With its muddy roads and rustic wooden houses, the village of Galtai ("fire" in Buryat) seems virtually untouched by either Soviet influence or the later upheaval of perestroika.

As they have for years, Buryat families tend small patches of land where cabbage, potatoes, onions and beets grow in the dark earth. They milk their own cows, make butter and sour cream, and raise pigs and sheep for slaughter. There is no running water in any of the houses, and horses pull carts down the uneven dirt roads and through the village's single intersection.