ABSTRACT
As David Harvey (2000: 74) says, ‘What is missing . . . is an understanding of the forces constructing historical-geographical legacies, cultural forms, and distinctive ways of life – forces that are omnipresent within but not confined to the long history of capitalist commodity culture and its spatio-temporal dynamics.’ This chapter is in part a response to Harvey’s call for closer attention to be paid to the historical, geographical and cultural legacies that shape contemporary urban configurations. With that in mind, the specific focus is a contribution to understanding of the post-socialist ethnic city in the Russian Federation through a brief ethnography of how Buryat Mongols create and re-vitalise sacred spaces and places in Ulan-Ude, the capital city of the Republic of Buryatia in eastern Siberia. This phenomenon can be seen as one of the most effective ways of creating ethnic spaces consciously or unconsciously, and having one’s own centres in modern Soviet-type cities, where political and economic life, language, education, social services and infrastructure are all Russian-dominated. Ulan-Ude is one such city in an ethnic Republic.
