While the global ethnic revival, starting in the late 1960s, resulted in minorities' movements to maintain their ethnic identity closely connected with the revitalization of minority languages, the other ethnic identity pattern in relation to language can be identified from the perspective of a rarely discussed minority group-the Buryats. This article has found that within the Buryat minority group the assimilation strategy, widespread during the Soviet period, has been replaced by the integration strategy and a combination of strategies. In the latter case, linguistic integration is combined with the economic assimilation and marital separation. Two options have been identified regarding the language and identity link among Buryats. First, the native language is considered a salient feature of the Buryat ethnic identity, and it is actually used and maintained. However, more powerful is the trend to abandon the language as an irrelevant ethnocultural identity marker. In general, the native language has for Buryats a rather symbolic, unifying value and its abandoning does not affect the ethnic identity itself. Finally, the article explores external and internal determining factors, which have formed this identity pattern. As external factors we consider the ethnic and language policy of the Soviet Union, modernization, the Russian-dominated majority-minority configuration, and insufficient institutional support of the Buryat language restoration and development. The internal factor is the widespread attitude among the Buryats themselves consisting of a negative evaluation of the Buryat language and unwillingness to learn it and to transfer it to the next generations. The Buryat case shows that ethnic identity, in fact, can survive the loss of the indigenous group language, which has been sacrificed to the historical pressures of the last two centuries. It was the only possible ethnic identity pattern not only for the Buryat ethnic group, but also for many other minorities in Russia.