The Altargana’s Roots Run Deep: Buryats between Russia, Mongolia, and China ebook

Permission is granted for usage of the publication The Altargana’s Roots Run Deep: Buryats between Russia, Mongolia, and China. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) under the condition that this licensing information appear and that copyright ownership is attributed to Ewa Nowicka as well as Collegium Civitas. The text of this license is available at the following URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.pl.

Academic reviewer: Dariusz Niedźwiedzki, Jagiellonian University

Translation, copyediting, and proofreading: Annamaria Orla-Bukowska

Consultations and transliteration from Russian and Buryat: Ayur Zhanaev

General editor for the English edition: Klaudia Wójcik

Typography, typesetting, and additional editing:Marek W. Gawron

Cover design: Aleksandra Jaworowska, [email protected]

Cover photograph: Buryat woman in traditional dress, author’s collection (Ulan-Ude, 2012)

This publication is a translation of the book, Korzenie ałtargany sięgają głęboko: Buriaci między Rosją, Mongolią i Chinami by Ewa Nowicka, published in 2016 by the Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos publishing house based in Kraków.

General editor for the Polish edition: Anna Grochowska-Piróg

The publication of this volume has been co-financed by a subsidy from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Poland) under the auspices of the Excellent Science II – Support for scientific monographs program, grant number MONOG/SN/0020/2023/01.

The research, the results of which are presented in this book, was funded by the National Science Centre (Poland) under decision number DRC-2011/03/B/HS6/01671. 

e-ISBN: 978-83-66386-52-5

DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.27852564

Publisher:Collegium Civitas

Ministry of Education and Science Identification Number:19800

Palace of Culture and Science, 12th floor, 00-901 Warsaw, plac Defilad 1

phone: +48 500 807 895  |  e-mail: [email protected]  |  http://www.civitas.edu.pl

Table of contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I. The Social Spaces for Building a National Community

Chapter 1. Language as a Determinant of Buryat Ethnic Identity

Introduction

The Buryat language – A history

The Buryat language as a cultural value

Problems with the ethnic language

Language in the educational system

Mastery of the language: Dialect and identity

Foreseeing the future of the Buryat language

Collapse or development?

Summary

Chapter 2. Historical Narratives of Contemporary Buryats

Introduction

The Buryat intelligentsia – Building an appropriate historical narrative

The Huns

Genghis Khan and his era

The Soviet era

Post-Soviet times

Summary

Chapter 3. Religion as a Determinant of Buryat Ethnic Identity

Introduction

Buryat Buddhism

Connections between Buddhism and shamanism

The relationship between religion and the ethnos

Christianity – A non-Buryat religion

Summary: Buddhism and shamanism as the foundation for maintaining Buryat tradition

Part II. Creating a National Canon

Chapter 4. New Means of Cultural Transmission: Festivals, Shows, and Public Events

Introduction

Tradition and creation

Geseriada

Yord Games

The Yokhor Night

Summary

Chapter 5. The Altargana

Introduction

Altargana: Plant and symbol

The history of the Altargana festival

The Altargana Festival in Aginskoe (2012)

The 20th anniversary of the Altargana (Dadal 2014)

Summary

Chapter 6. Preserving Tradition and Identity

Introduction

Physical and cultural identity

What is Buryat tradition in the contemporary world?

Methods of preserving tradition

Tolerance, multiethnicity, interethnicity, interreligiosity, and internationalism

Tradition found, invented, and created

Chances for the development of the Buryat nation

Summary

Part III. Between Russia, Mongolia, and China: Buryats facing 21st century challenges

Chapter 7. Transborder Life: Connections within Ethnic Buryatia

Introduction

Buryats in Mongolia and China

Ideological returns to the Mongolian homeland

Cultural connections with Mongolia

Mutual perceptions

Return migrations to ethnic Buryatia

Historical differences

Russia and Mongolia from a Buryat perspective

Summary: New circumstances, new perspectives

Bibliography

Illustrations

Collegium Civitas Publications

Footnotes

Preface

Occasionally, an anthropologist will be drawn to return, time and time again, to the same place. It does happen that, over the course of years, a desire to more deeply explore one and the same community will pull the anthropologist back. This was the case with Margaret Mead (2001) as well as Sergei Ariutiunov (1969). Yet, as time passes, both the society under study and the researcher change. The latter yields to the vicissitudes stemming from successive contacts, new information, and pensive reflections upon the former, as well as from external factors that are nevertheless relevant to the fieldwork. The anthropologist reads the accumulating literature but also interacts with increasing numbers of groups and individuals within the community. Further, he or she also becomes familiar with publications regarding many a different topic and intermingles with people who are not the focus of the research at hand. All of this contributes to inevitable shifts in the anthropologist him- or herself.

Such is the situation in which this book came to be. It was already in 1993 that Buryat society became a subject of my interest, and the following year, in 1994, I undertook fieldwork in the Republic of Buryatia. In 2000 and then again in 2020, my research also encompassed another part of ethnic Buryatia (territory traditionally inhabited by this group), the Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug (also known as Ust-Orda Buryatia). Subsequent years led me to return and explore more of the Buryat homeland. In 2012 I focused on Ulan-Ude and the surrounding area in the Republic of Buryatia as well as the Dul’durga and Aga Districts of the Aga Buryat Okrug (also known as Aga Buryatia); in 2013 I again concentrated on Ulan-Ude, but also the Barguzin and Kurumkan Districts of the Republic, the Aga and Mogoitui Districts of the Aga Buryat Okrug, and the Khentii Aimag of Mongolia. My aim was thus to cover areas of Buryatia previously unknown to me, especially Aga Buryatia which holds a unique place in Buryat thinking about identity. Buryat interlocutors from various lands have made reference to cultural practices in the Aga District as a model of Buryatness. That district – treated as a stronghold of ethnic culture – is generally considered the place where the language has been more purely and perfectly preserved.

