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The Local History of an Imperial Category: Language and Religion in Russia's Eastern Borderlands, 1860s-1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Kathryn E. Graber  and
Jesse D. Murray
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Abstract

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the construction and naturalization of many unitary ethnolinguistic categories that would serve diverse ends within the Russian and Soviet states. This article combines disciplinary perspectives from linguistic anthropology and history to excavate the local history of one such category–the Buriat language. We trace the category's origin in the grammars, translations, and correspondence of its first Russian proponents, Russian Orthodox missionary linguists working in the area around Lake Baikal, and its subsequent uptake by Buriat nationalists and Soviet linguists. We show that the missionaries and their religious motivations played a significant role in the construction of ethnolinguistic categories and that these ethnolinguistic categories were not, as is often thought, predominantly imposed by the center onto distant peripheries. Attending to Orthodox missionaries’ linguistic work in the Baikal region reveals the more complex local workings of colonial power.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , Spring 2015 , pp. 127 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2014

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References

1. Buriat and the Buriats have undergone many name changes in connection with their perceived relationship to other Mongolic languages and dialects and their speakers. This paper includes references to several different scripts and associated languages that are not consistently attributed in Russian texts. The subject of the linguistic works described herein was variously called “Mongolo-Buriat,” “Mongolian,” and “Buriat.” We use “Buriat” throughout the main text to be consistent with its contemporary name.

2. See Svantesson, Jan-Olof, Tsendina, Anna, Karlsson, Anastasia, and Franzen, Vivan, The Phonology of Mongolian(Oxford, 2005);Google Scholar and Janhunen, Juha A., Mongolian (Amsterdam, 2012), especially 4–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In the People's Republic of China, Buriat and Buriats are grouped with Mongolian and “ethnic Mongols.“

3. On imperialism and knowledge, see, e.g., Cohen, Bernard S., Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, 1996);Google Scholar Dirks, Nicholas B., Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, 2001);Google Scholar and Stoler, Ann Laura, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, 2002).Google Scholar Nergis Erturk's Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey (Oxford, 2011) examines linguistic pan-Turkism in postrevolutionary Turkey, a case with many parallels to that examined here.

4. A number of political and religious administrative divisions split the region in the imperial period. Some of these have had presumed cultural divisions within the Buriat population mapped onto them, and others have provided a template for post-Soviet political structures. To avoid invoking these distinctions, we refer to our area of study as “the Baikal region” rather than “Pribaikal'e” or “Zabaikal'e” or their English translations, unless directly indicated by our sources.

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12. On constraints on missionary activities, see Geraci, Robert P., Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, 2001);Google Scholar Paul, W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia's Volga- Kama Region, 1827-1905 (Ithaca, 2002);Google Scholar and Geraci, Robert P. and Khodarkovsky, Michael, eds., Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, 2001).Google Scholar Exceptions include Kreindler, Isabelle, “A Neglected Source of Lenin's Nationality Policy,” Slavic Review 36, no. 1 (March 1977): 86–100;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Jersild, Austin Lee, “From Savagery to Citizenship: Caucasian Mountaineers and Muslims in the Russian Empire,” in Brower, Daniel R. and Lazzerini, Edward J., eds., Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917 (Bloomington, 1997), 101-14Google Scholar, who find roots of Vladimir Lenin's nationalities policies within the Il'minskii philosophy of mission schools, which emphasized native-language instruction of non-Russian convert children.

13. See, e.g., Irvine, Judith T., “Subjected Words: African Linguistics and the Colonial Encounter,” Language & Communication 28, no. 4 (October 2008): 323–43;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Irvine, Judith T., “The Family Romance of Colonial Linguistics,” in Gal, Susan and Woolard, Kathryn Ann, eds., Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority (Manchester, 2001);Google Scholar Pugach, Sara, “Images of Race and Redemption: The Protestant Missionary Contribution to Carl Meinhof's Zeitschrift für Kolonialsprachen ,” Le Fait Missionnaire 15 (December 2004): 59-95;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Volz, Stephen, “European Missionaries and the Development of Tswana Identity,” Le Fait Missionnaire 15 (December 2004): 97-128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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15. Hirsch, Empire of Nations; Martin, Affirmative Action Empire; and Tolz, Russia's Own Orient.

