Abstract
Abstract The article offers an analysis of Orthodox missionary efforts among Transbaikal Buryats in the middle of the nineteenth century, with a special focus on the conversion of the Buryat Taisha Nikolai Dymbilov. His voluntary baptism, supported by the Russian metropolitan authorities and the Orthodox Church, led to unintended consequences, disrupting local power relations and undermining the Christian mission in the region. The case illustrates that conversion was often rather a negotiation of privileges and limits of authority on the native elites’ side than a purely spiritual transformation. The state’s intervention, and in particular the patronage of high‐ranking officials, including the tsar himself, that was intended to support the mission, instead destabilized the local order, undermined the reputation of missionaries, and facilitated corruption. This article shows that indigenous populations were not passive objects of missionary efforts but acted as agents who resisted, adapted to, and used the system in their own interests. And its exploration of the Dymbilov Affair, based on rich archival evidence, provides an empirical foundation for a reconceptualization of Christianization in Siberia as a field of contestation where the objectives and expectations of converts, missionaries, and different levels of imperial authority often diverged, which in turn led to outcomes that were equivocal, problematic, and sometimes even opposite to what was expected.