An offshoot of Altai’s “Burkhanist” religion (although not using this name), the Karakol Initiative Group, part of the “White Faith” movement, is heavily persecuted.
by Massimo Introvigne
Russian media recently reported that on April 16 special forces cracked down throughout Altai Republic, in Southern Siberia, on another “extremist cult”: “operatives and investigators with the forceful support of the special forces of the Russian Guard, seized extremist literature, computers, phones and money” and arrested several “cultists,” including the main leader of the group. It was also reported that in faraway Ulyanovsk (some 3,000 kilometers from Altai) a “cult member” who conspired to overthrow the Putin regime had been arrested.
What was this “cult”? It was referred to as part of “neo-Paganism,” a bête noire of Russian anti-cultists, but the name “Karakol Initiative Group” and the reference to the leader Vasily Chekurashev allowed to identify the movement, which has a long history of persecution and on which a significant scholarly literature exists (including the 2021 thesis at the University of Utrecht by Elizaveta Shishlakova, which I use here as my main source for the history of the movement).
The story starts at the beginning of the 20th century when a combination of national, economic, and religious claims created a new religion in the Altai region, which Russian authorities called “Burkhanism.” The term was the result of a misunderstanding but, as it often happens in the history of religions, it stuck. “Burkhan” is the Russian transliteration of a Mongolian term for “Buddha.” However, what Russian Czarist bureaucrats and Orthodox missionaries called “Burkhanism” in Altai was a syncretistic new religious movement rather than a Buddhist sect.
The movement started with an Altai shepherd called Chet Chelpan (Russianized as Chelpanov) who, together with his adopted daughter Chugul, announced in 1904 that they were receiving revelations from the White Rider, a traditional divine figure in Altai mythology. He asked them to preach a new faith that would unify the five main religions, ban shamanism and blood sacrifices as superstitions, reject Russian rule and Russian currency, avoid associating with Christians, and—curiously—also to get rid of cats as pets, which the Turkic Altai people regarded as a symbol of Russian customs foreign to their traditions.
The White Rider also announced the advent of a future messianic figure, the Oirot Khan, who would free the Altai from Russian oppression. The visionaries called their religion “Ak-Jaŋ” (the White Faith) although Chugul sometimes called the White Rider “the White Buddha,” “Ak-Burkhan,” which led the Russian opponents to label the movement “Burkhanism,” a term they had previously used for local Buddhist sects.
As a result, thousands of Altai gathered in the Tereng Valley for a revivalist meeting, hoping that the Oirot Khan would appear. Instead, the Czarist police came and arrested Chet, Chugul, and their main followers, although Czarist tribunals proved lenient enough and in 1906 they were acquitted and liberated. “Burkhanists” continued to be denounced as arch-heretics by the Orthodox clergy but fascinated intellectuals with esoteric inclinations such as painter Nicholas Roerich, which painted both the Tereng Valley revival and the Oirot (or Oirat) Khan.
Much less tolerant of “Burkhanism” were the Soviets, who executed or drove underground most leaders of the faith, although the movement survived clandestinely. However, during their clandestine years, “Burkhanists” often worshiped together with shamanists and proscribed Buddhist sects, although the original “White Faith” was anti-shamanist and different from Buddhism.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, during the short-lived religious freedom of the Yeltsin era, a journalist from Altai TV called Altaichy Sanashkin founded in 1991 and registered a religion called Ak-Burkhan, which claimed to be both the heir of the “White Faith” and a legitimate part of Buddhism.
A competitor of Sanashkin, who did not legally register an organization, was businessman Sergei Kynyev (who goes under the religious name Akai Kine), who in 1997 created a group he called Ak-Jaŋ, which was however different from the movement of the early 20th century since it welcomed rather than fighting shamans. In the early 21st century, Vasily Chekurashev left the Kynyev’s group. Since the name Ak-Jaŋ was used by Kynyev, Chekurashev called his movement “Karakol Initiative Group,” although it is often referred to as “Ak-Jaŋ” in Altai.
Indeed, Chekurashev’s group is the movement that maintains most of the original ideas of Chet Chelpan and Chugul, although with some distinctive innovations. It is anti-shamanist, anti-Christian, and anti-Russian. It is also, more than the early 20th century group, anti-Buddhist, and its followers are accused of destroying in the villages both Christian crosses and Buddhist stupas as elements foreign to the Altai Turkic tradition. At the same time, there are messianic claims centering on Chekurashev himself (whom some followers regard as the Oirot Khan) and a use of Theosophical sources, including the writings of Madame Helena Blavatsky and Nicholas Roerich (who, of course, would not have approved the movement’s hostility to Buddhism).
In 2018, the Karakol Initiative Group was banned by an Altai court for “extremism,” and in 2019 made it to the federal list of extremist organizations. The decision was applauded by Ak-Burkhan, which presents itself as part of “legitimate” Buddhism and as pro-Putin, while regarding the Karakol Initiative Group as a “cult.” Kynyev’s group also tried to distance itself from Chekurashev’s anti-Russian positions.
Chekurashev went underground but has now been captured in the raids of April 16, 2014. The popularity of his movement—and the reasons for its repression—is not due to religious reasons only. The Ak-Jaŋ tradition has been, since its beginnings, a vehicle for the defense of Altai identity (and communal ownership of public lands by herders) against Russification. In Putin’s Russia, the existence of all its branches can only be precarious.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
