Problems of Land Tenure and Land Use of the Trans-Baikal Buryats and its Solution by the National Authorities

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of land tenure and land use by the Buryat population in the Trans-Baikal region at the beginning of the XX century, before the formation of the BMASSR, which became the main one in the self-preservation of the ethnos. If the national movement and the struggle for autonomy have been well studied in historiography, the regulation of land relations is the main motive for activating the national movement and the demand for autonomy. The article is based on published and unpublished materials of the Burnatskom, the Far Eastern Republic and the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Region. The author used microhistorical approach, as well as historical, narrative and comparative methods, which made it possible to study the historical events of 1900–1923 in the field of land relations in Transbaikalia against the historical background of events taking place in the country, in close connection with changes in political conditions and the formation of administrative and state structures. It was believed that the Buryats had more land, therefore at the beginning of the 20th century. According to the land reform, the withdrawal to the “state colonization fund” for the resettlement of immigrants increased and the unauthorized seizure of the land of the Buryats by Russian peasants during the revolutionary period increased. The tsarist government reduced the land holdings of the Buryats in order to switch them to agricultural economy, despite the ineffectiveness of its distribution. A great inconvenience for land use was the artificially created striped distribution of land between the Buryat and Russian populations. The problems of land tenure and land use became one of the incentives of the national movement and the formation of its governing body – the Buryat National Committee (Burnatskom), whose main task was the establishment of national autonomy, within which land problems must be resolved. Burnatskom managed to create an aimak administration, which was able to exist during the period of the Provisional Government, and during the years of the civil war. With the formation of the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Region as part of the Far Eastern Republic, the problem of land tenure and land use by the Buryat population remained open in connection with the continuing seizure of Buryat lands by Russian peasants. Despite the new legislation of the Far Eastern Republic and the RSFSR, the land issue in the BMAO was not resolved. Keywords: Trans-Baikal region, Buryats, land use, land tenure, national movement, Burnatskom, Buryat- Mongolian Autonomous Region