Urban Shamanism in Siberia The Dialectic PDF

- ISSN 2450-8047 nr 2017/3 (5)
http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/ht.2017.5.3.07
s. 85-126
URBAN SHAMANISM IN SIBERIA:

THE DIALECTIC OF PLACEMAKING AND
FIELDWORK
Zbigniew SZMYT
-
Adam Mickiewicz University
ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to shed light on the influence of ethnography on urban shamanism in
Siberia. In spite of the classic division into the researcher and respondents. Categories used in
ethnological descriptions cause changes in an inquired society. Rather than obsessively verify
authenticity of shamanic heritage, this paper focuses on agency acquired by Buriads through
shamanic practices. Siberian shamanism represents an effective and popular way to enforce
indigenous rights to the urban space. Contemporary shamanism is involved in such process
as decolonisation of urban space, new temporalisation and indigenous placemaking, while
-
question of authenticity is used as an instrument of political legitimacy for different social
actors in their fight for public space.
KEYWORDS:
u r b a n s h a m a n i s m , fi e l d w o rk , t e m p o ra l i z a t i o n , p la c e m a k i n g , a u th e n t ic i t y ,
p o st co lo n ia lism , i n d i g e n i z a ti o n , S i b e ri a, B u rya tia, B uriads
85
From living perception to abstract thought and from this to practice –
such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality.
V. I. Lenin
INTRODUCTION
Colonial and postcolonial cities were a constant object of anthropological in-
quiry at least since the times of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute of Social Studies1 .
However, some issues and native practices were traditionally associated with rural
areas, and, for a long time, scholars did not pay attention to their urban dimension.
One such topic is Siberian shamanism, which has been explored intensively almost for
two centuries by native scholars2 , Russian prisoners3 and anthropologists4 . From the
1960s onwards shamanism became a popular topic in the West. It was Mircea Eliade
who gave the word the idealised vision of shamanic ecstatic trance and cosmology
that inspired hippies and New Age fans all over the world. Eliade (1964) and two
anthropologists: Michael Harner (1980) and Carlos Castañeda (1968) became
the bedrock of a religious movement known as ‘neo-shamanism’. In contrast to tradi-
tional shamanism, it is a bricolage of spiritual techniques from different cultures used
by the western middle class to explore their subconscious and develop some spiritual
skills. The scientific mainstream makes a fundamental distinction between these two
forms: the traditional ethnic shamanism (usually rural) and the invented by western
bourgeois (mostly urban) neo-shamanism. This clear division has become vague and
ambiguous in contemporary times because of urban shamanism – an outstanding
social phenomenon that appeared in post-Soviet Asia.
In fact, as shown later, the scientific reception of shamanism in urban space was
very sceptical. It has been emphasised by various prefixes (neo-, post-, invented etc.)
added to the word ‘shamanism’. For some reason, in the eye of the Western beholder,
1 U. Hannerz, Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology, New York 1980.
2 D. Banzarov, Chernaya viera ili shamanstvo u Mongolov, “ Uchenye zapiski Kazanskogo
universiteta”, No 3, p. 52-120; G. Cybikov, Shamanizm u Buryat-Mongolov, “ Buryatovedenie”,
vol. 4(8), p. 39-46.
3 W. Sieroszewski, Dwadzieścia lat w Kraju Jakutów, Warszawa 1900; E. Piekarski, K. Va-
silev, Plashch I buben yakutskogo shamana [in:] F. Volkov (ed.) Materialy po etnografii Rossii,
t. 1, Sankt-Peterburg 1910, p. 93-162.
4 M. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia. A Study in Social Anthropology, Oxford 1914; T. Mikhailov,
Buryatski szamanizm: istoriya, struktura i social’nye funkcii, Novosibirsk 1987; R. Hamayon, Are
‘Trance’, ‘Ecstasy’ and Similar Concepts Appropriate in the Study of Shamanism?, “Shaman” vol. 1
nos. 1-2, p. 17-40.
86
ZBIGNIEW SZMYT Urban shamanism in Siberia: the dialectic of placemaking and fieldwork
indigenous people became less authentic as they started to practice their culture in
urban space. Scholars frequently pointed out that urban shamanism has been recon-
structed via ethnological publications about shamanism; while in remote rural areas,
one could find a vivid transmission that survived the communist repressions. In my
opinion, it does not ring true. After some time in the field, I found that very often
urban shamans are treated like charlatans, who are trying to cheat people and science.
It leads me to the question that we ought to face now: What is the cause of the sharp
decline of authenticity in urban space? Why are some ethnic practices treated as fake
when they are performed in cities? Why is the process of indigenous placemaking
so often being recognised in the categories of authenticity and innovation but not
a political act?5 In my opinion urban shamanism is a powerful practice of placemak-
ing which develops through a dialectic interaction with ethnographic fieldwork and
writing. A dialectic approach to indigenous placemaking and fieldwork should provide
insight into the specificity of post-Soviet shamanism. The multi-layered narrative is,
therefore, a conscious analytical strategy. I will shortly explain why I decided to involve
the research method in my explanatory framework.
Fieldwork is being referred to as the very heart of the anthropological approach.
It has become the hallmark of anthropology. With the help of field notes, the author
builds his scientific authority6 . Through participation in the life of a local community,
talks, interviews, observations, a researcher gets a unique cognitive status. Other hu-
manistic disciplines, which have no basis in fieldwork, are often deemed to be purely
academic divagations. The knowledge produced by quantitative methods is void of
this discreet charm of genuineness. By and large, the anthropologists conducting
fieldwork figure in a play. In order to gain perspective from the inside-out, we seek
to become members of the group and try to take on the role that otherwise we may
not have chosen7 . Often we jolly people along until they agree to help us to gain
valuable insight. You have no choice, you must try to draw upon the role of ‘marginal
native’ to convey the emic view of the culture – even if no one invited you over. For
this purpose, we use numerous acting techniques: participant observation, cultural
immersion, face-to-face interaction etc. However, what if the natives start to perform
their ‘traditional culture’ guided by ethnographic papers? What if the shamans have
5 Indigenous placemaking can be viewed as a process that is transforming the identity

of urban space from colonial to native. It is also a way of reframing the past and symbolic land
possession, and a collective strategy in the fight for the public space.
6 J. Clifford, On ethnographic authority, “Representations” 2, p. 118–146.
7 S. Schensul, Anthropological Fieldwork and Sociopolitical Change, “Social Problems”, Ethi-
cal Problems of Fieldwork Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 309-319.
87
PhDs in anthropology and are analysing the cultural practices that they are acting?
It could be concerned as a radical case of ‘native anthropology’8 or ‘anthropology at
home’9 , when the Western power-knowledge monopoly is finally being overcome.
The question arises here, whether it is still reasonable to divide cultural phenomena
into ‘authentic’ and ‘invented’, ‘tradition’ and ‘innovation’, or rather we are doomed
to a never-ending precession of simulacra. It is the essential question that has to be
posed by every scholar who decides to research post-soviet shamanism10 .
This paper attempts to use my own insights to shed light on the inf luence
of ethnography on contemporar y shamanism in Siber ia. In spite of the
classic division into the researcher (subject) and respondents (object), I shall try to
demonstrate that all three actants of the research process (researcher, respondent and
scientific paper) have their own agency and remain in a dynamic, dialectical relation-
ship with each other11 .
I paid particular attention to the per formative dimension of shamanic
utterances and r itual acts 12 . Shamanic rituals act on three levels: individual,
family and community level. Performativity on the level of community is essential
for this paper.
Furthermore, I shall show how categories used in ethnological descriptions,
such as: ‘authenticity’, ‘tradition’, ‘innovation’, ‘invented tradition’ cause changes in an
inquired society. Rather than obsessively verify the authenticity of shamanic heritage,
this paper focuses on agency acquired by Buriad people through shamanic practices.
Invented or not, Siberian shamanism represents an effective and popular way to en-
force indigenous rights to the urban space. Contemporary shamanism is involved in
such process as decolonisation of urban space, new temporalisation and indigenous
placemaking, while the question of authenticity is used as an instrument of political
legitimacy for different social actors in their fight for public space.
My argumentation is based on 15 months of ethnographic research conducted in
2002- 2003 and 2009- 2010 in Buryatia. Additionally, in May 2006 I undertook field-
work among the Buriads of North-East Mongolia. The very last fieldwork I conducted
8 T. Kuwayama, Natives” as dialogic partners: Some thoughts on native anthropology, “Anthropology Today”
Vol. 19, Issue 1, pp. 8–13.
9 A. Jackson (ed.), Anthropology at Home, London 1987.
10 R. Wallis, Shamans/neo-Shamans: Contested Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies, and Contemporary Pagans,
London 2008.
11 The present paper attempts to analyse the Siberian indigenous shamanism, so later on it stays apart from the
American new age and neo-shamanic movement established by anthropologist Michael Harner.
12 J. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford 1975; S. Tambiah, Performative Approach to Ritual: Radcliffe-
Brown Lectures on Social Anthropology, London 1979.
88
89
in the city of Ulan-Ude in September 201513 . Generally, I have been making a good
fist of communicating with people in their mother tongue: Russian and the Buriad-Russian
creole language frequently used by countrymen. In the beginning, I was collecting data
about shamanism and Buddhism in the Tunka Valley in Buryatia. I mostly used the
formal interview method, but also included participant observation. Later on, I gave
up formal interviews and concentrated on participant observation. I was mucking in
with an urban Buriad family, studying at the local university and hanging out with
my classmates, who were without exception countrymen and backwoodsmen. By the
virtue of their hospitality, I had a unique opportunity to participate in two groups
of natives: new burghers and elder city dwellers. Thanks to their immense kindness,
I could participate in kin rituals and closed events. This enabled me to observe social
actors in their natural, real-world setting. Except for the brief episodes, I did not
follow particular shamans from ritual to ritual. Instead, I tried to observe the un-
constrained rhythm of social life and come into contact with the shamans when my
homies, friends or classmates did so. One must suppose that it allowed me to avoid
the fetishism of marginal topics, which could appear as a result of an ethnographic
fixation on shamanism only. But even so, in an academic paper, I was forced to extract
shamanic phenomena from the vital fabric of society. I strongly hope that people
from the good city of Ulan-Ude will be able to recognise themselves in the mirror of
these modest notes and will not feel too exoticised or (heaven forfend) demonised.
When creating my interpretive model, I consciously essentialised collective actants
i.e. Russians, Buriads, Evenki, burghers, villagers. The reader must be aware that these
are strategic idealisations brought to life in order to understand key processes and
social mechanisms.
HOW TO READ THIS PAPER?

I assume that the dynamic, dialectical processes must be described in order to
retain its processual character. However, this may also make the text less readable. In
the Buddhist tradition of the Mongols, Buriads and Tuvanians there is a widespread
practice of drawing mandala – diagrams that symbolise cognitive processes and es-
sence of contemplation. Let us try to create a mandala of our text.
To the core of the analysis, the dialectic of field research and social practices,
the reader may get through four ‘gates’ (terms): knowledge/power, authenticity,
13 This work was supported by the Polish National Science Centre, grant No.: 2012/05/E/HS3/03527.
90
temporalization and placemaking. One process has been shown in four perspectives,
which have been convolved into the following parts of the text. The text consists of
seven subsections. (1) The first part considers shamanism in the Soviet period. (2)
The second part is the taking apart of the role shamanism played in the process of
ethnic revival. (3) The third part refers to the difference between rural and urban
shamanism as an example of a discussion about the authenticity and invention of
cultural phenomena in the post-Communist period. (4) The Fourth part contains
an analysis of the process in which ethnographic descriptions and narratives have
been incorporated into a local system of knowledge. (5) The fifth part gives a short
case study of urban shaman practice. (6) The sixth part is an attempt to break down
the role of urban shamanism in the new temporalization of urban space and native
placemaking. These two parts should be considered as a proposal on reframing urban
shamanism – beyond the category of authenticity. The very last part (7) is devoted
to conclusions.
SHAMANISM IN THE SOVIET UNION

The Soviet ethnographic gaze was aimed at the materialist and evolutionary
frames of shamanism. In the USSR, ethnography was a ‘historical science based on
Marxist-Leninist ideology’, and its basic task was the ’building of socialism and com-
munism’14 . Ethnographers were useful tools in the hands of Soviet state apparatus.
In the then existing paradigm, shamanhood had been described as a relic of the past
socio-economical formation. In the eyes of scholars of that period, Siberian shaman-
ism no longer bore the hallmarks of a religious system15 . It was only possible to talk
about degraded, simplified elements of beliefs, superstitions and shamanic practices
detached from wider cosmology. With the progressive modernisation, these relicts
of tribal society had to disappear gradually16 . In the Historical and Ethnographic Atlas
of Siberia under the editorship of Leonid Potapov (famous ethnographer and ‘ethnic
engineer’ of Altaic groups) we read:
The Great October Socialist Revolution has opened to the peoples of Sibe-
ria a shining path toward building a brand new life. The age-old oppression
and exploitation of local people by merchants, kulaks and shamans came to
14 I. Bromley, Soviet Ethnography. The Main Trends, Moscow 1977, s. 109.

