Disassembledge in the siberian city of Ulan-Ude: How ethnic buryats reconstruct through time and space

This chapter focuses on the Buryat experience centered in and around the city of Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Republic of Buryatia - a territory of the Russian Federation located in eastern Siberia. It examines how the Buryats reconstructed their society in new ways that built on and sometimes borrowed from each successive system. Ulan-Ude is the largest city in Buryatia and it is the educational, cultural, economic, and political center for the southeastern Siberian region and for the Buryat people. Ulan-Ude was founded in 1666 in southeastern Siberia at the confluence of the Selenga and Uda rivers during the Russian Empire’s expansive march east across Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. While Stalin’s policies meant enormous destruction in Buryat society and in the city of Ulan-Ude, they did put into place opportunities for reassembly. The disassembling of the Soviet regime and the imposition of a neoliberal market economy rapidly required retooling of daily life for most people.