Old Believers and "former" Cossacks in the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR: interaction with the Soviet government (1920s – early 1930s)

Khomyakov Sergei Vasil'evich PhD in History Junior Researcher; Institute of Mongolian Studies; Buddhology and Tibetology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences 670045, Russia, Republic of Buryatia, Ulan-Ude, Tretyakov str., 25A, sq. 29 khomyakov777@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

The policy of the Soviet government towards the Old Believers and Cossacks of Buryat Mongolia was studied mainly in terms of work on each of the communities separately. Soviet scientists of the 1920s and 1930s (A.M. Popova, A. Dolotov ^{[23, 6]}) proceeded from the obvious position of approving all measures of the Bolsheviks in relation to the Old Believers. In the post-war period, researchers (L.E. Eliasov, I.Z. Yarnevsky, G.I. Ilyina-Okhrimenko ^{[32, 19]}) switched to studying the ethnographic specifics of the Old Believers-Semey, emphasizing the successful ideologization of the community. Modern scientists (F.F. Bolonev, V.M. Pykin, S.V. Vasilyeva, S.V. Buraeva, etc. ^{[1, 26, 3]}) study this period in the life of Old Believers from the standpoint of critical analysis. As for research on the Cossacks, in the Soviet period, one can highlight a brief essay about it by F. M. Shulunov ^[31], in which identity is considered from the standpoint of the inevitable split that objectively occurred within the group on the eve of the revolutions of 1917, and the "Soviet" Cossacks of the 1930s were able to independently and successfully get rid of remnants of the past. Of the modern works, the most complete and objective picture of the complex processes in the Cossack society of Buryatia in the pre-war period is given by the monograph by E.A. Vysotina ^[4].

Of great importance for the work were documents, protocols, resolutions, memoirs of party meetings of the Buryat-Mongolian Regional Committee of the CPSU (b), stored in the State Archive of the Republic of Buryatia, periodical press materials of the 1920s, as well as sources of personal origin - memoirs of Old Believers S. Nadezhino and descendants of military Cossacks S. Bichura about the life of their parents and ancestors in the 1920s and 1930s.

The 1920s became a turning decade for two distinctive traditional communities living in the territory of the Buryat-Mongolian Republic – Old Believers (despite several existing agreements and interpretations here, who received the speaking ethnonym "Semeyskie" from their arrival from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 1760s in Transbaikalia, given their arrival in large families) and Cossacks (who lost their official status, but did not simultaneously lose their special identity). The Old Believers, over decades of interaction with the tsarist government, have built a special type of relationship with it. It consisted in the fact that since the middle of the XIX century, a policy of relaxation was pursued with regard to the religious freedom of "dissenters" (with their formal condemnation and control over the non-proliferation of "sectarianism"), up to the Decree on the principles of religious Tolerance in 1905 ^[20], which allowed them to unite into communities (which the majority refused ^{[28, p. 3]}), open and build chapels and houses of worship. By the 1920s, such a policy led to the de facto non-interference of the regional authorities in the internal religious self-organization of the Old Believer communities, in the performance of their economic and military duties.

On the contrary, the Bolshevik government, which won the civil war, established itself in the Old Believer villages and proclaimed a "cultural revolution." In an ideological sense, it was intended to incorporate the Semeyskys into Soviet society, through maximum intrusion into their inner "sacred" space, attempts to transform it. An anti-religious campaign was widely carried out, which was supposed to destroy the core of identity – an extremely persistent commitment to the ancient Orthodox faith. Huts were built-reading rooms, schools, paramedic stations, houses of culture – the authorities wanted to achieve a positive attitude of Old Believers to non–church education and official medicine, which has long been considered a sinful thing by them, i.e. to overcome another constant of identity - "we live as our fathers bequeathed and believed, we did not reduce any of this and did not added" ^{[16, d. 416, l. 4]}. The party cells of the CPSU (b) were created from local cadres to coordinate the ongoing processes and simultaneously form, first of all, in the family asset, the qualities inherent in the new, Soviet personality – collectivism, idealism, faith in a bright communist future as opposed to the "obsolete" Christian paradigm. However, the authorities here, in contrast to the negative attitude towards the "pro-imperial" Cossacks and its cultural markers, did not seek to push the Semey identity into the background, it was supposed to preserve and develop its ethnographic component (in material culture, festive rituals and "Sovietized" oral folklore).