16. Michael Khodarkovsky portrays Nogma as part of a class of local nobles shaped by imperial service and educational systems but linked by life experience and loyalty to their localities of origin. See Khodarkovsky, Michael, Bitter Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus (Ithaca, 2011), 21,106,125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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18. For example, Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, in Russian Orientalism, and Geraci, in Window on the East, choose to address Orthodox orientalist scholarship largely within the context of Orthodox institutions of higher learning.

19. Aleksandr Orlov, Grammatika mongolo-buriatskogo razgovornogo iazyka (Kazan, 1878). Orlov's grammar was not the first linguistics text to treat Buriat as a discrete language. This distinction is held by M. Alexander Castren, also known as Matthias Aleksanteri, Versuch einer burjaetischen sprachlehre (St. Petersburg, 1857); and Gábor, Bálint, Az éjszaki burját-mongol nyelvjárás rövid ismertetése (Budapest, 1877).Google Scholar Orlov drew on Castrén's grammar as well as manuscript grammars by other Orthodox missionaries. Nonetheless, many subsequent Russian scholars of Buriat treated Orlov's grammar as the first.

20. Orlov, Grammatika, v.

21. Records of programmatic, if erratic, Orthodox linguistic study and translation efforts in the region begin in the late eighteenth century. Language became a key focus of local scholarship in the 1850s, under Archbishop Nil (Isakovich), when the seminary began to consistently focus on language training, linguistic research, and translation. The translation committee's members were connected to Nil's efforts and the Irkutsk Seminary. Most had been working on translation projects long before the committee's formation. Local linguistic efforts thus predate shifts in ways of imagining diversity within the empire that sparked Orthodox translation efforts elsewhere, and they were the result of local need and interest. For histories of local Orthodox linguistic scholarship, see Florensov, Vasilii, Iz istorii perevodcheskogo dela v Irkutskoi eparkhii (Irkutsk, 1908);Google Scholar and Murray, Jesse D., “Building Empire among the Buryats: Conversion Encounters in Russia's Baikal Region, 1860S-1917” (PhD diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2012), 205–74.Google Scholar

22. Orlov classified as Balagansk Buriats groups he labeled as the Khorinskie, Barguzinskie, and Kudarinskie, of eastern Baikal, and the Tunkinskie, Alarskie, Idinskie, Kudinskie, Lenskie, Verkholenskie, and Ol'khonskie, of western Baikal. The list suggests that Orlov had a more detailed view of the sociocultural landscape west of Baikal than east. Orlov, Grammatika, v-vii.

23. Ibid., vi.

24. Pozdneev, A., “Grammatika mongolo-buriatskogo razgovornogo iazyka, sostavlennaia protoiereieem A. Orlovym,” Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia (December 1879): 172.Google Scholar

25. Pozdneev's, works include Mongoliia i Mongoly: Rezul'taty poezdki v Mongoliiu, ispolnennoiv 1892-1893gg. A. Pozdneevym , 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1896-98);Google Scholar Ocherkibyta buddiiskikh monastyrei i buddiiskogo dukhovenstva v Mongolii v sviazi s otnosheniiami sego poslednogo k narodu (St. Petersburg, 1887); and Mongolskaia khrestomatiia dlia pervonachal'nogo prepodavaniia (St. Petersburg, 1900).

26. Dolbilov, “Russification and the Bureaucratic Mind,” 256; Geraci, Window on the East, 51-54, 58, 73-74, 116–57; Staliunas, “Did the Government Seek to Russify Lithuanians and Poles,” 286; Weeks, “Russification and the Lithuanians,” 104; Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy, 179-99, 225–26.