15 I. Peshkov, Hostages of the Place of Exile. Polish Researchers of Shamanism in Soviet Academic and Museum
Discourses, “Sensus Historiae”, vol. 6, p. 176; N. Vakhtin, Transformation in Siberian Anthropology: An Insider Perspective,
[in:] G. Lins, R. Escobar (eds.), World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations within Systems of Power, Oxford-New
York 2006, p. 51; S. Veinstein, Shamanstvo, [in:] E. Zhukov (ed.), Bolshaya Sovetskaya Enciklopediya, Moskwa 1973.
16 T. Mikhailov, Buryatski szamanizm: istoriya, struktura i social’nye funkcii, Novosibirsk 1987, p. 204-254.
91
a grinding halt. Reorganisation of the economy, based on collectivization,
the introduction of new technology, significantly raised the level of mate-
rial wealth of native nations. Qualified health care, compulsory schooling,
overall cultural effervescence undermined faith in the “power” of shamans,
lamas and other mediators, who had been performing the various rituals in
an effort to obtain the grace of gods and spirits. Shamanism is disappearing
with all its attributes17 .
Shamanism had become a previous stage of development of Siberian native culture,

and its remains were managed by ethnologists with the assistance of two institutions:
a regional museum and stage folk performance. Soviet ethnologists, regionalists and
folklorists created a lifeless, ossified canon of native culture, which had no right to its
own path of development and innovation. We can repeat after Jean Baudrillard that ‘in
order for ethnology to live, its object must die; by dying, the object takes its revenge
for being ‘discovered’ and with its death defies the science that wants to grasp it’18 .
Moreover, in the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet administration persecuted the
shamans and put an end to their practices, attributes and sanctuaries. In some ethnic
regions actions of dekulakization of shamans were held. In this period the number
of Shamans in Altai, Tuva, Buryatia and Yakutia fell dramatically. Some of them were
arrested, but most were forced to abandon their profession. At the same time, the
shamans were often treated by the repressive apparatus more lightly than other ‘cult
workers’ because shamanism often wasn’t regarded as a religion but as quackery19 .
According to the Stalinist conception of national culture ‘socialist in content and

national in form’, cultural differences were supposed to remain mainly on linguistic and
aesthetic levels, while the deeper layers of traditional culture were to disappear from
the everyday life of indigenous peoples of Siberia. The ‘holdovers of tribal culture’,
carefully recorded and classified by ethnographers, were involved in the historical
narrative about the evolution of ethnos from primitive forms to socialism20 . Tokarev
and his students delineated stages of Siberian shamanism and refined it to classical
(clannish) shamanism and later forms, syncretic with Buddhism and Orthodoxy21 .
17 E. Prokof ’eva, Shamanskie bubny, [in:] M. Levin, L. Potapov (eds.) Istoriko-etnograficheskiy atlas Sibirii,
Moskva-Leningrad 1961, p. 435.
18 J. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, Michigan 1995, p. 7.
19 V. Kharitonova, Politika, korrektiruiushchaia traditsii: (neo)shamany i (neo)shamanizm v SSSR i RF (1922–
2010 gg.), [in:] František Bahenský a kolektiv. Národnostní polityka na teritoriu bývaleho SSSR. Praha 2010, p. 86-94.
20 A. Anisimov, Etapy razvitija pervobytnoi religii, Moskva-Leningrad 1967.
21 S. Tokarev, Rannie formy religii, Moskva 1964, p. 289-290.
92
Probably for political reasons, Soviet ethnologists did not lend more weight to the
research on shamanism in the contemporary Soviet society22 . As Ivan Peshkov stressed:
The institutional status of an ethnographic expedition […] created a special

mode of knowledge production, in which ‘religion’ was located only in the past
perspective (in memories and legends). For this reason, the Soviet shamanistic
studies were an extremely secondary-source-oriented school of ethnography
at that time. As a result of the chosen perspective, the Siberian religious life
of the time was closed in the Soviet period not only to foreigners but also to
Soviet researchers because of their conscious blindness to local knowledge23 .
Some authors (e.g. Novik 1984) used the so-called ‘ethnographic presence’ as
a mode of presentation of the shamanic topic. In such a narrative practice allochronic
field data are synchronised in order to de-temporalize the described culture24 . Us-
ing generalisations and analyses as if fieldwork notes and historical sources25 were
a timeless reality, authors not only achieve much success in constructing objectified
structural analysis but also avoid involvement in problems of contemporary Soviet
shamanism. Most of the Soviet ethnographers either analysed the ‘classical’ period of
shamanism (XIX- early XX century) or ignored historicity a priori.
SHAMANISM IN THE REALM OF ETHNIC RENAISSANCE

The period of change came in the late 1980s when the perestroika and glasnost’
policy gradually developed into an ethnonational reawakening. Since 1991, within two
decades following the dissolution of the USSR, significant changes in the paradigm
of Russian ethnology and within its field took place. The identity crisis caused by
the devaluation of the Communist progress idea and Soviet nation led to the ethnic
mobilisation of indigenous Siberian peoples. Notwithstanding the reasons for ethnic
mobilisation at the turn of the 21st century, it was connected with aims to restore
the tradition. During that period, local ethnologists, taking a leaf out of their western
colleagues’ books, began to explore the present-day shamanism. Erstwhile supersti-
tions became an important element of indigenous cultures. In spite of communist
repressions, several elements of shamanic traditions have been passed from generation
22 As a relic, shamanism was unable to take new forms, e.g. syncretic with Communism. It could only degrade
and disappear.
23 I. Peshkov, Hostages of the Place…, p. 172.
24 K. Hastrup,The Ethnographic Present: A Reinvention, “Cultural Anthropology” Vol. 5, Issue 1, p. 47-50.
25 Nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century ethnographic descriptions written by D. Banzarov,
W. Sieroszewski, G. Ksenofontov, S. Shirokogoroff etc.
93
to generation, but many others were missing. Reservoirs of tradition were located in
museums, departments of ethnography, as well as in rural peripheries.
The ethnic urban elite sipped knowledge at its various sources; however,
the countryside (bur. hüdöö) began to fulfil the leading role on the stage of tradition.
The countryman became an ambiguous figure: an embodiment of poverty and rural
backwardness on the one hand and the salt of the earth, the bedrock of ethnic herit-
age on the other. The problem is that rock was eroded by the same processes that
resulted in the acculturation of native townsfolk. For a number of reasons, it was the
shamanism that was selected from the vast historical legacy by the urban intelligent-
sia26 . The urban intelligentsia did not want to step back to premodernity and for sure
they did not wish to return to pastoral roots. We can probably say that they merely
tried to deal with the post-Soviet anomia, using for this purpose selected quotations
from the so-called traditional culture. Simultaneous processes took place in other
Siberian republics: Yakutia, Altai and Tuva. In all those cases urban elites played the
leading role in the restoration of shamanism27 . It is worth noting that in this process
shamanism was institutionalised. In 1993 the Association of Shamans from Buryatia
Khese khengerig28 was established, later renamed to Böö mürgel29 and, in 2002, the Local
Religious Organization of Shamans Tengeri.30 In Tuva, Buryatia and Sakha shamanism
were de jure recognised as a traditional religion of the titular nation and taken under
the government’s protection. State-oriented ethnic institutions framed in the Soviet
era were in use in the post-Soviet religious revival. Considering the case of Tuvan
shamanism Ksenia Pimenova noticed that:
Shamanism has taken the form of ‘religious organisations’, a particular insti-

tutional frame that had been initially used in the USSR to control the “great”
religions. It persisted after the collapse of the USSR and provided believers
26 Other important elements of new urban tradition project were ethnic language and
Buddhism.
27 K. Pimenova, The “Vertical of Shamanic Power”: The Use of Political Discourse in Post-
Soviet Tuvan Shamanism, “Laboratorium”, No. 1, http://www.soclabo.org/index.php/ labora-
torium/article/view/63/966 [access: 09-02-2016]; M. Balzer, The Poetry of Shamanism, [in:]
G. Harvey (ed.), Shamanism. A Reader, London-New York 2003.
28 Bur. “thundering drum”.
29 Bur. “shamanism, shamanic faith”.
30 N. Zhukovskaya, Neoshamanizm v Buryatii, [in:] A. Abaeva, N. Zhukovskaya (eds.)
Buryati, Moskva 2004, p. 391-394.
94
with access to some practical advantages, especially when the concerned

religious organisations belonged to “traditional confessions”31 .
Religious organisations were not the only institutions adapted from the Soviet
modernism. Thanks to Soviet scholar practices shamanism was subjected to the institu-
tion of ethnography that could distinguish between the authentic and false elements of
a shamanic cult. The 19th-century description and its Soviet ethnographical analyses
become points of reference for contemporary shamanism. At least ethnographers
tried to keep the right to judge and distinguish the traditional from the ‘invited’.
The coexistence of these reframed Soviet institutions caused some internal tensions
in urban shamanism. The status of official religions required institutionalisation of
shamans and some universalization of local practices. At the same time, each innova-
tion could be considered by ethnographers as defection. In order to overcome this
contradiction, urban shamans started to reconstruct ‘classical Siberian’ (or Central
Asian) shamanism, a fully-developed religious system, uncontaminated by Buddhism.
Consequently the scientific model of a certain stadium of shamanism – an ethnologi-
cal idealisation – was put into practice.
Shamanic organisations made an attempt to reinterpret their heritage and to

(re)establish a new canon. Shamans began to perform ‘forgotten’ practices and ritu-
als. They resurrected local neglected gods, and even (perhaps taking seriously into
account remarks made by ethnologists about the disappearing shamanistic cosmol-
ogy) strove to agree on a common Buriad pantheon. Shamanic practices were adapted
to the urban space where the Russian language dominated. Just as Buddhist lamas,
shamans opened their offices in Ulan-Ude, Irkutsk and Chita.
Organisations Böö mürgel and Tengeri are active in every-day work in Ulan-Ude.
They also bring together tens of shamans working in the Buriad countryside. The Tengeri
has an office in Moscow as well. In contrast to rural shamans, shamans from both
organisations are often open foes of Buddhism: in their opinion, Buddhism deceives
people and makes them weak. The Tengeri organisation shows reformative tenden-
cies, focusing on the worship of ‘Great Buriad Gods’, while local spirits (sabdak32 )
are considered to be harmful. Shamans from this organisation explained to me the
dangers related to the sabdak:
31K. Pimenova, The “Vertical of Shamanic Power”...

32 Sabdak is a Tibetan word, means spirits, “lords of places”. This term was taken from
the Buddhist Tibetan demonology (Gerasimova 1989:186-190).
95
Sabdak must feed on something, He needs people who would offer sacrifice
to him – he can offer you some help. If you ask him, you will get it. Sabdak
will do it to get you hooked on him. If you start offering sacrifice to him,
then he won’t leave you alone. He will harass the life out of you. He will send
misfortune on you to bring you again to sacrifice to him […].Feeding the
spirits is vicious. Only fools bring a sacrifice to them – we don’t33 .
I should admit that the process of shamanic urbanisation is quite ambiguous. On
the one hand, we can observe a tendency towards codification and institutionalisa-
tion; on the other hand, in praxis, many shamans started to transgress ethnographical
orthodoxy and involved into their cosmology various forms and energies taken from
Buddhism, popular movies and new age esotericism34 .
What is uncommon for ethnographic standards is the locality in which the rituals
proceed. The target group became much more varied, no longer bound by clan and
ethnic ties. The leaders of the Tengeri organisation regularly perform shamanic rites in
the city outskirts, where everyone can take part. These events are usually advertised
in advance in the local press and inside the city mini-buses. Shamans often appear
on the local television as experts in Buriad tradition. Together with Altai and Tuva
shamans, they are frequent guests of national broadcast programs. Their activity is
divided between the local ethnic community and those Russian citizens who need
supernatural service. The following list of available services can be found on the
Moscow website of the Tengeri organisation:
Animation of things, finding of lost goods, analysis of root causes of problems,

creating a channel for communication with ancestors (linking up with pedi-
gree channel), soul restitution, banishment of evil spirits and purification of
a household, obtaining success, opening the path – liquidation of causes of
failure, assistance in business – examining the business situation, disclosure
of dishonest partners, request for child’s soul in cases when woman cannot
become pregnant, stabilisation of private life – return of lover’s affection,
family restitution, purification from defilements (evil eye, hex spell, genera-
tional curse, celibacy wreath), formation of strong protection, assistance in
purchasing/sales, prevention and treatment of diseases – including early-stage
cancer, request for permission from hosts of place to build a house or other
object on land lot and many others35 .
33 Interview with 5 shamans from Tengeri was conducted by the author right after ritual of “entering into
ongon” on 16 September 2008 in Ulan-Ude.
34 C. Humphrey, The Unmaking of Soviet Life. Everyday Economies after Socialism, Ithaca-London 2002, p. 201-218.
35 Internet resource: www.moscow-tengary.ru, access: 20 Jan 2012.
96
As can be seen from this example, the services in Moscow are addressed first and
foremost to the middle-class, offering assistance in business, love and house build-
ing. A shaman’s skills are accessible for all interested people, regardless of ethnicity
and religion. It must be recognised that a similar variety of services is also offered by
shamans in Buryatia. Often their customers are Russians and foreigners. As every
living cultural practice, shamanism had to adapt to the modern city milieu. In the
1990s local entrepreneurs started to solve the business conflict problems with the
advice of shamans. This kind of business consulting is still very popular. In 2013 one
of the most popular shamans in the Eravna region (aimag) moved to Yakutsk at the
behest of Buriad businessmen, who needed support and protection against Yakut
shamans. Business consulting or even technical expertise could be sometimes used
by the local administration. In the capital of Eravna aimag, for example, instead of
paying for professional expertise, the administration decided to pay a shaman to find
deep well water36 .
Next in the order of interest and importance to this analysis, unquestionably, is the
political aspect of urban shamanism. In the 1990s some Buriad leaders were trying to
build an ethnonational identity based on shamanism, but this project enjoyed general
popularity only among Western Buriads, while eastern Buriads were more affected
by Buddhism37 . After all, shamanism is being used in particular political strategies.
In September 2014, during the elections to the city council in Ulan-Ude, a friend of
mine was working as a spin doctor for a local candidate, who stood in need of sup-
port from suburban voters. The most effective way to gather and convince voters was
to organise shamanistic rituals for the benefit of the local community. A sponsored
shaman became the best political agitator among suburban Buriads and the candidate
won by a head. It is only one example when a shaman is using his authority to mediate
between social actors.
Sometimes a shaman participates in the negotiation of social boundaries and

ethic norms. The rite of sacrifice to the ancestral spirits I observed in 2009 was much
in the same manner. The ritual (tailgan) was organised by the prominent urban clan
of Kurumkan descent. Just a year before I attended in a more modest but structurally
one and the same ritual organised for one lineage of this clan. That time the ritual
36 Informal interview conducted in September 2013 with a state official in Sosnovo-Ozerskoe.

