Sibirica

The three articles in this issue of Sibirica focus on the ways in which sacred landscapes have been (re)integrated into the ritual life of indigenous Buriats, as well as how they can become contested terrains. Once considered the opiate of the masses by Soviet leaders, religion is no longer “dangerous” in Russia. Decades of institutionalized atheism have taken their toll, however, as sacred sites have been secularized, shamans have lost links to their ongons, and Buriats have forgotten their clan affiliations. In the past decade and a half, shamanism has reemerged and practitioners are striving to revive and re-invent the practice to return shamanism to a central position in the everyday lives of rural and urban communities.

“Traditionally” Buriat shamanism is clan-based. Ritual practice embedded kinship relations within a sacred geography, linking the living and the dead through a relationship to the landscape, reaffirmed at yearly tailgan ceremonies. In Buriatiia, Soviet modernization transformed the Buriat relationship to the land, and with it, the conditions of shamanic practice. As a result, many urban Buriats either do not know their clan affiliation, or no longer hold clan ceremonies. In response, two urban shaman's organizations have begun to hold tailgans on behalf of the residents of the city. The new ritual form relieves anxiety at the loss of tradition and underscores that loss. However, by redefining the ritual community around the city instead of the clan, the ritual community becomes multiethnic.

During fieldwork on a contemporary revival of shamanism in Buriatiia in the summer of 2005, I was initially puzzled by what I had witnessed. The spirits that were embodied by the shamans were interacting with the audience. Afterward, the shamans did not remember what had occurred while they were in trance. To me, it resembled what has been described as spirit-mediumship performance. While discussing this with shamans, their initial response was that Buriat shamanism is real shamanism, insisting that authentic trance is unconscious, while at the same time dismissing other forms as fake. Later, however, some quietly admitted that Buriat shamans used to be able to remember their ecstatic journeys, and eventually they will be able to regain this ability. I argue that the post-trance amnesia among the contemporary Buriat neo-shamans is the result of the disruption caused by the Soviet anti-religious legacy, which inhibited Buriats to progress to higher degrees of initiation.

This article examines the sacred mineral springs in Arshan, Buriatiia. These springs have been inscribed as sacred due to their medicinal properties and are marked as sacred through rituals and material offerings. Residents lament the loss of healing, and implicitly sacred, strength of Arshan. The author argues that the sense of loss is due to the medicalization of healing in Tsarist and Soviet times and from the commodification of this type of sacred site through bottling and tourism.

Eleanor Lord Pray (1868-1954), an American woman from New England, lived in Vladivostok from mid-1894 through 1930, and wrote letters to her friends and family in other parts of the world almost daily. She truthfully described her everyday life, scenes from the city and its surroundings, and the extraordinary historic events that occurred there. This Collection of more than 2,000 extant letters, illustrated with hundreds of photos from Mrs. Pray's albums, offers unique information about Old Vladivostok, its people and traditions, and contributes greatly to uncovering some of the history of the city's early bourgeoisie of Russian, German, Scandinavian, and American merchants, consuls, and officers. The Eleanor L. Pray Collection is owned by Patricia D. Silver of Sarasota, Florida.

Lydia Black, Russians in Alaska, 1732–1867

Iurii M. Serdiukov and Evgenii N. Spasskii, eds., Journal: Sotsial’nye i Gumanitarnye Nauki na Dal’nem Vostoke

Molly Lee and Gregory A. Reinhardt, Eskimo Architecture: Dwelling and Structure in the Early Historic Period

Eva-Maria Stolberg, ed., The Siberian Saga: A History of Russia’s Wild East

Leo McCann, Economic Development in Tatarstan: Global Markets and a Russian Region

Agnieszka E. Halemba, The Telengits of Southern Siberia: Landscape, Religion and Knowledge in Motion

Nikolai Vakhtin, Evgenii Golovko, and Peter Schweitzer, Russkie starozhily Sibiri: Sotsial’nye i simvolicheskie aspekty samosoznaniia

A.I. Kostanov and V.B. Kataev, eds., “Byt’ mozhet, prigodiatsia i moi tsifry …” Materialy sakhalinskoi perepisi A.P. Chekhova. 1890 god

Books Received