27. Geraci, Window on the East, 116–57; see also Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy, 133-40.

28. In one of their translations, the two listed their names in Buriat written in Old Church Slavonic script, with Dorzheev's Russified post-baptism name re-Buriaticized. See Postnaia triod’ na mongol skom iazyke, trans. Nil laroslavūn ba, Rostovūn Arkhīepiskop [Nil Iaroslavskii (Isakovich)] and Protoierei Nikolai Nil-dorzhin [Nikolai Nilovich Dorzheev] (St. Petersburg, 1869), final page. Nil also highlighted Dorzheev's roots in Nil Iaroslavskii (Isakovich), Buddizm, razsmatrivaemyi v otnoshenii k posledovateliam ego, obitaiushchim vSibiri (St. Petersburg, 1858), 343.

29. Sluzhebnik na Mongol skom iazyke [trans. Nil Iaroslavskii (Isakovich) and Nikolai Nilovich Dorzheev] (St. Petersburg, 1858); Nachatki khristianskogo ucheniia na Mongol skom iazyke [trans. Nil Iaroslavskii (Isakovich) and Nikolai Nilovich Dorzheev] (St. Petersburg, 1858); and Postnaia triod'. On the conceptions of Buriat and Mongolian contained therein, see Murray, “Building Empire among the Buryats,” 234–38; and Florensov, Iz istorii perevodcheskogo dela v Irkutskoi eparkhii, 11–12,18-19.

30. Stukov compiled a Slavonic-Russian-Mongolian dictionary and teaching materials, translated the Lord's Prayer, and wrote articles on Buddhist philosophy. See Florensov, Iz istorii perevodcheskogo dela v Irkutskoi eparkhii, 11; and A. M., , “Uchenaia zametka o nekotorykh predmetakh buddizma,” Pribavlenie k Irkutskim eparkhialnym vedomostiam (hereafter PIEV), no. 12 (March 12, 1874): 141–42.Google Scholar He was also a founding member of the translation commission. “0 perevode uchebnykh knig na buriatskii iazyk,“ Irkutskie eparkhial'nye vedomosti, no. 12 (March 16,1863): 163–64.

31. Konstantin Stukov, “Appelatsiia k mongolologam Rossiiskoi imperii,” quoted in Florensov, Iz istorii perevodcheskogo dela vlrkutskoi eparkhii, 25–26. Orlov reported that he had found the Mongolian word for coitus in one of Dorzheev's translations. Orlov, A., Otvet na neblagopriiatnyi otzyv o sostavlennoi mnoi grammatike mongoloburiatskogo razgovornogo iazyka (Irkutsk, 1882), 53 Google Scholar. Such errata were endemic to missionary translations; see Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy, 113–15.

32. “Svedeniia ob Irkutskom otdelenii dukhovnoi missii v 1867 godu,” PIEV, no. 22 (June 1,1868): 129–30. See also “Missionery Tunkinskogo vedomstva,” PIEV, no. 31 (August 3,1868): 237–39; and “Irkutskaia dukhovnaia missiia v 1868 godu,” PIEV, no. 36 (September 6,1869): 299–302.

33. Meletii, “Chto takoe buriatskii ‘obo’ i ot chego neredko byvaet zaraza v stepiakh i okrestnostiakh,” PIEV 10 (March 4,1872): 118. See also “Zabaikal'skaia pravoslavnaia missiia v 1870 godu,” PIEV, no. 44 (October 30,1871): 765–66.

34. See Kuznetsov, E., “Deiatel'nost’ Zabaikal'skoi dukhovnoi missii za sorokaletie ee sushchestvovaniia (s 1860 po 1899 gg.),” Pravoslavnyi blagovestnik (hereafter PB), no. 22 (December 1901): 252.Google Scholar

35. Veniamin, , “0 lamskom idolopoklonnicheskom sueverii v vostochnoi Sibiri,“ PIEV , no. 25 (June 19, 1882): 324.Google Scholar The Khambo lama was the government-certified head of the region's Buddhists. These claims were overblown. A thriving regional Buddhist publishing industry indicates the presence of many people who operated in the written languages. Grosheva, E. N., Knigoizdanie na buriatskom iazyke (XlX-nachalo XXI vv.) (Ulan-Ude, 2008), 21.Google Scholar