37 W. Połeć, Współczesny szamanizm buriacki między religią a tożsamością, [w:] E. Nowicka (red.), Szamani
i Nauczyciele. Przemiany kultury Buriatów zachodnich, Warszawa 2013, s. 192.
97
was performed by a village shaman on the clan sanctuary (oboo) in the forest near the
Barkhan-uula Mountain in the Barguzin valley. This time the tailgan was organised in
the city suburb because it was important to gather a large number of clan members
(especially males), and not everybody could take time off for that purpose. The ritual
was conducted in the intention to revive the vital energy of the clan because some
important members had problems with health or reproduction of their kind. It is
a very interesting case when a shaman tried to introduce a cultural innovation by the
authority of tradition. Furthermore, the shaman was also a shamanism researcher
and he chose for the ritual playground Verkhniaya Berezovka – the spot that became
an important element of indigenous placemaking and temporalization. Let me give
a brief description of this event.
TAILGAN: OFFERING TO ANCESTRAL SPIRITS IN THE

CITY OF ULAN-UDE
One summer morning of 2009 a Buriad family gathered next to a small birch
grove in Verkhniaya Berezovka – a fashionable leisure destination for city dwellers –
located on the city outskirts. There were about ten vehicles parked by the roadside
and family members were catching up with all the gossip in the momentary expec-
tation of the shaman’s arrival. As it usually happens at family meetings, everybody
was exchanging latest news. Several people were absent because they could not beg
off work. Men in baseball caps and leather belts (men during the ceremony should
have a hat and a belt) set the tables and benches. Women were taking out foodstuffs
prepared for the ritual from the trucks.
Pretty soon shaman Boris Bazarov (leader of the Boo mürgel organisation) ar-
rived at the place by Toyota together with his two assistants. The shaman’s assistants
set a stack of specially selected dry wood and kindling, then laid on top a sacrificial
ram slaughtered and crafted beforehand. Meanwhile at the shaman’s request people
were carefully writing down on a piece of paper their names, clan lineage, dates of
birth and Mongolian zodiac signs. It turned out that not all were confident of their
zodiacs and some of them were knocked all of a heap discovering that they did not
remember the zodiacs of their absent relatives.
98
The shaman took off his cowboy hat, donned a shamanic costume and took
out his drum. His first assistant also dressed up. At this time the second one, in order
to purify the participants, performed the ritual of fumigation with a twig of juniper
(bur. arsa). He also fumigated the wheels of the parked cars. There were many cars
passing by, their passengers staring at us in surprise.
Bazarov decided to give a speech before the ritual had begun. He explained the
history of shamanism and the meaning of the rituals we were about to pass in a little
while. He stressed that he had recently obtained his PhD in history. His dissertation
was a study of Siberian shamanism. Then he spoke about the origins of Buriad sha-
manism, arguing that it has Uyghur provenance. Therefore it has nothing to do with
the spoiled Mongolian Buddhism-shamanism, but it stands to reason that pure Buriad
shamanism is one and the same as the ancient Uyghur shamanism.
After a half-an-hour speech, the ritual finally began and its structure did not
differ from the same sacrifice to the spirits of ancestors which I had come across one
year earlier in the Kurumkan region:
• Preparation of meat from slaughtered sheep and other offerings.
• Calling of deities and spirits.
• Initial offerings of alcohol, cigarettes and milk.
• Divination by sacrificial bowl throwing.
• Burnt offering.
• Ecstatic trance and communication with the spirits.
• Shamanic trials (licking embers and hot knife).
• Purification of family members.
• Collective consumption of sacrificial meat and vodka.
• Return home and offering up sacrifices for the spirit of the home (on an elec-
tric cooker).
However, the performance was much more colourful – every ten minutes the sha-
man invoked prayers to more gods and spirits, drumming rhythmically at the same
time. The only active participants in this ritual were men who belong to a single agnatic
descent group and me – by way of exception.
After many hours of major rites, the shaman and his assistant started to take out
hot stones from the fire using the steel pliers, flushed them with water and licked…
99
People looked at each other in silent wonder. Later on, hot stones were flushed with
the herbal mixture, and people inhaled the fumes; it was supposed to purify them and
protect from diseases and evil influences. At the close of the ceremony, the shaman’s
pupil whipped naked torsos of the participants, banishing all evil energies this way.
During the following feast, the shaman again began to give advice on everyday
matters. After a few cups of vodka, he delivered a speech on the advantages of polygamy.
He claimed that polygamy is a part of the Buriad tradition and thanks to it a man
can beget a sufficient number of sons – at best over a dozen. He appealed to women
not to reproach their husbands for making other women pregnant, especially when
they cannot give birth to a son. Shocked women didn’t have the courage to openly
oppose the shaman, but they did not look pleased by his social advice. Bazarov also
explained why, when making sacrifices, one drips vodka rather than milk or water.
“Each liquid has its information capacity. Water does not have a big one, milk has
a little bigger one, and vodka has 1000 times more capacity than water. Vodka is our
information relay for communication with spirits. If we want to give them a lot of
requests, prayers, then I have to use vodka.” He said also that such a tailgan should be
conducted every year and at least once every five years it must take place in the sacred
place of the descent group in the Kurumkan district. Tailgan gives the power, energy
to the clan and guarantees contact with ancestors’ spirits who take care about every
single member of the kinship group.
Finally, Bazarov with his assistants received a payment, so they went home.
Slightly drunk drivers got in their cars and drove away; the rest went to the bus sta-
tion, carrying bags full of leftovers from the consecrated feast.
As can be seen, Boris Bazarov managed to combine striving for (re)traditional-
ism (shamanic costume, drum and other paraphernalia, demonstration of shamanic
power) with urban modernity (purification of car wheels, place of worship within
the boundaries of the city, PhD degree in shamanism, vodka as a digital data storage
device etc.). An urban venue for the meeting gives the opportunity to participate in
rituals to a substantial part of a kinship community, without the strict need to travel
hundreds of miles to a family sacred place (oboo) situated in their heimat. Scientific
discourse embedded in the shaman’s speech serves perfectly to educate urban Buri-
ads who seemed to be pleased with the rational explanation of every custom and the
longue durée perspective used to explain their origins. It is also worth noting that in
urban milieu a shaman is still accomplishing his main function − he mediates between:
100
• Descent group and the ancestors.

• Gods, spirits and the local community.
• The global and the local.
• Tradition and innovation.
• Past and present.
He managed to show the genealogy of polygamist practice and, by doing so, to
reframe the personal tragedy of women whose husbands have affairs as a responsibil-
ity for the continuation of a family. Placing the local ancestral cult on the scientific
map, where it becomes part of a broad, ancient tradition, older and more powerful
than Christianity, gives an opportunity to feel proud of one’s ethnic heritage, which
has often been embarrassing in the modern urban society. This mediation is possible
because of the ambiguous position of Bazarov. He is a scientist and an object of his
scientific interest at the same time; he tries to obtain the power of scholarly knowledge
(objectification) and keep the position of a maintainer of tradition (spiritual power).
As a result, he subverts the subaltern position of the shaman and native people en bloc
in urban space. Fragmented personal temporality and dictionaries (urban, pastoral,
socialist-modern, traditional) are involved by ritual in the integral time of a kinship
group – eternal in its nature38 . Finally, the shamanic act could be seen as a form of
symbolic decolonization or indigenisation of post-Soviet urban space that, from the
very beginning of the Russian presence, has been considered as a stronghold of the
Russian culture and power. But then what about authenticity, you might ask. How
far can you go in reinventing tradition before sinking completely into the swampy
waters of postmodernist nihilism, constructivism and relativism? And do we really
need to fetishize tradition? What if tradition is just an empty category in opposition
to which the Soviet modernism constituted itself? If so, mayhap we shall regard the
post-Soviet fetishization of tradition as the inverse of the Soviet hegemonic discourse.
URBAN VERSUS RURAL: INVENTED CONTRADICTION

The problem of the authenticity of shamans has at least two dimensions:
emic and etic. I am deeply convinced that it is not a task for an anthropologist to
judge who the authentic autochthon is, and who is a fake. Nonetheless, some native
burghers consider institutionalised shamanism as untraditional, which has to be
investigated39 . The idea is to fight shy of using categories from the scholar’s culture
38 My interlocutor in Ulan-Ude said once: ‘children are vertically directed to the eternity’.
39 K. Graber, J. Quijada, E. Stephen, Finding “Their Own” Revitalizing Buryat Culture Through Shamanic Practices
in Ulan-Ude, “Problems of Post-Communism”, vol. 62, p. 258-272; W. Połeć, Współczesny szamanizm...
101
of origin to understand another social reality and to analyse conceptual frameworks
and categories used by people within a particular culture. For many reasons, those
kinds of projections are misleading. Furthermore, it is worth to investigate how local
agents use binary categories constructed by anthropologists (authenticity and inau-
thenticity, traditional and invented) for self-positioning in the field. In other words,
how an anthropological authority and some parts of ethic perspective are absorbed
by social actors. At this point, it will be useful to analyse the urban–rural opposition
in etic and emic perspectives.
Post-socialist shamanism that crossed the narrow boundaries of the village
community has been described in varied terminologies, like ‘neo-shamanism’40 ,
‘postmodern shamanism’41 or ‘urban shamanism’42 . All these definitions underline that
it is a brand new phenomenon, different from rural shamanism, which was secretly
continued during the Soviet era.
Rural shamans, because of persecution in the Soviet period, were forced to
reduce the splendour of their shamanic attributes. Shamanic drums, shaman’s sticks,
costumes and iron paraphernalia have fallen into disuse. Collective rituals stopped.
Rites related to the cult of great heavenly gods Tengeri disappeared almost completely.
Rural shamans focused on the cult of local gods, medical practice, fortune-telling etc.
Buddhist impacts on their practice are obvious, and some of them share the view that
shamanism and Buddhism are two complementary religious traditions of the Buriads43 .
A rural shaman, first of all, serves the members of his local society, in places used by
generations for shamanic worship44 .
Urban shamans mainly differ in social background. Many of them have higher
education, some of them, like Nadezhda Stepanova, used to be professional ethnolo-
gists45 . They are organised in associations with clearly defined authorities, organisation
charters and standardised degrees of shamanic initiation. Urban shamans pay a lot
of efforts to reintroduce vintage forms: complete costume and accessories (crown
mirror, drum, cane, ongon’s representations etc.), shamanic songs, invocations and
spectacular rituals performed by numerous shamans. Their clients are not only local
Buriads but also people from all over the country.
40 N. Zhukovskaya, Neoshamanizm v Buryatii…; V. Kharitonova, Feniks iz pepla? Sibirskiy shamanism na
rubezhe tysyacheletiy, Moskva 2006.
41 M. Hoppál, Shamanism in Postmodern age, Central’no Azyatskiy shamanizm: simpoziummiyulya 1996 g.,
Ulan-Ude 1996.
42 C. Humphrey, The Unmaking of Soviet Life…; V. Belyaeva, Szamani i lamowe w sercu Sajanów. Współczesny
system wierzeniowy Buriatów Doliny Tunkijskiej, Wrocław–Poznań 2009.
43 Some of Buriad lamas share this view explaining that shamans work with local, not enlightened energies.
44 V. Belyaeva, Szamani i lamowe...
45 N. Zhukovskaya, Neoshamanizm v Buryatii…, p. 390-391.
102
From the emic perspective, the most important criterion of a shaman’s authentic-
ity is udha – the shamanic vocation46 . According to the rules, you cannot decide to be
a shaman. A future shaman should be chosen by spirits. Usually, udha is passed down in
the family line. The shamanic vocation appears as ‘shamanic sickness’ – a liminal state
when the man is trained by spirits in an altered state of consciousness. Afterwards, the
candidate for the shaman position must receive the knowledge and initiations (shanar
hiih) from an experienced shaman47 .
Some rural shamans point out that not all urban shamans have received a proper
empowerment, the transmission of udha and knowledge from an older shaman to
younger successors. Indicating a particular shaman as a fake makes other shamans
credible. This kind of scepticism is an immanent part of the system48 . Shamans from
Ulan-Ude tend to be accused that they only play the part of the shaman and have no
real power. One of the most respectful rural shamans in Tunka Valley told me:
They were studying their profession from ethnographic books, but not from
real shamans and even if they are from shamanic families they are not real
shamans. They are performing Tailgan motivated by money. They are making
a show for tourists49 .
In my opinion, this remark is half-true. Dozens of institutionalised shamans learnt

