The article discusses the emergence of Tibetan nationalism in Sino-Tibetan borderland in the period after the fall of the Qing Empire in 1911 and untill the incorporation of Tibet into the PRC in 1951. It argues that the cult of the Bodhisattva of compassion Avalokitesvara was a key spiritual root of the Tibetan religious nationalism, associating Tibet with the state of the Dalai Lamas. Other kinds of nationalisms emerged on the vast territory of the Tibetan plateau, among which the author distinguishes Tibetan collaborative nationalism and secular autonomist nationalism of Kuomintang or Communist types. The religious factor was central in this competition. Tibetan Buddhism, due to its long tradition of interweaving religion and politics, easily adapted to new conditions and was used by various forms of nationalism for diametrically opposite aims. The article shows how the clash of various national and religious interests finally led to the victory of the Chinese communists and the defeat of the religious nationalism. The author argues that the cult of Avalokitesvara, despite the defeat of the religious nationalism in 1951, became the “icon” of Tibetan nationalism of the subsequent period associated with the exodus of Tibetans to India in 1959.

The article discusses the main factors and trends of Buddhism's reception in Russia. The author highlights both internal sociocultural and religious interest within the Russian intelligentsia, and the interest to cultures of India, Tibet and China in the context of the political events of the time. The author shows how the perception of Buddhism was influenced by the Orthodox mission and theology, the growth of Oriental studies, the formation of the intelligentsia and of the national elites, as well as the appropriation of Oriental material in Russian philosophy and literature. The author analyzes the phenomenon of “Russian Asiaphiles;” the ideas of Prince Esper Ukhtomsky, a representative of “vostochnichestvo” (Russian Orientalism); the studies of a brilliant galaxy of academic Orientalists from the school of Fyodor Shcherbatsky; works by esoteric thinkers like Elena Blavatsky, Nikolai and Elena Roerich; authors like Ivan Bunin, Konstantin Balmont, Innokenty Annensky and others. The article shows that a specific image of Buddhism, within the context of intercultural interaction, was created both by the interest for the “other” as different and, at the same time, as something that can possess a typological similarity.

The current development of Buddhism in Buryatia is often characterized by the term “revival”. The leadership of Buriat Buddhists, Pandi-to Khambo Lama Damba Ayusheev and his circle, played the central role in the ideological construction of this revived tradition. The activities of the “Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia” (BTSR) are not limited to the religious sphere and cover a variety of aspects of the socio-political and economic life of Buryatia. BTSR is often opposed by other Buddhist organizations and groups. This opposition, or competition, forces BTSR to make significant efforts to integrate the “traditional” Buddhist community. This paper identifies the basic elements of constructing the Buddhist “revival” in Buryatia through the analysis of the activities of the Buddhist leadership. The leitmotif of the re-vival/invention of the tradition is the claim of historical continuity and defining clear ethnic boundaries of the Buryat Buddhist community and its ability to overcome marginality within Russia and within the Buddhist community worldwide. Another element of this struggle for legitimacy is sacralization of the Buryat territory by introducing specific Buddhist markers. The most significant of such markers was the so-called “recovery of the immortal body of the Lama Itigelov.” This created a basis for supporting prestige and legitimacy of Buryat Buddhism and its claims to the status of an important Buddhist center in Russia and worldwide.

The article considers Buddhism in modern Mongolia in the context of the world of Tibetan Buddhism. The peculiarity of Buddhism in modern Mongolia lies in the simultaneous coexistence of different models and interpretations of Buddhism. The “socialist” model is the result of the transformations during the period of the People’s Republic of Mongolia: Buddhism is seen as a part of the cultural and national heritage, and the Hambo-lama is recognized as head of the Sang-ha. The “Tibetan” model assumes orientation to the Dalai Lama and those lamas who are close to him and calls for the restoration of the Tulku institution headed by Bogd Gegeen. Supporters of the “nationalist” model oppose the interference of the Tibetans altogether. Some lamas also defend the originality of Mongolian Buddhism. The emergence of the tenth Bogd Gegeen could potentially unite these disparate groups and significantly strengthen Mongolia’s position in the world of Tibetan Buddhism that now undergoes through difficult times. Despite the economic difficulties, “spiritual” dependence on the Tibetan lamas and the tight pressure from China, it is in the field of Buddhism that the Mongols manage to show their agency and act as an independent player. Alternative religious discourses presented by followers of shamanism and Christianity are much less efficient or popular. The article draws upon extensive field sources.

