Religion and Nationalism in Inner Asia in the late Imperial and early Soviet Period

This thesis is devoted to the study of religion and nationalism in Inner Asia in the late Imperial and early Soviet period. In the early XX-th century new popular national and religious movements appeared in the region, such as burkhanism in the Altai and the Renovationist movement in Buryatia and Mongolia, whose supporters stated the need to either completely get rid of the stale rituals and to introduce new ones. Thesis of this work is: heterogeneous preconditions of the mentioned movements combined with their conflicts with Imperial policy show the need for a comprehensive study of the relationships and development of religion and nationalism in these movements. One of the main objectives of this work is to show and correctly identify the emergence of new religious and national movements in the region. Another objective is to show how the government of the Russian Empire and the RSFSR perceived these phenomena and how has their vision changed afterwards. One of the most important findings of the study is that the new religious and ethnic movements (such as Renovationism, burkhanism and theocratic movement) should not just be included in the context of modernization and revolution, but theories of postcolonialism and nationalism for the correct understanding of the situation should be used. The source critics part of this work is devoted to the analysis of concepts in various sources (such as, for example, correspondence from local members of the Comintern to the centre or notes of the ethnographers), to the study of the own terms of these regions and the official terms of the legislation, and to the search of national discourse. The work concludes that religion in all mentioned cases is closely linked to nationalism, and was more familiar to the masses than purely national or socialist ideas.