A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Introduction 21
border cities of Sükhbaatar (Mongol side) and Kiakhta (Russian side),
and the Selenga then heads toward Baikal, passing by Buriatia’s capital,
Ulan Ude, shortly before flowing into the lake.The Buriats or northern
Mongols, Buddhists like their southern kinsmen, do not appear to have
played any significant historical role, but their territory assumed some
importance in the nineteenth century as a gateway for Russian influence
reaching Mongolia usually by way of Kiakhta.The Russian presence in
Siberia, a fundamental factor ever since the seventeenth century, is symbolized
here by Irkutsk, which lies a short distance to the northwest of
Baikal’s southern tip.A little farther west is a mountain range, the
Eastern Sayan, which together with the Western Sayan and a third
range, the Tannu Ola on the south along the Mongol border, encompasses
the greater part of the Tuva Autonomous Republic, a geographical
formation somewhat resembling northern Sinkiang (Jungaria),
though smaller.The great Siberian river Yenisei originates in Tuva,
owing its existence to a number of mountain streams which rise in the
Eastern Sayan and gradually combine as two branches, the Biy Khem
and Ka Khem.These two rivers then converge at Kyzyl, the capital of
Tuva, to form the Yenisei.The latter soon changes its westerly course to
a northerly one as it prepares to break through the Western Sayan and
embark on its course toward the Arctic Ocean.The people who inhabited
the area along the upper Yenisei were in antiquity and the Middle
Ages the Kyrgyz, tribes speaking a Turkic language and sharing some of
the same culture that animated the Kök Turks and Uighurs of the
Orkhon valley.The Tuvans of today also speak a Turkic idiom, and may
be partly descended from the Kyrgyz; the latter, however, mostly
migrated west and eventually constituted the principal population of
modern Kyrgyzstan.The Tuvans themselves, like their Buriat neighbors
to the east, underwent strong influence from the south and converted to
Buddhism, the only Turkic-speaking group to do so besides the historical
Uighurs.Eventually, however, Russian presence had a decisive
impact both culturally and demographically, and in this sense Tuva has
become, like Buriatia, an inseparable component of Russia’s Siberia.
Yet another Mongol group, the Oirats or Western Mongols, used to
live between the upper Yenisei and Lake Baikal, to the east of the Kyrgyz
and north of the Tuvans.In the fifteenth century they embarked on a
long series of migrations and conquests analogous to those of Genghis
Khan’s Eastern Mongols, but never as brilliant or successful.
The Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region of the Russian Federation, the
capital of which is Gorno-Altaisk, is situated between Tuva and