36. Orlov, Grammatika, vii.

37. Ibid., 130.

38. Orlov, Otvet, 21. Chistokhin appears within English-language historiography on the Russian empire as the “single Russian (please don't insult this person by calling him a Buriat)” about whom Archbishop Veniamin wrote to Nikolai Il'minskii in 1874. This statement has been used as proof of Veniamin's rejection of the Il'minskii system (see Geraci, Window on the East, 73); however, the context surrounding the communication suggests that Veniamin was less opposed to Il'minskii's translation efforts than his rhetoric suggests. The letter was occasioned by Chistokhin's trip to Kazan to work on a translation project affiliated with Il'minskii. Veniamin's release of Chistokhin when the mission was suffering a personnel shortage and the fact that the Irkutsk Translation Committee's peak productivity coincided with Veniamin's tenure indicate that Veniamin's distaste for translation was not absolute.

39. Orlov, Otvet, 12. Chistokhin's translation of the Sviashchennaia istoriia Vetkhogo i Novogo Zaveta na narechii Severo-baikal'skikh buriat (Kazan, 1878) was published the same year as Orlov's grammar. Chistokhin's many translations include Zhitie sviatitelia Nikolaia, episkopa Murlikiiskogo (Kazan, 1879); Uchenie pred priniatiem sv. kreshcheniia (Kazan, 1875 and 1877); and Kazhdodnevnye molitvy na narechii severo-baikal'skikh buriat (Kazan, 1882).

40. Chistokhin came from Aga, an eastern Buriat region. His translations bear markers of the Tunka dialect, which differs significantly from the Aga dialect.

41. “0 perevode uchebnykh knig,” 163-64.

42. Berestov, A. M., Skazanie o zhidi prepodognogo Aleksiia, cheloveka Bozhiia (St. Petersburg, 1889).Google Scholar

43. See Dov Yaroshevski's discussion of grazhdanstvennost’ in his “Empire and Citizenship,“ in Brower and Lazzerini, eds., Russia's Orient, 60.

44. “0 perevode uchebnykh knig,” 164.

45. “0 perevode uchebnykh knig na buriatskii iazyk (prodolzhenie),” Irkutskie eparkhial'nye vedomosti, no. 13 (March 23,1863): 178.

46. Gaps in the records prevent determining the exact number of converts and when they were baptized. In 1859, the church recorded 2,090 baptized Tunka Buriats; by 1867, there were 7,197, as compared to 6,127 Lamaists. Dittmar Schorkowitz, Staat und Nationalitaten in Russland: Der Integrationsprozess der Burjaten und Kalmücken, 1822-1925 (Stuttgart, 2001), 568. The term Lamaism has a lengthy imperialist history as a means of denigrating Inner Asian Buddhism as separate from and inferior to Buddhism proper. We use it here to refer to the Russian government's ascriptive practice of categorizing Buddhist Buriats as Lamaists and use Buddhism to designate religious belief or practice. On the genealogy of the term Lamaism, see Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago, 1998), 15–45.

47. 0 kreshchenii mongolo-buriatov Tunkinskogo inorodcheskogo vedomstva, Irkutskogo gubernii (Moscow, 1859), 5,11. On the Boldonovs, see Montgomery, Robert W., Late Tsarist and Early Soviet Nationality and Cultural Policy: The Buryats and Their Language (Lewiston, 2005), 123–25.Google Scholar

48. See, for example, Podgorbunskii, I. A., “Buriaty. (Fizicheskii tip i dukhovnaia lichnost' buriat),” PB , no. 9 (May 1903): 27.Google Scholar On transcultural interaction and exchange in the Baikal region, see 0. V. Buraeva, Etnokul ‘turnoe vzaimodeistvie narodov Baikalskogo regiona v XVII-nachale XXv. (Ulan-Ude, 2005). On the missionaries’ views of Lamaism and Buddhism, see Murray, “Building Empire among the Buryats,” 180-99.

