. 474 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 9, p. 493; James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Articles 3 & 13 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918 Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 673 & 674. 475 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Article 13 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 19171918, Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 674.

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provision, it also allowed the use of hired labour by collectives and individuals when the farms of individuals could not supply their needs through personal labour alone, and when the collective or individual farm needed hired labour during times of urgent work, such as ploughing, sowing, haymaking or harvest. The use of such labour was to be governed by the labour law.476 This provision relied on there being a pool of labour available. One wonders why these labourers did not till their own land, which all citizens were entitled to, and what they lived on between such periods of urgent work. This provision for hiring labour may indicate several things. Perhaps the government recognised that workers in the non-agrarian sector were temporarily displaced from their jobs by the chaos of civil war, or that as payment of wages in the state sector was often delayed, workers might be appeased by being allowed to maintain themselves by temporary employment outwith their normal activity. The RSFSR had outlawed the leasing of land as part of the abolition of the private ownership of land,477 but article 15 of the DVR’s Law on Land stated ‘free state lands, not meant for allocation to state or public needs, may be allocated by the state to lease-hold use by individuals, groups of cultivators and organisations both for industrial and other purposes...’.478 In this way peasants could increase their land-holding and the state would get an income. Indeed, it was anticipated that revenue from leases would yield 100,000 gold rubles for the state in 1922.479 This compared with the

476 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 10, p. 493. 477 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Article 1 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918, Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 674; this abolished all private ownership of land. The concept had been more specifically expanded in the earlier ‘Decree on Land’ adopted (at bolshevik instigation) by the Second All-Russian Congress of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on 26 October / 8 November 1917, in its ‘Land Mandate’ (of SR origin), Article 1 of which stated ‘The right of private ownership of land is abolished forever. Land cannot be sold, bought, leased, mortgaged, or alienated in any manner whatsoever....’, ibid. p. 129. 478 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 15, p. 494. 479 TsGA RSFSR DV: F. 1731, Op. 1, D. 68, L. 124., Quoted in L. S. Kler, ‘O klassovoi syshchnosti gosudarstva Dal’nevostochnoi respubliki’, 50 let osvobozhdeniia Zabaikal’ia ot belogvardeitsev i

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republic’s two other most lucrative industries, gold and fur, which yielded 600,000 and 800,000 gold rubles profit respectively in a year.480 Whereas the RSFSR’s land law had established state monopolies over foreign and domestic trade in grain,481 and trade in agricultural machinery and seed,482 this was not done in the DVR. The RSFSR also confiscated the peasants’ surplus income,483 their privately owned livestock and agricultural implements,484 and their buildings,485 but again these provisions were not made in the DVR. Although, as in the RSFSR,486 in the allotment of land, preference was given to communal forms of land use over individual farms,487 the DVR allowed that the people could decide whether the

inostrannykh interventov (Materialy nauchnoi

konferentsii) Chita, 24-25 iiunia 1971 g. (Chita,

1972), p. 211. 480 D al’nevostochnyi Telegraf 6 April 1921, Quoted in L. S. Kler, ‘O klassovoi sushchnosti gosudarstva Dal’nevostochnoi respubliki’, 50 let osvobozhdeniia Zabaikal’ia ot belogvardeitsev i inostrannykh interventov (Materialy nauchnoi

konferentsii) Chita, 24-25 iiunia 1971 g. (Chita,

1972), p. 210. 481 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Article 19 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 19171918, Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 675. 482 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Article 18 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 19171918 Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 675. 483 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Article 17 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 19171918 Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 675. 484 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Article 6 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918 Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 673. A state monopoly in agricultural tools and machines was declared by a Sovnarkom decree of 30 November /13 December 1917 [see ibid p. 336.] 485 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Article 7 of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918 Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 673. 485 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, Article 22 (Note) of the ‘Fundamental Law of Land Socialisation, (Decree of the Central Executive Committee, February 19, 1918)’, The Bolshevik Revolution, 19171918 Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 675-6. 487 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 12 (Note), pp. 494.

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land should be worked individually or collectively, and that groups or individuals could break way from communities so long as this could be done ‘without the infringement of the essential interests of the remaining part of the community’.488 Interestingly, Shchagin points out that this freedom of choice was to become part of NEP in the RSFSR by the decisions of the Eleventh Party Congress and the Ninth Congress of Soviets.489 All of these major differences can be explained by the DVR’s precarious hold over the loyalty of the peasantry, necessary not only for food supply, but also to maintain the facade of the buffer state’s democratic and property owning credentials. Of immediate importance was the maximisation of food production in a period of constant threat, and reality, of famine. Since the first days of revolution, food supply had been a major problem for all governments in Russia, and the co-operation of the peasants had been almost impossible to secure. By the advent of the DVR, and especially by the time of its formulation of a law on land, many important lessons had been learned. Sibrevkom’s representative, V. Vilenskii remarked that making friends with the middle peasants was the key to success in Siberia, and the same principle had to be applied in the Far East.490 The clash of B uriat autonomy with the Law on Land Just before the Law on Land was passed, there had been the abortive attempt to introduce a law ‘On the Autonomy of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast” which was discussed in the previous chapter.491 One of the main stumbling blocks which prevented the progress of this draft into legislation was the land question. The discussion demonstrated conflict between representatives of the Buriat administration, Amagaev and IT in, who had been drafted in from Irkutsk by the communists to take charge of the emerging Autonomous Oblast’, and I. P. Kovrigin, a Russian representative of the