Long term research, speckled across time and space, inspires deeper reflection upon findings that lend themselves to comparison as they stem from different circumstances. It also introduces qualms about the accuracy of descriptions and assessments while changes are taking place in the society under study as well as in the researcher him or herself. Nevertheless, for the social scientist conducting the longitudinal study of a single society, there is an irresistible need to record precisely those changes; a dynamic perspective is part and parcel of such a study in every moment, in every place. Such was the case with Caroline Humphrey who began doctoral fieldwork in Buryatia in 1967, returning there in the 1990s. As a very young student of anthropology, she had come across Bayangol, a Buryat village in the Barguzin District, in the northern part of the Republic of Buryatia; nearly a quarter century later she revisited. Such has been the case with me and my relationship with this same group. After my initial fieldwork in 1993-1994, I returned to ethnic Buryatia after six years (2000), then another decade later (2010), and then for three consecutive summers (2012-2014).

Arriving there for the first time, I had already accomplished much research, and had written numerous publications on various aspects of cultural difference and the us-them divide; I had conducted fieldwork among ethnic and/or religious minorities in Poland as well as racial minorities in the United States. Despite all that and my fluency in Russian, my knowledge of Russia itself and Siberia in particular was rather unexceptional. A perspective shaped by earlier-completed research and readings led me to view the Buryats as a conquered, colonized minority, weak within the multicultural (by some measures) Russian Federation – a country betraying in all periods and versions of its existence the dominance of a single ethnos and culture self-perceived as higher, civilizational, and worth emulating. This was indubitably associated with a Polish outlook on political history and world society, one especially anchored in a tradition of fighting for one’s national identity and civic autonomy. It is eminently clear to me that my breaking free of this perspective would be impossible. Hence it will be through such a prism that I will be looking at the (changing) Buryat reality, differently than social scientists from other social milieux – such as the British one to which Caroline Humphrey belongs. If in writing this book I am able to consciously identify in my descriptions and interpretations, the peculiarities of my viewpoint upon the Buryats (in the 1990s and contemporaneously), then I will consider this a success.

The conditions under which this fieldwork was done were, in my case, ever more well-appointed. By meeting and getting to know Buryats in academic circles in Buryatia I gained contacts within various administrations, regions, and villages. Inside the Russian Federation, this is an ideal means of gaining all manner of assistance. Closer contacts and friendships were often pivotal in chances to be hosted directly in the homes of my informants, people introducing me to the details of their lives and world of meanings.

An effect of these circumstances is that my fieldwork situation was the reverse of that described by Edward Evans-Pritchard (1967) who complained that the subjects of his research demonstrated an ostentatious reluctance towards him. They did not permit him to live within the village as a result of which he was unable to gain even a single, consistent informer. The local people were disinclined to answer his questions, interfered in any longer exchange with a single interviewee on a single subject, always came in a larger group, and treated the anthropologist’s things as if their own. Deliberately playing tricks on him, they deceived Evans-Pritchard by providing false information one day, correcting it the next, and all the while laughing at his naïveté.

Still, it cannot be said about the Buryats that they were exceptionally easy and extremely garrulous as Caroline Humphrey (2010: 19) described her experience in India: “The place where it was easiest to do fieldwork was India because in India – at least in Jaipur where I was looking into Jainism – people are incredibly talkative. You only have to sit down with a cup of tea and that’s all it takes! Five hours go by and you don’t have to ask any questions: people just talk.” On the one hand, such loquacity (which can be burdensome) was rarely encountered in Buryatia, but this was due to a bit of restraint and distinctions made among all their social and territorial groupings. On the other hand, in contrast to the unpleasantness and difficulties with which Evans-Pritchard struggled, Buryats generally showed a deep interest in my research, addressing me with words of kindness and even gratitude.

Here it is I who is moved to express words of the deepest appreciation with regards to all those who offered their assistance, spared me their time, and made every effort to facilitate my information-gathering about past and present events, the lives of village societies, and about their beliefs, views, and meanings. My thankfulness goes to all those whose names and surnames are too numerous to list, but who are preserved and presented herein as (regrettably) anonymized, soulless codes indicating the date and number of the interview, referencing direct quotes drawn from interviews and conversations.

There are, nonetheless, a few people whom it behooves me to thank personally. Among them, a person very close to me – Tuyana Tsyrenovna Dugarova – who generously assisted in all formal and informal tasks arising over the course of my final, three-year fieldwork, its organization and execution in both Ulan-Ude and the Aga Buryat Okrug. Thanks to her knowledge of the Buryat community across large areas of the Republic of Buryatia and the Aga District, the outcome of my research was rich and fruitful.

The second person to whom I must express my gratitude by name is Ayur Zhanaev, my “cultural gatekeeper.” He assisted at each stage of my research – unveiling many a nuance of traditional life, shedding light on identity issues among the younger Buryat intelligentsia, and introducing me to the subtle intricacies of the Buryat mindset and character. Only thanks to our long, close, and intense collaboration was I able to penetrate the situation of the contemporary Buryat nation so profoundly. It was also Zhanaev who facilitated many of my trips and interviews, and also provided professional consultations as I prepared the contents of this volume. As Evans-Pritchard said regarding relationships with respondents, what matters is not only the duration of contact, but above all its intensity. It was the magnitude of my relationships with Dugarova, Zhanaev, and several other, friendly and kind individuals that provided me with the deepest insight into the affairs of Buryat society.

My gratitude also goes out to Dulgar Poskhodieva and her family. Thanks to her hospitality and care, I was afforded the opportunity to delve into various aspects of the past and present of Buryat inhabitants of the Barguzin and Kurumkan districts – including the village of Bayangol, made famous by Caroline Humphrey’s early works. During field research, I was also provided with much practical assistance by employees of the district and local administrations in Aginskoe, Dul’durga, Mogoitui, Kizhinga, Bayangol, Kurumkan, and many villages along the Onon River.

Also deserving of recognition are my tireless fieldwork companions – particularly those engaged in the last phase which yielded most of the empirical material presented in this book: Blanka Rzewuska (2012) and Wojciech Połeć (2013 and 2014). Spontaneous conversations and discussions while we were still in the field sparked my imagination and enriched subsequent interpretations of data. Finally, I would like to express my thanks to my friend, Stanisław Zapaśnik: over a quarter of a century ago, he introduced me to the subject of Buryatia (then quite new to me) and encouraged me to deal with its people.

Introduction

The altargana (pygmy caragana, Caragana pygmaea) is an unassuming and thorny shrub, native to the Eurasian Steppe, which blossoms with small yellow flowers in the spring. Indeed, its Buryat name, altargana refers (like its Russian appellation, zolotarnik) to the golden color of the twigs and flowers. With its very deep roots, the caragana is extremely resistant to both drought and frost, and can thus survive under the most difficult climatic conditions. Quite appropriately, this plant has acquired symbolic meaning in contemporary Buryat culture, conveying, too, the goals of Buryat elites who have taken up actions on behalf of their nation.