49. Podgorbunskii, I. A., Russko-mongolo-buriatskii slovar’ (Irkutsk, 1909).Google Scholar Podgorbunskii's grammar, Materialy dlia grammatiki razgovornogo buriatskogo iazyka, cannot be precisely dated because of missing front matter and its complete absence from library catalogues.

50. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy, 240–54.

51. “Doklad irkutskogo arkhiepiskopa Serafima na imia tov. ober-prokurora sinoda P. S. Damanskogo ot 6 oktiabria 1913 goda. N9 3811,” Krasnyi arkhiv 53, no. 4 (1932): 105.

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53. Podgorbunskii, Materialy, 20.

54. See Podgorbunskii, I. A., “Iz mifologii buriat i mongolov shamanistov. Tengrii,“ in Sheshunov, I. G., ed., Sibirskii sbornik: Prilozhenie k “Vostochnomu obozreniiu,” pt. 2 (Irkutsk, 1894), 1–34.Google Scholar

55. Podgorbunskii, Materialy, 20.

56. Podgorbunskii, Slovar', 1.

57. “Poezdka Vysokopreosviashchenneishego Serafima, Arkhiepiskopa Irkutskogo i Verkholenskogo v Tunku,” PB, nos. 23-24 (December 1913): 723.

58. NARB, f. 340, op. 1, d. 78,11.1,12 (memorandum by Deloproizvoditel’ Protasov of the Irkutsk Committee of the Orthodox Missionary Society, October 26,1907. In the records of the Tunka Missionary Church).

59. Podgorbunskii, I. A., Neskol'ko zametokpo fonetike buriatskogo iazyka, v sviazi s voprosom o transkriptsii buriatskikh tekstov (Irkutsk, 1910)Google Scholar, reprinted from “Materialy dlia razgovornogo buriatskogo iazyka: Neskol'ko zametok o glagole v buriatskom iazyke,” Izvestiia Vostochno-Sibirskogo otdela Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva 41 (191011): 40–115.

60. Amagaev, N. and Alamzhi-Mėrgėn, , Novyi mongolo-buriatskii alfavit (St. Petersburg, 1910).Google Scholar On this text's position in minority language affairs, see Graber, Kathryn, “Public Information: The Shifting Roles of Minority-Language News Media in the Buryat Territories of Russia,” Language&Communication 32, no. 2 (April 2012): 127.Google Scholar Their alphabet derived from Agvan Dorzhiev's writing system, which was designed to be closer to Buriat pronunciation and easier to learn. See Dugarova-Montgomery, Yeshen-Khorlo and Montgomery, Robert, “The Buriat Alphabet of Agvan Dorzhiev,” in Kotkin, Stephen and Elleman, Bruce A., eds., Mongolia in the Twentieth Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan (Armonk, 1999);Google Scholar and György, Kara, Books of the Mongolian Nomads, trans. Krueger, lohn Richard(Bloomington, 2005), 173–76.Google Scholar

61. Amagaev and Alamzhi- Mėrgėn, Novyi mongolo-buriatskii alfavit, 38. On the scripts in use at the time, see Montgomery, Late Tsarist and Early Soviet Nationality and Cultural Policy, 117–40.

62. Amagaev and Alamzhi- Mėrgėn, Novyi mongolo-buriatskii alfavit, 3.

63. Ibid., 1-2.

64. Podgorbunskii is listed as the censor for the Irkutsk Translation Committee's Kniga dlia chteniia v buriatskikh shkolakh s prilozheniem buriatsko-russkago i russkoburiatskago slovaria (Kazan, 1903).

65. Podgorbunskii wrote that the Russian alphabet was first used to represent Buriat in an 1863 publication intended for use in village schools in Zabaikal'e. He failed to note that the publication was an Orthodox textbook on the creation of the world, On Cosmogony (0 mirozdanii), and that its translation was the foundational event of the Irkutsk Translation Committee. Podgorbunskii, Neskol'ko zametok, 20.

66. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism, 151.

67. Tsybikov, G. Ts., Otzyv o knige: I. A. Podgorbunskii. Russko-mongolo-buriatskii slovar' (Vladivostok, 1909), 1–3.Google Scholar

68. Tsybikov, Otzyv o knige, 10.

69. On Russia and Manchuria, see Paine, S. C. M., Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier (Armonk, 1996).Google Scholar

70. These dates reflect shifts in policy, not implementation. The Latin alphabet, officially adopted in 1929, was not implemented in media institutions until 1931.

71. Andreyev, Alexandre, Soviet Russia and Tibet: The Debacle of Secret Diplomacy, 1918-1930s (Leiden, 2003);Google Scholar Bazarov, B. V., Neizvestnoe iz istoriipanmongolizma (Ulan-Ude, 2002);Google Scholar Bazarov, B. V. and Zhabaeva, L. B., Buriatskie natsional'nye demokraty i obshchestvenno- politicheskaia mysl’ mongol ‘skikh narodov vpervoi treti XX veka (Ulan-Ude, 2008);Google Scholar Chimitdorzhiev, Sh. B., “Panmongolizm i ego opponenty na raznykh etapakh istorii,” in Sanzhieva, T. E. and Tsybiktarov, A. D., eds., Buriatiia: Problemy regional'noi istorii i istoricheskogo obrazovaniia , vol. 1 (Ulan-Ude, 2001), 3–8;Google Scholar and Rupen, Robert A., Mongols of the Twentieth Century (Bloomington, 1964).Google Scholar

72. Heated public debates over the relative value of the Mongolian, Latin, and Cyrillic scripts unfolded over 1923-29. By 1929, Latinization had gained political popularity, and scholars were working on an alphabet for Buriat in coordination with the Ail-Union Central Committee of the New Turkic Alphabet. Bazarova, V. V., Latinizatsiia buriat-mongol'skoi pis'mennosti v 1920-1930 gg. (Ulan-Ude, 2006);Google Scholar Montgomery, Late Tsarist and Early Soviet Nationality and Cultural Policy, 238-55, 259–66.

73. Poppe, Nicholas, Reminiscences, ed. Schwarz, Henry G. (Bellingham, 1983), 102,106.Google Scholar

74. Poppe, N. N., Buriat-mongol'skoe iazykoznanie (Leningrad, 1933), 41–44.Google Scholar

75. Poppe, N. N., Zametki ob aginskom govore (Leningrad, 1933);Google Scholar Poppe, N. N., Iazyk i kolkhoznaia poeziia buriat-mongolov Selenginskogo aimaka (Leningrad, 1934); and Poppe, Nicholas, Tsongol Folklore (Wiesbaden, 1978).Google Scholar Poppe's focus eastward and southward is notable because his earliest Buriat dialectological work in 1928 was on the Alar (Alarskii) dialect spoken west of Baikal. See Poppe, N. N., Alarskii govor (Leningrad, 1930-31);Google Scholar and Poppe, Reminiscences, 103-6.

76. Bertagaev, T. A., “Zapadno-buriatskii dialect na materialakh leksiki,” in Akademiia naukSSSR, akademiku N. la. Marru, XIV (Moscow and Leningrad, 1935), 143–64.Google Scholar

77. Both the Tsongol-Sartuul dialect basis and the Latin script proved ill-fated for political and linguistic reasons. The BMASSR resolved to replace the Buriat Latin alphabet with Cyrillic in 1938, a change that was implemented piecemeal over 1939-40. Bazarova, , Latinizatsiia buriat-mongol'skoipis'mennosti, 216–31.Google Scholar

78. Rudnev, A. D., Khori-buriatskii govor: Opyt izsledovaniia, teksty, perevod i primechaniia (St. Petersburg, 1913-14).Google Scholar

79. Poppe, N. N., Grammatika buriat-mongol'skogo iazyka (Moscow, 1938); Nicholas N. Poppe, Buriat Grammar (Bloomington, 1960).Google Scholar