Memories of the miracles and ecstatic seances of the Siberian Yupik shaman: Contemporary atomization of ritual life and post-soviet nostalgia

In the first half of the 1970s, in the predominantly Yupik coastal village of Novoe Chaplino (Chukotka), a shaman named Aglu died, and his contemporaries have many memories about his death. On the one hand, Aglu is the hero of the nowadays myth; on the other, he is the hero of the relatively recent Soviet past. He is a respected shaman, the embodiment of tradition and a wonderful gift; at the same time, he is a magician, a cheater who loved to drink and always needed money for more alcohol to ease his hangover. The memories, collected in the winter of2020, of the underground shamanistic ecstatic seances in the post-war period and the anecdotal miracles performed by Aglu are considered here in the context of modern perception about the “old life” and post-Soviet nostalgia for the sense of community and ritual saturation. Why was Aglu called the “strongest shaman”, and knowledgeable Yupik who lived after him were not? What do memories of shamans tell us about ritual dynamics in coastal Chukotka? Can we write about the disappearance of shamanism among the Siberian Yupik, or is the funeral of this tradition premature?

Keywords

Authors

References