ABSTRACT
In the late and post-Soviet period the practice of something labelled shamanism became popular among many members of the indigenous peoples of northern Russia, Siberia and the Far East. In the expanding empire that the Russian tsars, ever since the sixteenth century, had been building, and which the Bolsheviks took over, there were more than 30 peoples, or ethnic groups, that the Russians considered traditionally being shamanists. These peoples inhabited northernmost Russia, Siberia and the Far East. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the small numbered peoples were organized in the Russian Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East (RAIPON). Shamanism is by no means the only religious movement that has germinated among the indigenous peoples of the North in post-Soviet times. Shamanism is an ancient human system of knowledge which developed more than 10,000 years ago.