The article looks at the Social Flock (sotsial'naia otara) project whereby the sangha gives sheep to laypeople and other locals as a kind of socially engaged Buddhism in Buryatia. It places the Social Flock project into a broader context of moral economy in the region, where through various acts of help, support and other kinds of giving the sangha establishes itself as a “pillar” of society. The article also critically discusses the very concept of socially engaged Buddhism. While it is often understood in the literature as a distinctly novel kind of movement that takes on particular institutional forms, the article explores it instead as a more general ongoing negotiation of the religious realm, which has in fact been present and relevant throughout Buddhist history. Finally, it explores the implications of religious social engagement for contemporary “secular” modernity in Russia and the post-Soviet region more generally.

This paper explores the influence of Tibetan Buddhism on the development of Ak-Jang (White Faith or Burkhanism), an ethno-religious movement that sprang up in the Mountain Altai in the early twentieth century. It is emphasized that a large part of the “White Faith” pantheon and spiritual practices originated from Tibetan Buddhism that was coming from Mongolia. The article is particularly focused on the links between the messianism of the White Faith and ethno-religious messianic movement Amursana that developed in Western Mongolia from 1910 to 1923. Both movements received their spiritual and cultural inspiration both from Tibetan Buddhism and the shared set of heroic oral tales about the coming of the glorious redeemer prince Oirot (Amursana). Scholars frequently approached the Altaian “White Faith” movement as a purely local phenomenon stripped of significant neighboring political and spiritual influences. The goal of the present article is to expand the revisionist scholarship that questions that narrow approach. It is argued that the rapid expansion of Tibetan Buddhism into the Altai and the rise of the Ak-Jang messianic movement became possible as a result of the spiritual and political void created by Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the eventual collapse of the Manchu and Russian empires. The article is based on the wide range of primary sources.

The article is devoted to pilgrimage and represents an anthropological interview with the researcher’s comments. The interview was recorded on April 2019, in Elista, at the religious community of the Temple “Golden Abode of Shakyamuni Buddha”. The narrative shows how a pilgrimage to India is perceived by Kalmykia’s believers as a means of coping with life’s hurdles and of searching for its new meaning. A biographical interview illustrates the path to faith - from atheism, through ritual practices in the temple and reading Buddhist literature - to pilgrimage to Dharamsala and “taking refuge” (conversion). The respondent presents her biography using a religious language that is new for her - the interview is rich with Buddhist terms. The story of the pilgrimage shows one’s path to faith, in which everything goes in an extraordinary way, and the key word in this narrative is “miracle” which is a tool of verifying faith. In the (post)secular context, belief in miracles is an element of the imagined border that distinguishes practicing, believing Buddhists from those who perceive Buddhism as a cultural tradition only. Another border marker of the pilgrim’s habitus is daily practices: morning and evening prayers with beads, stretches, self-control over speech and behavior.