The primary aim herein is to shed light on the implementation of such activities – the processes and mechanisms by which the national identity of Buryats (their homeland split by state borders, their diaspora scattered far and wide across Russia, Mongolia, and China) has been shaped under contemporary social conditions and within international political systems. The volume at hand constitutes an attempt to analyze 21st century transformations in the functioning of the Buryat ethnos as both an imagined (Anderson 2016) and conscious (Obrębski 1936; Znaniecki 1952; Ossowski 1984) community. Examined more closely is the process by which new symbols are born, how their denotations change, and how they are interwoven into a new whole – all while seismic shifts are taking place in the world around them. The contemporary cultural reality of Buryats has been brimming over with revivals of old, extinct or partially abandoned symbols which have gained new meaning in dynamically changing social, economic, and political contexts.

It is obvious that, precisely in times of crisis, more intense interpersonal communication (which must be based on shared meanings) is essential (cf. Stolte et al. 2001). At present, socioeconomic change in Buryatia is gaining momentum: transformed are property rules, the social structure, economic marketization, the development of activization, mass media usage (including the internet), and the consumption of the ubiquitous products of pop culture. Hence I reject the assertion, or rather tacit assumption of many an ethnographer, journalist or columnist seeking the “true” tradition, that what is observed in Siberia today is the decline and degradation of authentic, time-honored practices. As Łukasz Smyrski, who deals with other regions of Siberia, writes, typical among ethnographers is a claim that “modern culture is but a poor imitation, an ‘artificial’ tradition imitating old, long-buried customs” (2008: 6).

Taken for granted in my research is that everything that happens in a society, everything that is found in interpersonal relations or the cultural mindset is, in effect, authentic for the simple reason that it exists as an established social fact – i.e., all these are elements of a specific social reality that is empirically experienced, externally observable, and evidently practiced by group members. Therefore, I will not be seeking some arbitrarily understood “truths” in the words of my interlocutors; I will not be making distinctions about (in)accuracies which have been accepted or rejected by scholars. Of actual interest to me is the holistic reality experienced and created by people I observed and especially those with whom I conversed.

Naturally, the practicing of a culture is not the only measure of its authenticity. As genuine as the Irkutsk Buryat dance described by a 19th century German researcher is the 21st century yokhor performed as part of an ethnic festival well-planned and organized by specialized ethnographers, musicologists, and event coordinators. A present-day social movement – even one institutionally anchored – is as qualitatively a social fact as the cultural forms transmitted orally in 19th century Buryat society. At the same time, no doubts are harbored about the fact that the customs, rituals, and artistic forms of the culture – today considered quintessentially Buryat – are, alongside the national symbols (i.e., the flag, anthem, etc.) and collective memory, the result of conscious and purposeful efforts made by the Buryat intellectual, political elite. In this sense, we speak of an “invented tradition” (Hobsbawm, Ranger 1983) and constructed ethnicity (Smith 1986). Again, however, attention is drawn here, not to some unspecified authenticity, but precisely the ways that Buryatness is invented or constructed today. A hope is that the contents of this book will render at least one Buryat intellectual’s dream more lucid. That visionary interlocutor (a youth organization activist of the middle generation) spoke of Buryat men, sitting in their Buryat clothing and discussing in the Buryat language, the businesses that have brought them millions: “My dream is to create a Buryat who will be spiritually rich and will be spiritually developed, and will know his language and culture, will have his own personality, but, at the same time, be successful in the modern world” (13, 71003).1

I recall the reflections of John Stolte and his coauthors on sociological miniaturism (cf. Stolte et al. 2001), finding their assumptions essential to ethnographic research as well. When studying a society, we must also assume that its individual members are not completely (or even to a slight degree) autonomous; much of who they are is ultimately determined by institutions and more sweeping phenomena. At the same time, we must not be blind to the ofttimes even idiosyncratic diversity within a culture, limiting a scholar’s generalizations about what is individual and what is social.

During fieldwork, there is constant transcription from the micro to the macro level and vice versa. For example, the national symbolism examined in this book exists at the level of individual attitudes, but also of institutional phenomena. And yet the latter – found at the end of the observation chain – are inevitably and ultimately found in the distinct attitudes of specific people. On the one hand, there are those with the power and ability to make political decisions regarding the use and shape of specific symbols; on the other hand, there are the addressees of these symbols. The network of meanings stretches between the macro and micro, continuously expressing itself on both levels.

Congruent with my line of reasoning and research experience, I am an advocate of miniaturism as a methodology, but rather seen as multipoint and socially dispersed. A consequence is the study of various fragments of a social reality – on a smaller scale, but capable of reaching different social spaces, especially the key, nodal social points. This is not a matter of simply territorial multilocality, but rather about reaching into various places in the horizontal and vertical social structures and culturally diverse parts of society. From a single case study, we can (in a certain way and to a certain extent) draw conclusions about other cases – although, in truth, this is a reflex action, not to be applied mechanically and universally. An explication in the Geertzian sense requires an understanding of the context, meaning the multiplicity of factors that determine the narratives embodied in individual statements, published documents, and individual or collective behavior (including public events, carefully planned by specific social circles). I therefore intend to trace what could be seen as a guidebook to narratives – a handbook presenting a broader system of everyday as well as ceremonial knowledge and beliefs.

Conducting my observation of Buryat reality in the first decades of the 21st century, I have done so more unconcernedly and casually, my attention drawn to specific pieces of this society. I carried out research in several villages across a widespread territory and conversed with people seen as possessing cultural and social competencies significant to my study. In our discussions, these interlocutors articulated components of the Buryat world, expressing their views and positions on various matters. At the heart of such exploration are always distinct, small groups within which those specific nodal points can be identified on the basis of knowledge gathered through dialogue and interview.

The range of my investigation included not only individuals with whom interactions were planned, but also random people through unplanned interactions: someone met in a shop, on the street, by the river, at a bus stop, or on a train. Such contacts provided me with a mass of diffused and scattered pieces of data from the field. Each was certainly minute in scope, but, arranged altogether on the table, the resulting puzzle unveiled a relatively complete image of this society. A culture changes over the course of a study, hence the image can change from week to week, day to day, or even minute to minute. These dynamics are a beneficial aspect of multi-wave, multi-point, and multi-site fieldwork which centers on the smallest of details. Ultimately, the outcome is a holistic picture of what is called Buryat society.