their shamanic craft from the Buriad diaspora in the Dornod province in Mongolia.
Many of them had the same teacher − Ceren, great shaman (zairan böö) at the 13th
degree of initiation from Harhira hamlet. In the early 1990s shamans from Buriadia
went to apprentice to Ceren because he was a powerful shaman and he preserved
skills and knowledge that vanished in Soviet Siberia50 . Probably Buriad shamans from
Mongolia have contributed to the retraditionalisation of contemporary shamanism.
I think that Buriad diasporas in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia play a role of the ‘liv-
46 Literally udha means in Buriat: ‘origins’, ‘descent’ but also ‘sense’, ‘essence’.
47 M. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia…, p. 16; R. Hamayon, Are ‘Trance’…, p. 35; D. Penkala-Gawęcka, The Way
of the Shaman and the Revival of Spiritual Healing in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, “Shaman” vol. 22. Nos. 1-2,
p. 44. Literally: qualities processing.
48 B. Manduhai, Dealing with uncertainty…, p. 268.
49 Interview with rural shaman Danila Sushkiev conducted by the author and Veronika Belyaeva in the vil-
lage of Kharbiaty in 15 Aug 2002. Later on we found out that Danila is a member of a shamanic association and he
regularly collaborates with urban shamans.
50 Interview conducted by the author and Marcus Aurelius Havliček, Harhira 11 May 2006.
103
ing fossil’. Post-Soviet enthusiasts of shamanism were travelling to remote Mongolian
areas so as to go back to their history (Szmyt 2014)51 .
In my opinion, a sufficient separation between rural and urban shamans could
exist in the early 1990s. With the passage of time, the two groups began to resemble
each other52 . Many rural shamans joined one of the shaman organisations. It allows
them to stage degree-elevating rituals (shanar), exchange information and consolidate
the forces in attempts to defend sacred sites53 . Long-term migration from rural areas
to cities led to the situation when almost a half of Buriads are urban dwellers. Many
provincial shamans followed their countrymen who migrated to the city. Among the
shamanists (both urban and rural) many changes have taken place. It becomes a norm
that matrilineal kinsfolk take part in tailgan. It indicates the domination of a bilateral
system of kinship that edged the patrilineal system out of its position of influence.
In the time when most family members moved to the cities, smaller family tailgan
are organised in the suburbs, not in the small homeland places of family cult (tonto
nyutag)54 . Besides the organisation of collective sacrifice to gods (burhad), spirits and
ancestors, shamans perform ever more consulting and medical functions. A part of
the Buriads loses identification with the rural heimat and identifies only with the city.
Nevertheless, they also command the services of shamans as one of many available
specialists on the market of uncertainty management: lamas, fortune-tellers, heal-
ers, quacks, psychologists, mediums, bonesetters (bariachi), massage therapists etc.
People ask shamans for help in different matters like treating alcoholism, recovering
stolen vehicles, laying curses, choosing a partner and investments. In the shamanist
worldview, every case of misfortune or illness is caused by hostile activity, and skilful
shaman or lama know how to shield a client from preternatural aggression. It is perhaps
the greater than before interethnic relations and anonymity, the uncertain nature of
urban life, which causes shamans to deal with various entities related to other ethnic
51 During my visit in 2006 in Harhira – the place of shamanic cult in Dornod aimag – I noticed that the heirs
of the great zarin are open to the international. They were proud that the previous year they consecrated shamans-
neophytes from Germany, Italy and other European countries. Local shamans do not seem to be radically opposed
to Buddhism. In the Dashbalbar settlement I met a young shaman who was the son of a lama-shopkeeper. Also in
Harhira, near sanctuary for ongon, a Buddhist chapel (dugan) was built.
52 Of course shamanic practice in the city keeps its specificity resulting from the difference between rural
and urban societies.
53 V. Belyaeva, Szamani i lamowe…, p. 123; N. Zhukovskaya, Neoshamanizm v Buryatii…, p. 392.
54 Contemporary Buriad kinship operates on at least three levels: (1) Nor mat ive k inship – ideal formula-
tions of kinship structure and practices based on a pre-medieval clan system, especially on the lineage of Genghis
Khan’s descendants. This notion of kinship is closely connected with ‘traditional values’ and ethnic identity. (2) Jural
k i n s h i p – a complex of rights and duties based on bilateral kinship and introduced to the Buriad society via the
Russian legal system (3) Pract ical k i nship – particular kinship networks maintained by social actors who have
to take into account traditions and legal system, but also their current social, gender and economic position. On this
level kinship is sometimes an idiom that establishes social ties between formally unrelated people.
104
groups. They have to struggle with hexes, evil eye, curses cast by Russians, Evenki,
Tatars, Armenians and representatives of other ethnic groups. Buriad shamanism
has changed over time with the changing needs of people. A brand new urban reality
appeared and therefore series of innovations took place, but on second thoughts the
basic functions of a shaman have not changed; he still contacts the spirits and cures
sickness. In order to illustrate the characteristic features of contemporary urban sha-
manism, let me recount stories I have come across in 2009 during my stay in Ulan-Ude.
In 2006 a young relative of my homies fell out of the dorm window and seriously
injured his spine while he was attending the University of Omsk. After surgery the
wound did not heal, so the student’s parents sought help from a shaman who lived
in Ulan-Ude. Reading the cards the shaman found out the reason of the unfortunate
accident. Mother of the victim’s roommate asked a Russian old hag (rus. babka) to
cast a curse on the young Buriad. This was supposed to be a punishment for mistreat-
ing her son. Trauma-related mortality should become the endpoint of this magical
intervention. To break the evil spell, the shaman decided to transfer the hex to a ran-
dom stranger. Problem-oriented ritual action has been undertaken, and the patient’s
jacket was given to a homeless man. In this way, a deadly curse was transferred to
the homeless man, and the student recovered. This story demonstrates a widespread
belief that powerful curse cannot be removed; it can only be transferred to someone
else. The universality of this practice is illustrated in yet another story, cast in the same
mould as the one just told.
One middle-aged married couple, friends of mine, had serious domestic dif-
ficulties so they went to a shaman in Eravna. He stated that the husband had been
living without a soul for the last three months and might commit suicide by tomor-
row, while his wife for five years had been cursed by a Russian woman, from whom
she took a position at work. The recommitment of a soul to the body required ritual
actions in the patient’s heimat – in the Barguzin Valley, so it could wait – but in the
lady’s case, the shaman decided to perform a ritual to remove the curse immediately.
For this purpose, they went to the nearest cemetery after dark and looked for the
grave with the name of a cursed woman. Since such a grave wasn’t found, the shaman
decided to transfer the curse to a dead Muslim Tatar. He put the woman on the ground
near the grave, covered her with a winding sheet and began the curse transfer ritual.
In the shaman’s opinion the ritual succeeded, nevertheless, he told the woman to go
to another cemetery, find a grave of her namesake and rub her ill (because of curse)
hand over the grave. After this procedure, the ill hand was healed.
105
Both cases could be recognised as a standardised practice of levelling the risks
generated by other ethnic groups. Life in a multicultural urban environment impacts
worldview. Usually, extraordinary phenomena are explained in two modes: looking
for a ‘rational’ explanation and a ‘deeper’ meaning. The reaction must be prepared on
two levels and described in two dictionaries: rational and animistic. Premature death
is often explained by unhealthy lifestyle, stress, alcoholism etc. Sometimes, however,
it is considered that these factors were caused by the rejection of a shamanic gift.
We may observe the same situation in the case of personality disorders. Let me
give you another example.
My bosom buddy began to hear creatures howling behind the fence of his house
at night. He recited Buddhist mantras in hope that the creatures would leave, but they
started to scream even more. His friends told him that he needs psychiatric assistance
and he should abstain from drinking alcohol. At the same time, they both guessed
that it could be his suicide brother in the form of demons-vampires (shüther) who
calls him. So he should go to a shaman to figure out the reason of the ghost attack
and cut the bad karmic connections that press upon him.55 Other people, in contrast,
suggested that the true cause of bad visions might be a curse cast by a shaman at the
request of his enemies.
The length limits of the paper shut the door upon further Decameron-like ethno-
telling. However, I am certain that the presented material sufficiently demonstrates the
nature of shamanic practices in the urban space. To put it in a nutshell, the practices of
urban and rural shamans became analogous with each other while being adopted into
the peripheral capitalism of the post-Soviet period. In the next part, I shall examine
the role ethnographic literature played in these changes.
ANTHROPOLOGY AS A SOURCE OF TRADITION: PROB-

LEMS WITH AUTHENTICITY
As I mentioned above, during the Soviet period several elements of shamanic
practice have disappeared. In order to supply their professional knowledge, many
urban shamans were happy to benefit from ethnological monographs and reference
material. To illustrate the relationship between ethnological texts and shamans I shall
quote the passage from the book of vice-president of shaman association Böö mürgel,
Boris Bazarov56 :
55 It is a fairly common practice also among Buriads in Mongolia (see C. Swancutt 2008).
56 According to the words of shaman Danila Shushkevich from the Tunka Valley, this book was often used
as a text book by practicing shamans.
106
I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the scholars of Buryatia,

ethnologists, historians and philosophers whose works truly and accurately
reflect on the path of shamanism transformation in accordance with the zeit-
geist. Their works have now become the history of the existence and customs
of our ancestors and other folks in the Baikal region. I cannot but remember
Sergei Petrovich Baldaev, scholar and historian. He was a good friend of my
father, he often visited us and I remember him coming to the Barguzin Valley,
collecting hymns and invocations. He described the traditions of Barguzin
Buriads […] Thanks to these scholars we have excellent material today and
modern shaman believers in Baikal region can base on it57 .
Scholars are still arguing about the chronology of shamanism; some of them
like to see ‘classical’ shamanism as ancient or at least pre-Buddhist, others are willing
to accept the shamanism of the early twentieth century58 . Regardless of the result
of this dispute, ethnographic texts constantly remain a culture pattern of the ‘true’
shamanism. With the help of ethnographical material, many shamans began to restore
shaman costumes and paraphernalia, customs, prayers, cosmology and mythology.
Shamans started again to use attributes specific for this profession, perform rituals
with the help of shaman drum. Spectacular tailgan rituals returned to reality59 , but
new esoteric elements appeared as well. Andrei Znamenski sees the Western New-
Agers and neo-shamans who from the 1990s were regularly visiting Siberia as the
main source of indigenous world-view contamination. Western neo-shamans involved
Siberian shamans in the global ‘world shamanism’ movement, which concentrates on
the universal and esoteric aspects of shamanhood60 .
In the 1990s, besides Russian ethnographers, also foreign researchers started to cast an
eye on Siberian shamanism. They were fascinated by the similarity of the old descriptions of
ancient shamanic rituals and contemporary practice. To illustrate it I will quote Mihál Hoppál’,
a Hungarian ethnologist and the leader of European shamanologists:
In June 1996 an international conference on shamanism was held in Buryatia.