488 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31 December 1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, clause 28, pp. 496. 489 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927 gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 290 (Quoting: Resheniia partii i pravitel ’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam, 1917-1928gg., Tom 1 (Moscow, 1967), pp. 262 & 268.) 490 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostoclinoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr' i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927 gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 286 (Quoting: Central State Archive of the Far East, F. R-1006, Op. 2, D. 13, LL 5 & 8 ob.). 491 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, LL. 1 - 9.

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Ministry of Agriculture who was a long established specialist on land tenure, a former chinovnik, and deeply involved in the development of the Law on Land.492 Article 2 of the draft on Buriat Autonomy affirmed that the Oblast ’ was an inseparable part of the DVR, but article 3, dealing with the land to be allotted to the Oblast’, was more troublesome. It used wording suggested by Amagaev and II’in,493 who had argued that the territory of the Oblast’ should ‘correspond with all the area of allotment land and forest, allotted to the Buriat-Mongol population according to the standard [i.e. a government established norm. C.B.], established in accordance with the soil-climatic and economic conditions, plus the area of interspersed unsuitable lands (articles 129 and 131 of the fundamental law)’.494 They recognised that ‘precise establishment of territory is possible only on the basis of a colossal work of scientific-preparation and land-use organisation. In the conditions of the times we are living through, work like this cannot even be thought o f. Meanwhile the Oblast’ had already been created and so it was necessary to define the boundaries of administrative regions.495 Amagaev and Il’in held that the interests and needs of the dominant Buriat cattle-breeding economy, currently experiencing a crisis of transition, should be the basis for defining the territory, and actual use of the land rather than any reference to historical ownership. Referring to the past, they found that before 1917 a reorganisation of land plots had given the Chikoi and Khori Buriats 18 destiatinas per head, with the surplus going to make up zones set aside for immigrant settlers and state lands for renting. But this allowance was insufficient for the Buriats’ needs, a fact recognised even by those who had made these decisions, so the Buriats continued to use those lands they had lost which

492 In the next chapter we shall meet Kovrigin again. Borovinskii, chairman of the Central Governemntal Land Commission described Kovrigin as ‘an old and experienced worker who has served in land matters for 37 years...a former chinovnik...’. [From: RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 500, LL. 1-5: L. 4 ob.: ‘Borovinskii’s report on the work of the Central Governmental Land Commission, dated 2 August 1922’]. 493 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 4. 494 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 2. 495 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 2.

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remained unused. Thus Amagaev and Il’in proposed to re-word article 3 on the basis of the lands actually in use by the Buriats before 1917, until a full survey of needs could be undertaken.496 But Kovrigin, from the Ministry of Agriculture and in charge of the Central Land Department, thought otherwise. He also found the draft wording of article 3 inappropriate, citing state interests and the requirements of the future universal organisation of the use of land. He proposed that until the boundaries of the Oblast’ could be established, its territory should be those lands which were actually being used by the Buriats before 27 April 1921, plus lands in the state reserve fund which were to be given to the Oblast’, with the aim of eliminating the intermingling of strip holdings as provided for in the Constitution.497 But Amagaev and Il’in strongly opposed Kovrigin because during the revolutionary period Russian peasants had forcibly seized extensive Buriat lands. In Khorinskii Aimak alone, according to the data of a Joint Land Commission, working in April 1921, this involved 36,837 desiatinas,498 To establish land holdings on the basis of Buriat usage on 27 April 1921, ‘legitimises all the seizures carried out which undoubtedly must be viewed as a scandalous violation of the interests of the Buriat economy and an ideological benediction of the psychologically persistent “Great-power chauvinism” of the Semeiskie peasants [i.e. the ‘Family Old-Believers. C.B.]...’.499 In addition they pointed out that it was useless to seek a solution to the problem of the intermingling of strip-holdings by allocating land from the state reserve fund because this did not yet exist. In their view Kovrigin’s plan would be catastrophic: ‘Such a diminution and reduction in the actual land tenure of the Buriat population, will, without doubt, aggravate the economic crisis being undergone and will place them on a slide into final extinction.’500 Article 4 would also prove troublesome. It guaranteed immutability of its territory to the Oblast’, continuing:

496 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, LL. 2 and 2 ob. 497 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 1. 498 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 2 ob. 499 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, LL. 2 ob. & 3. 500 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, LL. 2 ob. & 3.