The work at hand fits into the scheme of reflexive anthropology broadly understood. My aim is not to apply some general rules in order to explain things, but rather to understand this culture. I agree with Clifford Geertz (1973: 311) that “It is explication that I am after, construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical.” However, towards the end of his groundbreaking essay, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” Geertz goes (in my opinion) too far, claiming “that a Beethoven quartet is a temporally developed tonal structure, a coherent sequence of musical sound – in a word, music – and not anybody’s knowledge or belief about anything” (1973: 322). To my mind, Beethoven’s musical composition entails a permanent, written musical structure, performance(s) thereof, as well as the historically and geographically diverse ways of how it has been experienced and understood by musicians and listeners. Coming to mind here is Stanisław Ossowski’s (1966) classic reflection on a divide between cultural phenomena and the material correlates of culture.

It is further my aim to reach into the interconnections, networks, and other configurations of meaning that surface in interpersonal relations, yet with reference to the outside world, within contemporary Buryat society. The material gathered for analysis always and everywhere encompasses observations of concrete signs of those meanings – sometimes diversified, sometimes homogenous, sometimes contradicting themselves, sometimes quite logical. I will also maintain a sense of self-awareness, analyzing my own experiences and not remaining oblivious to the consequences of highly pleasant events at the lowest level of generalization in the relationship between the researcher and his or her subject (cf. Kabzińska 2013). The emerging emotional connections, feelings of sympathy or antipathy, and sense of mutual understanding or misunderstanding between the researcher and the research participants (particularly considering sundry aspects of the power relationship created during fieldwork) have been long recognized as an actual component of anthropological research. All these components of the research process will be taken into account in my final deliberations.

I will not be neglecting the autoethnographic approach dear to me. Undoubtedly, my persona as a social scientist from Poland, from Europe, from a European Union country belonging to NATO and yet once partly within the Russian Empire and then wholly within the Soviet sphere of influence after World War II, has never been crystal clear in Buryatia. Who I am foremostly in the eyes of my interlocutors in the field has an enormous impact on their reactions to me and, thus, to my understanding of their lives. Furthermore, who I am greatly determines the scope and the ways by which I understand this group. Preliminary lines of detachment are drawn simply in dividing scholars who have written on this topic into Buryats themselves and non-Buryat residents of the Russian Federation – and then segregating those in Russia from complete outsiders. Among the last mentioned, it is worth taking a closer look at differences in opinion when dividing outsiders into those from post-communist bloc countries and those from other Western countries (e.g., North America or Western Europe). With no plans for detailed investigation into disparities, I only note here a need for such in the future.

Another matter to bear in mind is the question of whether we actually have (or, perhaps more accurately, how much we have) access to the experiences of others. This is another issue that will not be resolved herein, and yet the uncertainty does not entirely absolve the social scientist of reflection upon a process which could be described as an enquiry into one’s own knowledge. It is necessary to look, too, into how anthropology copes with this process which is seen, above all, as an analysis of the narratives of a culture’s members, treated as a pathway to understanding that culture.

The narrative is therefore seen as a kind of intermediary between a culture, the lives of its representatives, and the researcher. Our own communication within our own culture or between cultures takes place via symbolic language – that is, through a verbal relationship, through a story. Thus an anthropologist is also an intermediary between the people under study and the people reading the final analysis. I shy away from the concept of the cultural “informant” (as found in traditional anthropological realism) who is notionally a coauthor of the scholar’s writings. It is the social scientist who selects, interprets, and constructs the ethnographic story; it is the anthropologist who is responsible for the final treatise. That said, however, the researcher and the researched do (inasmuch as they can) negotiate meanings, yielding a work that is ultimately published only under the scholar’s name.

After decades of anthropological fieldwork among various cultures, spread far and wide, I have acquired a disinclination (typical of social anthropologists in general, but expressly verbalized today) to formulate generalized theories to be applied in future analyses of material gathered during fieldwork. Naturally, every researcher in the field will be influenced by certain sweeping ideas, but these are not the subject of anthropological study or analysis. More aligned with my approach is Victor Turner’s (1975: 23) observation that,

Although we take theories into the field with us, these become relevant only if and when they illuminate social reality. Moreover, we tend to find very frequently that it is not a theorist’s whole system which so illuminates, but his scattered ideas, his flashes of insight taken out of systemic context and applied to scattered data. [….] The intuitions, not the tissue of logic connecting them, are what tend to survive in the field experience.

It is these moments of inspiration which lead to the unveiling of the connections between isolated facts observed in the field and new hypotheses. The process of such anthropological research is obvious and will naturally lead to deduction: first observations, then construction of general assertions. Of course, this does not mean that the anthropologist takes up fieldwork with no knowledge of general concepts and entire theories, but that it is only the data collected among the people whose society is under study that imbues theoretical statements with true meaning.

The research described herein pertained, above all, to individuals – their responses and their behavior. Yet speaking about a group, society, or culture on the basis of a study of individuals gives rise to further reflection: the individual cannot, of course, substitute for the group. Nevertheless, each (even the least standard, least typical, and most unique) individual is representative of the group and essentially significant in its imaging. It is clear that we cannot learn more about a group than by studying its particular members. The parallels between individual and group behavior are, nonetheless, a delicate matter which should not be presumed from the outset. Therefore, it is with equal attention that I set about observing the relations between people forming the community; such observations have included both ordinary, daily contacts as well as holiday, ceremonial, and ritual occasions in the eyes of my interviewees.

An objective (likely unattainable, not fully achieved) is to understand the logic of events, processes, and phenomena – the fragments of which we, anthropologists, are capable of discerning in the field. From these scraps of information, observations, feelings, and our own impressions – sometimes consulted and negotiated with members of the community and sometimes with other researchers – we strive to construct a transparent, clear, and comprehensible image. However, the question remains whether that image is legible only for the social scientist (and/or peers) or also for the community under study itself, its (selected) participants.

