In this article, Katherine Metzo examines the creation of Tunka National Park in Russia's Lake Baikal region. Formed in the last days of the Soviet Union, the park represents the efforts of local indigenous elite to manipulate state policies on conservation to return control over natural resources to the local population. Metzo sees the formation of the park as part of a cultural revitalization movement through its ties to a broader Buriat national-cultural movement that emerged in late socialism. Movement leaders were vnye, in Alexei Yurchak's sense of the word, as they promoted their personal as well as the national-cultural agenda through the inbetween spaces created in the discussion of nature conservation.