It must be said that in the 1920s, the Buryat-Mongolian Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) was aware that radical actions on the ground led to a sharp rejection and passive protest of the numerous "masses" of Semeyskis, accustomed to certain indestructible boundaries in the interactions of their community and government. "The fight against the charters by administrative means will not give any positive results. We need to take up the task of educating the young family generation, we will not do anything with the elderly. The religiosity of the Semey population cannot be broken quickly. First of all, it is necessary to increase the network of schools, to train school workers, in addition, it is necessary to prohibit the training of homegrown teachers. First of all, the Communists need to gain authority among the "family", and only in my opinion, after that the work will be fruitful" ^{[25, d. 1420, l. 73-74]}. Accordingly, in the 1920s, the tasks of "ideologizing" the Semeyskys were solved by moderate public influence on their worldview, in which the majority was set against class "enemies" by fairly peaceful means (through a newspaper, cultural events, the work of local communists). The prospect was a split in Semey settlements beneficial for their ideological tasks, the successful development of anti-religious and anti-Kulak campaigns, the "cultivation" of the population, the strengthening of party cells, etc., in other words, the gradual creation of a community of "Soviet" Old Believers, which the Bolsheviks needed. "It is also easier for the kulaks to do their dirty deeds under the guise of religion, and that is why the scribes, the kulak part of the "family" population, believe so fanatically. The split that is currently observed among the "Semeyskys" should be used, but it is necessary not to support them, but to incite them against each other" ^{[18, d. 1420, l. 78]}. The class enemies were implicitly declared to be well-to-do kulaks and the Old Believer clergy (charters and scribes), who, however, in the 1920s, had every opportunity to participate in politics, lead village councils, and continued to freely engage in worship. "Nadeino, Verkhneudinsky district. Kulaks go around and collect taxes from the poor and middle-class. They do this in order to get their protege Chernykh, who now presides and holds the Kulak line, into the chairmanship of the village Council" ^{[22, p. 1]}.

As a result of these accents in the policy towards the Old Believers of Buryat Mongolia in the 1920s, the following should be highlighted. As for the atheization of the population, when analyzing archival sources and periodicals of the 1920s, we note that in practice anti-religious work in Old Believer settlements was often reduced to fairly universal measures common in the republic. These are mainly the formation of an atheist backbone among local activists, the patronage of urban anti-religious activists and a broad information campaign against the clergy. Strengthening atheistic discipline, at least among the party members from the local Old Believers, was difficult, due to the desire of the latter not to provoke conflicts with fellow villagers and with their family, for which there were objective reasons. "Old Stuff. Kulaks throw anonymous letters to activists: izbach and Komsomol members, in which they threaten to kill them if they do not stop working" ^{[21, p. 2]}. Visits to the places of urban patronage organizations were carried out quite often, but complaints from rural activists about their formal work were widespread. "Desyatnikovo. They took over the patronage of the cell: the city railway and the Ganzurinsko-zavodskaya, but both of them remain only paper bosses for the time being. They came one day during field work, walked around the village, promised us a newspaper, anti-religious literature, even a librarian. That's where we're done" ^{[2, p. 3]}. The communal reputation of the charters was discredited by the creation in the Buryat-Mongolian Pravda of the image of believers as ignoramuses, and the charters as lazy and patrons of the kulaks, at the same time creating a clear impression among readers that the ministers of worship are greedy people, but rather narrow–minded, their newspaper image was harshly satirical ^[24]. As a result, at the meetings of the regional committee of the republic in the late 1920s, the recognition of the failure of "soft power" in anti-religious work with the Semey was almost unequivocal, and the charters were appointed the main culprits, the attitude of the authorities towards them was already absolutely serious. "Our cells and assets underestimated the danger of further pressure from hostile elements. In Tarbagatai, the secretaries believe that there is no need to be afraid of the influence of charters and scribblers" ^{[5, d. 542, l. 100-103]}.

