Religious Policy in Late Imperial Russia: State and Orthodox Church in the Buryat Spiritual Space

Abstract

The paper analyses the situation that took the most expressed forms since the late 19th century and reflected strengthening criticism from the Orthodox Church against both the Buddhist clergy and the Russian state. The contradictions between the state and the Orthodox policies were caused by differences in principles, since when giving Buddhism some legitimacy the government was guided by the interests of Russia in the east of the Empire, while the Orthodox Church saw its task in suppressing the influence of the Buddhist clergy through the soonest religious and ideological homogenisation of Buryats with the ethnic Russian population