Agents of Evil: Curse Accusations and Shamanic Retaliation in Post-Soviet Tuva (Siberia) Konstantinos Zorbas Darwin College This dissertation is submitted to the Board of Graduate Studies, University of Cambridge, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Scott Polar Research Institute March 2007 i Declaration This dissertation, entitled Agents of Evil: Curse Accusations and Shamanic Retaliation in Post-Soviet Tuva (Siberia), is the result of my own work and includes nothing that is the outcome of work done in collaboration. This dissertation does not exceed the word-limit restriction of 80,000 words, as approved by the Degree Committee of the Faculty of Earth Sciences and Geography. Konstantinos Zorbas March 2007 ii Abstract This dissertation examines suspicions and accusations of affliction with curses in the Republic of Tuva, south Siberia (Russia). Based on a sample of consultations between shamans and clients regarding curse-inflicted misfortunes, as well as on sociological and statistical sources about post-Soviet Tuva, this thesis identifies a significant incidence of curse accusations in contemporary Tuva. I argue that this tendency is a repercussion of socio-economic pressures principally related to the post-socialist transition, in particular to new patterns of relatedness which emerged after the privatisation of property and the market in the early 90s. My data show that curse accusations occur especially in the context of tense or ambiguous personal relations associated with private economic ambitions, or of conflicts over private property and competition for jobs. If pre-Soviet curse accusations occurred between “tribes” or similar groups, in today’s bureaucratic segment of Tuvan society they occur within networks of relatives and white-collar workers. It would seem that even cursing has been privatised. The ethnographic body of the thesis consists of three consultations with one shaman. I focus on the interaction between shaman and client, and identify pervasive patterns of analogy between the misfortunes of each party. Contrary to classic accounts of shamanic initiation in the pre-Soviet age, I show that the shaman’s symbolic repertoire originates not only in encounters with spirits and dead shaman- ancestors, but also in ordinary events of Soviet repression and post-Soviet despair which are experienced equally by laymen. The analysis of this shaman’s psychobiography reveals how ordinary events can now offer the triggers for stages of initiation and symbolic transformation in a cumulative way. The shaman’s manipulation of the analogy between the client and himself is crucial for the resolution of the consultation and for the shaman’s own personal fulfilment. I, therefore, argue that in contemporary Tuva the repertoire of shamanic transformation has encompassed historical traumas of Soviet persecution and the post-socialist transition. Furthermore, analogous shared narratives of psychic conflict and soul loss show how both parties also adapt pre-Soviet idioms of suffering to their present circumstances. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the factors contributing to an ethos of “curse paranoia”, arguing that the formation of this ethos results from the repression of aggression under social pressures related both to Soviet and post-Soviet patterns of relatedness. Central to this operation of suspicions and accusations is the shaman as a regulator of “paranoia”: the shaman’s performance contributes to this ethos by cultivating anxiety and expanding the client’s horizon of suspiciousness in a process of regulating the client’s suspicions and accusations of curse affliction; ultimately, the healing process and the ritual retaliation, achieved through the return of the curses to the enemy, lead to the reduction of the client’s tension and suspicions. iii Acknowledgements I am especially indebted to Aleksei Gennadevich Kolmakov, Head of International affairs of the State University of Tuva, for providing administrative support for my fieldwork. I would also like to thank Dr. Valentina Suzukei, Institute of Humanitarian Researchers; our discussions on Tuvan shamanism, culture and personality led me to deep and original insights into the contemporary transformations of shamanism. In addition, I was privileged to receive intellectual support from an expert on Buddhism in Inner Asia, Prof. Nikolai Viacheslavovich Abaev (Tuvan State University). I wish also to thank: Valerii Kotelnikov (Institute of Comprehensive Development of Natural Resources), Khimaa, Orlan, Amir and Eres Saryglar, Aldynai Seden-Khyyrak, Elena Khertek, Chaizu Kyrgys, and two anonymous passengers on my return flight to Moscow. I am grateful to my supervisor, Piers Vitebsky, for his commitment to this project and for his remarkable, unequalled guidance over the past five years. By accepting me as a student in the Scott Polar Research Institute, he made true a dream I had ever since I was an undergraduate in Greece. His inspirational commentary and constructive criticism on successive drafts towards this thesis