It was known beforehand that, beside scholars, several local Buriad shamans
were also invited to the event, what is more, the organizers took care to time
the conference so that it coincided with the summer sacrificial festivities in
57 B. Bazarov, Tainstva i praktika shamanizma. V dvukh knigakh, Ulan Ude 2008, p. 10-11.
58 K. Gerasimova, Tradicionnye verovaniya tibetcev v kultovoy sisteme lamaizma, Novosibirsk 1989, p. 95;
T. Mikhailov, Shamanizm – drevnyaya religiya buryat, [v:] A. Abaeva, N. Zhukovkaya (red.) Buryaty, 2004.
59 Sporadically ug tailgan (offering to ancestral spirits) were organised in the countryside during the Soviet
times, although officially authorities prosecuted shamans. Often those tailgan were performed without shamans – just
by family members (Humphrey 2002: 402-416).
60 A. Znamenski, The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination, Oxford-New York 2007,
p. 353-354.
107
order that animal sacrifice may be performed as part of the gathering […]
Recently, when I was preparing for publication the works of undeservedly
forgotten Hungarian ethnographer and traveller, Benedek Baráthosi-Balogh.
I came across an excellent description of a Buriad horse sacrifice which he
had seen in 191161 .
After an extensive quotation from Baráthosi-Balogh, Hoppál compares the
description it contains with current, traditional ceremonies, which he had the op-
portunity to observe during the conference:
By traditional, I mean that the structure of the animal sacrifice has remained
old and traditional even though several elements have been incorporated
which are specific to our day and age62 .
Finally, he concludes:
The tradition survived in people’s memories and there are individuals living
who still remember everything accurately. In the recent years, tailgan rites
have again been performed regularly and it is a very important and interesting
aspect of the symposium that this is the first time when researching scholars
and practising shamans have made a joint effort to come to understand the
nature of shamanism)63 .
The following snippet illustrates the process which Natalia Zhukovskaya64 calls
the merging of shamanhood and the science that describes it – shamanology. Hoppál
also introduces a useful and not too rigorous definition of tradition. The criterion
here is the preservation of the rite structure, without further reasoning whether the
structure was reconstructed on the basis of literature or preserved in the intergenera-
tional oral transmission65 .
While Polish ethnologist Ewa Nowicka has a more critical approach to this is-
sue, she has nevertheless accepted the vision of secretly cultivated shamanic rituals in
the USSR. She explained this vitality of shamanism by its low-level institutionalisa-
tion. Unlike Buddhists, shamanists had no monasteries or monks, so the Soviet state
couldn’t so easily put an end to them. Shamanic practices can be performed in remote
places, away from outsiders’ eyes66 . So we can see that, at any rate, some researchers
are inclined to think, from their own field experience, that the shamanic revival is
a quite organic process. So why in the late 1990s had there appeared a widespread
61 M. Hoppál, Shamans and traditions, Budapest 2007, p. 111.
62 Ibidem, p. 112.
63 Ibidem, p. 118.
64 N. Zhukovskaya, Neoshamanizm v Buryatii…, p. 394.
65 However, in another publication Hoppal calls urban shamanism in Tuva and Yakutia ‘postmodern shaman-
ism’ and concentrates on its invented aspects (Hoppal 1996).
66 E. Nowicka, R. Wyszyński, Lamowie i sekretarze. Poziomy więzi społecznych we współczesnej Buriacji, War-
szawa 1996, p. 85.
108
conviction that post-Soviet (especially urban) shamanism is an artificial innovation

rather than ‘authentic’ tradition? What caused the paradigm shift? I could indicate
three factors at a minimum.
First, post-Soviet shamans, surprisingly similar to those described in ethnologi-
cal works, began to appear not only in the remotest villages of Buryatia but also in the
urban communities. Researchers began to notice that their respondents skilfully use
ethnological terms and rely on specialised publications67 or include in their practice
definitely new deities, such as Archangel Gabriel, Buddhist female bodhisattva Green
Tara, Japanese samurai or Autopilots of the Cosmos68 . Some other anthropologists
may have been disappointed by the fact that the ‘noble savage’ was cheating and started
to unmask ‘fake’ shamans. Giving a grade for authenticity became a common practice
in anthropological texts e.g.:
Valentin Khagdaev, a Buriad shaman who practices the ancient tradition on
Olkhon, tries to fill this gap with his work. He is controversial, but some of the
facts seem to work to his advantage […] however, it still is not the traditional
Buriad shamanism that we were looking for during our study.69
And about Tuva:
What we find is that today’s shamans and their clients in Tuva bear little or no
resemblance to what could be found in pre-Soviet times. They are “products
of a Soviet education, which denied the reality of spiritual life and taught that
shamans were primitive charlatans [...] On the other hand, despite the finan-
cial temptations that characters such as Kenin-Lapsam would seem to have
succumbed to, this does not imply the neo-shamans in Tuva are necessarily
charlatans […] The suggestion has been made that the revival of shamanism
in Siberia should involve the local traditions of Buryatia, Tuva, Khakassia and
so on and not Harner’s version of neo-shamanism70 .
Here we can see a typical concern for the purity of the indigenous culture and,
implicitly, a call for the isolation of ‘naïve savages’ from the corrupting influence of
amateur shamanism from the West. As far as I understood the author’s intention,
modernity has a deadly influence on pure Tuvans, which was proved by the Soviet
school institution.
This case leads us to the second factor of anthropological uncertainty, which
is urban space itself. Sometimes I get the impression that the native loses much of its
67 N. Zhukovskaya, Neoshamanizm v Buryatii…, p. 390-396; K. Pimenova, The “Vertical of Shamanic Power”...
68 C. Humphrey, The Unmaking of Soviet Life. Everyday Economies after Socialism, Ithaca-London 2002.
69 A. Wierucka, Modern forms of Buryat shaman activity on the Olkhon Island, “Anthropological Notebooks”
19 (3), 2013, p. 101-114.
70 M. Berman, Soul Loss and the Shamanic Story, Cambridge 2008, p. 46-47.
109
authenticity just entering the city. In our ethnographic eyes, urban space will deprive
him or make him/her false. The native should sit in the village or in the taiga − where
he belongs. In this case ‘authenticity’ means to stay in line with the pattern of eth-
nographic museum71 , but only in an unconscious way because acting is inauthentic.
When in 2003 I came to Irkutsk with a young Polish ethnographer, I heard from him
in two days:
‘Let’s go away from here, I want to see real Siberia.’
‘Is it not real?’ I asked confused.
‘No, I mean the taiga and real shamans! Not that dirty, ugly Soviet city. I’m sick
and tired of moping around this crap. We got such horrible blocks in Poland – no need
to watch it here.’
‘But you can interview shamans here too, in the city,’ I insisted.
‘No, they cannot be true. Just look at this city. Let’s go to the village, please.’
Next day we went to the Tunka Valley and my colleague was extremely happy
to inquire ‘true’ shamans. People just feel disappointed when they travel 4,500 miles
with you and meet a guy who is reading books and drives an expensive car. It is simply
not fair.
The third reason why anthropologists started to undermine the authenticity
of shamanic urban culture was the outstanding popularity of one book: The Invention
of Tradition edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Hobsbawm considers
invented traditions quite non-evaluative, as an immanent aspect of modernity and
nationalism: ‘they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference
to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition’72 .
For some reasons, for some researchers, urban responses are less convenient than
rural. They do not pay attention to the fact that the collective farm villages were also
exposed to Soviet modernization and, like the town, now produced their own inven-
tions. It seems that, despite this on-going reflection on the interaction between the
ethnological knowledge and described community, my colleagues are still trying to
preserve the category of authenticity in the study of Siberian shamanhood. The divi-
sion into spurious urban shamans, who learned the craft from books, and real shamans
from rural communities is still popular:
Associated shamans, despite having shamanic roots, were separated from
their national culture, which survived only in rural areas. On the other hand,
71 R. Lane, G. Waitt, Authenticity in tourism and Native Title: place, time and spatial politics in the East Kimberley,
“Social and Cultural Geography”, 2(4), 2001, pp. 381-405; I. Peshkov, Pravo byt’ «simvolom lesa» vmesto «prava na
les»: granicy iuridicheskoy deesposobnosti «tradicionnyh soobshhestv» na primere opyta cedentarizacii evenkov-olenevodov
Vnutrenney Mongolii, “Sociology and Anthropology of Property in Post-Socialist Societies”,№ 5(76), 2014, p. 177-192.
72 E. Hobsbawm, T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge 1992, p. 2.
110
as members of the intelligentsia, they understood that non-associated sha-

mans are too weak to compete with Buddhism, which also aspires to become
Buriads’ national religion. Therefore, having a scientific base and access to rich
literature, shamans from the cities want to do ‘pure’ shamanism, untouched
by impacts of the Orthodox Church and Buddhism and undamaged by com-
munism, as opposed to the shamanism which survived in the countryside and
is according to them ‘untrue’73 .
Leaving aside anthropological categories, it is worth noting that authenticity
became a social fact with the emic notion of the fake shaman. Nevertheless, it seems
to me that, when using the category of ‘fake shaman’, Buriads meant less his ‘authen-
ticity’ in terms of cultural transmission but rather his lack of power and poor ability
to contact spirits. Conversely, a ‘real shaman’ is a man who can effectively explain the
causes of the problems, get along with spirits and use shamanic power for the benefit
of individuals and community.
It also seems that post-Soviet shamans adopted the anthropological notion of
‘tradition’ and ‘authenticity’ and involved these categories into their own game of
power and placemaking. In fact, they have divided into two groups with different
approaches to tradition, let us call them hereditary and platonic.
Hereditar y shamans use the sticky label of ‘rural shamans’ and claim that
they are traditional because they are the holders of the oral lineage transmitted from
mouth to mouth, from ear to ear. They could survive despite communist repressions
and preserve local practices and knowledge.
Platonic shamans (known as urban shamans) claim that they are certainly
traditional. Based on the scientific knowledge they are reconstructing pure shamanism in
the form free from Buddhist and atheist contamination. For them, rural shamans’ practice
is degraded shamanism that needs to be restored. They leave the Soviet cave and come
to understand that the shadows of preserved practices do not make up any real tradition
at all. That is why they want to perceive the true form of tradition rather than the mere
shadows seen by the processual shamans. It is an attempt to embody shamanism that
exists in the anthropological ‘world of ideas’. However, Veronica Belyaeva (like dozens
of other researchers) prefers to give the right yo tradition only to one group:
The tradition of ‘rural shamanism’ is constant; its practice never stopped, and
only has been transformed a bit. From this, it follows that the term ‘neosha-
manism’ or ‘rebirth of shamanism’ is inappropriate in relation to the current
rural shamanism, which undoubtedly includes most of Tunka valley shamans.
The other side of the problem is the participation in media of associated sha-
73 V. Belyaeva, Szamani i lamowe…, p. 202.
111
mans and the fact that they are officially registered by the state as a confession
and on that basis, they claim that their shamanism is ‘truly Buriad’74 .
This is a kind of statement that I cannot agree with. It follows from my humble
observation that those two worlds (rural/urban) get along with each other very
well. We can only talk about the scale of impact of ethnological discourse on today’s
shamans. For some of them it is definitely a crucial factor; in other cases, shamans
use ethnological knowledge only occasionally. However, everybody could read
ethnological literature. Ethnological texts became a part of the cultural code, which
a person should learn to become a shaman. Remarkably, some shamans seem to use
the anthropological critic of neoshamanism to acknowledge its ‘true’ status and to fight
down their ‘false’ competitors. Thus, rural shamans – the result of Soviet anti-religious
policy and repression – become a working standard for authentic shamanism. Their
yesterday’s shortcomings become the hallmarks of truth today. Further on, I shall try
to analyse urban shamanism beyond true and false.
NEW INDIGENOUS TEMPORALIZATION AND SACRED PLACES

The new urban space is one of the most important dimensions of an ethnic
renaissance. It should be considered as a complex of practices dealing with the co-
lonial and Soviet past. In consequence native Buriad and Evenki people transform
themselves from strangers into the hosts of the city. We can use Henri Lefebvre and
David Harvey’s concept of the right to the city described as follows:
The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban
resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover,
a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably
depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of
urbanisation75 .
Harvey also notes that ‘[t]he right to change the city is not an abstract right,
however, but a right that inheres in daily practices’76 . Siberian natives obtain their
right to the city by practices of indigenisation of public space. Some of these practices
are part of a conscious strategy created by ethnic activists and native representatives
in the city council:
74 Ibidem, p. 220.
75 D. Harvey, The right to the city, “New Left Review” 53, 2008, p. 23.
76 D. Harvey, Dialectical Utopias, [in:] E. Bosch (ed.) Education and Urban Life: 20 Years of Educating Cities,
Barcelona 2008, p. 42.
112
• Insertion of ethnic-oriented elements of architecture into urban space: yurts,

