The Yakut National Festival of Ysyakh in Transition: Historical Myth, Ethnic-Cultural Image and Modern Celebratory Narrative

Abstract

Drawing on a large body of fi eld materials collected during 1979-2010, the authors analyze the evolution of the traditional festival of Ysyakh in a broad historical retrospective, with an emphasis on the situation of the turn of the 20th-21st centuries. The phenomenon of the festival is viewed through the prism of the “remembering” culture (culture as memory); and the celebratory narrative is revealed at the level of the cultural practices of Homo Sovieticus, national revival projects, and modern resources of the ethnic festival ideology (symbols, invented tradition, branding).