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The Buriat-Mongol .lands, forests, waters and mineral reserves are declared to be the resources of the Buriat-Mongol working people and may not be used without the agreement of the Buriat-Mongol population for the resettlement of people of another nationality or for any other requirement, with the exception of the building of means of communication or other technical purposes of an overall state importance. In this case Buriat-Mongol lands and other property are to be requisitioned in accordance with the rules of payment for requisitions of property.501

Amagaev and Il’in found this largely acceptable but called for some changes to broaden and more exactly define the rights of the state over Buriat lands. They suggested an alternative wording:

“with the exception of the building of means of communication or other technical purposes of an overall state importance” to put it in the following way: “with the exception of structures of overall state importance”. As a whole article 4 should state: ‘The Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Oblast ’ is guaranteed, by law, the immutability of its territory. The Buriat-Mongol lands, forests, waters and mineral reserves are declared to be the resources of the Buriat-Mongol working people and may not be used without the agreement of the Buriat-Mongol population for the resettlement of individuals of other nationalities or for any other requirements, with the exception of structures of overall state importance, in this instance Buriat-Mongol property is requisitioned according to the regulations on requisition requiring payment.”502

They also insisted that the word ‘lands’ be excluded from the final sentence since there was no justification for state payment for requisitioned lands, forests, waters or mineral rights.303 Kovrigin, of the Ministry of Agriculture, also objected to article 4, claiming that it contradicted articles 126 and 127 of the Constitution.504 Kovrigin proposed that only ‘general

501 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 4. 502RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 3. 503 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 3. 504 Article 126 states: ‘Private ownership of land forests, natural resources, water-ways and their resources within the territory of the Far Eastern Republic is forever abolished.’ Article 127 states: ‘All land regardless of previous use or ownership (without reimbursement) is declared to be the property of the working people and forms the national land fund.’ See The Far Eastern Republic, Its Natural

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colonisation’ by other peoples be forbidden and that ‘the inviolability of its territory’ should be granted to the Oblast’ only after an ‘organisation of land-use on the basis of the law on land’.505 Kovrigin’s suggestions were again opposed by Amagaev and Il’in as it would take years to carry out the organisation of land tenure. Adoption of Kovrigin’s amendment would amount to ‘legal authorisation of new illegal seizures of Buriat lands’.506 This went hand in hand with Kovrigin’s prohibition only of ‘general colonisation’, and they envisaged further problems between Russians and Buriats ‘definitely introducing an element of anarchy’.507 This Land Law would be passed by the People’s Assembly on 14 December 1921,508 and Kovrigin, a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture and head of the Central Land Department, must have been closely involved in drawing it up. It applied to the Buriat Autonomous Oblast ’,509 and land tenure norms were to be set by Oblast’ land organs, according to soil, climate, economic conditions.510 It also provided for land to be allocated to the state for educational, cultural, warehousing, transport and communication purposes.511 When the Land Law was published it contained a bland statement to the effect that where there was no free land for the land-hungry in one region, they could move to another region where there was free land.512 As we shall see, a great deal of argument was to centre on the amount of land allocated to Buriat nomads and whether, when unoccupied, this counted as ‘free’. At the end of the life of the DVR very little real land reform had been carried through. Theses on the DVR’s economic policy prepared for the Far Eastern Communist Party’s fourth conference in

Resources, Trade and Industry, published by the Special Trade Delegation of the Far Eastern Republic to the United States of America, (Washington, D.C., 1922), Section VIII, ‘The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic’, Part V ‘The Basis of the National Economic Organization”, Section 1 ‘The Land”, p. 22. 505 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 1. 506 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 3 ob. 507 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 435, L. 3 ob. 508 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31/12/1921, Art. 236, pp. 491-9, ‘A Law on Land’. 509 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31/12/1921, Art. 236, pp. 499, ‘A Law on Land’, Section XI, clause 44. 510 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31/12/1921, Art. 236, pp. 492, ‘A Law on Land’, Section I, clause 6. 511 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31/12/1921, Art. 236, pp. 493, ‘A Law on Land’, Section II, clause 11. 512 Sob. Uzak. No. 10 (16), 31/12/1921, Art. 236, ‘A Law on Land’, p. 495, clause 21.