My analyses, therefore, are also in line with symbolic interactionism broadly understood. In this case, participants in an interaction are 1) members of the ethnic group in contact with each other, 2) members of this group in contact with a strange, outsider milieu, and 3) members of the ethnic group in contact with an ethnically foreign researcher. All these different participants and partners, “engage one another in discourse to construct a ‘bundle of narratives’ (‘stories’) regarding their social movement” (Stolte et al. 2001: 395). This kind of social movement is not at all of an institutional nature, but is built upon community-based ideas and activities. Some people are clear about their identification with a specific ethnic group, but also know that there are other groups found in an identical or similar position. They realize that there are various external observers around: near strangers (e.g., neighbors, fellow citizens, etc.), as well as distant, complete outsiders, who, in contact with the group under study, do also contribute to its imaging (something that is by no means irrelevant for the group). Thinking in terms of reference groups, we can say that those include one’s own group (i.e., persons considered members), the near strangers with whom contact is daily or as necessary, and the distant strangers.

In line with the rhetoric, or rather phraseology of contemporary social sciences, the title of this book should read, The Birth and Perseverance of Buryat Nationalism. Nevertheless, conscious of the connotations that the concept of nationalism bears in Polish and other languages, I will be – despite the toughest and (I assume) sincerest intentions of academia – avoiding that term like the proverbial plague. A guiding principle in my work has been that a sociologist, in using (even the most en vogue) language, must remain acutely aware of the social, political, and, therefore, ethical consequences (conceivably) incurred by certain words.

Michael Herzfeld (2016: 145-155) called nationalism a “cosmology” – pointing to the broadest possible references the term evokes in descriptions of the building of social ties. Herein, though, I will refer to the formation of bonds on a scale broader than the local, in categories of a supra-local or supra-regional (sometimes labelled “supra-tribal”) community. Ultimately, however, community-building of a higher level is as universal a phenomenon as moves towards local separatism. Both tendencies exist simultaneously although sometimes the former and sometimes the latter dominates. Shifts along that spectrum are connected with political game-playing – be that momentary and incidental, or long-term and wide-ranging.

In fact, this book deals with a period of intense and turbulent dynamics playing out across the Buryat homelands. During this historical turning point, Buryat cultural reality has been brimming with the revival of ancient symbols which take on new meaning in the shifting social, economic, and political context. Indeed, the decades at the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries have entailed a deep and substantial, economic, sociolegal, and cultural transformation.

Particularly the economic aspect has been critical with changes in the system of ownership which have, in turn, led to the establishment of individual and cooperative herding. Economic changes have also introduced a free market economy, (re)privatization of land and other goods, and new management systems – all aimed at increasing the social participation of citizens and NGOs. Inasmuch as this seems very well-defined and unidirectional, management changes at all levels (concurrent with reforms being introduced) are not so focused and unequivocal (but also not to be unheeded).

Territorially, of interest to me since the beginning of the 21st century has been the entirety of ethnic Buryatia, encompassing those areas of the Russian Federation, Mongolia, and China (Inner Mongolia) inhabited by Buryats. Within the Russian Federation these include three administrative units qualified as Buryat: the Republic of Buryatia plus the Dul’durga and Aga Districts of the Aga Buryat Okrug. More tightly focused on western Buryats in the Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug (Irkutsk Oblast) was a cowritten volume (cf. Głowacka-Grajper, Nowicka, Połeć 2013), based upon our research in 2000 and 2010. Although I will sporadically refer to material discussed in that publication, the focal point of my analysis here will be on material collected in the years 2012-2014 in the Republic of Buryatia (especially the two northern, Barguzin and Kurumkan Districts, and the most traditional, Kizhinga District), as well as Aga Buryatia.

The perspective which has guided me foremostly has been associated primarily with the minority condition of the Buryats: a stateless nation, possessing a nominal modicum of autonomy, and yet ensnared within a multinational country within which they constitute a politically, socially, economically, and territorially marginalized group – subject to the callous hegemony of Russian culture. In fact, the Russian Federation does not apply a legal definition of ethnic or national minority – a concept rejected as “demeaning” for all the numerically small nations found in the federation. And yet the minority condition construct accurately and holistically reflects the social power structure affecting the cultural development of all the non-Russian nations found in a country in which the Russian nation and culture has dwarfed the rest both historically and contemporarily (Nowicka 1989; Nowicka 2012a; Brubaker 1995). This ethnic minority situation seen from my etic perspective will turn out to be crucial from the emic perspective as well.

Since the 19th century there has been some concern among Buryat elites about the preservation of group rights; more recently that concern has chiefly pertained to the vanishing of the Buryat ethnic culture and identity. Wherefrom stems this unease, if Buryats (in the whole of the Russian Federation) are not a small population, endangered neither biologically nor culturally? Quite the contrary, they constitute a nation that is clearly distinct and relatively numerous. Still, on a countrywide scale, they are decidedly a national minority in the social sense.

According to 2010 census data, 461,389 Buryats live in the Russian Federation – 217,134 in urban areas, 244,255 in rural areas. In fact, whereas the national population decreased by 1.6%, their population has grown 3.6% in the decade since the previous census2. Evident, too, is a migration from the rural to the urban areas – something highly evident in the forceful expansion of Buryatia’s capital, Ulan-Ude in which the Buryat population is systematically growing. In their capital, the number of Buryats grew 4% from 2002 to 2012 while the Russian population in the city fell by the same percentage (Szmyt 2014). And yet rural residents are consistently a slight majority in the group, and are the principal carriers of Buryat tradition. However, during the 2002 census, 368,807 persons declared that they speak Buryat, while the 2010/11 census (published at the beginning of 2012) disclosed only 218,557 Buryat speakers – a decrease of 40.74% over eight years.3 These statistics suggest that the demographic increase in the group’s population does not protect the Buryats from an accompanying decrease in language usage.

