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Paper abstract:

What was Soviet or socialist in the election processes for the people`s councils in the Kyrgyz countryside in the 1920s? It was not only a rhetorical question to answer but also the reality in which Soviet official workers found themselves while trying to implement sovietization policies in the Kyrgyz society in the 1920s. Focusing on the elections to rural soviets in Kyrgyzstan in the second half of the 1920s, I argue that despite the elimination of traditional clan chieftains, called manaps, the new regime could not fully control the electoral processes as it wished. The Kyrgyz society was organized along the lineages where traditionally strong kinship groups dominated local political and economic matters. So, when the Soviet regime introduced universal suffrage, these powerful lineages became dominant in the elections to the local level people’s councils. More importantly, the electoral process reflected preexisting local power contestation in the Kyrgyz nomadic settings rather than Soviet authorities’ anticipated struggle along the class lines. Despite the Soviet state’s attempts to extend its legal rule in the Kyrgyz countryside, the indigenous rules of power and subordination decided the outcome of the electoral process. Thus, borrowing insights from the “legal pluralism” research, which conceptualizes how the multiple overlapping assertions of authority (state and non-state) interplay with each other in the imperial contexts, I suggest looking at the meeting of Bolshevik electoral order and Kyrgyz traditional nomadic authority in the 1920s as an example of “legal pluralism” in the Soviet Central Asian context.

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Paper abstract:

Throughout its long history, Buddhism has been greatly influenced by historical, political, and cultural events and circumstances wherever it has spread and been promulgated. Russia is a good example. Despite periods of turbulence in Russian history, Buddhism has managed to establish deep roots in Russian culture. Moreover, until recently, there was talk of a revival of Buddhism there—especially in the Buddhist Republic of Kalmykia.

The institution of shajin lama (Kalm. Хальмг таңһчин Шаҗн лам) played a significant role for the revival of Buddhism in Kalmykia and Russia. It was formed after the liquidation of the Kalmyk Khanate as part of the state system of the Russian Empire. During the imperial period, a candidate was appointed to the post of shajin lama by order of the imperial administration. In the 1920s, the position became elective, during the period of repressions against the Kalmyk clergy it was liquidated, and again restored in the early 1990s.

The list of shajin lamas includes twenty supreme lamas of the Kalmyk people, starting with the prominent Oirat Buddhist scholar Zaya Pandita (1599-1662) who was taking this position for twenty-three years (1639-1662). In 1992, Telo Tulku Rinpoche (Erdne Ombadykow) was approved as shajin lama by the Extraordinary Conference of Buddhists of Kalmykia and the Astrakhan Region. On 29 January 2023, he announced his resignation in response to being added to the Russian government’s list of “foreign agents”, as a result of his speaking out against Russia’s war in Ukraine. After him, the title was taken by Mutul Ovyanov, who is the current supreme lama of the Kalmyk people.

Among the twenty shajin lamas, Telo Tulku Rinpoche, who is also an honorary representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Russia, Mongolia, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, has a greatest contribution to the Buddhist revival in the region. He is the longest-serving shajin lama of the Kalmyk people and one of the most influential Buddhist teachers of our time.

The paper will examine the institution of shajin lama from historical perspective and will focus on the achievements of Telo Tulku Rinpoche over the period of 30 years (1992-2023) as a significant sign of the revival of Buddhism in Russia.

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Paper abstract:

Soviet literary studies, Kyrgyz, and overseas contemporary scholars, such as Abdildajan Akmataliev, Layly Ukubaeva, James Mozur, Rashmi Doraiswamy, and Iraj Bashiri write about the different aspects of Aitmatov’s life and his prose.

However, these works have not sufficiently addressed the specifics of the relationship between the writer and his native readership, culture, and society at various stages of his oeuvre. The main principles of post-colonial methodology in literature, especially the theories of hybridity and mimicry and imagined community, give a scientifically reliable base to analyze and systematize the information and research emerging in post-Soviet times. As a result, it is evident that the Russian culture takes the central position and that the Kyrgyz ethos is on the periphery in the context of Aitmatov's ethnic identity. The primary purpose of the research is the thorough

exploration and analysis of added resources about the national identity of the most prominent Kyrgyz writer, Chingiz Aitmatov, and the question to which nation he experiences “deep, horizontal comradeship.” Specifically, in the project, the focus will be on the initial stages of Aitmatov's oeuvre and the socio-political, and cultural situation in

the Soviet Union in the 50-the 60s in the context of Kyrgyz literature as part of the Soviet literature. The main argument of the paper is that Chingiz Aitmatov as an individual and as a writer acts in the Russian imagined community and his Kyrgyz imagined community is a creation of Soviet propaganda.

In conclusion, this project, by carefully examining Aitmatov's approach toward the Kyrgyz culture, sheds new light on the rarely acknowledged issue of the

the hybridity of the writer's personality, oeuvre, and its reception abroad.

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Paper abstract:

In the proposed study, the author explores the phenomenon of national identity policy and state-building process in the Republic of Dagestan within the Russian Federation, which is the most diverse from an ethnic point of view: more than 18 nationalities are officially recognised as nations here and 14 languages, including Russian, have official status: newspapers are printed on them, television and radio programs are conducted, and culture and creativity are developed.

With its Turko-Persian name, which emerged in the 16 Century and means “land of mountains”, Dagestan differs from other national entities in Russia and the former Soviet Union in having geographical rather than ethnic designation. Its autonomy is based not one or two name-giving nationalities, as in the case of other republics, but on multitude of autochthonous ethnicities. The ethnic diversity creates a Babel-like tangle of languages in a dense patchwork identities.

The identity of Dagestan, in turn, was made up of several factors, such as a common religious heritage, the multinational composition of the region, its relationship with Moscow, as well as the ideological foundations for the elite of the republic (which has always consisted mainly of Avars and Dargins) in an attempt to prove, or vice versa delimit the consolidation of the peoples of Dagestan. In the presented study, the author makes a phenomenal conclusion that, despite the diversity of ethnic groups, which, nevertheless, are united by a common religion, which should play the role of an ethno-confessional mobiliser, despite the presence of alternative figures of public opinion in the form of imams and sports champions with low confidence in official institutions of power on the ground, and despite the use of a single language of interethnic communication, which is associated with the metropolis in the form of Moscow, Dagestan and Dagestanis have not yet formed a solid basis for self-identification. The failure of the policy of building a general Dagestani project is expressed, first, in the fact that the strongest catalysts for ethno-social mobilisation in the republic is the opposition of Dagestanis with others (residents of Moscow, immigrants from neighbouring republics or tourists), while in normal times the identity markers are the community or village from which the respondents originate.