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October 1922 remarked that, regarding land reform: ‘for a year and a half too little work has been done: only the most urgent land questions have been, and are being, decided’. The document continued: ‘Having abolished by law private property in land as a form, we still have not created another form of land usage, and the population, as previously, continues to use the land as it used it before’.513 The conference decided to take steps to bring the land law more into line with that of the RSFSR.514

513 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927 gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 293. Quoting: D al’nevostochnaia Respublika, 20th Sept 1922. 514 E. M. Shchagin, ‘Zemel’naia Politika Dal’nevostochnoi Respubliki (1920-1922 gg.)’, Oktiabr’ i Sovetskoe Krest’ianstvo, 1917-1927gg. (Moscow, 1977), p. 290.

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CHAPTER 4 PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS TO LAND PROBLEMS

With the Constitution’s provisions theoretically met; with the law on land in place, the Central Governmental Land Commission created and the Buriat Autonomous Oblast’ established (if not defined in either nature or extent), the time had come to attempt the practical solution of the inter­ ethnic conflicts over land. This involved sending people out into the countryside to investigate, mediate and resolve. As this was the brief of the Central Governmental Land Commission, this chapter will investigate the work of this, and related bodies. The work of earlier land commissions:

There had been half-hearted and sporadic attempts at a practical solution to the land problem before. Land commissions had been set up during the Soviet period in 1918, and as the DVR, from the first, worked from the basis laid down then in the approach to the land problem, this method was being employed even before the DVR’s Constituent Assembly made provision for it. Some of these attempts were local affairs and there are indications that, although the Buriats might most often have been the victims in land seizures, this was not always the case. A report, dated 16 May 1921, from the emissary of the Pribaikal Oblast’ to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, gave an account of the level and nature of tension there.515 Throughout Pribaikalia the Buriats were ‘enduring an alarming situation’ due to land allotment problems. In the Troitskosavsk and Barguzinsk areas there were conflicts with Russians over land use and duties which were to be performed relating to the maintenance of the post roads.516 With his report the emissary forwarded a telegramme which he had received from Basharov, the chairman of the Barguzin Uezd Administration, on 15 May. This told of Buriats moving into, and settling on, Russian lands, which had resulted in disturbances. The Russian Uezd administration had felt forced to create a special commission to put an end to such occurrences, and the chairman reported its return (on 14 May) ‘having settled all the conflicts’. But that was not the end of the matter:

515 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, LL. 218 ob., 219 & 219 ob.: ‘Report of the Emissary of the Pribaikal Oblast’ to the Ministry of Internal Affairs ( 16 May 1921)’. 516 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 218 ob.

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Today some Russian people turned up who had been resettled with the Buriats in 1914, they announced that the Buriats, together with the militia are carrying out new acts of violence, they are destroying houses, stealing property, spilling seed and throwing families out onto the mercy of fate. The disturbances are carried out from a well-known agitation - the barring of Russians from using empty lands. Such an occurrence gives rise to sorry consequences which are expressed in the form of clashes.517

The chairman saw the situation as ‘serious’. He had to ensure the success of the spring sowing campaign, as well as defuse this inter-ethnic conflict, and so proposed to send an armed detachment to the region to restore ‘order and calm’.518 The Pribaikal emissary noted that the friction between Buriats and Russians was due to ‘irreconcileable clashes of economic interests’, but he also thought that:

hidden everywhere throughout the various Buriat settlements there are many former police and gendarmes, who lead the movement of the Buriats against the Russians, carry out agitation and harm the normal course of life. A section of these reactionaries serves in the militia, as teachers and is engaged in trade, or simply creates points for White-guardist work, concentrating people and weapons there, in the expectation of an appropriate moment for an uprising in Pribaikalia.519

He also passed telling comment on the peace-keeping resources of the state, saying that in January 1921 the militia in Pribaikalia had 371 rifles, 41 revolvers and 30 sabres for 1,000 men. Not only were they badly armed, but they had no money, no uniforms and no food. In his view the militia did not constitute any kind of reliable force which the state might use to maintain order or carry on a ‘firm and systematic struggle against criminality’.520 This indication of unreliability and even antistate activity on the part of local law-enforcers, and the incidence of Buriats taking the law into their

517 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 219. 518 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 219. 519 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 219. 520 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 65, L. 219 ob.

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own hands, are both factors which we shall meet again, on a larger scale, in connection with the theocratic movement. Obviously the Barguzin Russians’ locally generated land commission was not really up to the task. But other attempts to deploy land commissions locally gained the backing of central govermnent, and the result of just such an attempt even reached the republic’s calendar of laws.521 On 12 April 1921, two weeks before the Constitution was adopted, a land commission had pronounced its solution to problems between Buriats and Russians in Badinskii Somon, on the river Khilok.522 Although the decision dated from April, it still had not been enforced in December 1921, when, on the 21st, the govermnent decreed that this should be done.523 The report is very detailed and must be the result of a thorough land survey, taking some time, and illustrates the nature of the problem and the attempted solution. A previous allotment of land had been made by a surveyor called Larichev,524 to the people of the Khokhotui railway settlement, from lands held by the Buriats of Badinskii Somon. The DVR’s government confirmed the commission’s decision that this allotment should be reduced in size, and that the Buriats should be allowed to keep 14 plots used for winter quarters. There followed a very