The weak perception of atheism by the Old Believers in the 1920s, among other things, led to a formal attitude towards their duties on the ideological front on the part of communist cells. The realities of the past decade (1920s) showed that for local party members, the problematic task of creating and staffing cultural facilities was more important, more topical, in relation to such a difficult topic as the formation of a new type of personality. Similar situations were typical for Semey settlements: "New Rubbish. In addition to the school, there is also an educational center, which, according to the teacher, did not work very well. There were many who wanted to study, but the sent liquidators did not meet their purpose. Work was also poorly carried out in the reading room. The inept hut did not attract, but only alienated the public and she began to look at it as an unnecessary appendage in the village ^{[17, d. 961, l. 41-50]}. The new bride. In the villages of the village council, there are no red corners, no schools, no educational centers; young people are content with gatherings, for which girls pay two pounds of bread to the owner of the premises." ^{[7, p. 1]}. In addition, a general weak degree of self-discipline was recorded, which led to a formal attitude in matters of ideological work (weak attendance at meetings, non-fulfillment directives). In these conditions, the benefits of daily communication between party members and fellow villagers remained as "one with one's own", spending time together in work and celebration, which was often seen by the regional committee as the only opportunity for at least gradual, "targeted" ideologization, but it also had its objective costs, such as "joint festivities on a holiday, weddings and other household cases" ^{[25, d. 1420, l. 74]}. It seems that for local communists, this was rather a common occurrence, joining the party and, in general, the practice of socially approved behavior was presented by them as an opportunity for education, a change of occupation. In addition, in the personal memoirs of rural communists about the "Semey" village of the 1950s and 1970s, the facts of their holding positions in the village council and collective farm, obtaining higher education, going to party meetings on the territory of the USSR correlate with the stable informal tradition of celebrating Easter, baptizing children at the charterer, be sure to invite him to the funeral for prayers ^[11]. All this could be an echo and consequence of how ideology could have been initially perceived in the 1920s, even by activists. "Wishing to preserve both the newly acquired statuses and the positive images of "one's own" in the community, rural party members were the conductors of a visual change in life" ^{[30, p. 105]}. However, they did not try not to stand out from the mainstream by behaving too differently for them, for example, in the image of active God-worshippers, in addition, they often actually "abandoned" ideological work. Together with the sluggish atheization of the Semey population, the difficulties of updating their way of life – this provoked a radical tightening of the party's policy towards kulaks and charters, as well as the formation of a new everyday (collective farm) space for the bulk of Old Believers in the 1930s.

