on responsibilities such as organizing the elections, assembling the Buryat Duma, and publishing works in the Buryat language. Among other topics discussed at the Congress were the establishment of an Education Council to create Buryat schools, trained educators, and curricula that included the history of the Buryats and Mongols, Buryat studies, and the history of Mongolian literature. After the November Revolution in 1917, the Buryats bid for independence was complicated by the arrival of a Japanese expeditionary force into Buryatia in 1918. The Buryat national leaders saw the Japanese as potential and critical allies in assisting the independence movement, but the cooperation ultimately failed due to the conflicting agendas. The Red Army advanced in Buryatia in 1920 and continued to Outer Mongolia in 1921. Attracted to the promises of self-determination and territorial autonomy by the Bolsheviks, and having lost the cooperation of the Japanese, the Buryat leaders embraced the idea of building a Buryat nation with the new Soviet state. In 1923, the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (; ) was created as a result of the merger of State of Buryat-Mongolia and Mongol-Buryat Oblasts and promised territorial autonomy. In 1937, Aga Buryatia and Ust-Orda Buryatia were detached from the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR and merged with Chita and Irkutsk Oblasts, respectively. In 1958, the name "Mongol" was removed from the name of the republic. The Buryat intelligentsia were active throughout Buryatia and beyond, into Tibet and Mongolia, some with the goals of Pan-Mongolism. At the turn of the 20th century, Buryats leaders, such as Batu-dalai Ochirov and Mikhail Bogdanov, began actively writing political articles about the threat to Buryatia and Buryat existence from Russia. Despite their noted influence from 1900 to 1930, most of them were purged, killed outright or sent to concentration camps, in the 1930s. The leader of the Buryat ASSR from 1962 to 1984 was Andrei Urupkheevich Modogoev. In the 1970s, Soviet authorities began two major industrial projects in Buryatia: the Gusinoozerskii power station to the south of Ulan-Ude and the construction of the Baikal–Amur Mainline railway in northern Buraytia. The construction of both projects, particularly the railway, required recruiting campaigns to bring workers from other parts of the country to Buryatia. Towns developed along the railroad, and the urban population in northern Buryatia doubled between 1979 and 1989. In addition to the Russians who moved to Buryatia for work, Buryats from other parts of southern Siberia also