Periodical printing on state policies with regard to confessional institutions in Buryat-Mongolia (1920-1930)

The article is devoted to one of the most controversial periods in the history of Soviet Union nation-building - anti-religious struggle and inculcation of atheistic, communist ideology. The introductory part identifies the range of scientific problems, territorial and chronological scope of the study. We have made an attempt to reconstruct the phenomenon of anti-religious propaganda and agitation in public media on the example of the republican newspaper.Buryat-Mongolskaya Pravda. (Buryat-Mongolian Truth). The appeal to the periodical press allowed us to identify the public attitudes to the issues of antireligious struggle, the general emotional background of the processes under consideration..Buryat-Mongolskaya Pravda. reflected such forms of anti-religious struggle of 1920s- 1930s as the removal of bells from Orthodox churches, the request of workers to ban religious holidays, the disputes with Buddhist priests on theology. One of the manifestations of anti-religious propaganda was the defamation of the clergy, the public exposure of their unconvention behavior. The use of pejorative vocabulary for description of the event, and the mockery of the clergy’s behavior are characteristic for this kind of newspaper stories. We have concluded that the exposure of the radical stage of anti-religious struggle in the.Buryat-Mongolskaya Pravda. was one-sided and tendentious. The defamation of religious practices, rituals, and image of the clergy formed the necessary ideological background, exacerbated the atmosphere of anti-religious struggle.