521 Sob. Uzak. No. 9 (15), 31 December 1921, Art 189, ‘Decree on the settlement of land relationships between the Russian and the Buriat population in Badinskii Somon. (Dated 21 December 1921)’, pp. 451-452. 522 This area, where even today, as part of the Chita Oblast’, settlements bear the names of Bada, Mukhor-Shibirska and Khokhotui, lies between Petrovsk-Zabaikal’skii (formerly Petrovskii Zavod) and Khilok, which, in turn, lie on the Trans-Siberian Railway between Ulan-Ude (formerly VerkhneUdinsk) and Chita. Information from map: Respublika Buriatiia, scale 1:1,000,000, published by Roskartografiia (Moscow, 1994). 523 Sob. Uzak. No. 9 (15), 31 December 1921, Art 189, ‘Decree on the settlement of land relationships between the Russian and the Buriat population in Badinskii Somon. (Dated 21 December 1921)’, p. 451-2. 524 Shchagin tells us that private surveyors were employed by the kulaks to try to avoid loss of surplus land in transfers between villages. On the Amur this practise was banned only on 28 September 1922, almost at the end of the DVR’s existence. Shchagin, op. cit. p. 292, (Quoting Central State Archive of the Far East, F. R-1731, Op. 1, D. 1086, L. 25).

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detailed definition of the lands involved, precise in every detail of dimension and location, drawing on information from a land settlement of 1910.525 Coming to the decision concerning land given to the Russians of Mukhorshibirskii village from the lands of the Badinsk Buriats, we find that the commission had established a different land allotment norm there from that granted to the people of Khokhotui. A possible explanation is that the quality of the land was different. At Mukhorshibirsk the allotment was reduced ‘to the norm established in the Commission’s decree of 12 April 1921, i.e. to allot the share for the people of Mukhorshibirskii in no circumstance more than 50 desiatinas’. Again, this was very precisely delineated.526 A group of Russians, the Utenkov artel’, had occupied the allotment of Usota, which belonged to the Badinsk Buriats. The commission’s decision to evict them was ratified and state aid was promised for the move. Another group of settlers, who had moved in 1921 from the village of Kharaslvibirsk to occupy Badinskii Buriat lands at Zakul’t, were to be evicted with state aid, despite the fact that the land had been formally allotted to them.527 Other Russian groups at Rodionov, Zil’sk and Ologa-Shilinsk, were to be allowed to stay as they lived on plots previously earmarked for migrants. However, they were warned by the commission, and the govermnent, that unauthorised seizures of Buriat lands were prohibited.528 From this document we can see that Russian incursion on to Buriat land was on a large scale. Six Russian communites are listed as having taken land from one Buriat community. This

525 Sob.Uzak. No. 9 (15), 31 December 1921, Art 189, ‘Decree on the settlement of land relationships between the Russian and the Buriat population in Badinskii Somon. (Dated 21 December 1921)’, p. 451-2. 526 Sob.Uzak. No. 9 (15), 31 December 1921, Art 189, ‘Decree on the settlement of land relationships between the Russian and the Buriat population in Badinskii Somon. (Dated 21 December 1921)’, p. 451. 527 Sob.Uzak. No. 9 (15), 31 December 1921, Art 189, ‘Decree on the settlement of land relationships between the Russian and the Buriat population in Badinskii Somon. (Dated 21 December 1921)’, p. 452. 528 Sob. Uzak. No. 9 (15), 31 December 1921, Art 189, ‘Decree on the settlement of land relationships between the Russian and the Buriat population in Badinskii Somon. (Dated 21 December 1921)’, p. 452.

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indicates not only the difference in land-holdings, but also speaks of significant inter-ethnic resentment, probably not only due to the incursions, but also to the evictions which the govermnent ordered to rectify the situation. To keep the Russian settlers loyal, the state aid promised would have to be appropriate and the lands to which they were moved would have to be of comparable quality. We shall see that this was not achieved in every case. Commissions with closely related tasks With the promised creation of the Central Governmental Land Commission in August 1921, it seemed to have been set quite well-defined tasks. But one of the problems it faced was that several other bodies seem to have been given jurisdiction over similar and closely related problems. Thus we find a Council of Ministers meeting on 30 December 1921 considering a report from the Ministry of National Affairs concerning inter-departmental commissions for Buriat-Mongol affairs. The meeting forwarded a draft decree setting up inter-departmental commissions to investigate and resolve conflicts between the different nationalities and the separate groups within these, to be agreed by a committee made up of the Ministers of National Affairs, Internal Affairs and Justice. It also proposed funding at the rate of 2 gold rubles a day, to be paid for the whole period of a commissioner’s official trip.329 Within a month this had been done and funding allocated. The law which was published indicating these per diem allowances also defined more closely the nature of the commissions’ work. It concerned payment to ‘the members of all the inter-departmental commissions which exist today for Buriat-Mongol affairs and the return of the Buriats from Mongolia’.330 Although it seems from this wording that the commissions already existed, their functions were not yet properly established in detail. These were spelled out in an order made by the Council of Ministers, probably on 1 February 1922.331

