Editor's Introduction

During the cultural revivals of the late Soviet period and the 1990s in many of the ethnic republics of Russia, art and museum exhibit openings, theater premières, and book presentations were happening nearly every week. For me, traveling frequently to Sakha Republic (Yakutia), it was as if some cork had been popped on a champagne bottle, unleashing a pent-up creativity that had deep sources in local cultures. The cultural intelligentsias of Kalmykia, Buryatia, and the Altai and Sakha Republics, featured here, were encouraged by the conditions of the 1990s and by each other to explore many cultural paths, including new globalizing inspirations from Europe and Asia. Yet many of them simultaneously looked to folklore and their artistic roots. Social patterns became remarkably similar in the ways artists in these communities were and are valorized for their national themes. While republic leaders were busy choosing national flags, and arguing over national constitutions—within the Russian Federation—their artists were exploring epics and other spiritual resources. I have chosen two Mongol and two Turkic republics to illustrate the little-known and underappreciated artistic flourishing of the post-Soviet period and its legacies. This is partly because these are places I know, where specific artists have become brilliant synthesizers of their cultural traditions. They are also places where local art historians and anthropologists have been producing reflective work about their creative artist-culture-heroes. This issue merely samples their work: