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Kristina Jonutytė, "Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia" (Cornell UP, 2026)
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
I didn't expect this. TikTok has more short dramas than I could ever finish.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Each episode leaves you wanting the next.
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Christina Yunodita about her book titled between the Buddha and the New Urban Religion and Minority Politics in the Asian Borderlands of Russia, published by Cornell University Press in 2026. Now, this book takes us to a part of Russia that perhaps isn't often examined, which is of course one of the reasons I'm so intrigued by this book. So looking at, in some ways, I suppose, the Mongolian area of Russia, and crucially a place where there are, as the title suggests, some tensions around kind of what religion is, what religious practice is, how this conflicts with state politics, what this means for urbanisation and of course what this means today, but also what this has meant over the past few decades. Right. So we are going to talk about the tsarist period of Russia, the Soviet period, kind of what's happening now, and similarities and differences over time. So a whole bunch of things for us to get into. Christina, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
Hi Miranda, thank you for having me.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
Sure. So I am a social anthropologist and I currently am associate professor at Vilnius University in Lithuania and also postdoc at Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at Cambridge University. So as a social anthropologist, my kind of the main method that I employ is ethnographic field work with the various methodologies that that involves. And as you mentioned, my field site is one that probably isn't a very common one. It is in the Republic of Buryati in the Russian Federation. And I first went there to do field work in 2015, so a while ago. And this book is kind of a product of really about 10 years of work. And so this project started when I was part of a research group, Buddhist Temple Economies in Urban Asia at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. And so it's as a research group, it was really interesting to kind of work with other people, also anthropologists, so doing research on contemporary societies and contemporary urban Buddhism in different locations. So I was the only one doing fieldwork in Russia or this Mongolian part of Russia, as you correctly said. And then we also had people in Mongolia and Japan and China or Tibetan parts of China. So it was really interesting to do that kind of comparative work with my colleagues. And the focus there kind of the initial focus of this project was Buddhist temple economies as they kind of emerge and develop in particular social, political, historical context. And of course in Buriatia, one of the main kind of parts of that context that were of interest to me was the post Soviet context and the post socialist one where obviously there were massive repressions of religion in the Soviet period and Buddhist as also other religious infrastructures, including monasteries, temples, but also lineages and kind of transfer of knowledge and pilgrimage routes and these kinds of things, public religious practice, all of that to a large part was, well, not destroyed because certainly religion persisted, but at least the public parts of it were destroyed and the monasteries and temples themselves were. So I was really interested in how this infrastructure is being rebuilt or in many cases, in most cases really built anew in, in the post Soviet period and what meanings and significance that has in contemporary reactia, which is a multi ethnic and multi religious region. And so yeah, in particular I was interested also in how that plays out in the urban context, because in the pre Soviet period Buddhism was mostly rural. So Buryats used to be nomadic or semi nomadic. So certainly based outside of cities, landed there itself can be called a colonial city, historically established by Russian colonizers. And so Buddhism was not really present there to any large extent, as Buryats were not. And then so in the post Soviet period when Buddhism was being rebuilt, about half of Boreats were living in the city itself. And so the city kind of had to become an important religious and cultural site for Buryats who were not previously urban to a large extent. So that's kind of a short introduction, I guess, to my initial interest in this research region and subject.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, no, there's a whole bunch of intriguing things there. Is there anything further we want to discuss in terms of questions you're asking in this book or the kind of development of the project?
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
Yeah, so I think, obviously, because this book project took me a while, as it normally does, I suppose, but for someone who does research in Russia, that was a very significant period of time where important things happen. So certainly 2022, when the full scale invasion of Ukraine took place, invaded by Russia, that was a really important kind of watershed moment in some ways. Certainly I had to. Well, myself, I wasn't really able to go back to Buriati since COVID because after my kind of main bit of field work in 2015, 2016, I did return there, but then with COVID and closed borders, and then after that the kind of increasing political tensions, I myself am from Europe. I wasn't able to go back to Buryatia. And then when the full scale invasion took place, uh, that certainly meant kind of that Buriati was shot, shut off for research for a very long time. Um, so. And also. So research wise, kind of methodologically, obviously I wasn't able to go back there and I had to work around it. But also it was a moment or a process that really changed Buryatia a lot. And it was a huge thing obviously for my research participants. So then obviously Buryatia is very far removed geographically from Ukraine. But as Russian citizens, Buryats to take part in this war. And so this has been quite a prominent story, I guess, or prominent news in the media that Buryats were kind of dis. Or are still disproportionately dying in this war and they're on the Russian side and they're being disproportionately conscripted for this war. And mostly, obviously this isn't really official data, because official data like that are not released about the ethnic composition of who takes part in the present war. So it's kind of what activists and data scientists have gathered from data they were able to find and kind of open access. And so Buryatia as a region is disproportionately represented in these statistics. But some scholars, such as Maria Vyushkova, also argue that Buryats as an ethnic group are being disproportionately conscripted. For this war. So this means. I mean, this is just kind of a significant factor showing that the effects of the war have been really extreme in Buryatia also demographically, but also in terms of the presence of the state, in terms of the increasingly oppressive regime in Russia, in terms of any kind of public expressions of dissent, any time, any kind of communal organizing, and certainly a period of decreasing kind of cultural sovereignty and, yeah, freedom of expression in Russia. And so this has been really important for my, yes, Research participants, research region. And so obviously that. Well, that's only a small part of the story of how the war has affected this region or how has it changed since 2022. But even then I suddenly had to kind of question my own research. So are my findings still relevant? So there seems to have been a huge shift, a huge change in the region. Should we even be talking about religion in this context, about urban Buddhism? And is there any significance to my findings? And certainly I did find that what I was researching was very relevant and probably even more relevant today because the story about Huriat Buddhism is also the story of marginalization, minoritization, and also kind of, well, one might say peripheral region of Russia, borderland region of Russia, where a lot of the violence of the Russian state is felt much more acutely. So this is something that Buryats have dealt with for a very long time, decades and centuries. But this is something that is becoming even more acutely felt today. And so Buryats today are many Boreats, as other Russian citizens are leaving the country, if they can, if they are in a position to do so. Others are obviously the majority remains in their region and in their country, but they also have to deal with the effects of the current war, whether it's fear of being conscripted to the army, fears of, you know, just kind of losing their jobs or having their salaries cut, Increasing precarity for many and yeah, living in that increasingly oppressive regime and kind of decreasing public space for expression of beread culture and religion as well, not just for kind of directly political aims. So I think in that sense, yeah, I do kind of see the continued relevance of my research on urban burial Buddhism, even though the region itself seems to have changed so much. And also writing a book is also a kind of a complex process of putting many different things together. And so when there's this kind of watershed moment in the middle of it, that complicates the process, but it's also very helpful in rethinking your findings and your frameworks. And that's a process I've had to go through.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, and obviously, as you said, is putting lots of different things together, so we'll see if we can kind of unpick some of them to go into more detail. Obviously not as much detail as the book, but you know, at least some to give people a sense of what you figured out. So making sure we have a good foundation for that. Of course, you've already explained very helpfully a number of the things you were interested in going into the project. Some of the complexities that came up. Can we talk a little bit more about who is a Buryat, given that this is sort of something that's changed and the region is going through different things, like what does that mean now? What has that meant historically? Right. The question of ethnic minorities in Russia isn't exactly a static thing. So can we talk about that?
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
Certainly. So it is, as you say, kind of a changing and shifting category of identity. And if you ask, you know, a number of Buryats today what it means to be buried for them, you'll get vastly different answers. I think as with other identities as well, but as, as you mentioned earlier, Buriatia is a Mongol region, Mongol within kind of a larger Mongol cultural world. And so some Buryads, more kind of, I guess politically active ones, are even calling themselves not Buryads, but Buryad Mongols. Right. So they kind of want to highlight that link with the Mongol cultural world. And so Russia colonized this region where the Republic of Buryatia today is in the 17th century, late 17th century. And so ever since then, or rather perhaps ever since the 18th century, when the border was kind of more firmly established between what is now Russia and what is now Mongolia and China, when that border was established, exchanges across the border became more and more limited. And that was complicated for people whose, you know, co ethnics, one might say, live across the border and co religionists as well, because Buryad Buddhism is certainly a transnational affair, as I guess we'll come back to in a minute. So ever since then, ever since the 18th century, one might say, Buryats were kind of by the tsarist regime and later, especially in the Soviet period, were being increasingly kind of removed from Mongolians across the border. Mongolians primarily, for instance, there in the early Soviet period, Buryat language, which is very similar and closely related to the Mongolian language, it was kind of formalized institutionally as a separate language. And to do that, a dialect that was quite far removed from Halha Mongolian was used. Right. So although on the ground in this region, people spoke many different dialects and some very close to what is spoken in Mongolia today, across the border, a particular dialect was chosen to kind of further remove people in the two different countries. And in that way, of course, kind of limit cultural exchanges and limit contacts. And that was also kind of done, I suppose, through various cultural initiatives of kind of standardizing, especially in the Soviet period, Buryat culture as kind of more and more a separate culture, removed from other Mongol peoples, both within Russia. So Kalmyks are another Mongol group in Russia, although quite far removed geographically because of the nomadic history. But yes, also others who now live in other countries, Mongolia and China. So this is a story that perhaps is fairly common in borderland regions. So Boreats now predominantly live in these three countries of Russia, China and Mongolia. And so because of these many centuries of being Russian citizens, being Russian subjects, um, some Borats really identify very closely with Russia today. And on the kind of extreme end of the spectrum, you might even have people who say, well, I'm Buryat, but I'm really Russian, or even a word. So in Russian, there's a distinction, Ruski, which means ethnic Russian, and Russian, which means Russian citizen. So some Boreats would even say, I'm more of a Russky, a Russian ethnic Russian. And these two categories are kind of being blended in contemporary Russia under Putin's regime. So they say, pretty much, I feel like I am ethnic Russian, but I just look different, meaning they look Asian. And ethnic Russians wouldn't really identify them as Russki, usually. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have people who will say Mongolian. You know, I identify with Mongolia, and Russia is a kind of a colonial power, which I don't really see myself part of. And so now, actually, I do research since 22 with those who have left Russia to Mongolia and to South Korea. And I find it really interesting because when people go abroad especially, then they're kind of faced with a question of, you know, who are you? And how can you explain this, you know, this. This obscure to many place that you come from? And so some people when they're abroad, they just say, I am Mongolian, you know, and some people say who have left Russia, they say, I don't want to return to Buryatia, but I want to return to Mongolia, which they might now feel like, well, these are people in South Korea now. So I've met people who say, you know, although my technically my home country, my home region is Buryatia, Russia is today, you know, militant, oppressive, and it's not a good place to be. And I don't like the state of, you know, the state that Buryati is in now. So I feel like Mongolia is my home country, even though they might not have, you know, live there for extended periods of time. So what I'm trying to say is that there's certainly a kind of a spectrum of identities in terms of how they relate to the Mongol strand of history, culture, identity that Buryati and Buryats are suddenly a part of. And then on the other hand, there's that kind of Russian strand of being Russian subjects, Russian citizens, and certainly being, you know, in very close contact with Russian culture and Russian language. So Buryats today who live in Russia, they usually speak Russian well, either as their first language or at least, you know, very few people. But some only learn it in kindergarten or school. So when they become parts of institutions. But all bureats today speak fluent Russian, and they have to communicate in the Russian language a lot, usually daily. And they get Russian education, which is quite standardized across the country. You know, they consume the Russian media. So these links with the Russian state and that background, that strand is quite strong as well. So as with any identity, there's a lot of kind of flexibility in terms of how one identifies and which direction one kind of leans towards. And that can also change over time. And again, the War and especially the full scale invasion of Ukraine. That has also been an important moment for these identity shifts for some people, some of my interlocutors, and then also leaving Russia for those who did because of the war and because of conscription, that has also, you know, changed things around for some. So some people have, maybe they had experience of living abroad and they said, well, no, I feel, you know, best at home in Buryatia, within Russia. And then others said, you know, once I went abroad, I realized that Russia is not for me and I need to stay out of it and I need to live in, for instance, Mongolia. Ever since, I suppose, Putin's regime, And especially since 22, I would say there has been a trend within Russia to, I suppose it could be called Russification, right, to strengthen that Russian part of identities of ethnic minorities. And there was even this banner or this advertisement, a picture of which went on the Internet which said, yakalmuk no sivodny Mif si Ruskia. So I am Kalmyk, and Kalmyks are this other Mongol ethnic group within Russia. So I am Kalmyk. But today we are all ethnic Russians, right? As if. As if ethnic Russians and Russian citizen was the same. So that linking of citizenship and Russian ethnicity has been, I think, growing in significance. And this is, in my understanding, the kind of the effort of the current Russian regime to assimilate ethnic minorities and to ensure that the Russian strand of their identity and cultural background becomes the main one or even the only one.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
And of course, as you've mentioned, that has implications for kind of all aspects of identity. But the book does focus, of course, on Buddhism, sort of particularly within that. So is there anything further we want to discuss in terms of Buryat Buddhism and how the Russian state has dealt with this aspect of identity?
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
Certainly. So what is buried Buddhism is in itself also a political question, because some call it Tibetan Buddhism, some call it Buryat Mongolian Buddhism, and then others insist on the fact that Buryat Buddhism is unique and it's autocephalous. It's kind of a separate church from these other strands of Buddhism. So historically, buried Buddhism is closely related with Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism. So it kind of came to the Buryat region via Mongolia when it was still a nomadic population. And so these traveling lamas, or lamas being Buddhist professionals, traveling lamas accompanied kind of nobility and preached and did religious rituals in the Boreat lands. And so they kind of eventually settled down into monasteries. So. And also it is important to say that even today, Boreat shamanism is quite prevalent as well. So there was a kind of a period of conversion, but both coexist to this day, certainly, and are very strong. So although kind of technically it is Vajrayana Buddhism and Geluk school of Vajrayana Buddhism, which comes from Tibetan Tibet via Mongolia, that is practiced in Buryatia. Recently, again in the period of Putin's rule, there has been a claim that Buryat Buddhism did not come from these places, but Buryats took Buddhism themselves. So they kind of took what they needed and they established their own separate Buddhist church. And these claims were made by the official leader, widely recognized leader of buried Buddhism, Kambalama Damba Ayusha, who has been the head of this leading Buddhist organization in the region for, if I'm not mistaken, about three decades now. And so he's quite. These are fairly controversial statements, and not everyone agrees with him, but he basically kind of tries to deny these transnational links and transnational histories of Buryat Buddhism. And this is effective to some extent. And this also has some base because, secondly, Buddhism everywhere is localized and it is related to Buddhist local landscapes, local deities, local culture. And for instance, Buryat language is oftentimes used in BT Buddhist context. So there is certainly some truth to claims that Buddhism is unique. But at the same time, to perhaps most Buddhists in Buddha, the Dalai Lama is probably the highest, or at least certainly one of the highest Buddhist and spiritual authorities, even though technically, of course, he cannot even visit Buryatia because of the political regime. Right. Because Russia has a kind of an isolationist policy in religion where they try to limit the transnational ties and links and authority and kind of influence from outside, I guess, as they call it. So, yeah. So although Vajrayana Buddhism, of which Buddhism is part, is certainly a kind of transnational, trans regional affair, there have been efforts to. Yes, to kind of pin it down and make it a national religion. And I'd say this is to some extent a successful effort, but not quite. And this is also, I guess, an important part, an important argument of my book, which is perhaps that's a simple statement, but what I want to say is that these official narratives, they don't really tell us the whole story. Right. So if you listen to the Buddhist leaders in Russia, you will hear these kinds of isolationist and Russian loyalist strands of thought. But in practice, I think the story is quite different because, for instance, the Dalai Lama is still certainly extremely highly deemed, extremely highly in the region, and Tibetan lamas are very much appreciated and valued and for their authority and education and religious ritual. Efficacy as well. And also. So that's why. Well, that's part of the reason why I call these everyday religious practices an infra political field. Right. So a field that is not directly political, that doesn't necessarily kind of speak in political terms. At the same time, it can be quite subversive and quite. Yeah, it really doesn't kind of blindly follow the official narratives. Yeah.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
I want to talk a little bit more about kind of what that means in practice. So what is urban religion in this context? What does that look like for kind of normal people, Right. On a given Tuesday? Or what does this kind of political kind of not practice look like?
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
Well, certainly there is a lot of variety there, but I'll try to give you a kind of a general overview of this. So, as I mentioned earlier, buried Buddhism historically was very much related to nomadic lifestyle and the. Yeah, the steppe, the nomadic landscape. And Buryats were mostly, by and large, not urban. So when Buddhism started kind of cropping back up and surging in the late Soviet period, and in the post Soviet period at that time, most Buryats lived in the city already. Right. So this huge, massive shift, massive urbanization took place place in the Soviet period. And so the city then became a prominent site of Boreat life, of Boreat culture. And when public religion came back into it, or came into it in the 1990s, certainly Ulanade had in some ways to become a religious Buddhist site as well. And so to talk about urban Buddhism, perhaps it's important to also kind of outline what rural Buddhism is or what the kind of locally called traditional Buddhism is. So it is very temple based. I would say going to the temples, especially on important ritual occasions is certainly crucial. It also relies very heavily on religious professionals, lamas. So I'm not actually, I'm consciously not using words, monasteries and monks here, because by and large in Buryatiya, lamas are not monks. So they don't reside in monasteries. They don't kind of uphold the monastic code, which would include celibacy and other things. So by and large, it's kind of professionalized Buddhism, but not monasticism, although there are exceptions to this. So it's. Yeah, traditional Buddhism would be mostly rural, temple based and relying very heavily on lamas on professional professionals. And so also what is important is that one would kind of ideally be part of a parish, one might say, although I guess that's a Christian concept. But one would go to their local temple and one would have a kind of a lasting contact with one lama who would be their kind of teacher. I guess, or guru throughout one's life, perhaps. So a sustained kind of relationship with a particular religious professional would be quite important there. And traditional Buddhism, and that's a local term, it is quite strict in terms of hierarchies, which are based on gender, based on age, based on also the level of religious education. And then in contrast to that, we have ebb and Buddhism, which is much more diverse, much more eclectic or creative, one might say. So in the city there is that diversity in terms of who gets to be a religious professional as well, because there are Tibetan lamas as well. And I'm actually, when I use the present tense, it's more, I'm speaking more about up to 2019. I don't actually know, for instance, what happened to Tibetans in Buryatia, but there used to be Tibetan lamas there. Not a huge amount, but certainly a kind of substantial handful. There were also female lamas. And that's quite, to some extent that's controversial. Not every Buryat Buddhist would accept a female religious professional. But in the urban environment that is more flexible that, that is kind of allowed and that has its own place. So there was a female temple where female religious practitioners, professionals would do rituals and, and meet lay people also. There are more lay organizations so that traditional Buddhism is more professionalized, as I mentioned. Whereas in the city, laypeople, sometimes the most active ones, can also take on kind of complex and time consuming and difficult Buddhist practices, such as meditation or learning, reading texts, going to lectures and so on, and Tantric practices as well. So, so in the city you get lay Buddhism, a lot more lay Buddhism, lay active practice as well. You get kind of Buddhist lectures, which isn't something that's part of or that's a substantial part of that more traditional rural Buddhism. Also that link with one particular temple and one particular lama is certainly, I think, not as strict, not as prominent in the urban context. And urban Buddhists, they kind of pick and choose, they choose a professional that they want to visit. They might kind of hear on the Internet or through their friends or colleagues that, oh, there's this great lama at such and such temple who does very good divination. And so they might kind of randomly drop in and see that llama just for that purpose. So you have a more diverse field of Buddhism and certainly less of that kind of traditional authority and hierarchy. Although to some extent, of course, that's part of the urban Buddhist landscape as well. And I think that these observations, they do kind of fit into that classical urban studies, you know, statement or Argument that cities are a more diverse, a more flexible, a more eclectic environment where individuals are freer of community bonds and things like that and are able to act, you know, more freely and choose whatever religious practices they want to pursue. And I think that is actually to a large extent the case in urban Buryad Buddhism. And this is also important locally, that kind of distinction between urban and rural Buddhism. Not just. So those aren't just kind of backdrops, neutral backdrops or environments for religion, but those are also moral categories. So lamas, often, especially those belonging to these official organization, leading organizations of warrior Buddhism, they actually speak quite critically of urban Buddhists, urban Buddhism as such, because they say, well, there isn't that oversight of our institution, of the community. And so urban lamas don't really, you know, are not up to the same standard as rural ones are where the close knit community kind of observes them constantly. So they can't, you know, go out and drink and behave inappropriately or whatever. And they have to be exemplars in many ways. Right. In the city you can kind of easily hide and, you know, blend in. And so you can lead a pretty normal life and just be a llama as a job. And so this is something that is talked about locally and evaluated oftentimes negatively locally, where it is said that urban lamas are maybe kind of. Yeah. Not up to the same standard, that their behavior might be immoral. And generally the city to some extent has these associations with immoral behavior and kind of. Yes, lack of oversight. So yeah, those are also locally meaningful moral categories, one might say.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, and it's very clear that kind of throughout this, relationships between people are a really important aspect of this. And you talk about some of these practices in the book as being evidence of religious intimacy. Do we want to talk about that?
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Dr. Christina Yunodita
Sure. Yeah. So I'm using this term that comes from the anthropologist Michael Hertzfield where he talked about forms of religion that. Or practices in religion, but also beliefs that diverge from the kind of official norm. Right. So they're not doctrinally correct, so to speak, but they are practiced by a large part of the population of a religious group. And so there's kind of acknowledgement of this common divergence from the norm and that divergence from the norm kind of, unless unofficial and something that's not really spoken about very much, but it brings people together really in important ways. So a good example of this, I think is religious consultations. And I think with the previous question, I didn't quite. Yeah. Go down to the level of what it actually, what Buddhist practice every day actually looks like. And so this is actually an important part of it is what I call Buddhist consultations. So people in the city also, to some extent outside of the city, but I'm not going to go into that. But urban Buddhists go to see a lama when they are facing any problems, issues, important questions, when they need either a particular ritual or a divination, maybe a combination of both. Maybe they don't even know what they need. Right. But they say they come to a lama and they share their problems and questions, and then the lama helps them through various means. Like I mentioned, divination and ritual. But also it can be just a piece of advice, a piece of Buddhist teaching or personal advice as well, based on their own experience. So questions might be, you know, I lost a job. How can I find another one? You know, how can I can you help me find another one? Or can you divine as to how, you know what that will go? What is best course of action now? Or people might have a planned trip to a trip abroad, for instance, for a labor stint of labor in South Korea, which is a very popular labor migration destination for worriers. So they might want to go to work to South Korea to earn some money, but that not exactly fully legal. So they might ask for a ritual to kind of open the road for doing that or to choose an auspicious date for doing that. It might also be interpersonal problems, such as, yeah, difficulties in the relationships in the family or divorce, a difficult divorce. It can also be more, I guess, traditional issues, such as visiting a temple at the start of the lunar new year. That's also what quite a lot of people do. They go to the temple to see a lama and to get an astrological prognosis for the year. So these kinds of Buddhist consultations are quite eclectic. They can take on many different forms depending on the particular temple and lama and the particular question that one might have. But by and large, people kind of look down upon the ways in which they are being done today in Buryatya. So while in general many would agree that lamas are important and they are authoritative and one should to some extent respect them and maybe even rely on them to some extent. But most people see the present practices as over reliance on lamas. And a few times I even had this, it put in this way of, you know, these lay people, they go to temples and ask a lama before they go to the bathroom, you know, meaning even in very minute, you know, daily questions that are not so Important, they cannot make a decision, but they want to ask a lama about it. And this over reliance on religious professionals, in some ways, it's also a sign or an outcome of people feeling like they don't know Buddhism well enough, they don't know enough about Buddhism, both the kind of philosophical side of it, what things mean, what are the deities that are out there, what are the rituals that are out there, what are the meanings of various things in temples, people just don't know very much, theoretically, and sometimes also practically, many people don't even feel very comfortable in temples, especially younger ones. They don't really know what to do there. And that's certainly to some extent a product of the post Soviet setting where there were huge repressions on religion and public practice was extremely limited. And so people, even if they identified as Buddhists and practiced something, it would be typically at home in the private sphere, and people would oftentimes not pass these practices and the knowledge onto their children in order to keep them safe, you know, in the Soviet regime. So in that context, there is what anthropologist Saskia Abrahams Kavonenko calls the blossoming of ignorance. Right. So ignorance, or not knowing enough or feeling like one doesn't know enough, it has a lot of socially meaningful and creative and kind of generative qualities as well. And in some ways it brings people together, right, because on the one hand, they feel like they're not good enough, they don't practice religion well enough people, they don't practice religion correctly. But at the same time, it creates these community bonds and kind of, you know, a felt identification with, you know, these other people who also are in the same predicament and a kind of a shared striving also towards something else, towards perhaps a better future, whatever that might mean for them.
- [48:54]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And speaking then of the future, or I guess also the present, of course, you mentioned earlier in our conversation the impact of the war in Ukraine, and also, of course, combining with the fact that this isn't necessarily the part of Russia that tends to be part of those conversations around the impact of the war in Ukraine. So how does your research, your interlocutors, how do you think that might complicate some of the understandings we have about what sort of impact the war is having?
- [49:23]
Dr. Christina Yunodita
Yeah, I think there's a few things to mention here. So one thing that I hope to contribute to kind of the knowledge about the situation amongst kind of Russia's ethnic minorities in the context of the present war, one thing is that I think it's important to go beyond these Kind of grand and simplified categories or binaries, such as submission or resistance. Right. So in the context of war, I think a lot of people outside of Russia, say in Europe or perhaps the US Are expecting to see resistance among people who might disagree with the war or, you know, that they should. There is an expectation certainly in Europe, a lot of places in Europe, that people in Russia will kind of rise up and they will take to the streets with protests and so on. And that's not happening. Right. So I think. But at the same time, this doesn't really mean that they are completely submissive to the regime, that they fully support it and so on. And the actual situation of the vast majority of people is suddenly a complex one, a mixture of these things. Right. So that's why I use the term infrapolitics to talk about Buddhist everyday Buddhist practices in the region where that resistance might not be very open, very clear, it might not even be visible from outside. But at the same time, it is a space of kind of thinking about and talking about and acting politically. If one goes to a consultation with a lama to discuss labor migration, that's in itself oftentimes a kind of a political critique of why are we not living better in a more prosperous way in our own region? Why can we not work and lead a dignified life in our own region? And so, yeah, these intimate religious settings like consultations and rituals are oftentimes in themselves a mode of, well, perhaps not resistance, but of political acting, I would say, or infra political acting. And yeah, so I would certainly hope that my research contributes to providing a more complex picture that goes beyond those grand categories. And also, relatedly, I want to show, as I mentioned earlier, that the official narratives and categories do not really show the whole story, even though it might be very, you know, shocking and it might draw attention when a religious leader and a Buddhist leader of all religions promotes going to war. And the Buryat Buddhist official leader, Hamola Ma has said, has kind of promoted that Buddhists should go to war, Russian Buddhists and that. I can't remember the exact quote, but he did say in the beginning of the full scale invasion that the Buddha is with us and the guardian deities are with us, and the past Buddhist leaders are with us in this war effort. So it is kind of. It makes for very flashy headlines, right? To have a Buddhist leader encourage violence where violence is really against. It goes against Buddhist precepts and Buddhist philosophy. But that's the reality of things on the official level. However, as I said in on the Everyday level, things look quite differently. And they might not often include open resistance, but people are oftentimes kind of dealing with the consequences of the violence of the Russian state. And maybe they're looking for ways to leave Russia or to kind of just get by in the present conditions. Or they might be looking for their sons, husbands, relatives who went to Ukraine and maybe people lost contact with them and they're not sure whether they're alive or dead. There's obviously funeral rituals that Buddhists do as well in the present context. And those are, I think that goes to certainly kind of diverge from those official narratives of wholehearted, wholesome support of religious minorities for the Russian state. And certainly in this war there has been a lot of stereotyping and a lot of racist stereotyping against Buryats specifically. So. Well, this is a very long story, but I'll try to make it short. And so ever since 2014, war in eastern Ukraine, this kind of meme or stereotype of Putin's militant Buryats emerged in Russian, whereby at that time Russia was kind of denying its presence in Eastern Ukraine and saying that it's local people who started the military action there. However, through social media, journalists were able to track specifically Buryat soldiers and their presence in those parts of Ukraine. So that was a big media story. And so then it got also picked up by the Russian propaganda. And the Russian state media also propagated this image of Buryats being the most loyal subjects of the Russian state and also some of the best soldiers, most violent, most fierce, most aggressive. And that is racial and racist stereotyping because in part it stems also from buried history and Mongol history of the Genghis Khan warriors and being a kind of fierce Asian warrior that is I think, also a kind of a flashy headline to some extent. Right. Because people are not expecting non ethnic Russians to be kind of at the forefront of the Russian war effort. And they're not necessarily at the forefront of it because Buryats constitute a very small problem proportion of the Russian military, even though it's disproportionately large for burets themselves, but it's still perhaps around 1% of the Russian army. Again, the data is not really fully there to make concrete statements about the proportion. But if they're around 1% of the Russian army, well, surely it is an over exaggeration to talk about Buryats being at the forefront of the war effort or being especially, yeah, especially fierce, especially violent. That really is based to a large extent on racist stereotyping of non ethnic Russian Soldiers. And so obviously. Well, it's easy to say that an ethnographic or an anthropology book goes to argue against stereotypes. But, yes, it is my intention to, I guess, show the complex intertwinement of the Russian state and Buryat culture and religion in contemporary Russia. Right. So it wouldn't be right to say that all Buryat or Buryat Buddhists are resisting the regime and they're anti Russian and whatnot. But it's also certainly not correct to go to the other end of the spectrum and say all Buryats are fierce supporters of the Russian regime. So my goal is certainly to show complexity and to show, yeah. Local life from a more nuanced perspective that ethnographic research enables. Yeah.
- [58:54]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And I mean, that is exactly what, as you said, ethnographic, amongst other types of research enable. And that sort of nuancing and busting of myths. Right. So that a propaganda statement isn't taken as truth. So very helpful there to add that nuance and a very useful takeaway as well for readers. So I think that's probably a good place then to end our discussion about the book, leaving me just to ask what you might be working on now that it's done. Anything on your desk you want to give us a sneak preview of?
- [59:25]
Dr. Christina Yunodita
Yes, quite early on in my new project, but I will share a little bit about it. So now I am working with Buryats and also some other indigenous populations from Siberia who left Russia. Whether it's a direct consequence of the war or to some, it is not. It is labor migration, but people who have left for Buryatia and neighboring regions for Mongolia and South Korea. And so in this research, I'm also looking at how that process of migration is shaping Buryat society and Buryat identity and I guess the kind of making and remaking of Buryat society, you know, beyond the borders of Russia and beyond the borders of the Republic of Buryatia.
- [60:25]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, that certainly sounds intriguing. And while you are pursuing that, listeners can read the book we've been talking about titled between the Buddha and the New Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia, published by Cornell University Press in 2026. Christina, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [60:45]
Dr. Christina Yunodita
Thank you for.