The minority condition has shaped – in the past and continuing into the present – social conditions which have indeed situated Buryats in a permanent state of endangerment (Nowicka 1989). This relatively sizeable and autochthonous nation of eastern Siberia might lose its traditional culture and ethnonational identity, weakened over long centuries as a result of Russia’s political and civilizational dominance – as well as the more recent effects of globalization. Although their intensity has historically varied, Buryat assimilatory tendencies pushing towards Russian culture have been noticeable since the first contacts between these nations (Khilkhanov 2005). Two phenomena have always given rise to such tendencies. One is of a political nature, associated with official forms of Russian assimilation policies. The second entails spontaneous, initial attempts to acquire practical elements of Russian civilization, and later to mimic or adopt Russian culture which (for numerous and various reasons) has been considered superior. In addition to this cultural domination operating through political structures as well as other processes that introduce Buryats to world culture, albeit through a Russian prism, there is, of course, the influence of mass culture operating through (inter alia) mass media that also penetrates all spheres of Buryat life. Today the Buryat nation finds itself in a consolidatory phase, but, concurrently, faces a need to confront enormous civilizational transformations alongside the dangers stemming from the unavoidable processes pushing it towards the national majority culture. As a consequence of all these pressures, a process of disintegration has also been making itself felt in Buryat culture since the beginning of the 21st century.

Looking back, a Buryat intelligentsia was already born at the end of the 19th century. Growing over the years and educated in the Russian school system, this elite began to act culturally and politically on behalf of the interests of its own nation. On the one hand, this Buryat-Mongolian group has continued to be diversified tribally and (due to the dominance of a pastoral economy) semi-nomadic, strewn across the vast steppes. On the other, functioning on Russian territory at the beginning of the 20th century were datsans – Buddhist monastic universities, centers of both religion and culture. Preserved thereby was the continuity of written Buryat (albeit of a religious nature) penned in the Old Mongolian alphabet (Abaeva 2004). Even in tsarist times, as it is now, Buddhism has been recognized as one of four, legally functioning religions in Russia. Naturally, changes were effected after the Bolshevik revolution, leading to the creation of ethno-nationally designated republics. Thus was born, in 1923, the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

The Soviet era was, on the one hand, a period in which ethnic groups were formally and officially recognized as separate legal entities, tethered to the territorial units assigned to them. On the other hand, uniform patterns were sometimes worked out for everyone – that is, for all constituents of all the culturally diverse nations inhabiting the country. “The Soviet nation was to be a political community, and the identification of its members was not to be based upon ethnic affiliation, but to their attachment to the state as an institution” (Golińska 2012: 10). Leonid Brezhnev said: “Our compatriots, regardless of their national affiliation, have many shared features that unite them into a single, coherent whole. These are an ideological community; a community of historical events; a community of socialist-economic living standards – the fundamental interests and goals of a developing community of socialist culture that brings together the true values of each national culture” (as cited in Golińska 2012: 11). Due to the multiethnic nature of the state, internal affairs policies “had to continually balance between the maintenance of the country’s unity and permission for the autonomous development of the nations” (Golińska 2012: 11).

As Golińska (2012: 33) noted, Arkady Lipkin claimed that, on the one hand, nationalities in the Soviet Union gained the political boundaries of their republics. On the other hand, only the folk layers of a culture were cultivated. In fact, the Soviet system sought to reduce all the non-Russian nations of the USSR to the level of mere folklore or ethnography. Ethnically different societies were not permitted to become modern nations (Golińska 2012: 34; Szmyt 2013a). It was only in the early 1990s that modernization – thanks to the perestroika transformation – gained the possibility of success. Currently, that process is gaining momentum – something observable in Buryat society as well.

Many a top-down, centralized political move determined, to a large degree, the state of the culture and ethnic consciousness found in Buryatia. In fact, the early Soviet Union was marked by an eruption in the development of Buryat culture thanks to the pro-ethnic policies of this period. However, the so-called higher, Russian-language culture was always one of secondary and tertiary education, of academic careers, and of scholarly journals (Bobrownicka 2006: 215). The decline in publications in the ethnic languages of the USSR and now the Russian Federation already began as of the 1930s. Then, in 1958-1959, lessons in the ethnic languages were made elective in the ethnonational republics; this option directly resulted in decreased usage of the mother tongue and accelerated Russification.

A process relegating non-Russian languages to the role of a rural dialect spoken by the unenlightened, lower classes has been ongoing ever since. In the case at hand, progressive bilingualism has, in practice, led to changes in the pragmatic function and social position of Russian vis-à-vis the ethnic Buryat language (cf. Zajączkowski 2001: 221). As intended, ethnicity could only survive in the form of folklore and folk art. Russification at the linguistic level has continued as common practice.

Further, starting in the mid-1930s, ethnic and national differences themselves became the target of attacks and accusations. Among others, the Buryat intelligentsia was virtually eliminated as part of a planned purge during the 1937 congress of Buryat writers. Later, starting in the 1950s until the end of the USSR, a policy to develop communism by suppressing any manifestations of inimitability, separatism or nationalism began to escalate. This, too, translated into policies of assimilation into the Russian culture and nation. As a consequence of this course of political events, the depth and breadth of Buryatness suffered serious damage: the sequence of its natural development and, most importantly, its intergenerational transmission have been disrupted.

Nonetheless, the mid-1980s ushered in an ethnonational rebirth across the USSR, which is continuing in the present-day Russian Federation. A similar process has also been taking place in Mongolia which has undertaken a national policy centered on the culture of the numerically dominant Khalkha group – and, albeit indirectly, this has had a positive effect on the upholding of Buryat distinctiveness. As for China, such a phenomenon has not yet occurred and hence Buryat culture has survived there in a highly conventional, traditional form.

The most meaningful manifestation of the national revival phenomenon is the search for appropriate action-taking that could stop the slow death of Buryat culture. Perhaps pathways might be found that could even reverse the process and restore vitality to long dead and forgotten traditions. This would entail something along the lines of a nativistic movement (cf. Linton 1943), but taking on a contemporary form. The essence of such movements – a collective striving to maintain or recreate disremembered elements of a group’s culture – remains the same. Constant is talk of the preservation or revival of tradition. And yet it must be emphasized that, in the case at hand, this is not a spontaneous rebirth of tradition, but a “rebirthing” of the culture. This is not a matter of an extemporaneous event, but rather an actively undertaken endeavor directed by Buryat intelligentsia milieux to revitalize dying cultural forms or revive those already forgotten (cf. Khilkhanov 2005).

The focus in this volume is that part of Buryatia found within Russia’s borders, but similar processes are taking place in Mongolia where the largest group, however, is the Mongolian-speaking Khalkha community. As for Buryats in China’s Inner Mongolia, their position is marginalized, although they are intensifying efforts to strengthen ties with Buryats living in the other two countries. Analogous to the Russification described earlier, the Sinicization taking place there is abetted by the complete relegation of the Buryat community to the periphery of not only the masses of the Chinese state, but also other Mongolian-speaking groups in Inner Mongolia.

