Saving Buddhist Heritage During Soviet Antireligious Policy: The Story of Two Tanks from the Altsinkhuta Tract

Annotation

This study is of significant scientific relevance due to the insufficient study of the fate of Buddhist heritage in the USSR in the context of the antireligious policies of the 1920s and 1930s. In Soviet and Russian historiography, repressions against Buddhist culture remain understudied. An analysis of the antireligious propaganda of the 1920s and 1930s shows that it was pervasive and included legislative measures. This study introduces a specific microhistorical story about the rescue of two Buddhist thangkas, demonstrating strategies for preserving religious artifacts under conditions of ideological pressure. The main goal of the study is to reconstruct the historical path of two Buddhist thangkas from the Altsinkhuta tract as a cross-cutting narrative reflecting the stages of state policy towards religious heritage. The study traces the full life cycle of religious artifacts – from ritual use through confiscation and museum storage to their return to the context of a resurgent regional culture. Additional objectives include identifying the role of the individual in preserving cultural heritage (using the example of scholar L. Z. Zakharov) and analyzing the continuity of the state's approach to religious heritage – from outright destruction to partial restitution. The study is based on a comprehensive analysis of diverse sources: materials from the State Archives of the Russian Federation, the State Archives of the Saratov Region, and museum documents from the Stavropol State Historical, Cultural, Natural, and Landscape Museum-Reserve named after G. N. Prozritelev and G. K. Prave; visual sources – Buddhist thangkas themselves with their iconographic features; and Soviet-era legislative acts regulating religious policy. The methodological framework incorporates the core principle of historicism, as well as historical-systemic and chronological methods, allowing for a historical perspective and systemic connections to be considered in the research object. A microhistorical approach is crucial, allowing for the uncovering of large-scale historical processes through individual cases. The study led to the following conclusions: the antireligious campaign in Kalmykia was all-encompassing, leading to the complete destruction of religious buildings, as evidenced by the fate of the khurul complex in Altsinkhuta. Despite systematic antireligious propaganda, the state failed to completely eradicate the religious component. In the post-war period, the state's approach shifted from a tactic of destruction to the managed existence of religious institutions and the partial restitution of cultural heritage. The micro-history of two thangkas from Altsinkhuta illustrates the general pattern of preserving religious identity at the local level, which subsequently allowed for its revival.

Keywords

• Antireligious policy of the Soviet state,
• antireligious campaign
• Buddhist cultural heritage
• Kalmykia
• Buddhist thangkas
• Altsinkhut khurul complex
• cultural heritage preservation
• religious artifacts
• museumification of religious objects
• restitution of religious heritage
• secret Buddhist practices
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