329 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1169, L. 58 & 65. 330 Sob. Uzak., No. 1 (17), 31 January 1922, ‘A law on the remuneration by per diem allowances of the members of the inter-departmental commission on Buriat-Russian affairs (Dated 10 January 1922), Art. 24, p. 88. 331 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 545, L. 1 & 1 ob., ‘An Order of the Council of Ministers: about the institution at the Ministry of National Affairs of inter-departmental commissions for investigation of the conflicts between the Russian and Buriat-Mongol populations’. The file copy of this was received by Dal ’biuro on 1 February, but this may have been delayed.

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Called the Special Investigation Commissions, they were to act under the supervision of the Ministry of National Affairs, which also held a special budget and line of credit for their upkeep, but they were to include representatives of the Ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs. The Council of Ministers would grant a statute to each commission individually, but they received the rights to assistance from ‘all public servants and the organs of central and local power’, to ‘carry out interrogations, examinations, seizures and other investigatory actions, to submit guilty people to investigation as accused, to take measures of preventive punishment against those who would avoid the legal process and investigation...’. They were also to ‘consider and resolve civil disputes about property linked with the conflicts being investigated’, this brought their sphere of activity very close to that of the Land Commission, for often, when land was seized, so were domestic and agricultural implements. The Commissions’ decisions could only be implemented after ratification by the Council of Ministers.532 The need for such work was pressing, but real solutions were slow in coming. As early as 18 March 1922 a report was being presented by the Minister of National Affairs, to the Council of Ministers, on investigations by the Chikoiskii Commission into murders of Buriats in the Chikoiskii Aimak and in Gochytskii and Batanai-Kliarganatskii Khoshuns of the Khorinskii Aimak in 1921. But the Council could reach no decision on what action to take and referred the matter for the consideration of the Ministry of Justice.533 In late February 1922, things had reached an acute state in the kg* Aimak, a stronghold of Buriat culture, so that what seems like just such a commision had to go to work there. This ‘Aginsk Special-Investigatory Commision’ was first mooted in a draft from the Council of Ministers dated 28 February 1922.534 In this form it was to consist of four members; representatives of the Ministries of Justice, Internal Affairs and Nationality Affairs and of the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Administration, under

532 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 545, L. 1 & 1 ob. 533 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 1169, L. 170: ‘Protokol of the meeting of the Council of Ministers of 18 March 1922’. 534 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 545, L 2&2 ob., ‘Statute on the commission for the investigation of conflicts between the Russian and Buriat-Mongol population of Aginsk Aimak’.

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the chairmanship of the representative of the Ministry of Justice. Other interested parties, such as representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture, of other departments and of the local population might be invited to have a consultative voice in its sessions. It was to investigate clashes and other events in the region and to oversee implementation of decisions made during the period 20 September to 31 October 1921 concerning disputes over livestock and other property. This latter point shows that although resolutions to such problems had already been attempted, they had not been implemented. Indeed the members of the commission were to supervise the execution of these four month old decisions in person.535 In these tasks it was to have the right to call upon assistance from ‘all organs of state power and self-administration and from public servants’ and ‘demand military protection from local military leaders’ whenever such was deemed necessary. It could carry out interrogations of private individuals and public servants, investigations into seizures etc, bring the guilty persons to trial and take ‘measures of preventative punishment’ against those who would evade justice and investigation. It could also ‘definitively decide civil disputes over property connected with the above-mentioned clashes and conflict’. The Commission was to act under the overall guidance of the Ministry of Nationality Affairs and at the end of its work all its findings were to be presented to the Ministry.536 The meeting of the Council of Ministers on 3 March 1922 approved the draft for this legislation as presented by the Minister of National Affairs,537 and went on to assign the sum of 1120 rubles and 92 kopeks, in gold, for the upkeep of the Commission.538 This scale of financing is impressive, and may indicate the importance of the work, since the whole budget granted to maintain the Ministry of National Affairs during November and December 1921 was only 459 rubles.539 However, when the statute, dated 13 March 1922, finally appeared, the ‘Aginsk JudicialInvestigative Commission’ had undergone considerable changes. From the original four members,

535 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D. 545, L. 2. 536 RTsKhlDNI,F.372, Op. 1, D.545, LL. 2 & 2 ob. 537 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D.1169, L. 137 & 137 ob. 538 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D.1169, L. 138. 539 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op. 1, D.1169, L. 61: ‘Protokol of the meeting of the Council of Ministers of 30 December 1921’.

