Two Structures, One in Buryatia and Another in Moscow, Now Competing for Leadership of Russia’s Buddhists

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 6 – Buddhism has proven to be just as much an administrative challenge for the centralizing and controlling Russian state as Islam. Neither is hierarchical in the same way that Russian Orthodox Christianity is, and both have their centers far from Moscow, in sharp contrast with the Moscow Patriarchate.

            Stalin hoped to change that by creating a central spiritual directorate for each of these faiths, but he failed and his successors have not had any more success. Neither Buddhism nor Islam have formed the single administrative structure the Kremlin would prefer, both because of their nature as religions and because most of their believers were located beyond the ring road.

            But in recent years, various Muslim and Buddhist leaders have tried to create centralized structures by setting up bodies in the Russian capital. The Muslim efforts in this direction are well-known, but the Buddhist ones are much less so not only because there are far fewer Buddhists in Russia than Muslims but also because the Buryat center has been more active.

            That is now changing, Andrey Melnikov, the editor of NG-Religii says, and the Buddhist community is “moving from a state of fragmentation” nominally under the supervision of the Buryat center to “a more or less clearly defined bipolarity” with a second center in Moscow dominated by the Kalmyks (ng.ru/ng_religii/2024-08-06/9_577_buddhists.html).

            The two centers are the Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia, which is the direct successor of the Central Spiritual Directorate of Buddhists Stalin set up and which has its headquarters in Buryatia, and the Central Spiritual Directorate, established by Kalmyk activists two decades ago in Moscow.

            Because of its Moscow location, Melnikov says, the latter has certain advantages; but the Buryat group is still powerful both because of tradition and because of Ulan Ude’s links with Tibetan Buddhist. He suggests that the two may coexist for some time with the latter playing a larger diplomatic role and the former a larger administrative one.