ABSTRACT
Like many other non-Russian peoples, the Indigenous Siberian Sakha community was engulfed in a movement for national revival from the late 1980s: this was their contribution to the “parade of nationalities” that eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet state. A key feature of the Sakha national revival was the revitalization of the Yhyakh, a shamanic ritual and festival that in previous centuries had formed a key part of the Sakha yearly calendar. In common with other important religious holidays, the Yhyakh was not so much forbidden by atheist Soviet authorities as adapted to suit their secularizing agenda. Yhyakhs were held throughout the Soviet period, even if the address to the deities that earlier was their main purpose was forbidden. Late-Soviet activists sought to recover the spiritual dimension of the Yhyakh as they re-modelled it into a huge and unifying event for the Sakha people. The Yhyakh revival has been a great success—as has the revitalization of Sakha shamanic practice more generally. This chapter describes the Yhyakh, its animist ontology, and the story of its revival. In doing so, it delineates the interrelation between post-Soviet spirituality and nationalist revival.
