Editing Russia and the Soviet Union (section)

== Buddhism in Russia before the October Revolution ==

Buddhism was formally recognized as a legitimate faith of the Russian Empire's eastern subjects by imperial rescript of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna in 1741. By the early twentieth century it was deeply embedded in the social, cultural, and intellectual life of both the Buryats and the Kalmyks, each of whom maintained extensive networks of monasteries, Buryat datsans and Kalmyk khuruls, respectively, a substantial clerical class, and traditions of Buddhist scholarship conducted in Tibetan and Mongolian. By 1917, there were more than 11,000 Buddhist clergy in Buryatia and more than 2,000 in Kalmykia,<ref>Sinitsyn, Fedor L. (Синицын Ф.Л.) (2013). "Советское государство и буддисты (1917–1946 гг.)" [The Soviet State and the Buddhists, 1917–1946]. ''Российская история'' 1: 62–76, p. 63.</ref> although John Snelling's account of the same period gives a somewhat different figure of roughly 16,000 lamas in some 36 Buryat datsans in 1916, a discrepancy that illustrates how unevenly the confession's demographic history has been documented.<ref>Snelling, John (1993). ''Buddhism in Russia: The Story of Agvan Dorzhiev, Lhasa's Emissary to the Tsar''. Shaftesbury: Element Books, p. 204.</ref>

Buddhism's institutional position among the Buryats had been shaped for more than a century and a half by tsarist policies of simultaneous toleration and control. In 1764 Catherine the Great created the elective office of Pandido Khambo Lama as supreme religious authority of the Transbaikal Buddhists, formally severing their subordination to the foreign hierarchs of the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu in Mongolia and the Dalai Lama in Tibet, and, on pain of death, forbidding contact between Buryat monks and their coreligionists abroad. These arrangements were codified in the 1853 "Regulation on the Lamaist Clergy" (Положение о ламайском духовенстве), which additionally imposed strict quotas on the number of monks, monasteries, and temples, and restricted monks' movement, public ritual, and religious publishing.<ref>Tsyrempilov (2019), "Сангха в эпоху упадка", pp. 350–351.</ref> The 1905 Revolution brought a surge of Buryat political activism, both secular and clerical: congresses held that year in Chita and Irkutsk demanded, among other things, that the demeaning term "lamaism" be replaced with "Buddhism" and that the discriminatory 1853 Regulation be repealed. The Tsarist government's Manifesto on Religious Toleration of 1905 granted the first demand, but repeated attempts by a Special Conference on Religious Affairs to revise the 1853 Regulation stalled and never resulted in new legislation.<ref>Tsyrempilov (2019), "Сангха в эпоху упадка", pp. 353–354.</ref> A comparable liberalizing proposal drafted by Buryat lay and clerical activists, including Dorzhiev, immediately after the February Revolution of 1917 met the same fate, overtaken by the October Revolution and the Civil War before it could be enacted.<ref>Tsyrempilov (2019), "Сангха в эпоху упадка", pp. 354–355.</ref>

In the absence of secular scientific, educational, medical, and cultural institutions suited to nomadic pastoral life, the Buddhist clergy functioned as something close to a national intelligentsia for both peoples, and monasteries served as the only permanent centers of intellectual and spiritual life. Soviet diplomats and ethnographers of the 1920s, examining this situation with some bewilderment, described the Buryats' relationship to Buddhism as "not only a national faith, but an attractive calling that elevates a simple person to a height unattainable in other circumstances."<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Советское государство и буддисты", p. 62.</ref> Buddhist belief permeated Kalmyk daily life to a comparable degree; a Kalmyk congress in 1917 declared that Buddhist teaching helped ordinary Kalmyks make sense of their lives.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Советское государство и буддисты", p. 63.</ref>

Before the October Revolution, no antireligious propaganda had been conducted in the traditionally Buddhist regions of the empire, and no antibuddhist literature existed.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Советское государство и буддисты", p. 63.</ref> As in [[Mongolia]], the near-total absence of any rival confession, secular philosophical tradition, or antireligious current meant that Buddhism was not merely the dominant religion among the Buryats and Kalmyks but the entire institutional and intellectual framework of their societies, a fact that would decisively shape both the possibilities and the limits of accommodation with Soviet power after 1917.