The Ivolginsky Datsan Buddhist monastery. This centre of Russian Buddhism stands on a wide plain 35km outside the city of Ulan Ude. Before the Revolution there were hundreds of similar monasteries in the area with the largest and most important at Selenginsk. Almost all were closed and the monks sent to the gulags in the 1930's but when Stain sanctioned greater religious tolerance in the 1940's, astrologers selected this site for a new monastery and it was built in 1946. The largest temple in the complex is a three storey building constructed in 1971.