‘Haunted by Ukrainian Ghosts’

Abstract

This contribution is one of the first ‘field-based’ personal observations, when ethnographic research in the region is now almost impossible, especially for Western researchers. It sketches ethnographically local experiences of the war, describing a divided society in distress, which ‘galvanises nostalgia’ (Balzer 2021) for the past amid the grim reality around. The essay attempts to show in particular, what soldiers from Buryatia are experiencing at war, including the supernatural, and to describe the reflections of their family members and their communities on how the war has changed their lives, on the tragedies of human losses, frustrations, fears for an uncertain future, and hopes that the war soon would be over. Moreover, Russia’s war in Ukraine is producing many narratives of cultural difference, when ‘Buryats’, whether that term indicates ethnic belonging or a regional identity, are now seen as a distinct social group separate from the majority of the population of the Russian Federation on the basis of their cultural and historical traits often based on imaginaries deploying the much-mythologised figure of the Mongolian nomad.