Zhamtsarano among the Western Buryats: The "Field Notes" as a Source for Buryat Social History in the Early Twentieth Century. Issue 2 (4th March 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: MONTGOMERY, ROBERT W.
• Is Part Of: Russian review. Volume 78:Issue 2(2019)
• Page Start: 272
• Page End: 299
• Publication Date: 2019-03-04
• Subjects: Soviet Union -- Periodicals; Russia -- Periodicals; Russia (Federation) -- Periodicals; 947
• DOI: 10.1111/russ.12223
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0036-0341

Abstract

Abstract : The Buryat scholar Tsyben Zhamtsarano (1880 or 1881–1942) is best known for his scholarly contributions as a folklorist and philologist, his participation in the Buryat national movement and Mongolia's revolutionary government, and his tragic end as a victim of the Stalinist purges. Yet he also was a keen observer of Buryat daily life. This article utilizes the "field notes" that he gathered during folklore expeditions in the Buryat territories of Irkutsk Province between 1903 and 1907 to explore aspects of Western Buryat society in the first decade of the twentieth century: relations between the Western Buryats and Russian officialdom; social ills such as alcoholism and disease; Western Buryat religious life (Buddhism, Shamanism, and Russian Orthodoxy); and the birth of native social and political activism.