Ivan Peshkov1; 1 Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, Poland
Discussion
The Russian conquest of the Transbaikalian region resulted in the development of new forms of ethnic and cultural identity based on cultural syncretism and metisation of the members of the analyzed groups with the inhabitants of the region. This “success” of the colonial project led to constant doubts about the confessional and racial purity of the population of the frontier region. Baptized foreigners were becoming a challenge for the administrative politicians of the region, who, on the one hand, believed in rapid Russification, on the other hand, were full of doubts about the religiosity of the local population and were afraid of mixed forms uniting Buddhism, Shamanism and Orthodoxy into a single whole. The asymmetric conflict between official Orthodoxy and local searches for Christian spirituality based on indigenous ontologies took the form of mutual accusations of hypocrisy, paganism and adherence to forbidden cults. Considering indigenous Christianity as an epistemological (definitions of purity of doctrine) and political (frontier security) problem for local administration, the article tries to show the forms of coexistence of imposed and native forms of Christianity in a colonial society.
