This article examines the role the public imagination of the state has in maintaining the current political status quo in Burjatija, an east Siberian Republic. Based on a quantitative and interpretative analysis of Burjatija’s local newspapers, it uses the ‘centre-versus-periphery’ paradigm to identify varying representations of the Republic’s territorial community in government legitimization discourse, before discussing their assimilation into popular newspaper discourse. Multiple narratives of Burjatija and the Russian Federation exist in these newspapers, incorporating various centres and peripheries. I end (...) by discussing the nature of the state these newspapers reveal, and the function the dissemination of alternative centres and peripheries has within it. (shrink)