inevitably led me to continuous improvement as an anthropological thinker and writer. Through him I was fortunate to interact with a number of students and academics, whose contribution to my research has been crystallised in many parts of this dissertation. Thus, I want to thank the “Magic circle” discussion group, for insightful comments and suggestions, as well as for debating my arguments through mind-bending critique. I am especially grateful to Katie Swancutt, for her meticulous and thought-provoking commentary on several chapters of this thesis, as well as on earlier drafts. Parts of this dissertation were read by Martin Holbraad and Eleanor Peers, to whom I am also grateful (I especially thank Martin for incisive criticism of key sections). Additionally, my research has benefited from interaction with: Anatolii Alekseev (I am indebted to Anatolii for imparting his esoteric knowledge on the practice of cursing among the Even people in north-eastern Siberia), Oktyabrina Tuprina, Angela Hobart, Galina Lindquist (I especially thank Galina for sharing with me precious information on cursing, which she elicited from shamans in Tuva), Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, Florian Stammler, Martin Walsh, James Woodburn, Jean Briggs, Lena Rockhill, Caroline Humphrey, Nick Megoran, Harri Englund, Alan Macfarlane, Gananath Obeyesekere, Laurel Kendall, Tatiana Bulgakova, Jerzy Wasilewski (I am thankful to Jerzy for his valuable information on cursing among the Tuvans of north-western Mongolia), Agnieska Halemba, Rebecca Empson, and Carole Pegg. I wish also to thank my mentor in social anthropology, David Riches (University of St. Andrews), who introduced me to the study of shamanism among northern cultures. For administrative and technical support during my studies at Cambridge I thank the secretarial office and the Library staff of the Scott Polar Research Institute (many thanks to Isabella Warren for her assistance with the transliteration of the Russian references cited in the bibliography). For funding, I wish to express my gratitude to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, for providing a generous grant to cover the expenses of my fieldwork. I received additional support from the Managers of the B.B. Roberts Fund iv (Scott Polar Research Institute), to whom I am also grateful. I wish also to thank my parents for providing ample money for my fieldwork in Tuva and for my studies at the University of Cambridge. My deepest gratitude goes to the shamans’ clients, those few people in Tuva who shared their anxieties, secrets, grudges, narratives of suffering, and experiences of healing with me. I dedicate this thesis to them, because without them this thesis would not exist. v Table of contents Declaration i Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of contents v List of Tables, Figures, and Drawings vii Glossary of Tuvan and Russian terms viii Chapter 1. Introduction 1 1.1. The problem and the argument – hypotheses and preliminary considerations 1 1.2. Tuva – general features and overview 9 1.3. Curse accusations as an index of post-socialist crisis in Tuva 14 1.4. Fieldwork in Kyzyl 16 1.5. Kinds of Tuvan shamans 27 1.6. Malignity and retribution: two modalities of cursing 31 1.7. Shamanic trance, the spirits and healing 34 1.8. Sketches of shamanic psychobiography 39 1.9. Tuvan shamanism in the post-Soviet age 43 Chapter 2. The social context of curse accusations 53 2.1. Varieties of shamanic practice 53 2.2. Khuvaanak (divination) 55 2.3. Sending off the soul of the deceased 57 2.4. Aryglaar (cleansing/purification) 58 2.5. Presentation of a sample of selected cases 59 2.5.1. Cluster 1: cases of spirit affliction 61 2.5.2. Cluster 2: cases of curse affliction 62 2.6. Discussion 65 2.7. Conclusion 70 Chapter 3. Symbolic healing and shamanic transformation under post-socialism 71 1st case study: Yuri’s suspicions 3.1. Introductory note 71 3.2. The consultation 72 Part I 3.3. Strategies of redressing misfortune 77 3.4. Divination validates suspicions of curse affliction 82 3.5. Shaman and client: misfortune, analogy, and symbolic transformation 87 3.6. The symbolism of süzük: where culture and personal experience converge 96 vi Part II 3.7. Transition to the post-socialist context of shamanic transformation 99 3.8. “Revenge is sweeter than reconciliation” 100 3.9. A sketch of transition: symbolic transformation out of post-Soviet misery 104 3.10. Conclusion 109 Chapter 4. Soviet persecution as a “rite of passage” to shamanic transformation 110 2nd case study: Anna’s accusation – the wrath of the dead 4.1. Introductory note 110 Part I 4.2. 1st session 111 4.3. The avenging hero: shamanic transformation out of Soviet persecution 114 4.4. Analogy extended to the mythical past: Balgan and the Tuvan hero 117 Part II 4.5. 2nd session 123 4.6. Overturning the pattern of revenge: the deeper cause of Anna’s misfortunes 128 4.7. Conclusion 137 Chapter 5. Shamanic psychobiography unfolded: the conflict of the Ancestors 138 3rd case study: Arzhana’s “paranoid” suspiciousness 5.1.