Bel'kova A.A. Public policy in the post-Soviet Buryatia: if Russian, then Orthodox

Abstract: This work analyzes the public policy in the post-Soviet Buryatia in the sphere of religion. Focusing on the cooperation of the Russian Orthodox Church and the government, the author examines how the notions of “Russian” and “Orthodox” fuse into one on the level of public policy. The focus is made on the processes that allow the Russian Orthodox Church to directly affect the political decisions on behalf of a large ethnic group. The author researches how the Orthodoxy – in the process of active transformation of the confessional field of the republic after the collapse of the USSR – received the status of traditional religion. The new institutional approach allowed studying the normative system of unification of Russian and Orthodox population of Buryatia within the framework of public policy. The author concludes that in the end, this phenomenon reflected in a system of norms that shifted between formal and informal scheme. In any of the cases throughout the entire post-Soviet period this normative system defined the public policy in the sphere of religion. The gradual inclusion of the Russian Orthodox Church into the political process served as a cause for granting this religious organization the status of an independent social organization, which represents the interests of the Russian population of this region.  

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