The trend observed within Buryatia can be treated as a manifestation of broader, global ones. Worth considering is that when Anthony Smith (1986: 8) posed a question many decades ago – “Were there, then, nations within nations waiting their moment of destiny…?” – the word “nations” bore different meanings for each different people. In the first instance, the sense is nation as an ideological extension of ethnos; in the second, the sense is that of a community of a political nature. Buryats constitute a distinct nation in both senses, striving hard to bring together all the ancestral-tribal (sometimes described as ethnic) groups (Gerasimova 2006) into a single whole – a rather effective process thus far. In Russia itself they (at least nominally) have their own republic as well as two districts, and, although these three units are not economically autonomous, the Buryat appellation appears in all of them.

In today’s multinational Russian Federation, no one (except for a few communist extremists) would consider resurrecting the idea (beggaring description) of the Soviet nation. In Russian, two distinct terms are used to describe the people of the country: rossiiane refers to inhabitants of the state; russkie refers narrowly to ethnic Russians. Thus, for example, a statement in Polish or English that Buryats are Russian is devoid of any descriptive sense, while among Buryats it might ring ironic, implying a profound level of cultural, linguistic, and intellectual Russification of the Buryat nation. Indeed, in all my years of research, I have never encountered the use of rossiiane with regards to any, even the most Russian-identifying Buryat; at worst, such individuals were simply called Russified Buryats.

Yet rather than the mechanisms by which it is lost, of interest to me are the mechanisms by which ethnonational identity4 is preserved – particularly under the conditions of changing policies in Moscow, Ulaanbaatar or Beijing. How have national and international relations been structured in the 21st century, and what has been their influence on Buryatia? In their hearts and minds, on what levels and in what ways have the Buryats envisioned themselves? And how has the outside world envisioned them?

Improbable today would be that someone would cast doubt upon the link between ethnic bonds and the formation of modern nations as explicated in the works of Adam Smith, Ernest Gellner, and Benedict Anderson. Just as unquestionable, however, is the fact that contemporary transformations in this realm are part of a process that is introducing completely different categories of thinking. The new concept of ethnicity is expanded and more top-down; it is neither habitual, natural nor mechanical, but, going against its own grain, connects to all the categories of thinking.

Appearing in Buryat literature is a distinction between the Buryat ethnic culture (associated with a social system anchored in local tribal communities) and the national culture which makes use of symbols, emotions, texts, etc., reaching beyond the imagined local, tribal or familial bonds. I will refer in my deliberations to Ksenia Gerasimova’s (2006: 27) reservations about an equating of “ethnic” with “national” with respect to Buryat culture. My fieldwork experiences confirm the crux of that distinction, but concurrently shed light on the ways by which ties at the levels of local, tribal or familial groupings are transcended in favor of the ideological community, the Buryat nation. Two Buryat scholars, Darima Boronoeva and Galina Dyrkheeva (2009: 14), set the period in which the Buryat nation was shaped: “The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th marked the end of the process of consolidating Buryats into one ethno-social community – that is, the Buryat nation.” A sense of national community is described as obvious in their volume – something that directly impacts social awareness.

Foremost in the responses of my interlocutors was discourse rooted in the categories of ancientness and the preemptive right of a nation to a specific territory considered ethnic. Therefore, both in Buryat academic scholarship as well as in non-academic conversations with Buryats, the concept of an ethnic Buryatia comes to the fore – and yet this is a geographical space wherein Buryats constitute a majority in very few settlements. In first order, only categories of anteriority, priority, and/or indigeneity could form the basis for such a conceptualization of ethnic Buryatia (cf. Trzciński 2002). However, a second category is that of a revival of tradition, but by reaching for this resource selectively. On the one hand, this cannot be called an invented tradition; on the other hand, debatable is the extent to which this can be described as a creation, compilation, and/or creative reconstruction. Nonetheless, it must be assumed that, even if a cultural element that is revived or reborn today is comprehensible only through the here and now (and not through the old, historical context in which it once functioned), it is still, in a social sense, traditional.

In this presentation of the (re)building and the functioning of tradition among Buryats nowadays, I will be applying certain ideas, distinctions, and observations proffered by Jerzy Szacki (1971). Of keen interest is what he defined as tradition, i.e., “dependence upon the past or an attachment to it” (Szacki 1971: 93). At present, in order to sustain their identity and ethnos, Buryats have adopted a tactic of preservation: they keep endangered elements from fading away and excavate from the ruins of memory those rudiments of their culture which still clearly distinguish Buryats from other peoples. Buryats seek elements that can serve as a distinguishing feature, emblem or marker; they also look for contributions to the achievements of humanity that only Buryats can have made.

The value in studying Buryatia writ large is corroborated elsewhere in Szacki (1971: 94), in words set down a long time ago: “Whenever connections between the past and present come into play, authors will be found who will speak of tradition and traditionalism.” Moreover, in perusing the various aspects via which contemporary Buryatia returns to tradition, I have found all the ways of understanding this phenomenon identified by that sociologist: how cultural goods are transmitted and transferred, what goods are available and which are subject to transfer, and, finally, what is the attitude of a given generation towards the past (e.g., is there acceptance of the legacy, is the inheritance accepted, rejected or even protested). Kept in mind, too, is that transmission need not take place directly from one generation to the next, but can skip to more distant generations. In the forthcoming chapters I will be addressing and analyzing precisely these processes.

A modern national culture is also associated with contemporary socioeconomic structures. From her perspective on ethnicity and the nation, Gerasimova sought the kernels of a national form of cultural life among Buryats at the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries, but observed that, at the beginning of the 20th century, Buryat society was still traditional and communal. I will be following the footsteps of this Buryat scholar who questions the existence of a cohesiveness in Buryat culture during the tribal period, discerning its development only in more recent times. Until a cultural homogeneity and the consciousness of a supralocal community began to materialize, one could not speak of a modern form of nationhood. Manifest for quite some time were outward signs and symbols that asserted membership in a specific tribal-familial group; religious rituals were also differentiated along the same divides. It was only the breakdown of many familial, tribal, and local factors and the onset of an all-encompassing globalization that could act as cornerstones upon which to build ethnonational bonds.

