Editing Russia and the Soviet Union (section)

=== The Buryats ===

Among the Buryats, the renovationist current had roots predating the Revolution, and had already split the community by the late nineteenth century between reformers seeking a return to what they described as the original moral purity of early Buddhist teaching and conservatives defending existing monastic practice.<ref>Damdinov, A. V. (Дамдинов А.В.) (1997). "Агван Доржиев в обновленческом движении бурятского буддийского духовенства" [Agvan Dorzhiev in the Renovationist Movement of the Buryat Buddhist Clergy]. In: ''Бурятский буддизм: история и идеология'' [Buryat Buddhism: History and Ideology]. Ulan-Ude: (n.p.), p. 81.</ref> Dorzhiev formalized the movement at a Buddhist Council held at the Atsagat datsan in October 1922, where reformers committed themselves to giving up material luxury, tightening monastic discipline, centralizing the administration of monastery funds, and organizing communal agricultural labor so that monks would cease to be a burden on the laboring population; opponents, who called themselves "conservatives," denounced Dorzhiev as the "Red Gushri Khan" for what they saw as his willful distortion of the Dharma.<ref>Andreyev (2003), ''Soviet Russia and Tibet'', pp. 159–160.</ref> The security services took a close interest in this rivalry: internal OGPU reports from Buryat-Mongolia meticulously catalogued the mutual denunciations exchanged by renovationists and conservatives, who accused each other by turns of counter-revolutionary sympathies, illegal emigration agitation, and even sorcery, "hadkha," blamed by conservative lamas for the deaths and illnesses of renovationist opponents; the renovationist leader Sh. Dugarzhapov was murdered by conservative partisans at the Aginsky datsan during this factional strife.<ref>Sipeykin, Alexander V. (Сипейкин А.В.) (2024). "Агван Доржиев и конец «золотого века» буддизма в Советской России" [Agvan Dorzhiev and the End of the "Golden Age" of Buddhism in Soviet Russia]. ''Российская история'' 1: 149–160, pp. 150–152.</ref> Renovationist lamas went so far as to bake ritual gurons in the shape of stars, hammers, and sickles, to mark the anniversary of the October Revolution in their datsans, and, in at least one recorded instance, to redecorate a monastic office with portraits of Bolshevik leaders and antireligious slogans, telling puzzled visitors simply that "such is now required, this is no longer Nicholas's time."<ref>Sipeykin (2024), "Агван Доржиев и конец", p. 152.</ref>

The Buryat Buddhist community proved remarkably resilient in the face of mounting Soviet pressure. Soviet authorities complained by the late 1920s that in some districts of Buryatia the Buddhist clergy was stronger than the local Soviet apparatus "not only quantitatively, but qualitatively," and noted with some alarm that lamas' work among the population was livelier and more engaging than official Soviet cultural events, drawing in communists and Komsomol members themselves.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Советское государство и буддисты", p. 68.</ref> Buddhist clergy made up as much as 10 percent of the adult population in some eastern districts of Buryatia, and the republic ranked first in the entire USSR for religiosity.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Советское государство и буддисты", p. 68.</ref> Even after antireligious campaigns intensified, officials had to concede that such propaganda had "almost no effect on the lamas," and when Buddhist leaders called on lamas who had left their monasteries under pressure to return, most did so.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Советское государство и буддисты", pp. 69–70.</ref> Renovationist and conservative lamas were, moreover, not permanently locked into their factional identities: by 1929, faced with mounting state pressure, the renovationist clergy of the Tsugol datsan abandoned reform altogether and openly re-aligned with their former conservative rivals in common resistance to Soviet power, to the visible dismay of the OGPU officers who had counted on the split to endure.<ref>Sipeykin (2024), "Агван Доржиев и конец", p. 157.</ref>