‘nomadic’ monuments, buildings which refer to a style of architecture that
has taken shape in Tibet and China and was adopted by the Buriad thanks
to Buddhism.
• The shift in periodization of the city’s foundation: from Udinskoye (colonial
fortress settled by Russian Cossacks in 1666) to Huns City (Bur. Hünnü
Hoto) – the ancient settlement which was founded in the 3rd century BC by
the postulated ancestors of present Buriads.
• Foundation of Buddhist and shamanic temples and shrines in the city77 .
Nonetheless, we can identify many unarranged practices:
• Dreams about the past.
• Topos-shaping urban legends.
• Creation of shamanic sacred sites.
• Shamanic rituals which give animation and new temporality to urban space.
• Mass illegal squatting: uncontrolled construction of log houses (relocated
from villages) on any available piece of vacant land78 .
A thorough analysis of all these practices is out of this paper’s scope. For our
purpose, it will be enough to concentrate on a few shamanic and memory practices
that are introducing indigenous temporality into the city: dreams, urban legends and
sacred sites.
D r e a m s are a very important element of Buriad life. In a dream, people could
communicate with the ancestors, see the future or understand the past. Dreams of the
people with shamanic roots (utha) are recognised as very meaningful and prophetic. We
can say that shamans and lay people as well are using dreams for the interpretation and
transformation of their personal and social condition. It gives the opportunity to wrest
control of colonial past and to frame a host position in the urban milieu. One of my
colleagues gave me the brochure in which he presents his philosophy and his dreams:
It is astonishing but before my first shamanic initiation I saw in several dreams
my former incarnations […] In the second dream I saw myself an Orthodox
priest, and that is why people called me “Father Mikhail”, and it was in mer-
chant Trunev house – at present times there is Arbat [street] and the Dental
Clinic No 1. I could see clearly that homemakers, Turnev and his wife were
arguing and I stood at a pause in front of a slightly open door. The servants
were coming greeting, I was making the sign of the cross over them and they
were kissing my hand in response. Then I went to work – to the church that
77 A. Hürelbaatar, The creation and revitalisation of ethnic, sacred sites in Ulan-Ude since 1990s, [in:] C. Alexander,
V. Buchli, C. Humphrey (eds) Urban life in post-Soviet London, New York 2007, p. 136-156.
78 B. Zhimbiev, History of the Urbanization of a Siberian City: Ulan Ude, Cambridge 2000.
113
was located in the municipal garden in Batareyka (district). I experienced old
Verkhnieudinsk for real, around the church there was only a fenced cemetery,
from where in my direction, slowly but with a solid step, a clear-cut crowd of
the ghost of the dead was coming. Currently, I work as a doctor in the dental
clinic – the former house of merchant Trunev. So it should seem that karmic
connections with this house bring me back here but in another form79 .
By the dream about his former incarnation, Cybik Cyngeevich managed to con-
nect himself with the city history. He was on the urban stage for centuries and he was
just changing costumes; he was a Russian priest and now he is a Buriad dentist. Now,
a hundred years later he works in the place, which he remembers from his former life.
Such stories were common enough to call them social facts. It could be interpreted as
attempts to break a Russian monopoly for the city past. Up to the 1970s, Buriad and
Evenki were mostly herders or rural dwellers.
In the beginning, the future Ulan-Ude was a Cossack fortress, built in 1666 in
order to suppress and control the indigenous population. In 1783, Verkhneudinsk gained
the status of district town and all over the nineteenth century was an important trade
hub on the way from China and Mongolia to western Russia. In 1920 it became the
capital of the Far Eastern Republic (a temporary buffer state) and in 1923 it becomes
the capital of the Buriad-Mongol ASSR.80 Memoirs and colonial documentation show
that in the suburbs of the 19th-century Verkhneudinsk there were Buriad settlements,
but their inhabitants had no city citizen status81 .
They had no right to the city and no rights in the city. The situation changed
nominally in the 1920s when Verkhneudinsk became the capital of the Buriad Au-
tonomous Socialist Soviet Republic. From that time some native party officials and
members of the brand new native proletariat were settled in the town. This change
was emphasised in 1934 when the town was renamed Ulan-Ude82 . Buriads made use
of the new channels of social mobility provided by the Soviet modernisation and
privileges under the socialist autonomous republic system. By 1970, a new urban
ethnic elite had formed83 . We may say that they mostly chose to assimilate into pro-
gress and, at least in the public sphere, they were acting as new Soviet men. However,
a mass migration of natives to the city took hold only in the early 1980s and became
79 C. Khobrakov, Metodika meditativnogo postroenya lichnoy stupy v praktike nekotorykh vidov vostochnyx boevykh
iskusstv, Ulan-Ude 2009, p. 21-22.
80 T. Breslavsky, Post-Soviet Ulan-Ude: Content and Meaning of a New Urban Idea, “Inner Asia”, vol. 14/2,
2012, p. 299.
81 B. Zhimbiev, History of the Urbanization…, p. 32-34.
82 Bur. “Red Noon” – red symbolised communism and Ude (noon) came from the name of the local river.
83 M. Chakars, The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia, Budapest 2014, p. 89-116; S.
Batomunkuev, Buryat Urbanisation and Modernisation: A Theoretical Model Based on the Example of Ulan- Ude, “Inner
Asia”, vol. 5, no. 1, 2013, pp. 3-16.
114
a significant demographic phenomenon in the 1990s as a result of the state farm

system crisis. Until that time Ulan-Ude was a Russian-speaking and Soviet looking
city. The ethnic specificity of this region was exhibited in a regional museum and in
the Buriad Theatre of Drama. Soviet emancipation of ethnic minorities was designed
in the centre (Moscow) and implemented in the peripheries without wide-ranging
consultation with local communities. Furthermore, the Soviet idea of native Siberian
emancipation was closely connected with modernisation and was manifested by new
factories, hospitals and schools, but not necessary by involving cultural peculiarities
in urban plans. And so, Russians kept the demographic and cultural hegemony in
the city for the whole USSR period. When I talked to urban Buriads, gradually there
emerged in me a definite impression that in the Soviet times their every-day practices
were based on evident spatial city/kolkhoz dichotomy. The city was the place of exer-
cise in modern form. In rural areas, albeit the state-farm modernisation, people were
able to practice numerous elements of ethnic culture. For this reason, some shamanic
practices could take place next to the collective farm but had no right to exist in the
urban public space. It means that the same person could behave differently in two
different social spaces. Sometimes it can be seen even now, especially on the language
level. Old Buriad urbanites often start to speak Buriad instead of Russian when they
come to the village of their origins, but if someone publicly speaks Buriad in the city,
they take it as a rude or even aggressive act.
This radical dichotomy has been changing for the last three decades in consequence
of Buriad mass migration from rural areas. In 2002 more than 33% of citizens were
Buriad84 . The decommunisation of the city has never been provided completely, maybe
because the titular nations had no urban past to restore. There was no sense restoring
the Russian dominance from the imperial times. That is why a new temporalization
had to be provided. Oneiric narratives in which the current Buriad elite have been
present in the Tsarist city in Russian bodies are one of the strategies that empower the
newcomers. Other practices concentrate on alternative historical narratives.
These include u r b a n l e g e n d s and folktales that often accompany shamanic
rituals. The oral genre is very popular among (post)nomadic groups and has great
tradition. We can find plenty of oral stories that have spurred people to action or
changed their social status. Nowadays such narratives are also spread through Internet
blogospheres and chats. Although these are no longer oral-only stories, they keep their
folk, anonymous character, and the same stories can be heard in the minibus public
84 The number of Evenki people is still small. It is because of Evenki’s long tendency to assimilate with Buriads
or Russians. However, Evenki play an important symbolic role in the city as a native nation.
115
transport and read on the Internet. In some cases, urban legends help to decolonise
the past and space by creating new topos.
A topos which became a nodal point around which ethnic conflicts and urban
legends are constantly taking place is Batareynaya Barrow (rus. Batareynaya Gora) –
a hill where the first colonial settlement was established in 1666. On this site in 1991
Russian activists put a memorial stone cross and since that time they have been trying
to erect a monument to the memory of their beloved Cossack pioneers. Buriad activists
actively counteract that project. Not far from the Cossack cross, in a place where the
people believe Cossacks imprisoned Buriad hostages (amanat), they put a wooden
tethering-post for ghosts (serge) and started to conduct shamanic rituals there85 .
Shamanic symbolic actions become in this case rituals of rebellion, but not
necessarily as defined by Max Gluckman86 . Shamans engaged in ritualised forms of
resentment in order to express their disagreement with the colonial discourse. How-
ever, through the ritual expression of hostility to official narratives, their subaltern
status is ultimately overcome and new temporality is established. Because of the
performative character of shamanic acts, a more accurate term would be ‘r i t u a l s
o f s u bv e r s i o n’. By ritual performance, shamans subvert the Russian domination
in the city and the right for its past. Unlike in Soviet times, the state is no longer the
monopolistic guardian of the past. Public memory becomes a battlefield for two
main ethnic groups with unequal and ambiguous status: the Russian urban majority
and the Buriad – the titular nation in the Republic but newcomers in the city. It is an
apparent paradox that Russians generally do not take part in the rituals but it is their
social status that is being transformed there. Step by step Russians become alienated
in the city that their predecessors have built and, of course, are not happy with the
symbolic violence performed over them. Shamans have provided an effective counter-
narrative to the Russian colonial historiography and the natives have added it to their
armoury. Local Buriads started to claim that the Batareynaya Barrow was an ancient
shamanic sacred place:
Before Russian built the fortress, there was a Buriad worship place. On that
site, our shamans had been offering worship to powerful [ghosts] lords of
this land. Russians intentionally built their stronghold on this place, as they
built churches in our holy places87 .
In effect, the Buriad community started to take a dim view of the Russian activists’
efforts to establish the Cossack Pioneers’ monument and a strong grassroots lobby
85 E. Nowicka, R. Wyszyński, Lamowie i sekretarze…, p. 135-136.
86 M. Gluckman, Rituals of rebellion in South-East Africa. Manchester 1954.
87 Internet resource: www.buriatya.org [access: 2-03-2016].
116
against the construction of the monument appeared. Perhaps for Russians, the memo-
rial was crucial to establish and maintain their identity. Through this monument and
the celebration of the anniversary of the city location they tried to order and delimit
the individual memories of citizens. But for Buriads, it was an unacceptable attempt
to humiliate their dignity and possess the history of their capital. It is a commonplace
practice to assemble public memory in the public space using historic monuments
to stake a claim to the city88 .
Resistance against the monument let many people see the Russo-centric character
of Ulan-Ude’s urban history. Some journalists, scientists and bloggers started to deal
with the native status of ‘people without history’ by creating an alternative history of
the city of Ulan-Ude. No scientific procedures were performed during this process,
so historical primary sources were enriched with folktales, legends and become full
of fads and fancies. Yet it has the performative power to reconquer the city’s past and
consecrate (ethnicize) some public sites.
The river Uda estuary and Selenga banks were pretty busy places, there was a
place called “Chuck-stone” and on the top of that rock was Oboo. [...] Shamanic
rituals attracted to the “Chuck-stone: a large number of Buriad nomads. [...]
Another of the important factors is that the Uda estuary was a part of ulus
[state] of Buriad-Mongol prince Turukhai Tabun – a well-known historical
figure. Here we are personally convinced that at the Uda estuary, called by
Buriad-Mongols “Udyn adg” until the alien Cossacks [came, there] were
two sacred Oboo. It means that this is a sacred place of the Buriad-Mongols.
And according to the Federal Law on June 30, 2013, №136-F3 in order to
counter the actions offending religious beliefs and feelings of citizens, two
sacred Oboo should be restored to a sacred place on the river Uda estuary.
Only these two sacred Oboo have the right to stay at that place and nothing
else. No need to commit sacrilege yet again!
From the former Cossack fort native people started the process of new indigenous
temporalization. Various practices: shamanic rituals, selection of historical evidence
and folk tales are consequently reframing the public memory of native people, and
also other urban sites have fallen under the shamanic rituals of subversion.
One of the most popular locations for shamanic rituals is the suburban land
called ‘Verkhnyaya Berezovka’ in Russian and ‘Deed Ongostoi’ (the upper place
filled with ancestral spirits)89 . This area was included within the limits of the city
in 1930 and because of that, some Buriad households were displaced to other rural
88 A. Gordon, Making Public Past. The Contested Terrain of Montreal’s Public Memories, 1891-1930, Montréal
2001, p. XV.
89 In fact the word ‘ongostoi’ means woodsy yard (Badmaeva 2005:76), but probably due to shamans’ activity
people started to associate this word with ‘ongontoi’ – a spirit.
117
regions. Although the master plan for this place was created in 1930, there was little
development and the land kept its peripheral character until the 1990s. The only one
spectacular investment was a huge open-air ethnographic museum. Nowadays it is
mostly a leisure centre and a place for cottages. After the USSR collapsed, Buddhists
built a monastery there and the Orthodox erected a modest church. Local Buriads
claim that Deed Ongostoi is a very powerful place and the local spirits did not allow
the Soviet authorities to build any industrial architecture there. The spirits only gave
the nod to the museum in a bid for the additional empowerment of this land by a
large number of shamanic exhibits90 . In the opinion of native amateurs of the local
history, Deed Ongostoi became a shamanistic sacred place after the Cossacks settled
down on the Batareynaya Barrow and cut off the road to the previous sacred spot91 .
Urban shamans also perform rituals within the area of the archaeological site
called ‘Huns city’ (bur. Hunnu Hoto), located on the city’s outskirts, near to the
Ivolga village. It is a widespread idea that Huns, who build that settlement, are close-
related ancestors of the present Buriads. Shamans performing a sacrifice on this site
venerate the Huns as progenitors of Buriad clans. Shamans connecting Buriads with
the ancient Huns undermine the classical urban temporality. The Huns play the
role of first urbanites and builders of the city 2,300 years ago, a long time before the
Russians appeared. The Russian colonisation and Soviet periods are transformed to
relatively insignificant episodes in the history of the eternal city of the Huns. The Idea
of Ulan-Ude as the oldest city in Russia is propagated by the so-called Hunnic Fund
(NGO), but the city council supports it probably because they are counting on the
growth of tourism. The archaeological site became a centre for the indigenization
of urban past. In 2011 the Buriad State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre staged
there Attila by Giuseppe Verdi, and after that, a Hunnic fashion week was held. This
year the first Hunnic investment will be held. A reconstruction of a Hun town will
be located on a river island. Moreover, the Hunnic Fund and archaeologists strive
for the UNESCO World Heritage status for the Hunnic archaeological site. The new
periodization of urban history was presented in the film by the president of the Hun-
nic Fund – Oleg Bulutov:
We are Huns and we have to understand this. The History of Huns’ city is
our commune history […] 2,300 years ago the city was already here and first
burghers appeared in that period; there was a school there, crafts workshops,
houses […] Whole territory around had been inhabited. On the place where
in the 17th century Cossacks built a ring fort, we had had a trade factory for
90 A. Hürelbaatar, The creation and revitalisation of ethnic…, p. 145-147.
91 O. Bulutov, Ulan-Ude eto Udyn Adag, “Buryad Unen”, 13.06.2012, online resource: http://burunen.ru/
projects/detail.php?ELEMENT_ID=522 [access: 08-03-2016]
118
Middle Asian merchants. It was a mediaeval factory from the 9th to the 15th
century. The Cossacks were the latest wave of immigration to a well-dwelled
area, and they were considering themselves as Huns too since they belonged
to the Golden Horde before.92
Turning urban sites into ancient and sacred shamanic places is a modern practice
of temporalization and historicization that undermines the Russian hegemony in the
urban past and present. Shamanic sites link urban Buriads with the pre-colonial period.
For that reason, shamans perform rituals in the so-called Huns city – an archaeological
complex in which the evidence of Huns/Buriad past activity is preserved. Michael
Guggenheim argues that ‘modernity is a process that tends to turn anything into an
object with a history and a biography’.93 Thus, temporalization is accompanied by
a boom in the protection and restoration of memory sites. It also provokes conflicts
about the destiny of monuments, buildings and archaeological sites. From that point
of view, it is a place of alternative temporalization of Ulan-Ude/Huns city. The Hunnic
origins of the city become the leitmotif of the indigenous counter-narrative to colo-
nial historiography. Of course, any attempt to write their own native history entails
a submission to the axiomatic structures of the Western Episteme (Thakur 2016:11).
Nevertheless, we can say the same about any use of modern form. The important thing
is that shamans and other native actors transform the archaeological site (constructed
by Western science) into their historical representation in urban space. The head of
the Hunnic Fund’ Oleg Bulutov in film broadcasted by local TV says:
Buriads are not just remote descendants of Huns – they are Huns […] The area
of Hunnic pottery begins near the Elevator [city centre] and spreads to the
south of the city. First townspeople appeared in that time. There was a school
there, workshops and dwelling houses […] In the place of the Cossack fort
there was a trading factory for merchants from Middle Asia, where now we
have the base of Burkoopsoyuz [Buriad cooperatives union], in middle ages,
from the 9th to the 15th century there was a huge factory. Cossacks were the
very last wave of settlers. Cossacks, as a people of the Golden Horde by origin,
were also more likely to identify themselves as Huns.94
Bulutov promotes the civic project of the Huns’ city reconstruction, which
included in the urban development plan. A Hunnic settlement is under construction
on an island in the middle of Uda River.
92 Internet resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyr3e30vBCw, [access: 10-03-2016].

