The main trends in the renewal movement of Russian Buddhism at the beginning of the XX century .

Abstract

The object of the study is the renovationist movement in Russian Buddhism. At the beginning of the XX century, some part of the Buddhist community began the process of revising the organizational forms of its existence, revising its theoretical and practical baggage. The work focuses on defining the basic principles of the main directions of this movement, studying their goals and objectives and identifying differences in their approaches to reforming the Buddhist church in the context of the ongoing changes in the socio-political conditions of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. As a result of the analysis of documents and archival materials, the author investigated the doctrinal and ideological foundations of the movements and their organizational forms. The study found that there were two significantly different movements that set themselves very different tasks and used fundamentally different approaches to solve them. On the one hand, the activities of Buryat enlighteners B. Baradin, Ts.Zhamsarano, etc., and such representatives of the clergy as A. Dorzhiev, Ch. Iroltuev, Ganzhurova–Gegen were designed to develop an ideological basis for preserving the national identity of the Buddhist peoples of Russia in the conditions of ideological and political expansion. On the other hand, L.S. Tsydenov and his followers set themselves a significantly different task: to reform Buddhism in such a way that it could develop in a new socio–cultural environment, in the Western culture of Russia. The task here was not so much the preservation of national identity as the development of the Buddhist tradition in a new cultural space, which indirectly solved the first task.