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representatives of the Ministries of Justice, Internal Affairs, National Affairs and the Buriat-Mongol Autonomous Administration, it was now increased to five by the addition of a representative of the Military Council. A representative of the Aga Aimak administration would also be allowed to attend with a consultative voice. Still prime among its responsibilities was the enforcement of decisions taken the previous autumn about disputes over livestock and other property, as well as further investigation of similar disputes as outlined in the draft. But the Commission had gained a second task. It was to organise the return to the DVR of those Buriats who were living in Mongolia and who expressed a wish to return to their homeland.540 This additional task given to the Commission was the logical follow-up to a Law published on the same occasion but dated three days earlier, which extended the amnesty for the expatriate Buriats who had been declared enemies of the people until 15 July 1922.541 This repatriation would prove a mighty task and will be investigated in the next chapter, but it must be observed here that repatriation would involve allocation of land. Thus, once again, the work of this commission would overlap with that of the Land Commission. To help the Aginsk Commission achieve its composite task it was granted a much more comprehensive set of powers than was envisaged in the draft. Most significant of these was that in addition to the rights of Public Investigators, the Commission now enjoyed the rights of a Military Investigative Judicial Authority and could entrust Public and Militaiy Investigators to conduct independent investigations. Members of the Commission were allowed to conduct investigations independently, as long as they had the knowledge and agreement of the Commission. They were empowered to raise criminal prosecutions against officials, to suspend them temporarily from their posts and even to dismiss those who were exposed in their illegal activities.542 There was to be free access to all necessary information for the Commission. It could call up any information or file from all government and public institutions and officials as well as demand attendance for ‘a statement of individual explanations and testimonies’ by officials of all departments and private persons.543

540 Sob.

Uzak. No. 4(20), 30 April 1922,Arts. 97 and 98, p. 243-245.

541 Sob.

Uzak. No. 4(20), 30 April 1922, Art. 93, p. 241.

542 Sob.

Uzak. No. 4(20), 30 April 1922, Art. 98, p. 244.

543 Sob.

Uzak. No. 4 (20), 30 April 1922, Art. 98, p. 244.

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Time was pressing. To speed tilings up the Commission was granted the right to select up to two subcommittees from within itself, i.e. to split into two, for the execution of specified responsibilities. These subcommittees enjoyed the same rights as the full Commission. It was only on such a subcommittee that the local representative from the Aga Aimak Administration might have a deciding, rather than a consultative, voice. But decision-making, whether by the full Commission or its subcommittees, was by a simple majority, and this effectively gave the central government departments, with their five members, the upper hand over the single local voice in all matters.544 The only way round this for the local Buriat interests would be if the representative of the Buriat-Mongol National Administration was put on a subcommittee with the man from Aginsk and chose to vote with him rather than with the men from the Ministries. As was explained in the chapter on the emergence of the Autonomous Oblast’, this might have been possible during the earlier life of the Buriat-Mongol Administration, but by the spring of 1922 it was probably less likely, as Buriat nationalists were weeded out and communists took firmer control. The change in the composition and the powers of the Aginsk Commission from a civil body towards a more military aspect probably reflect the rise in the temperature of military events in the east. Over the months since the original decisions (September and October 1921) about inter-ethnic problems in Aginsk Aimak the DVR’s People’s Revolutionary Army (NRA) had been fighting the remnants of General Kappel’s White Army on the Amur. The turning point came with the occupation of Khabarovsk on 15 February 1922 following the Republic’s victory at Volochaevka, a battle which a leading Red participant described as deciding the fate of the Far East,545 a view echoed by the Kappelite Commander.546 Throwing all its forces forward in this decisive campaign the DVR had had few resources to fall back on for the resolution of domestic conflicts in the rear, indeed forces from

544 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (20), 30 April 1922, Art. 98, p. 244 & 245. 545 la. Pokus, B or’ba za Primor’e, Chast’ Pervaia, Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia D al’ne­ vostochnoi Respubliki v 1921-1922, (Moscow, 1926), p. 65. Pokus was an NRA commander, having previously been a commander in Soviet Russia {ibid. p. 43). 546 la. Pokus, B or’ba za Primor’e, Chast’ Pervaia, Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia D al’ne­ vostochnoi Respubliki v 1921-1922, (Moscow, 1926), pp. 53-4. General Molchanov had taken command after the death of General Kappel in 1920.

