With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe the west has been confronted with the existence of several, little-understood Muslim ethnic groups in this region whose contested histories can be traced back to the Ottoman period and beyond. Previously overlooked Muslim ethnies, such as the Bulgarian Turks, Bosniaks, Pomaks, Kosovars, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars, have begun to receive considerable attention from both western scholars and the general public. Much of the interest revolves around the question of the identity of these Muslim communities and the history of their formation as distinct ethnic groups. The history of the formation of these groups has in many cases been contested terrain as Bulgarian authorities, for example, attempted in the 1980s to prove that the Bulgarian Turks were actually “Turkified Bulgarians”, as the Greek government sought to demonstrate that the Pomaks (Slavic Muslims) were actually Islamicized Greeks, and as Bosniaks were labelled “Turks” by their Serbian nationalist foes in spite of their Slavic background.

The article offers a survey of religious contacts maintained between Tibet and Russian Buddhists, the ethnic Buryats and Kalmyks, from the late 19th C. to the 1930s. Chronologically, the story falls into two parts, the dividing point being the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The focus in the first portion is on the Russian Buddhist colony in Lhasa centred around the Gomang Datsang (school) of the Drepung monastery, its emergence and growth in the early 20th C., in the wake of Russo-Tibetan rapprochement brought about by a Buryat scholar-monk and adviser of the 13th Dalai Lama, Agvan Dorjiev. The tsarist government tried to use their Buddhist connection with Lhasa to political ends – in January 1904, shortly after the beginning of the British military invasion of Tibet, they sent a secret Kalmyk reconnaissance mission to Lhasa under a Cossack subaltern, Naran Ulanov, assisted by a cleric (bakshi) Dambo Ulianov. The latter part of the article concentrates on the dramatic post-revolutionary period. It begins with the story of the Kalmyk refugees in Turkey and their abortive attempt to emigrate to Tibet. There's also a detailed discussion of the endeavours by Soviet leaders to win the Dalai Lama over, by employing the loyal Buryats and Kalmyks for their secret missions to the Potala. The key figures behind this scheme were the Soviet foreign minister, G. V. Chicherin, and the same Agvan Dorjiev, posing as the Dalai Lama's representative in the USSR. As a result of the Bolshevik propaganda, many of the Buryat and Kalmyk residents in Lhasa began to return to their homeland in the 1920s. The crackdown on Buddhism in Soviet Russia put an end to the Moscow–Lhasa political dialogue. Hence all connections between the Buryat and Kalmyk Buddhists and their religious “Mecca” were deliberately cut by the Soviet authorities by 1930.

Hugh Clifford has been described as “one of the most unusual colonial governors in British history”. Widely regarded as the “doyen of the colonial service”, Clifford held successive governorships in the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Ceylon, and the Straits Settlements. As a writer of novels, short stories, and reminiscences, moreover, he enjoyed a successful literary career; he moved in literary circles and counted Joseph Conrad among his particular friends. Clifford's inspiration was drawn almost exclusively from his experiences in Malaya, the territory where he not only started his career in the early 1880s, but also ended it in tragic circumstances nearly fifty years later. Throughout his Malayan career Clifford came into frequent contact with Malaya's ruling families. “To act the part of officer in attendance upon Malayan royalties is a task with which circumstances have familiarised me”, he declared in “Piloting Princes”, a 1902 contribution to Blackwood's Magazine. His attitude towards them ranged from disgust and condemnation, to admiration and a paternalistic concern for their dignity and survival. Unravelling Clifford's complex, and apparently contradictory, relationship with Malay royalty will be the subject of this article.