Калдак-Хамар: десакрализация и новая сакрализация

Чимиза Кудер-ооловна Ламажаа; Шенне Борисовна Майны

doi:10.25178/nit.2026.3.12

Authors

Chimiza K. Lamazhaa Al-Farabi Kazakh National University https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1813-3605
Shenne B. Mainy Tuvan State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2026.3.12

Keywords:

Tuva, Tuvans, Kaldak-Khamar, motor road, Tuvan People’s Republic, mountain culture, road infrastructure, conquest of nature, cultural memory, site of memory, multiple interpretations of the world

Abstract

The article examines the history of the construction of a motor road across the Kaldak-Khamar mountain pass (Tes-Khemsky kozhuun, Republic of Tuva), which connected Kyzyl, the capital of the Tuvan People’s Republic, with the country’s southern districts in 1938–1941. The project is considered as a Tuvan variant of a popular mobilizational and romanticized socialist construction endeavour, whose most prominent later example was the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM) of the 1970s–1980s. In Tuvan collective memory, the construction project has endured in songs, poems, legends, and the journalistic image of the “Tuvan BAM”; however, it has not previously been the subject of a dedicated scholarly study. The research draws on documents from the National Archives of the Republic of Tuva; issues of the newspaper Shyn published in the 1930s; literary and local-history publications; district press materials; a 1941 newsreel; contemporary media texts; theatrical productions; and the authors’ field materials.

The conceptual framework is provided by A. K. Olshlegel’s idea of multiple interpretations of the world, supplemented by approaches from the anthropology of sacred landscapes, the infrastructural turn, studies of Soviet Prometheanism, and cultural-memory theory.

The study demonstrates that the construction project was organized as a ritual drama of conquering the mountain-master: the mountain was anthropomorphized, yet cast as an adversary, addressed directly and presented with sung “reports” of victory. The article traces transformations in Tuvan attitudes toward mountains from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century: from reverence for the mountain-master, through the Soviet rhetoric of conquest, to the contemporary superimposition of symbolic layers. At the pass today, a stele commemorating labour achievement, a religious building, ovaa and ritual ribbons coexist, while the pass itself is once again understood as sacred.

References

Assmann, A. (2014) The Long Shadow of the Past: Memorial Culture and Historical Politics. Translated from German by B. Khlebnikov. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 328 p. (In Russ.)

Assmann, J. (2004) Cultural Memory: Writing, Memory of the Past, and Political Identity in the High Cultures of Antiquity. Translated from German by M. M. Sokolskaya. Moscow, Yazyki slavianskoi kul’tury. 368 p. (In Russ.)

Aranchyn, Yu. L. (1982) The Historical Path of the Tuvan People to Socialism. Novosibirsk, Nauka Publishers, Siberian Branch. 339 p. (In Russ.)

Baikalov, N. S. (2022) The Last Construction Project of Socialism: The Historical Experience of Late Soviet Modernization in the Areas of the Baikal–Amur Railway Mainline. Ulan-Ude, Buryat State University Press. 332 p. (In Russ.)

Baiyr-ool, M. S. (2011) The rise and fall of Aleksandr Chymba. New Research of Tuva, no. 2–3, pp. 151–173. (In Russ.)

Dagylga: Tuvan Consecration Rites in the Twenty-First Century (2021). Ed. by Ch. K. Lamazhaa and N. D. Suvandii. Kyzyl, s. n. 188 p. (In Russ.)

Dongak, A. S. (2018) Toponymic tales and legends of South-Eastern Tuva. New Research of Tuva, no. 3, pp. 126–147. (In Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2018.3.9

The History of Tuva (2007) : in 3 vols. Ed. by V. A. Lamin. Novosibirsk, Nauka. Vol. 2. 430 p. (In Russ.)

Khenin-Lopsan, M. B. (2021) Traditional Culture of Tuvans. Translated from Tuvan. Kyzyl, Children’s Literary Website “Rainbow of Tuva”; Tuvan Book Publishing House. 248 p. (In Russ.)