The Trans-Baikal Cossack army ceased to exist simultaneously with the defeat of the regime of ataman Semenov. "In August-September 1920, with the retreat of the Japanese and Semyonovites from Eastern Transbaikalia, the villages and settlements of the 3rd and 4th military departments of the Central Military District announced the recognition of the government of the Far East. At the same time, the liquidation of village and village boards began here, the abolition of the posts of village and village chieftains, the organization of new authorities – the People's revolutionary committees" ^{[27, p. 92]}. Unlike the Old Believers' community, which fluctuated in the civil war between different sides with a pronounced religious and oppositional identity, the Cossacks were clearly perceived by the new government as a paramilitary organization, natural allies and support of the monarchy. Specifically in Transbaikalia – as the basis of the defeated Semyonov regime, extremely dangerous for their professional military training. Many Cossacks were also aware of this, who initially did not remain in their native villages with the end of hostilities (taking into account the fact that many of them, on the contrary, accepted Soviet power, fought in detachments of red partisans against "their own"), here is one of the many characteristic examples recorded by N.V. Khokhlova "In 1920. During the retreat to China, Colonel V.G. Kazakov, at the head of a special banner group, delivered 34 battle flags of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks to China. In exile, he lived in the city of Hailar" ^[15]. Despite the fact that in February 1920 M.I. Kalinin assured that "the Soviet government does not intend to take away land from the Cossacks, forbid them to wear traditional uniforms and rename villages into villages" ^{[29, p. 113]}, the real policy turned out to be completely different. "The territories of the former Cossack regions were dismembered, transferred to the subordination of administrative-territorial formations. Gradually, the words “Cossack”, “stanitsa”, go out of official use, the Cossack population is called peasants. They are restricted in their civil rights and are not conscripted into the Red Army" ^{[12, p. 56]}. With the initial negative (and not ironically condescending, as in the case of the Old Believers) perception by the authorities of the constructs associated with the Cossack way of life, it is obvious that along with the loss of their official statuses by the Cossacks, the so-called "storytelling" already in the 1920s was not supposed to preserve and develop their cultural identity. In the Semey settlements, ideologization sought to influence and weaken as much as possible the exclusively internal, spiritual component of homogeneous unity, the authorities had nothing against the formation of a new Soviet personality in its "Old Believers" (in the ethnographic sense) version. In the case of the "unnecessary" Cossack identity, the Bolsheviks planned to educate the Soviet man by including the "former" Cossacks in the general ethno-cultural space of the rest of the Russian peasantry. Therefore, under the prohibitions (formal or tacit, on the part of the Cossack families themselves) were not only the deep meanings of their separate self-identification, but also the external attributes of material culture, markers of everyday life. "It was impossible to remember the military merits of the Cossacks. Military awards and Cossack checkers were not kept in families. Heroism in the battles for the faith was not considered heroism, but only intensified hostile sentiments towards the Cossacks" ^[15].

Faced with the task of fundamentally preserving life and freedom for themselves and their relatives, the heads of families (primarily those Cossacks who were not red partisans during the intervention) have been gradually moving to socially approved behavioral practices since the second half of the 1920s. Sources of personal origin show that at the household level they manifested themselves in the tendency of independent prohibitions on demonstrating ties to the Cossack past (photographs and weapons on the wall, awards, wearing uniforms, telling children and grandchildren about themselves) when trying to support the existence of identity at the level of "friend with friend" conversations, during frequent trips to guests, holding a festive pastime, etc. "Grigoriev M. T. (1870-1943), returned from service in full uniform, had weapons, including a personal saber. Representatives of the Soviet government confiscated everything, leaving only a saber. He was hiding the St. George's Cross, afraid that the award might also be confiscated. At his request, he was buried together with the St. George's Cross" ^[13]. Grigoriev E.G. (1873-1956), the former ataman of the Cossacks of S. Bichura, according to his remaining memories of him, in the 1920s gave his large house to the commune, voluntarily moving to a small one ^[9]. Serebrennikov I.P. (?-?), a Cossack from D. Dungui, according to the memoirs of his grandson, M.N. Serebrennikov (1932-2022), in the 1920s, during periods of difficulties in relations with local authorities, several times drove cattle to neighboring Mongolia for a certain number of months, returning home when the situation normalized ^[10]. These sources allow us to conclude that at the stage of the 1920s, with all the scale of the policy of "storytelling", in the conditions of actions (not only on the part of former rank-and-file, but also atamans) aimed at demonstrating their complete break with the past (which was the difference with the policy towards Old Believer charters, etc. during this period), the former Cossacks had the opportunity to adapt to the new social reality, implicitly reproducing their identity mainly between representatives of the older generation.

