Major rivers include: Over 80% of the republic's territory is located in the mountainous region, including the Baikal Mountains on the northern shores of Lake Baikal, the Ulan-Burgas east of the lake, and the Selenga Highlands in the south near the Mongolia–Russia border.

Further divisions of the Buryats came from those living on the western shore of Lake Baikal, with better land for agriculture, and those in the east, who practiced nomadism more regularly and continued residing in moveable felt yurts.

As a result of the superior farmland, the western side of Lake Baikal was settled by European peasants during the time of the Russian Empire – western Buryats were more exposed to and influenced by the culture, religions, and economy of their European neighbors, whereas the eastern Buryats maintained closer ties to other Mongolic peoples, Buddhism, and Asian civilizations.

[16] Kyakhta's founder, the Serb Sava Vladislavich, established it as a trading point between Russia and the Qing Empire.

[17] The 1820 reforms of Mikhail Speransky established indirect rule over Buryatia by codifying the local clan leaders as official members of the "steppe duma" in order to incorporate them into the existing imperial government.

[15] Buddhism was recognized as an official religion of the Russian Empire by Empress Elizabeth in 1741, with the first Pandito Khambo Lama, the spiritual leader of Buryat Buddhists, elected in 1764.

At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov served as the 12th Pandito Khambo Lama of Eastern Siberia from 1911 to 1917.

From March 1917, the leading Buryat intelligentsia organized a number of conferences in cities such as Petrograd, Chita, Irkutsk, and Verkhneudinsk (present-day Ulan-Ude) and invited representatives from Buryat administrative districts of the Irkutsk and Transbaikalia regions.

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.

[18] 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.

[20] 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.

Prior to World War II, less than 10% of Buryats lived in urban areas, compared to almost half at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union.

However this autonomy has been curtailed following the 2004 law passed by Vladimir Putin that decreed regional governors and presidents were to be appointed, rather than directly elected.

The People's Khural has 66 deputies and is currently dominated by the country's ruling party, United Russia, with 45 seats.

In the 2024 Russian presidential election, which critics called rigged and fraudulent, President Vladimir Putin won 87.96% of the vote in Buryatia.

From the second half of the 17th century, beliefs and cults in the shamanic form were displaced by Buddhism, which became widespread in ethnic Buryatia.

In addition, 25% of the population declares to be "spiritual but not religious", 13% to be atheist, and 10.8% follows another religion or did not give an answer to the survey.

Since the breakup of the USSR in 1991, a small number have converted to various Protestant denominations or to Rodnovery, also known as the Slavic native faith.

The republic's economy is composed of agricultural and commercial products including wheat, vegetables, potatoes, timber, leather, graphite, and textiles.