The essays presented in this book are about contemporary Tuvan culture and bear the stamp of temporality. They convey only a certain moment of culture or the process of change in one timespan. But these plots also need to be recorded. After all, today we have found ourselves in a conundrum. Until recently, we could say that Tuvan culture had been sufficiently studied, we could mention a large number of works in the field of Tuvan studies, we were proud of the fact that the Tuvans had preserved relatively much of their ethnic culture. And we did this, among other things, thanks to scientific knowledge, which recorded traditions, rituals, language, etc. But time flies and here we, the Tuvans, know rather more about our past than about the present. The paradox is that we do not know what kind of culture we have today.

Contemporary Tuvan culture is a bizarre combination of relics of a century-old history, the consequences of the 20th century with the Soviet legacy, ethnic declarations of the revival pathos in the late 20th century, the vagaries of globalization and Westernization. It is impossible to imagine Tuvan culture without yurts, shamanism, Buddhism, throat singing, rituals, horse racing, khuresh, Shagaa, Naadym… But it is also something that has come to coexist with motor transport, mass culture, Hollywood movies, imported products in everyday life, the Internet, mobile communication and social networks. All this is not just the sum of all the elements, but a fascinating combination in which it is not always clear what is new and what is old; what is revived and what is invented new; what has appeared inadvertently and what has been maintained deliberately…

This book combines several stories that I have worked on over the past few years, observing and collecting information. I was also applying methods of different scientific disciplines, analyzing and presenting results at conferences, in academic journals and mass media. In this collection, the stories are partly reinterpreted, supplemented with new plots and conclusions. They are compiled so that the outlines of several streams of contemporary cultural life of the Tuvans become obvious through the prism of the essays at a time. This will allow us to fathom the whole paradox of the situation and set new research tasks.

The content of the essays unfolds, starting with traditional themes. The comprehension of cultures with the help of universal categories, which have spread in the Russian humanities knowledge since the 1970s, begins with the analysis of the categories of time and space.

We can see how archaic the understanding of time by the Tuvans and other nomadic peoples seems today. Nevertheless, this steppe time is one of the most interesting features of the culture, which is closely connected with natural cycles, the person’s fusion with the surrounding world of the great expanses of the steppe, and the objective side of time markers. And this feature has not yet been outlived by the people of this culture. It is not outlived and is unlikely to be overcome as long as the culture itself and its language, which largely determines the logic of people’s thinking, are still alive.

More amazing things have happened to the concept of space: the space of Tuvan culture, as well as the space of the whole world, has become supplemented with online space; the speed of establishing connections and maintaining relationships has increased; however, in this new space, old ties of the Tuvans have begun to expand, primarily to strengthen the once severed kinship relations. This allows relatives to resume a common social life and even organize rituals of ancestor worship in order to pay their respect to the owners of these places and to strengthen the ties between the Tuvans and the spirits of nature. Almost all local residents believe in these spirits. This faith is not only an act of faith, of spiritual revelation, of moral perfection. The faith is based on quite pragmatic archaic “contracts” of people with the forces that “control” both nature and people themselves, their fates. The case is not so much about a selfless desire to revive traditional religious beliefs, but about the fact that people have returned to the idea of strong cause-and-effect relationships that are established between their actions (primarily in relation to the natural surroundings) and the consequences that follow wrong actions. People are also in no doubt that stories about the real powers of the Tuvan shamans, who can punish for bad deeds, are true.

The second religious system that has become traditional in Tuva is Buddhism. It has also turned to be very popular. Now the Tuvans (as well as the Kalmyks and the Buryats) practically put the ethnic identity on a par with the confessional one. If they are Tuvans it means that they are Buddhists. I have tried to show that Buddhism has enriched Tuvan culture by expanding and “stretching” the identity of the Tuvans, people of local and regional culture. For the Tuvans, considering themselves Buddhists means to identify themselves as persons of one of the world’s cultures, almost globalists. Buddhism has allowed us to expand the identification space, to broaden the area of our culture far beyond the borders of Tuva long before globalization. And the fact that today Buddhism continues to develop in the Republic and to unite the Tuvans with the Buddhists of the world is good news.

The family rituals have also been considered. Over more than a century-long history, Tuvan weddings have transformed from rituals of creating a family, establishing ties between clans, into some kind of presentations of families that are designed to shock everyone with a demonstration of the “power” of a clan. In these conditions of competition of parents and older relatives, young people are forced to put up with it or to find their own ways to make the event more family-friendly, even to the point of rejection of lavish and expensive ceremonies, or to reclaim places for their clearly Westernized innovations.

The competitiveness of families goes back to the traditions of the separate existence of tribal groups of the Tuvans. They used to live in different territories, had their own dialects of the Tuvan language, understood the differences between them and sometimes maintained distant and even competitive relations with each other. In the post-Soviet period, the archaization has led to the revival of the segregation of the Tuvans into territorial, kozhun and other groups. Therefore, I believe that current research into sub-ethnic groups of the Tuvans (not only in Tuva, but also outside of it), as well as the study of tribal groups, fellow countrymen, their relationships in the public life of the Republic of Tuva can be considered as an important sign of the times. The topic of internal differences between ethnic groups is not the most popular one in the Russian discourse today. But its understatement, in my opinion, will not give an understanding of the complexities of the political and sociocultural life of any regional community.

Another almost unexplored topic is the migrations of the Tuvans. On the one hand, their scale is very small, the history is sparse. It is not replete with such tragic events as, for instance, that of the Kalmyks. But the Tuvans have never been fond of leaving their Motherland. Not only because they are so patriotic, but also because moving, for example, to other Russian territories, especially abroad, is like a revolution in their world outlook. If they are the majority in Tuva, this is their territory, here the Tuvan speech can be heard from all corners and everything is familiar, then outside the Republic the representatives of the majority immediately and dramatically change their social significance – they become representatives of minorities. It is true that the standard of living in the Republic is low. Indeed, it is one of the poorest regions of Russia and some people have to move in search of a better life and earnings. And a thin stream of migration has begun to trickle. However, they do not lose connections with their small homeland.

All these changes taking place in the Tuvan sociocultural life need to be studied from different aspects and various methodological standpoints. Therefore, I also included some essays about ethno-sociological studies of the Tuvans, the history of which shows an active and rapid development of this subject area at the beginning, but a certain stagnation in recent years. Nevertheless, if we look at the very development of scientific knowledge in the aspect of the lineup of researchers, their attitude to Tuvan culture, and conditionally divide them into insiders and outsiders, then we will find a new research potential, which is inherent in the very position of insiders, in their knowledge of the Tuvan language, their understanding of cultural meanings, values, and concepts. I assume that we should use these research perspectives and opportunities to get a more comprehensive picture of contemporary Tuvan culture.

The preparation of the manuscript and the publication of the book were supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation within the framework of our research team’s project “Thesaurus of Ethnic Culture in the 21st Century: Problems of Research and Preservation (The Case of Tuvan Culture)” (2021–2023).