From Drums to Frying Pans, From Party Membership Card to “Magic Branch” Withe: Three Generations of Nanai Shamans

Every radical change that Nanai experienced in the 20th centurydivided the young people of this indigenous minority in Russia in two groups – radicals and conservatives, sharing values of the older generation. This way, in the period of establishing the Soviet power, radicals were members of the Young Communist League (Komsomol) who repressed shamans, whereas conservatives were those young people who became shamans but were forced to give up using shamanic drums and begun using pot lids or frying pans. During the changes in the 1960s and 1970s, the activity of radicals became more passive and not only they but also the conservatives (practitioners of shamanism and their customers) became members of the Komsomol. In the post-perestroika period, the social roles changed. Young Nanai, adherents of the revived shamanism, became radicals who practiced new forms of shamanism that they had adopted from the mass media. They maintained certain traditional elements of shamanic practices like using withe as a tool for measuring a healed person’s ‘level of energy’. Such transformations demonstrate the flexibility of shamanism and its ability to adapt to the changing ideological and cultural environment.