Article

Name: Historical memory of the uprising «Aldan Maadyr» in the Tuvan folk song

Authors: E. L. Tiron

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of folklore

Abstract: The purpose of the study is to examine the relevant characteristics of historical events which were captured by their contemporaries and are preserved in the memory of the people and broadcast by the next generations. The author analyses the published Tuvan folk songs about the uprising «Aldan Maadyr» which occurred in 1883–1885. In 1889, four years after the suppression of the uprising, on the recommendations of V. Radlov, N. Katanov, a graduate of the Faculty of Oriental Languages of St. Petersburg University, undertook an ethnographic-linguistic expedition during which he examined the Tuvan tribes living near the place of the uprising. Despite the Tuvans' fears of a stranger, the researcher managed to write down several lyrics about the insurrection. He published the texts translated into Russian in 1907 in the ninth volume of the series «Samples of folk literature of the northern Turkic tribes» named «Adverbs of Uryanshay people (Soyots), Abakan Tatars and Karagas». In 1964, in the monograph «Tuvan folk music», A. Aksyonov published three samples of songs about the uprising recorded in 1956 in Kyzyl from representatives of the Tuva intelligentsia N. Olzei-ool and S. Purbe. In 1985, Yu. Aranchin, one of the founders of the Tuvan humanities, published the book «Aldan-Maadyrlarnyy halyshkyny» («Rise of the Sixty Bogatyrs»), including eyewitness recollections and folklore materials. Most of the song texts are the republishing of national texts from the works of N. Katanov and A. Aksenov. In addition, four song texts recorded in the 1940s were deciphered and presented by Saaya Sevek. In 2015, in her monograph «Tuvan folk songs and ritual poetry», Z. Kirgis published 35 national texts about the uprising of sixty heroes with the author's translation into Russian, many of these texts also are reprinting of early publications. As a result of the analysis of published texts of songs about the uprising of the sixty heroes, the author comes to the conclusion that their stylistics is characterized by the absence of a direct description of historical facts. Events are reflected indirectly, through the prism of human perception. The creators of the songs were ordinary people who were in sympathy with the insurgents through song texts, expressed their negative attitude towards greedy and cruel officials. It confirms the general idea of historical memory as a stable system of notions of the past, existing in the public consciousness, for which the emotional assessment of the past is inherent.

Keywords: historical memory, song folklore, tuvan folk songs, tuvinians, insurrection

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