The next decade for both traditional communities became a period of tightening policies aimed at erasing their socio-cultural "specialness", which became for the Cossacks as a whole a continuation of objective processes, and for the Old Believers – a revision by the authorities of insufficiently effective practices for moderate ideologization. For example, the former ataman Grigoriev E.G., who tried in the 1920s to integrate into the new social and political reality of his village, in 1931, after the beginning of the socialization of farms and dispossession, was forced to move with his two younger sons to Mongolia, working there as a watchman, stoker, caretaker. According to documents, he was considered a Soviet citizen, and did not call himself a Cossack with his children and grandchildren until his death in 1956 ^[9]. Such widespread actions of "former" military Cossacks, of course, protected family members from questions from the authorities, or from possible harassment of peers in schools, however, they caused serious damage to the continuity of the historical memory of the Cossack identity, which is why the main difficulties arise in its reproduction in modern conditions of the revival of Cossack traditions. Nazarova (Grigorieva) Evdokia Markovna (born in 1931), a native of the village of Bichura, recalls: "Under Soviet rule, no one said that I was a Cossack. It was impossible. We were even forbidden to hang a portrait of our father at home. He was photographed there in a Cossack uniform and with a saber. And this is just a portrait. And that was impossible ^[14]. The father of Antonov N.P. (born in 1931), an Old Believer of S. Nadezhino, being a charter officer, freely engaged in service until the mid-1930s, after which he was arrested, acquitted after a long investigation and upon returning home hurriedly moved the family to Ulan-Ude, returning to the village only in the 1950s, no longer publicly advertising the continuation of their religious duties and hiding sacred books ^[8].

Thus, the chronological period of the 1920s - early 1930s becomes a moment of systemic transformation of the social, political and cultural orientations of two traditionally separate regional subethnoses – the Old Believers and the Cossacks of Transbaikalia, a significant part of whom have lived in the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR since 1923. Despite a certain degree of post-revolutionary romanticism of the political orientations of the 1920s, expressed in the proximity of the world socialist revolution, as well as the inevitable formation of a new Soviet personality type, on the whole, Communists (in the center and on the ground) were aware that many national and subethnic communities of the former Russian Empire, through their historically established identities They represent a hostile socio-cultural space for the perception of a new worldview. Accordingly, we can record a cautious, moderate strategy of changing the way of life of the Old Believers-Semey in the 1920s, expressed in unobtrusive forms of anti-religious propaganda and the preservation of religious statuses for charter members. On the other hand, the local realities of this period assumed the profanation of ideological work, based on the general disinterest in it of illiterate local communists-Semey, urban "bosses"-workers. As for the Cossacks, given their pre-revolutionary status, the Soviet government, from the very beginning of the 1920s, began radical measures that were supposed to lead to the elimination of signs of identity (public self-identification, attributes of material culture, generational memory). By the early 1930s, in relation to both communities, the government was gradually pushing through the process of aggravation of the "class struggle" in the village, which led to dispossession and repression. First of all, those categories of people who remained "anchors" for both identities fall under them, i.e. the clergy of the former and veterans of the military Cossacks of the latter, forcing the rest of the population to switch to practices of socially approved behavior, which allowed preserving some elements of cultural specificity. With all this, it is worth noting that as for the Old Believers, the authorities did not plan to fight such elements in the future, thereby showing mutual loyalty to the community in the post-war period. In the case of the "untold" population, in the context of escalating military tensions in the late 1930s, the government in its orders begins to use the term "Soviet Cossacks" altogether. This indicates that the state is aware of the stability of the deep meanings of identity in the mass consciousness and the need to use them, appealing to the archetype of traditional patriotism of this group of the USSR population.

The article was prepared within the framework of the state assignment (project XII.191.1.1. "Russia and Inner Asia: dynamics of geopolitical, socio-economic and intercultural interaction (XVII-XXI centuries)", No. 121031000243-5.