City Day

Abstract

City Day is a public celebration of the anniversary of Ulan-Ude’s founding. The public holiday, with a parade and speeches, indexes a chronotope and genre of history labeled the hospitality genre. This genre tells the history of Buryatia as a series of arrivals, beginning with the Buryats, followed by the Cossacks and Old Believer Orthodox Christians (Semeiskie). Both Cossacks and Old Believer Orthodox are Russian and yet not Russian, produced as local ethnic groups in opposition to the central Russian state, thereby transforming what might be a story of Russian colonization into a history of successive migrations. This genre produces a local history of multi-ethnic coexistence and toleration that contrasts the peaceful and multi-ethnic local with the national, and produces Buryatia as a place where many ethnicities have always, and will continue, to live together in peace and neighborly conviviality.