"Greater Mongolia": the concept of political unity and an attempt of its implementation (1900s-1920s)

The article is devoted to the Buryat nationalist project, an important part of which was the doctrine of Pan-Mongolism. Its essence was in the fact that the unification of Mongolia with Inner Mongolia, Buryatia, Kalmykia, with the Mongols of Xinjiang and Tuva would have allowed to restore the historical region of the Mongols' residence and turn the new country into a truly independent sovereign state. This approach to state integration of Mongolian-speaking peoples in the common cultural space with the aim of gradually leveling the differences between separate regional groups and the prospect of achieving greater ethnic unification and cohesion of the population reflected the European paradigm of nation. In the long term Pan-Mongolism had an aim to establish the Mongolian nation - a political construct above ethnicity in relation to those territories and cultures on the basis of which it was constructed, and later they would have had to be homogenous in all senses. The article is based on the materials of published works of the representatives of the Buryat national intelligentsia and on the analysis of works by Russian and foreign researchers dealing with different aspects of Pan-Mongolism. The article consists of three parts, the last summarizes the main conclusion. To understand the phenomenon of Pan-Mongolism is hardly possible only within the framework of the Buryat nationalism and in isolation from the historical context that formed by the end of the second decade of the 20th century in the region including Mongolia, North China, Transbaikalia and the Russian Far East. In a difficult international situation resulting from the crisis in Russia and China, there were several competing political actors, each of them tried to use Pan-Mongolism in their own interests. All of these actors can be divided into two camps: those who sought to realize their interests in the context of Pan-Mongolian movement and those who saw a threat and thus protected their interests by countering Pan-Mongolism. The level of confrontation between the different political forces acting in the region and the high intensity of the struggle between them led to the fact that the nationalist content of Pan-Mongolism disappeared in the regional geopolitical discourse, and the activity of the nationalists, objectively, was forwarded from the task of unification of the Mongol peoples to the counteraction to political actors and to each other. The authors note that followers of the ideas of ethno-political self-determination of the Mongols became a tool in the hands of other regional actors, and Pan-Mongolism was much better used by the latter, not by the former. Nationalists were unable to cope with the task of relaying their views to the masses. Thus, supporters of this doctrine failed to establish the essential prerequisites for its implementation - to achieve the creation of a sustainable view in the society on the need to achieve the political unity of the Mongolian world.

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