‘Remote’ areas and minoritized spatial orders at the Russia – Mongolia border

Abstract

The article first outlines how ‘remoteness’ was conceived and constructed during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods in Russia. Using the ideas of the social geographer Boris Rodoman, it argues that centric structures of power, communications and state provision created scalar zones of non-development and isolation at borders between internal administrative regions. In post-Soviet times this structure continued, but according to Vladimir Kagansky it has been disturbed by recent ‘spontaneous transformations’ whereby state international borders are becoming areas of contact and enterprise, rather than isolation. The paper suggests to the contrary that, with the increasing centralisation of the Putin era, Kagansky’s theory has not been realised on the Russia-Mongolia-China border, and that the reduction of border crossing points in fact deepen the residents’ sense of being situated ‘at a dead end’. However, the indigenous people living in border zones, notably the Buryat, operate not only with these state-constructed geographies, but also with their own quite different spatial concepts. These are so much the converse to the Russian that they can be seen as a distinctive minoritized vision. The Buryat ideas and ritual practices reach across political boundaries. In effect they create a subtle challenge to the spatiality of the Russian state. It is argued that roads in this situation become particularly concentrated vectors of contradictory values.

Mongolian map-making as practice

“…Clarification of boundaries remained salient for governmental purposes. After a dispute over land, a general in the far western Mongolian domain was ordered in 1781 to erect oboos at 7 Oboos at which the Mongols carried out rites of worship to spirits of the land were marked differently on maps from boundary oboos and were often situated in the interior of Banners; nevertheless, I have argued elsewhere (Humphrey 2015) that these oboos, which were usually set on mountain tops or high passes, did mark the edge of socially recognized pasturing areas.…”

“…7 Oboos at which the Mongols carried out rites of worship to spirits of the land were marked differently on maps from boundary oboos and were often situated in the interior of Banners; nevertheless, I have argued elsewhere (Humphrey 2015) that these oboos , which were usually set on mountain tops or high passes, did mark the edge of socially recognized pasturing areas.…”

A Military Zone in a Dwelling of the Buddhas: Appropriation and Re-appropriation of the Cultural Landscape in Transbaikalia

“…The concept of the state border as a line of sovereignty and the protection of it carried a special cultural and ideological value in the Soviet state (Humphrey 2014;2015), which was rapidly transforming the cultural landscape of the region. Born in the Aga district in 1920 Tsyrendashiev witnessed the changing Buryat reality.…”

Nested Peripheralisation

“…it is as if we don't exist," as Iuliia put it. Ivangorod had been cut off from its larger sister Narva, and due to "hyper-centric hierarchical structure of the Russian state" 28 with Pfoser / Nested Peripheralisation 33 a concentration of capital, power, and signs of a capitalist modernity in its two metropolises it now formed a remote place despite its relative geographical proximity to St. Petersburg.…”