FEAST As a Mirror of Social and Cultural Changes

23 Chapter 1. Performing Ethnicity: Buryat Ethnofestivals … ture. Such a strategy offsets, first of all, the Soviet era interference in the familial transmission of a collective past (the two generations living under the USSR were cut off from Buryat tradition), and secondly, the ubiquitous effects of globalization. In such a situation public events organized by intellectual elites and administrative centers—be they communal festivities, celebration of holy days, or ethnofestivals—assume more meaning. Three grand Buryat ethnofestivals facilitate the transmission of national culture on the one hand, and the construction of national unity on the other. In the present-day world, Buryatness must be demonstrated by use of the language as well as through visual means which are particularly legible for the young, contemporary individual. Concurrently, it should instill respect for signs of ethnic identity. The Geseriada The first ethnofestival was organized in the immediate aftermath of the fall of communism: the ceremony began on a bank of the Angara on August 17, 1991. Riding a wave of enthusiasm and ethnic revival and traveling all over the country, the Geseriada lasted four years. The name stems from the word Geser, which refers to the mythical Central Asian hero as well as to the tales about him, known from the oral tradition of Buryatia. Found in the pre-Buddhist tradition of the nearly boundless expanse of Central Asia are epic mythological stories known as the uliger epic; one collection is the Geser epic, which tells of a battle between heroes and monsters, between good and evil. According to this mythology, at the time of primal chaos, the world was inhabited by monsters—mangas. Geser Bogdo, the son of a God living in the heavens, was born into a family of an elderly, poor, and childless couple; Geser Bodo’s task was to do away with the monsters on Earth. When he matured, he set forth with a band of 33 warriors to battle evil. Tales about him were communicated orally; bards recited the stories from memory for hours on end (Sharakshinova 1991; Ulanov 1991). The epic was set down in writing by Tsebeen Zhamtsarano in 1906 from a street singer, Manshud Imiegenov (1849–1908) (in Burchina 2004: 271). However, as of the 1930s, the Geser epic was prohibited, banished into oblivion, and perceived as a sword in the hand of bourgeois enemies of the socialist state. The Russians were offended by the depictions of monsters as tall people with light-colored hair and long beards, coming from the west, and identified with the Russian incomers. Upon the fall of the Soviet Union and with weakened

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