Survival Through Soviet Suppression and After

Siberian shamanic traditions faced severe and sustained persecution under Soviet policy through much of the twentieth century, with authorities actively suppressing shamanic practice as backward superstition incompatible with state atheism and modernization, resulting in the death, imprisonment or forced silence of many practicing shamans and significant disruption to the generational transmission these traditions depend on.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, various Siberian indigenous communities have worked to revive and reconstruct shamanic practice, a process complicated in some cases by the genuine loss of knowledge that occurred during decades of suppression, meaning contemporary practice in some communities involves real reconstruction alongside continuous elements that survived underground or in more remote areas less reached by Soviet authority. Anthropologists working with these communities today generally emphasize that meaningful documentation and any responsible discussion of specific Siberian shamanic prayer or ritual content requires direct collaboration with and consent from the specific indigenous communities concerned, given both the sensitivity of material still actively practiced and the history of outside anthropological extraction that some communities have found exploitative. This entry's general, descriptive treatment follows that same principle rather than attempting to summarize specific community traditions without that direct engagement.