Lamazhaa, Ch. K. (2021) Tuvan dagylga rites in the twenty-first century. Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, no. 2, pp. 125–143. (In Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.31857/S086954150014811-2[eo.iea.ras]

Lamazhaa, Ch. K. and Mainy, Sh. B. (2026) Mountain country: mountain culture. New Research of Tuva, no. 1, pp. 6–36. (In Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2026.1.1

Mikhalev, M. (2023) The Notched Line of Inner Asia: Southern Siberia and Eurasian Integration. Moscow, Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences. 295 p. (In Russ.)

Mollerov, N. M. (2022) The Soviet factor in the spatial and economic development of the Tuvan People’s Republic. Aziatskie issledovaniia: istoriia i sovremennost’, 2022, no. 2(2), pp. 102–117. (In Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.24412/2782-6139-2022-2-102-117

Nora, P. (1999) Issues in places of memory. In: Nora, P., Ozouf, M., Puimege, J. de and Winock, M. France-Memory. Translated from French by D. Khapaeva. St Petersburg: St Petersburg University Press. 328 p. Pp. 17–50. (In Russ.)

Ondar, B. K. (2007) Toponymic Dictionary of Tuva. 2nd ed. Kyzyl, Tuvan Book Publishing House. 551 p. (In Russ.)

Ondar, M. V., Koshkendei, I. M. and Khomushku, Ch. O. (2018) Toponyms in Tuvan folklore: evidence from heroic epics and folk songs. New Research of Tuva, no. 3, pp. 53–68. (In Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2018.3.4

Povoroznyuk, O. A. (2020) (Post-)Soviet infrastructure: the politics of identity and emotions on the BAM. Sibirskie istoricheskie issledovaniia, no. 3, pp. 32–47. (In Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.17223/2312461X/29/3

Ritual Ribbons and Flags in Tuvan Culture (2024). Ch. K. Lamazhaa, Sh. B. Mainy, N. D. Suvandii and Ch. Kh. Sanchai. Ed. by Ch. K. Lamazhaa and N. D. Suvandii. Kyzyl, Tuvan State University Press. 195 p. (In Russ.)

Samdan, A. A. (2017) The invasion of Chinese and Mongolian detachments into Tuva, 1918–1919. New Research of Tuva, no. 4, pp. 143–153. (In Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2017.4.9

Samdan, Z. B. (2017) The historical significance of ancient legends recorded in the Tes-Khem area. Uchenye zapiski / TIGPI, issue 24. Kyzyl, s. n. Pp. 240–260. (In Tuvan.)

Sanchai, Ch. Kh. (2023) Images of the native land in the musical and song culture of Tuvans. New Research of Tuva, no. 1, pp. 80–109. (In Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2023.1.5

Serdobov, V. N. (2017) River valleys as communication routes between the regions of Tuva and neighbouring territories of the Sayan–Altai in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Vestnik NSU. Series: History and Philology, vol. 16, no. 3: Archaeology and Ethnography, pp. 62–69. (In Russ.)

Suvandii, N. D. (2024) Sacred toponyms of Tuva: lexical-semantic groups. New Research of Tuva, no. 3, pp. 191–202. (In Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2024.3.11

Suzukei, V. Yu. (2007) Musical Culture of Tuva in the Twentieth Century. Moscow, Kompozitor. 408 p. (In Russ.)

Basso, K. H. (1996) Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press. 171 p.

Harvey, P. and Knox, H. (2015) Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise. Ithaca, Cornell University Press. 264 p.

Josephson, P. R. (2002) Industrialized Nature: Brute Force Technology and the Transformation of the Natural World. Washington, Island Press. 313 p.

Larkin, B. (2013) The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 42, pp. 327–343. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522

Oelschlaegel, A. C. (2013) Plurale Weltinterpretationen. Das Beispiel der Tyva Südsibiriens. Fürstenberg/Havel, SEC Publications / Kulturstiftung Sibirien GmbH. 268 p.

Portelli, A. (1991) The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History. Albany, State University of New York Press. 341 p.

Scott, J. C. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, Yale University Press. 251 p.

Ward, C. J. (2009) Brezhnev’s Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press. 218 p.