We invite you to a discussion about Albert Jawłowski's book "Stacja Zima. On the Repressed Transbaikal Lamas" 🗓️ November 27, 6:00–7:30 PM 🏛️ State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw. 🎟️ Free admission. Buddhism began to spread in the Russian state around the second half of the 17th century, coming from the territory of present-day Mongolia. Due to civilizational proximity, it quickly became part of the culture of the Transbaikal province of the Russian Empire. Already in the 18th century, it was subordinated to the state bureaucratic machinery. Over a hundred years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, modern Buryat elites decided to use Buddhism as one of the foundations of a modernist national idea. In turn, the first years of the USSR's existence gave hope that the modern Buryat nation, together with its sacralized reference to Buddhism, would fit into the new, multinational Soviet state. Collectivization, Stalinist repressions, the GULAG system, and the Great Terror brutally shattered these illusions. In the 1930s, the last Buddhist monasteries were destroyed. Lamas who remained free were arrested, executed, or sent to labor camps. The few who succeeded managed to return and settle permanently in their homelands only after Stalin's death. A small number of them found a place in two restored and completely state-controlled monasteries in Upper Ivolga and Amitchasha. The rest ended up outside the monasteries, where some unofficially resumed ritual and medical practices. The book is the result of many years of field research, searching for information about lamas who unofficially practiced during the USSR era, survived repressions, and returned home. It includes interviews and conversations with their families and neighbors. It is also an attempt to combine local, biographical, and existential perspectives with long-term socio-cultural macroprocesses shaped by the policies of the Russian and Soviet empires. It is also an attempt to describe, analyze, and theoretically reflect on the multi-generational experience of state violence, forced acculturation, and local and individual strategies for preserving cultural identity—hidden, not expressed in open opposition to official ideology and the apparatus of state violence. PARTICIPANTS IN THE DISCUSSION: - Dr. Zoja Morochojewa, Faculty of Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw. Anthropologist and philosopher of culture, researcher of societies and cultures of Russia, Central Asia, and the Far East. She deals with, among other things, the theory and practice of trans-civilizational and transcultural dialogue, cultural aspects of traditional medicine in the East. Author of numerous monographs and scientific articles in this field. She runs the "University-in-différance" laboratory. - Dr. Łukasz Smyrski, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Ethnologist. Researcher of phenomena of identification and ethnic identity in Eastern Europe, post-Soviet Asia, and Mongolia. In his research, he also deals with issues of landscape anthropology, focusing on the processual, social character of nature and the environment. - Dr. Albert Jawłowski, Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw. Sociologist and cultural anthropologist. Author of the book "Stacja Zima. On the Repressed Transbaikal Lamas." The discussion will be moderated by Robert Zydel, graduate of the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. Director of the E.Wedel Chocolate Factory. From 2021 to 2023, he served as Director of the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw. Previously, he headed the City Marketing Office at the City Hall of Warsaw.