The situation in which Buryats have found themselves is forcing them to fight for the status of an autonomous nation. This is a relatively smaller nation, even in comparison with similar other ones in Europe: about two million in Slovenia, somewhat less than two million in Latvia (among whom ethnic Latvians number about 1.2 million), or the 600,000 in Montenegro. Among the autochthonous peoples of Siberia within the borders of the Russian Federation (i.e., not including Mongolia and China), Buryats are the largest (about 500,000 people), after the establishment of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) with its population of more than 400,000. Apart from the Yakuts and Buryats, another indigenous group is the Tuvans with a population of over 250,000. None of these populaces meet the requirements for classification as malochislennye natsii, “nations few in number” that, according to Russian law, qualify for various programs that protect traditional economies, provide affirmative action acceptance at state universities, and deliver various types of subsidies. Without such support, Buryats (like the Yakuts) have been forced to battle for their ethnic existence with only their own resources, making use of any and all opportunities still afforded by the Russian legal system as well as international institutions and relations.

Globally, the Buryat number not much over half a million, and this population is highly dispersed. As noted earlier, the majority lives inside the boundaries of the Russian Federation, though some enclaves are found in the northern aimags (provinces) of Mongolia and China’s Inner Mongolia. Across their traditional, native lands in 2010, there were: 438,447 Buryats. Found in the Republic itself are 286,839, in Zabaikalski Krai – 73,941 (including about 45,000 in the Aga Buryat Okrug), and in the Irkutsk Oblast – 77,667 (including about 54,000 in the Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug). In their Russian Federation diaspora, there were about 3-15,000 in Moscow and 7,000 in Yakutia, outside Russia, there were around 40-100,000. As for Mongolia, there were 45,087 Buryats tightly settled in five northern aimags (National Statistic Office of Mongolia 2020: 52); in China, roughly 10,000 live in Inner Mongolia (not including the roughly 20,000 Barga Mongols, a subgroup sometimes counted as Buryat).

Such territorial and political diffusion of a relatively small group arouses self-reflection among Buryat elites. During a 2010 interview conducted in the Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug, an elder shaman ruminated: “I do not understand why we cannot represent ourselves anywhere. After all, we live in a democratic country. But numerically there are fewer of us. We can never represent ourselves” (10, J9). The concern, dilemmas, and pain expressed in this response will also remain at the center of this volume’s attention.

The work at hand comprises three parts. The first has three chapters pertaining to spheres in which Buryatness and the means by which that is maintained are evident. I will analyze the three most important areas of Buryat culture, emerging as the most crucial from an emic perspective (i.e., what surfaces in conversations with Buryat interlocutors). These are the ethnic language, the envisioned collective history, and the religious belief system defined as Buryat.

The second encompasses three chapters illustrating the most vital forms of contemporary cultural transmission in Buryat society. These chapters will concern the means by which cultural communication takes place and how they work to uphold the ethnonational identity of a minority group. An analytical description of five ethnic festivals (to be characterized in greater detail later) will serve this chapter’s aim. The third and final part of this tome investigates the ways in which 21st century Buryats perform their identity across transnational, ethnic Buryatia: their various cultural ties, migrations to what they see as their homeland, mutual relations amongst themselves albeit across borders, historical differences, and their perspectives on their country of citizenship.

The research material used as a basis for the descriptions and analyses found herein include:

• Conversations and interviews (most often informal) with sociopolitical activists at various governmental levels (most often local and regional), cultural leaders, folklorists, journalists, shamans, teachers, persons working in regional departments of education, culture, and/or museums, folk dance group members, as well as scholars working at Buryat tertiary education or research institutions;

• The contents presented via museum exhibits and their descriptive labels as well as inscriptions on plaques, memorials, and other lieux de memoire;

• Observation (to some degree, participant-observation) during rituals, festivals, cultural events open to the public, but organized by and for the inhabitants of Buryat villages in the Kizhinga and Barguzin Districts, the Republic of Buryatia, the Aga District, as well as among Buryat families in and around the regional capital city Ulan-Ude.

My interlocutors were, quite naturally, both representatives and creators of their nation (cf. Babiński 1986) and will be treated here as such. That said (and despite the substantial number of conversations and interviews that were conducted), citations from recorded responses cannot be treated as epitomizing Buryat society as a whole. After all, the majority of the persons with whom I spoke were from an unambiguously selected group: members of the Buryat elite. All these individuals – as a natural outcome of their occupational duties and/or sense of civic duty – have undertaken certain efforts on behalf of Buryat culture and identity. Some might also see themselves as needing to act as exemplars of their ethnos. In the course of the fieldwork, it was often teachers in village schools who felt called to pass on to their pupils a tradition partially abandoned and memory of sacred and historical sites which should be honored. Members of this elite were more well-informed about local as well as international issues. Steadfast in their opinions, they possess traits which lead them to be treated as an elite at the regional, local, and Buryat levels. There were even moments when such a person insisted on a chance to speak with me (in fact, roles sometimes reversed and a person interviewed me).

Overall, the research carried out for this project entailed a series of intensive fieldwork visits (a basic methodological tool) over a longer period: not only the specific expeditions between 2010 and 2014, but also including earlier years in which numerous, informal, personal contacts were formed. However, close and long-lasting relationships with certain people can introduce all the problems and ethical dilemmas associated with an infusing of friendship into the interviewer-interviewee relationship. On the one hand, this affords the researcher deep insight into the culture of the group under study, into its world experienced emotionally and intellectually. On the other hand, it compromises the researcher’s detachment and could lead to identification with the group. Of course, this would still be identification tainted by the perspective of the anthropologist’s own culture from which one can never wholly remove oneself. And yet getting too close can hinder one’s ability to look at something coolly, distantly, using both “the microscope and the eye” (cf. Nowicka 2006). Some of the information and reflections heard or read I will keep to myself; I will not be delving into my self-imposed reflexive, emotional, and intellectual boundary.

One final qualification regarding the material which is interpreted herein: purposely omitted as a subject of analysis are many aspects of the public debates (in both Russian and Buryat) which are ongoing in internet fora, on various websites, in the press, and other mass media. This extremely rich and important source I leave to contemporary Buryat scholars, especially the youngest generation, especially those fluent in the Buryat language.

Part IThe Social Spaces for Building a National Community