The article offers a survey of religious contactsmaintained between Tibet and Russian Buddhists, theethnic Buryats and Kalmyks, from the late 19th C. tothe 1930s. Chronologically, the story falls into twoparts, the dividing point being the Bolshevikrevolution of 1917. The focus in the first portionis on the Russian Buddhist colony in Lhasa centredaround the Gomang Datsang (school) of the Drepungmonastery, its emergence and growth in the early20th C., in the wake of Russo-Tibetanrapprochement brought about by aBuryat scholar-monk and adviser of the 13th DalaiLama, Agvan Dorjiev. The tsarist government tried touse their Buddhist connection with Lhasa topolitical ends – in January 1904, shortly after thebeginning of the British military invasion of Tibet,they sent a secret Kalmyk reconnaissance mission toLhasa under a Cossack subaltern, Naran Ulanov,assisted by a cleric (bakshi) DamboUlianov. The latter part of the article concentrateson the dramatic post-revolutionary period. It beginswith the story of the Kalmyk refugees in Turkey andtheir abortive attempt to emigrate to Tibet. There'salso a detailed discussion of the endeavours bySoviet leaders to win the Dalai Lama over, byemploying the loyal Buryats and Kalmyks for theirsecret missions to the Potala. The key figuresbehind this scheme were the Soviet foreign minister,G. V. Chicherin, and the same Agvan Dorjiev, posingas the Dalai Lama's representative in the USSR. As aresult of the Bolshevik propaganda, many of theBuryat and Kalmyk residents in Lhasa began to returnto their homeland in the 1920s. The crackdown onBuddhism in Soviet Russia put an end to theMoscow–Lhasa political dialogue. Hence allconnections between the Buryat and Kalmyk Buddhistsand their religious “Mecca” were deliberately cut bythe Soviet authorities by 1930.