Since Christian theology, in order to formulate the articles of faith, inevitably uses the categorical apparatus of historically established philosophical traditions, the problem of theological languages is objectively present. This problem is primarily connected with the revealing of a correct correlation between those languages, which is required for maintaining the unity of the Holy Tradition. The issue in question had obtained a special significance for the Russian theological tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries, due to a fundamental paradigm shift in philosophy in the modern era and under the rapid development of Russian religious philosophy. Father Sergius Bulgakov, in particular intended to illustrate that the basic Christian dogmas, which still had not had an adequate exposition, could only be explained in the “language of Sophiology”. The present article analyzes the critique of the historical languages of theology, which was presented by Fr. Sergius in his so-called “The big trilogy” that includes his last three large works (“The Lamb of God”, “The Comforter”, “Bride of the Lamb"), it also reveals the peculiarities of the sophiological language of his own. Finally, based on the undertaken analysis, the article suggests a conceptual characterization of the “language of Sophiology”, as well as a conclusion about the association between Fr. Sergius' theological intentions and Russian “New Theology” of the early 20th century.

The article analyzes one of the most controversial clashes over religion in India, namely the conflict around the worship of god Ayyappa in the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. The practice of preventing fertile women from entering the temple has been established and entrenched here, fertility being formally defined as the age between ten and fifty. The practice is due to the fact that Ayyappa in this temple is worshiped as brahmachari, “eternal virgin.” However, within the framework of the same Ayyappa cult in Kerala and partly elsewhere in South India, there are other images of this god, other interpretations and practices that allow women of any age to visit the shrines. In September 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled the ban for fertile women to be discriminatory. Since October 2018, Kerala has been engulfed in waves of protests, clashes between supporters and opponents of the gender restrictions, which sometimes turn into violent clashes. This paper analyzes the course of these events in the context of both Ayyappa cult and the current challenges of the regulation of religion in India.

This article endeavors to detect the goals, main tracks and priorities of the Russian diplomacy in a vilayet of the Ottoman Empire - Hejaz, which hosted major Islamic sanctuaries. Religion and politics were tightly interwoven in Russia's diplomatic activities there. Our analysis is made at the micro level, through the official correspondence of a Russian diplomat, Michail Nikolsky, who in the early 20th century served as a secretary of the Russian Imperial Consulate in Jeddah, Hejaz. The article also seeks to examine the influence of the human factor, sometimes wrongfully ignored, but always retaining a powerful presence in real politics. The recent developments indicate that even in the hyper-globalization era, despite the triumph of systemic institutions, the personification of policy remains a phenomenon of a planetary magnitude. The approach followed by the author in this article is akin, to a certain extent, to some anthropological models of historical research and can be also categorized as a kind of political anthropology. The tasks and goals of the Russian diplomacy are determined as a result of close scrutiny of the perused archival documents from the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Empire of the period of the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907. Many of these documents are unedited. They tend to evoke the sense of deja vu reminding the Soviet/Russian foreign policy efforts undertaken in He-jaz/Saudi Arabia during the Soviet and post-Soviet time.

Traditionally Aquinas is considered as the leading representative of the position that natural theology is the king road to the knowledge of God by means of human reason alone. Nevertheless, Alvin Plantinga cites him along with John Calvin among the two main predecessors of his famous idea of sensus divinitatis. According to this idea, human reason can have natural knowledge of God via special cognitive mechasnism, which is closer to the functioning of human perception, than to the proofs along the line of traditional theologia naturalis. The goal of the article is to identify whether one can really find in the work of Aquinas anything similar to the sensus divinitatis of Plantinga. And if the answer is positive, then how exactly does this epistemic mechanism perform the function of rational justification of theistic beliefs? As a result, I claim that in Aquinas one can really find something that could be called sensus divinitatis, but its justificatory work functions in a way that is quite different from that of Plantinga, because it involves the natural orientation of the human will to God as the ultimate goal of human life.

The conference “Russian Orthodoxy from modernity to the present day (late 19th - late 20th centuries): projections of the Great Russian revolution in history and historiography” was held on June 15-17, 2018 at Smolensk State University. The conference was attended by more than 30 scholars from various academic centers of Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Poland and the USA. The discussion focused on a wide range of issues related to the evolution of Orthodoxy (from governance structure to religious practices) under the influence of the modernization of Russian society at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and the socio-political processes introduced by the revolutions and the formation of the Soviet system. The changes that took place then largely impact today's Russian Orthodoxy.