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Zabaikalia played key roles on the Amur.547 With the victory over the remnants of the White armies the end of counter-revolution and foreign intervention became a much closer prospect. The military momentum could not be relaxed, but neither could domestic problems in the rear, nor problems of supply, be allowed to threaten the military potential of the new situation. The militarisation of a body such as the Aginsk Commission and the widening of its tasks and powers reflect the Republic’s need for calm in the rear, for optimised food supply, including the herds of the expatriate Buriats, and for the certainty which military methods could bring without the recall of military units from the front. However, it was not only the Central Governmental Land Commission which had its tasks duplicated by other bodies. The body described above, the Aginsk Judicial-Investigative Commission, was only one variant of the inter-departmental commissions set to work under the guidance of the Ministry of National Affairs. On the very same day as it was set up, the govermnent also set up the ‘Special-Investigative Commission of the Ministry of National Affairs for the examination of the case of the theft from Buriat-Mongols returning from Mongolia to the DVR, and also from the Buriat citizens of Ul’zuto-OTskii Khoshun of the Aginsk Aimak in 1921’.548 This also was deemed to have military significance as its three members represented the Ministries of Justice and National Affairs, and the Military Council. Its tasks were to investigate the robberies, bring the guilty parties to justice and, if possible, return the stolen property to the victims. To assist in this the commission was granted the rights of Public Investigators and the Military Investigatory Judicial Authorities and the right to allow lone commissioners to act individually, so long as this was with the knowledge and agreement of the full commission. When the commission found someone involved in illegal activites, it could raise a criminal prosecution and temporarily remove them their post. The implication of this is that the government was seeking out corruption among its own agents. The commission could demand any documents and statements from all officials and private persons, official help in implementing its decisions and military protection when appropriate. When its work was concluded its findings would be passed to the appropriate court by the Ministry of National Affairs.549

547 la. Pokus, B or’ba za Primor’e, Chast’ Pervaia, Narodno-Revoliutsionnaia Armiia D al’ne­ vostochnoi Respubliki v 1921-1922, (Moscow, 1926), pp. 18, 43, 67-8, appendices 5 and 6 (maps). 548 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (20), 30 April 1922, Arts 99 & 100, pp. 245-247. 549 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (20), 30 April 1922, Art. 100, pp. 246-7.

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The work of the Central Governmental Land Commission: The Central Governmental Land Commission, established by the law of 18 August 1921, in fulfilment of a principle laid down in the Constitution, was given several specific tasks. It was to examine and decide disputes over land between Buriats and Russians, settle matters relating to unauthorised seizures of land, clear up the confusion of intermingled plots, organise the movements of population which this would cause and draw up a draft delineation of the Buriat Autonomous Oblast'. Additionally it was to examine any other problems connected with these tasks which the government might refer to it.550 The most important of this latter group was the repatriation of Buriats who had fled abroad to escape violence in Russia.551 This aspect of the commission’s work will be dealt with in the next chapter. The current chapter will examine its work in the area of land relations. The commission seems not to have begun work until 20 February 1922.552 It met under the chairmanship of Borovinskii, with representatives Bezsonov and Kovrigin (the latter had clashed with Buriat leaders Amagaev and Il’in over the draft bill on Buriat Autonomy a few months earlier) from the Board of Agriculture of the Ministry of National Economy, Vampilun from Burmonavtupr, Men’shikov from the Ministry of National Affairs and Zotov from the Zabaikal Oblast’ Department of re-settlement. Also present was Gantimurov, who both chaired the Mongolian commission on resettlement of expatriate Buriats and represented the military. Gantimurov does not seem to have been a full member of the commission. He helped in discussion of the treatment of the expatriate Buriats, which was of interest to the military as there were fears that some Buriats who might return from Mongolia were counter-revolutionaries, former henchmen of Semenov and Ungern.553 However, financial matters were far from settled. On 18 March 1922 the Council of Ministers could not agree on the budget for equipping the Central Governmental Land Commission and

550 Sob. Uzak. No. 4 (10), 8 September 1921, Art. 82, pp. 159-61. 551 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op.l, D. 500, L.9: ‘Protokol No. 2 of the Unified Conference Under the Auspices of the Central Governmental Land Commission of 25 Feb 1922’. 552 This is the date of ‘Protokol No. 1’, mentioned in the meeting of 25 February: RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op.l, D. 500, L.9: ‘Protokol No. 2 of the Unified Conference Under the Auspices of the Central Governmental Land Commission of 25 February 1922’. 553 RTsKhlDNI, F. 372, Op.l, D. 500, L.9: ‘Protokol No. 2 of the Unified Conference Under the Auspices of the Central Governmental Land Commission of 25 February 1922’.

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proposed that its Chairman should agree an estimate with the Minister of Finance and the People’s State Inspector, which could be passed to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers for approval.554 The position was not certain until mid-June, when a provisional schedule of expenses for the period January - March was approved. This document sets the place of the commission in a wider context of administrative expenditure:

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