93 M. Guggenheim, Building memory: architecture, networks and users, “Memory Studies” 2:1, 2009, p. 39.
94 Internet resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyr3e30vBCw.
119
Shamanic practices offer alternative possibilities to look into the past. While
historians could only pose questions to sources (in my opinion ‘dialogue with source
material’ is just a pompous metaphor), shamans can talk with the spirits of individuals
from the past. They can choose interlocutors and very often those are the ancestral
spirits of the shaman’s clients or famous persons. During these conversations, new
historical narratives appear sources with a unique ontological status and insights
into the past. Buriad shamans are able to communicate with persons from the recent
history (e.g., a tormented spirit of the victim of purges during Socialism) or medieval
ancestors (e.g., a soldier of Genghis Khan’s army, tribal leaders who organised resist-
ance against Russian colonisation). In fact, a shaman has to interview the spirit, know
his personal history. It is the conditio sine qua non for understanding the reason why
the spirit is disturbing the people. A solution to the present misfortune is very often
hidden in the past95 . Specific ‘oral history’ practices produce dozens of microhistories
that are permanently remaking the Soviet past and the period of colonisation into
Hunnic times and reassemble the natives with the land. What is worth to notice, all
those microhistories are based on personal and affective relations to the past. Unlike
in academic history dead persons have amazing agency; Buriad origin spirits (ongons,
ug garbal) and angry, unrested spirits of the people who died brutal deaths (shüther,
boholdoi) put forward demands, prosecute or help people, bring and take away sick-
ness, establish sacred places, eat, smoke and drink vodka offered to them. Time loses
its linearity and the past is constructed on the basis of kinship. As we can see, urban
shamans play a significant role in the process of indigenisation of the urban space and
time. Consequently, it is beside the point of critique whether they represent ‘authentic’
tradition or just pretend to be traditional. Their acts are socially meaningful and allow
the native urbanites to obtain their right to the city. It is more important how and
under which social and political circumstances urban shamanism became ‘traditional’
or ‘authentic’.96 Following S. J. Tambiah, I claim that shamanic rites should first and
foremost be examined within the performative frame of social action97 . Of course,
symbolic domestication of city space and time is only one of the social functions of the
urban shamans. They are also being used for dealing with the post-Socialist economic
95 B. Manduhai, Dealing with uncertainty: Shamans, marginal capitalism, and the remaking of history in postsocialist
Mongolia, “American Ethnologist”, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2015, p. 127–147; K. Swancutt, The undead genealogy: omnipresence,
spirit perspectives and a case of Mongolian vampirism, “Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute” vol. 14(4), 2008,
p. 843–864.
96 R. Wallis, Shamans/neo-Shamans: Contested Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies, and Contemporary Pagans,
London-New York 2008, p. 31.
97 S. Tambiah, Performative Approach to Ritual…, p. 129.
120
and social uncertainty98 , tourism development, nation-building99 and ethnic culture

revival100 , but it is out of the scope of this paper.
Discussion about tradition always refers to time and temporality. Using modern
categories (tradition, history, and heritage) and pre-modern forms (rituals, dreams,
ghost talk) shamans have established a new collective perception of how the city and
its inhabitants are placed in time. They invert the modernist progressive New Time
(Neuzeit)101 and install their own regressive temporality whereby native people exercise
their right to the city by placing the city in a wider, indigenous time frame. Unlike in
Eliade’s idealistic theory of shamanism, myths and rituals are not only vehicles that
transport the participants back to the world of origins, the world of events that took
place ‘in that time’ – in illo tempore102 . Contemporary shamans use those vehicles also
to travel along the axis of linear time to the past and establish ethnic boundary mark-
ers, which allow appropriating the city and introducing a division into hosts (Buriads,
Evenki) and comers (Russians).
CONCLUSION
Fieldwork and data analysis do not give rise only to objectified knowledge.
Through publications, scientific knowledge undergoes the secondary objectification
by the assimilation of anthropological papers to the described community – scholars’
knowledge becoming a part of ‘ethnographic flesh’, native knowledge. It is a dialectic
interaction between the researcher (ethnographer), the source (field), and the text
(knowledge).
Ethno-discourse to some extent keeps colonising the minds of studied people,
makes them begin to seek authenticity in their behaviour. People submit themselves to
the hegemony of science and assimilate categories generated within a foreign cultural
order, but they use them for their own purpose and in their own way. Quite often they
use anthropological papers to reconstruct the ‘tradition’ which is a scientific idealisa-
tion. But by such constructed tradition shamans were able to undermine the Russian
cultural hegemony in the city or build an advantage over other shamans. As a result,
fieldworkers often study their own theoretical constructs interiorized by the objects
98 B. Manduhai, Dealing with uncertainty: Shamans, marginal capitalism, and the remaking of history in postsocialist
Mongolia, “American Ethnologist”, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2007, p. 127–147.
99 E. Nowicka (red.), Szamani i Nauczyciele. Przemiany kultury Buriatów zachodnich, Warszawa 2013.
100 K. Graber, J. Quijada, E. Stephen, Finding “Their Own”…
101 R. Koselleck, Futures past: on the semantics of historical time, New York 2004, p. 222-254.
102 M. Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton 1964.
121
of their research. During the next fieldwork cycle, the procedure of separating the
‘real’ and ‘innovative’ elements are repeated.
For many anthropologists, serious problems with truthful representation grow out
of this very situation. It indicates a well-preserved sense of nostalgia for romanticised
authenticity unaffected by modernity, which is that obscure object of anthropological
desire. But the question of authenticity is not a neutral category for native people103
(Linnekin 1991). It is an oppressive practice that sets rigorous requirements for the
‘true’ natives: self-reflexivity, literacy and conscious group representations are prohib-
ited. This limits the territory of authenticity to rural areas. In other words, it denies
people the right to modernise and to live in an urban space. You cannot be modern
and authentic! Am I not right in thinking that it is Uncle Tom’s Cabin style paternalism
when you treat the indigenous people with indulgence, telling them how and where
to live? It is a classic example of ‘denial of coevolves’; the typological differentiation
between the anthropologist’s modern time and the static time of the Other that has
clearly defined rural spatialisation104.
As I highlighted previously, for anthropologists ‘authenticity’ is a part of the
Foucaultian power/knowledge system that gives them the right to classify and regulate
native culture105 . For native ‘authenticity’ has three dimensions: (1) an oppressive
scientific category that (if internalised) is forcing the man to act in a certain way, (2) a cat-
egory that is used in order to build own position by reproducing ethnographical hierarchy
of ethnic practices, (3) a part of the practice that breaks Russian monopoly over the city.
With regard to the above, there is no need to fetishize ‘authenticity’ or ‘tradition’.
I agree with Michael Herzfeld, who claims that every tradition is somehow ‘invented’
and we got no access to an ultimately knowable historical past: ‘if we deny the consumer
of tradition any role in recasting them or investing them with distinctive meanings,
we simply reproduce the state’s own denial of ordinary people’s participation in real
history’106 . Whenever we consider tradition as selected elements of culture (which
are used to construct social identity), it is inevitably invention107 . Even so, because
it is invented it does not mean it is not real. At the same time, we cannot negate the
presence of a qualitatively new phenomenon in urban shamanism. We can identify
a few of its distinctive features:
103 J. Linnekin, Cultural Invention and the Dilemma of Authenticity, “American Anthropologist”, 93(2), 1991,
p. 446–449.
104 J. Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object, New York 2002, p. 32.
105 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London 1972, p. 26-27; A. Zybertowicz, Przemoc
i poznanie, Toruń 1995.
106 M. Herzfeld, A Place in History: Monumental and Social Time in a Cretan Town, Princeton 1991, p. 12.
107 J. Linnekin, Defining tradition: variations on the Hawaiian identity, ‘American Ethnologist”, Vol. 10 Issue 2,
1983, p. 241-252.
122
• Exceeding the limits of a clan, tribe and sometimes even ethnicity.

• Institutionalisation and centralization.
• Global networking of shamans from different cultures.
• Urban emplacement.
• Eclecticism and syncretisation.
• The partial Soviet hiatus in the living line of transmission of shamanic knowledge.
• Market-oriented activities: complementary medicine, fortune-telling, extra
sensory support for business and natural persons.
• Involvement in projects of ethnonational revival.
However, it must be pointed out that many of these features can also be seen in the
practice of contemporary rural shamans, and a hermetic division between urban and
rural exist rather in researchers’ minds than in the external environment. I believe that
these two oppositions might be set up within the frame of the folk-urban continuum108 .
Focus on the wilder processual and structural context of shamanic praxis may give us
a clue to finding a way out from the vicious circle of authenticity. By various acts of
‘shamanic speech’ and rituals, shamans transform the post-Soviet city into the ancient
native metropolis. The metamorphosis of native countrymen into hosts of the city is
the perlocutionary effect of shamanic praxis. Since it is better to steer clear of radical
standpoints which undermine the sense of using the term ‘tradition’ or which claim
that every cultural innovation stands in stark contrast to indigenous worldviews and
heritage. Instead, I postulate to reflect on the phenomenon that Paul Rabinow called
the ‘dialectic process of the fieldwork’ when our informants are ‘constantly forced to
reflect on their own activities and objectify them’109 . This process leads to the formation
of a self-reflexive, objectified culture based not only on the intergenerational transmis-
sion of practices but also on the transmission of ethnological texts. It means that some
cultural practices are modified by scientific papers that describe and analyse them.
The process that has been widely missed, while anthropologists were concentrated
on authenticity, was a question of new temporalization and placemaking. It is an es-
sential social effect of urban shamanism, which gives a new sense of time and history.
As a result, the former colonial town and the Soviet industrial city is being transformed
into the ancient native capital – the oldest town in Russian Federation – built by Huns
two thousand three hundred years ago. New indigenous temporalization should not
be considered just as false or invented tradition. It is the way how the native people
exercise their right to the city.
108 R. Redfield, The Folk Culture of Yucatan, Chicago 1941.

