ABSTRACT
The Baikal region proved to be a zone of complex spatial entanglements. Its location on the boundary between the Russian and Qing empires, vast mineral resources, the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the telegraph and other communication lines made it into a strategic part of the economic, communications, and political topologies of the Russian Empire and Eurasia. Buryat intellectuals collectively worked out the project of Buryat Autonomy. Liberal and socialist notions of the February Revolution were supplemented with anticolonial nationalism. The Buryat national movement resembled other anticolonial movements globally, but supplemented lay political ideas with Buddhism which was to remain the dominant ideology of the people. The international regime collapsed in the Baikal region after the Treaty of Versailles ended the Great War and made the initial purposes of the Allied Intervention irrelevant. The decision to grant the Buryats autonomy was made jointly with the decision to help the Mongolian revolutionaries in 1920.
