| Information warfare is a key component of counterinsurgency operations. The US COIN strategy, for instance, embraces the use of information operations to create favorable public opinion and positive attitudes towards US policies. Such strategies have been employed by other groups in other contexts. My dissertation project examines history of interactions between the Soviet counterinsurgency agencies and Buriat Buddhist (Lamaist) Church to study the possibility of using rumors, gossip and prophecies as an insurgent information war weapon. I argue that, being outraged over economic crisis and anti-religious policies, between 1921 and 1937 the Lamas used these ancient techniques of shaping public opinion for undermining the Soviet stability operations in the Southeastern Siberian borderlands. My research is based on archival documents and secondary sources on an unknown conflict between Bolsheviks and Buriat Buddhist Church in the Siberian borderlands situated at the juxtaposition of state borders between Russia, China, and the Republic of Mongolia. In the 1930s the region constituted an important springboard for attack and, simultaneously, an extremely unstable and fickle buffer between the USSR and Imperial Japan's zones of influence. |