109 P. Rabinow, Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, London 2007, p. 39.
123
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
A. Anisimov, Etapy razvitija pervobytnoi religii, Moskva-Leningrad 1967;

J. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford 1975;
L. Badmaeva, Yazyk Buryatskikh letopisey, Ulan-Ude 2016;
M. Balzer, The Poetry of Shamanism, [in:] G. Harvey (ed.), Shamanism. A Reader, London-New York
2003, p. 307-322;
D. Banzarov, Chernaya viera ili shamanstvo u Mongolov, “Uchenye zapiski Kazanskogo universiteta”, No 3,
1846, p. 52-120;
S. Batomunkuev, Buryat Urbanisation and Modernisation: A Theoretical Model Based on the Example of
Ulan- Ude, “Inner Asia”, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, p. 3-16;
J. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, Michigan 1995;
B. Bazarov, Tainstva i praktika shamanizma. V dvukh knigakh, Ulan-Ude 2008;
V. Belyaeva, Szamani i lamowe w sercu Sajanów. Współczesny system wierzeniowy Buriatów Doliny
Tunkijskiej, Wrocław-Poznań 2009;
M. Berman, Soul Loss and the Shamanic Story, Cambridge 2008;
T. Breslavsky, Post-Soviet Ulan-Ude: Content and Meaning of a New Urban Idea, “Inner Asia”, vol. 14/2,
2012, p. 299-317;
I. Bromley, Soviet Ethnography. The Main Trends, Moscow 1977;
O. Bulutov, Ulan-Ude eto Udyn Adag, “Buryad Unen”, 13.06.2012, online resource: http://burunen.ru/
projects/detail.php?ELEMENT_ID=522 [access: 08-03-2016];
C. Castañeda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Berkeley 1968;
M. Chakars, The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia, Budapest 2014;
G. Cybikov, Shamanizm u Buryat-Mongolov, “Buryatovedenie” vol. 4(8), 1927, p. 39-46;
J. Clifford, On ethnographic authority, “Representations” 2, 1983, p. 118–146;
M. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia. A Study in Social Anthropology, Oxford 1914;
M. Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton 1964;
J. Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object, New York 2002;
M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London 1977;
K. Gerasimova, Tradicionnye verovaniya tibetcev v kultovoy sisteme lamaizma, Novosibirsk 1989;
K. Gerasimova, Voprosy metodologii issledovaniya kul’tury Centralnoi Azii, Ulan-Ude 2006;
M. Gluckman, Rituals of rebellion in South-East Africa, Manchester 1954;
A. Gordon, Making Public Past. The Contested Terrain of Montreal’s Public Memories, 1891-1930,
Montréal 2001;
M. Guggenheim, Building memory: architecture, networks and users, “Memory Studies” 2:1, 2009, p. 39-53;
R. Hamayon, Are ‘Trance’, ‘Ecstasy’ and Similar Concepts Appropriate in the Study of Shamanism?
“Shaman” vol. 1 nos. 1-2, 1993, p. 17-40;
M. Harner, The Way of the Shaman, San Francisco 1980;
D. Harvey, The right to the city, “New Left Review” 53, 2008, p. 23-40;
D. Harvey, Dialectical Utopias, [in:] E. Bosch (ed.) Education and Urban Life: 20 Years of Educating
Cities, Barcelona 2008, p. 41-46;
U. Hannerz, Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology, New York 1980;
E. Hobsbawm., T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge 1992;
K. Hastrup, The Ethnographic Present: A Reinvention, “Cultural Anthropology” Vol. 5, Issue 1, 1990,
p. 45-61;
M. Herzfeld, A Place in History: Monumental and Social Time in a Cretan Town, Princeton, New
Jersey 1991;
124
M. Hoppál, Shamanism in Postmodern age, Central’no Azyatskiy shamanizm: simpoziummiyulya, Ulan

Ude 1996 g., p. 108-110;
M. Hoppál, Shamans and traditions, Budapest 2007;
C. Humphrey, The Unmaking of Soviet Life. Everyday Economies after Socialism, Ithaca-London 2002;
A. Hürelbaatar, The creation and revitalisation of ethnic, sacred sites in Ulan-Ude since 1990s, [in:]
C. Alexander, V. Buchli, C. Humphrey (eds) Urban life in post-Soviet London, New York 2007,
p. 136-156;
A. Jackson (ed,), Anthropology at Home. London 1987;
V. Kharitonova, Feniks iz pepla? Sibirskiy shamanism na rubezhe tysyacheletiy, Moskva 2006;
V. Kharitonova, Politika, korrektiruiushchaia traditsii: (neo)shamany i (neo)shamanizm v SSSR i RF
(1922–2010 gg.), [in:] František Bahenský a kolektiv. Národnostní polityka na teritoriu bývaleho SSSR.
Praha 2010, p. 85-120;
C. Khobrakov, Metodika meditativnogo postroenya lichnoy stupy v praktike nekotorykh vidov vostochnyx
boevykh iskusstv, Ulan-Ude 2009;
R. Koselleck, Futures past: on the semantics of historical time, New York 2004;
T. Kuwayama, “Natives” as dialogic partners: Some thoughts on native anthropology, “Anthropology Today”
Vol. 19, Issue 1, 2008, p. 8–13;
R. Lane, G. Waitt, Authenticity in tourism and Native Title: place, time and spatial politics in the East
Kimberley, “Social and Cultural Geography”, 2(4), 2001, p. 381–405;
J. Linnekin, Defining tradition: variations on the Hawaiian identity, “American Ethnologist”, Vol. 10 Issue 2,
1983, p. 241-252;
J. Linnekin, Cultural Invention and the Dilemma of Authenticity, “American Anthropologist”, 93(2), 1991,
p. 446–449;
B. Manduhai, Dealing with uncertainty: Shamans, marginal capitalism, and the remaking of history in
postsocialist Mongolia, “American Ethnologist”, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2007 p. 127–147;
T. Mikhailov, Buryatski szamanizm: istoriya, struktura i social’nye funkcii, Novosibirsk 1987;
T. Mikhailov, Shamanizm – drevnyaya religiya buryat, [v:] A. Abaeva, N. Zhukovkaya (red.) Buryaty,
p. 352-390.
E. Novik, Folklor i obryad v sibirskom shamanizme, Moskva 1984;
E. Nowicka, R. Wyszyński, Lamowie i sekretarze. Poziomy więzi społecznych we współczesnej
Buriacji, Warszawa 1996;
D. Penkala-Gawęcka, The Way of the Shaman and the Revival of Spiritual Healing in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan
and Kyrgyzstan, “Shaman” vol. 22. Nos. 1-2, 2014, p. 36-62;
I. Peshkov, Hostages of the Place of Exile. Polish Researchers of Shamanism in Soviet Academic and Museum
Discourses, “Sensus Historiae”, vol. 6, 2012, p. 165-180;
I. Peshkov, Pravo byt’ «simvolom lesa» vmesto «prava na les»: granicy iuridicheskoy deesposobnosti
«tradicionnyh soobshhestv» na primere opyta cedentarizacii evenkov-olenevodov Vnutrenney Mongolii,
“Sociology and Anthropology of Property in Post-Socialist Societies”,№ 5(76), 2014, p. 177-192;
E. Piekarski, K. Vasilev, Plashch I buben yakutskogo shamana, [in:] F. Volkov (ed.) Materialy po etnografii
Rossii, t. 1, Sankt-Peterburg 1910, p. 93-16;
K. Pimenova, The “Vertical of Shamanic Power”: The Use of Political Discourse in Post-Soviet Tuvan
Shamanism, “Laboratorium”, No. 1, online resource: http://www.soclabo.org/index.php/
laboratorium/ article/ view/63/966 [access: 09-02-2016];
W. Połeć, Współczesny szamanizm buriacki między religią a tożsamością, w: E. Nowicka (red.) Szamani
i Nauczyciele. Przemiany kultury Buriatów zachodnich, Warszawa 2013, p. 179-230;
125
E. Prokof ’eva, Shamanskie bubny, [in:] M. Levin, L. Potapov (eds.) Istoriko-etnograficheskiy atlas Sibirii,
Moskva-Leningrad 1961, p. 435-493;
P. Rabinow, Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, London 2007;
R. Redfield, The Folk Culture of Yucatan, Chicago 1941;
K. Graber, J. Quijada, E. Stephen, Finding “Their Own” Revitalizing Buryat Culture Through Shamanic
Practices in Ulan-Ude, “Problems of Post-Communism”, vol. 62, 2012, p. 258 – 272;
S. Schensul, Anthropological Fieldwork and Sociopolitical Change, “Social Problems”, “Ethical
Problems of Fieldwork”, vol. 27, No. 3, 1980, p. 309-319;
W. Sieroszewski, Dwadzieścia lat w Kraju Jakutów, Warszawa 1990;
K. Swancutt, The undead genealogy: omnipresence, spirit perspectives and a case of Mongolian
vampirism, “Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute”, vol. 14(4), 2008, p. 843-864;
Z. Szmyt, Autochtonizacja postsocjalistycznego miasta. Przykład Ułan Ude, „Lud” t. 98, 2014, s. 205-228;
S. Tambiah, Performative Approach to Ritual: Radcliffe-Brown Lectures on Social Anthropology,
London 1979;
B. Thakur, Postcolonial Theory and Avatar. Film Theory in Practice, New York 2016;S. Tokarev, Rannie
formy religii, Moskva 1964;
N. Vakhtin, Transformation in Siberian Anthropology: An Insider Perspective, [in:] G. Lins, R. Escobar
(eds.), World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations within Systems of Power, Oxford-New York
2006, p. 49-68;
S. Veinstein, Shamanstvo, [in:] Zhukov E. (ed.) Bolshaya Sovetskaya Enciklopediya, Moskva 1973;
R. Wallis, Shamans/neo-Shamans: Contested Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies, and Contemporary
Pagans, London-New York 2008;
A. Wierucka, Modern forms of Buryat shaman activity on the Olkhon Island, “Anthropological Notebooks”,
19 (3), 2013, p. 101-114;
A. Znamenski, The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination, Oxford-New York 2007;
B. Zhimbiev, History of the Urbanization of a Siberian City: Ulan Ude, Cambridge 2000;
N. Zhukovskaya, Neoshamanizm v Buryatii, [in:] A. Abaeva, N. Zhukovskaya (eds.) Buryati,
Moskva 2004;
A. Zybertowicz, Przemoc i poznanie, Toruń 1995.
126

Urban Shamanism in Siberia The Dialectic PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Urban Shamanism in Siberia The Dialectic PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

- ISSN 2450-8047 nr 2017/3 (5)

URBAN SHAMANISM IN SIBERIA:

5 Indigenous placemaking can be viewed as a process that is transforming the identity

HOW TO READ THIS PAPER?

SHAMANISM IN THE SOVIET UNION

14 I. Bromley, Soviet Ethnography. The Main Trends, Moscow 1977, s. 109.

Shamanism had become a previous stage of development of Siberian native culture,

According to the Stalinist conception of national culture ‘socialist in content and

The institutional status of an ethnographic expedition […] created a special

SHAMANISM IN THE REALM OF ETHNIC RENAISSANCE

Shamanism has taken the form of ‘religious organisations’, a particular insti-

with access to some practical advantages, especially when the concerned

Shamanic organisations made an attempt to reinterpret their heritage and to

31K. Pimenova, The “Vertical of Shamanic Power”...

Animation of things, finding of lost goods, analysis of root causes of problems,

Sometimes a shaman participates in the negotiation of social boundaries and

36 Informal interview conducted in September 2013 with a state official in Sosnovo-Ozerskoe.

TAILGAN: OFFERING TO ANCESTRAL SPIRITS IN THE

• Descent group and the ancestors.

URBAN VERSUS RURAL: INVENTED CONTRADICTION

In my opinion, this remark is half-true. Dozens of institutionalised shamans learnt

ANTHROPOLOGY AS A SOURCE OF TRADITION: PROB-

I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the scholars of Buryatia,

In June 1996 an international conference on shamanism was held in Buryatia.

conviction that post-Soviet (especially urban) shamanism is an artificial innovation

And about Tuva:

as members of the intelligentsia, they understood that non-associated sha-

73 V. Belyaeva, Szamani i lamowe…, p. 202.

NEW INDIGENOUS TEMPORALIZATION AND SACRED PLACES

• Insertion of ethnic-oriented elements of architecture into urban space: yurts,

a significant demographic phenomenon in the 1990s as a result of the state farm

92 Internet resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyr3e30vBCw, [access: 10-03-2016].

and social uncertainty98 , tourism development, nation-building99 and ethnic culture

• Exceeding the limits of a clan, tribe and sometimes even ethnicity.

108 R. Redfield, The Folk Culture of Yucatan, Chicago 1941.

A. Anisimov, Etapy razvitija pervobytnoi religii, Moskva-Leningrad 1967;

M. Hoppál, Shamanism in Postmodern age, Central’no Azyatskiy shamanizm: simpoziummiyulya, Ulan

You might also like