Pandemic has Brought Buryatia to ‘Boiling Point,’ Setting Stage for a Single Buryat Nation to Emerge, Ochirov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 31 – The coronavirus has hit Buryatia especially hard not only in terms of the illness itself but also in terms of the political consequences for the political elite whose failures have further discredited it and for the population which has been forced to overcome its divisions and become a single united nation, Bato Ochirov says.

            Expanding his earlier arguments (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/buryat-society-on-brink-of-violent-and.html), the opposition Buryat commentator argues that the tribalism and ethnic divisions the republic authorities have used to keep themselves in power are increasingly at odds with the interests of population, Moscow and the Mongol world (asiarussia.ru/articles/28486/).

            Moscow wants Buryatia to be a bridge from Russia to Mongolia but the divisions the Buryat elite have promoted preclude that from happening because it is impossible to unite Mongols abroad when you are dividing them at home. Consequently, Moscow’s backing for the republic elite is slipping.

            The Buryat people want a better future and they can see that the current elite in their republics isn’t interested or capable of providing it and so the population wants to take things into its own hands, a shift in attitudes that is leading previously divided groups to come together, boosting a common identity and threatening the power of the current elites.

            And the Mongol world is making a come back given geopolitical changes in the relationship between Moscow and Beijing; and whenever the Mongol world emerges, the Buryats historically play a much more central role than they do when it is in eclipse. That is what is happening now, inspiring Buryats to greater unity among themselves and more generally.

            This perfect storm means, Ochirov argues, that the current elites are going to be elbowed out of the way. They have lost the support of both Moscow and the Buryat people, and there is every chance that within the next two or three years, the Buryat nation will elevate an entirely new generation of leaders with an entirely new set of goals.

            As he puts it, “in this region have come together all the conditions for serious social shifts: weakness of the authorities, popular disappointment in the national elite, and intensifying dissatisfaction because of the pandemic. And this explosive cocktail … will define not just the fates of particular people but the vector of the development of the Buryat people.”

            Ochirov for his part suggests that these shifts will affect the outcome of the upcoming elections, ones in which the current powers may not lose office immediately but will be so weakened by the showing of the opposition that they will have to change direction quickly or face the prospect that they will be swept away soon thereafter.