Abstract
In: Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung 2019. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, pp. 53–66.
Focusing on the writings of the prominent Buryat-Mongol intellectual Elbek-Dorzhi Rinchino, this essay traces the development of the Comintern’s plan for Asia to the discursive and political legacies of the Russian Empire and the transcultural mobility of actors at the Siberian–Mongolian border. Rinchino, who worked for the Comintern and became one of the leaders of the Mongolian Revolution of 1921 and the new state, combined the imperial discourses of decentralization, namely Siberian Regionalism and minority nationalism, with socialist and imperialist ideas. Campaigning for decolonization of Siberia and the Buryat people before 1918, he switched to envisioning a new composite polity in place of the collapsed Russian and Qing empires – a united Mongol federation. He attempted to inscribe this polity into a larger imperial formation, first discussing a possible Japanese protectorate over it and then its inclusion into the Soviet Union. Rinchino’s agency as a politician and an intellectual contributed to the development of the Comintern’s plan, which foregrounded anti-colonial nationalism and aspired to include formally independent Asian nations into its own government structure.
Über den Autor
Dr. phil., geb. 1988 in Ivangorod (Russland). 2005 bis 2011 Studium der Internationalen Beziehungen und Weltgeschichte an der Staatlichen Universität Sankt Petersburg sowie der Universität Heidelberg, 2014 Promotion an der Universität Heidelberg. 2013 bis 2017 Dozent an der Hochschule für Wirtschaft, Sankt Petersburg, seit 2018 Leiter eines vom Europäischen Forschungsrat finanzierten Forschungsprojekts zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus in Russland, der Ukraine, China und der Mongolei an der Universität Heidelberg. Veröffentlichungen u. a.: Governing Post-Imperial Siberia and Mongolia, 1911–1924: Buddhism, Socialism, and Nationalism in State and Autonomy Building, London 2016; “National autonomies in the Far Eastern Republic: Post-imperial diversity management in Pacific Russia, 1920–1922”, in: History and Anthropology 28 (2017), Nr. 4, S. 445–460; “Democracy in the Russian Far East during the Revolution of 1905–1907”, in: Russian History 44 (2017), Nr. 2–3, S. 449–475; weitere Artikel in Ab Imperio, Nationalities Papers, Europe-Asia Studies.