Galina Dondukova

The project proposes an interdisciplinary study of the revival of historical memory after the fall of the USSR in one region of Siberia – Buryatia. It focuses on the poetry of the leading Buryat poet Bair Dugarov, whose poems and images have become the symbols of Buryat ethnic identity during a critical time of post-Soviet searching for self-identity. I argue that ‘the nomad’ and ‘nostalgia’ are the central motifs of Dugarov’s poetry and that they shape the ethnic identity of the Buryats through a connection with the all-Mongolian past.