Tuvinians are hardy Mongol natives, related to the Kyrgyz ethnic branch. Because it is difficult to specify physical features that are common to all the Turkic peoples, it is the shared cultural feature of language that identifies members of a particular group. The Turkic languages strongly resemble one another, most of them being to some extent mutually intelligible. The peoples of Siberia fall into three major ethno-linguistic groups: Altaic, Uralic, and Paleo-Siberian. The Tuvinians are one of the Altaic peoples, and the Tuvin language belongs to the Uighur-Oguz group of the Altaic language family. Together with the ancient Uighur and Oguz languages, these linguistic groups form the subgroup of Uighur-T?k?i. Even if a special Decree on Languages in the Tuva ASSR had not been ratified in 1991 stipulating that all academic subjects be taught in Tuvinian, the Tuvinian language would
Camel herd and herder. © NOVOSTI/SOVFOTO
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not be forgotten. The indigenous language is most widely spoken in rural areas, where 67-70 percent of Tuvinians live. The official lingua franca (Russian) is spoken mainly in Tuva’s four major towns.
For roughly 150 years Tuva formed part of the Chinese Empire, and later was subject to Mongol rule. An independent state, called Tannu Tuva, was established on August 14, 1921. Tuva nevertheless voluntarily joined the USSR in 1944 as an autonomous oblast. In 1961 Tuva became an autonomous republic.
Tuvinians are mostly engaged in agricultural activities, such as cattle raising and fur farming. Oats, barley, wheat, and millet are the principal crops raised. Recently, farmers from northern China have introduced the Tuvinians to vegetable farming. Many Tuvinians still live as nomadic shepherds, migrating seasonally with their herds. Those who inhabit the plains traditionally live in large round tents, called gers (yurts), made from bark. The main industrial activity in the Tuvinian Republic is mining, especially for asbestos, cobalt, coal, gold, and uranium. Other Tuvinians are engaged in processing food, manufacturing building materials, and crafting leather and wooden items.
Most Tuvinians were illiterate until the advent of the Russians. Thus, the Tuvinian culture is noted for its rich, oral epic poetry and its music (throat singing). The Tuvinian use more than fifty different musical instruments, and traveling ensembles often perform outdoors. The Tuvinians in East Asia have never been affected by Islam. In the early twenty-first century, one-third of the Tuvinians are Buddhists, one-third are shamanists (believing in an unseen world of gods, demons, and ancestral spirits), and the remaining one-third are non-religious. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; KYRGYZSTAN AND KYRGYZ; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam. (1995). Culture Incarnate: Native Anthropology from Russia. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Di?szegi, Vilmos, and Hopp?l, Mih?ly. (1998). Shamanism: Selected Writings of Vilmos Di?szegi. Budapest: Akad?miai Kiad?. Drobizheva , L. M. (1996). Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Leighton, Ralph. (1991). Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman’s Last Journey. New York: W. W. Norton.
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Vainshtein, S. I. (1980). Nomads of South Siberia: the Pastoral Economies of Tuva. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wangyal, Tenzin, and Dahlby, Mark. (2002). Healing with Form, Energy and Light: The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra, and Dzogchen. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.
At the November 1929 plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, it was decided to mobilize 25,000 industrial workers to help with collectivization and provide the countryside with thousands of loyal cadres.
Over 70,000 workers volunteered to serve as Twenty-Five Thousanders (Dvadsatipiatitysiach-niki). The All- Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS) directed and organized the mobilization campaign, set selection criteria, and established regional quotas. Of the 27,519 workers selected, nearly 70 percent were members or candidate-members of the party, and over half were under thirty years old.
Following short preparatory courses, the Twenty-Five Thousanders arrived in the countryside during the first phase of forced collectivization in early 1930. Most were assigned to work as chairmen of large collective farms. Others were to work in state farms, machine tractor stations (MTS), village soviets, or various local Party organizations. However, owing to the hostility of local officials, a great many Twenty-Five Thousanders were put to other tasks or ignored, and often not given adequate food or housing. Some were assaulted or murdered by angry peasants. Despite the obstacles, many farms headed by Twenty-Five Thousanders earned awards from party and collective-farm organs for being model collective farms.
The Twenty-Five Thousanders were expected to remain in the countryside until the end of the First Five-Year Plan in 1932. However, only 40 percent finished out their terms. Nonetheless, the Twenty-Five Thousanders were hailed as heroes of socialist construction. Many were promoted into rural party and government work, and several earned the distinguished honor of Heroes of Socialist Labor. See also: COLLECTIVE FARM; COLLECTIVIZATION; COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Viola, Lynn. (1987). The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press.
(1803-1873), Russian poet.
Widely considered one of the greatest poets in world literature, Tyutchev can be classified as a late romantic, but, like other persons of surpassing genius, he was strikingly unique. Tyutchev’s literary legacy consists of some three hundred poems (about fifty of them translations), usually brief, and several articles. Although recognition came slow to Tyutchev, in fact, he never had a regular literary career, eventually books of his poetry came to be the treasured possessions of every educated Russian.
Many of Tyutchev’s poems deal with nature. Some of them offer luminous images of a thunderstorm early in May or of warm days at the beginning of autumn. Others express the pantheistic beliefs of romanticism (“Thought after thought / Wave after wave / Two manifestations / Of one element”), particularly its preoccupation with chaos. Indeed, the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev considered Tyutchev’s treatment of chaos, which he represented as the dark foundation of all existence, whether of nature or human beings, to be the central motif of the poet’s creativity, more powerfully expressed than by anyone else in all literature. Tyutchev’s poem Silentium can be cited as the ultimate culmination of the desperate romantic effort to, in the words of William Wordsworth, “evoke the inexpressible.” A somewhat different, small, but unforgettable group of Tyutchev’s poems deals with the hopelessness of late love (“thou art both blessedness and hopelessness”), reflecting the poet’s tragic liaison with a woman named Mademoiselle Denisova.
An aristocrat who received an excellent education at home and at Moscow University, Tyutchev was a prime example of cosmopolitan, especially French, culture in Russia. Choosing diplomatic service, he spent some twenty- two years in central and western Europe, particularly in Munich. The service operated in French, and Tyutchev’s French was so perfect that, allegedly, other diplomats, including French diplomats, were advised to use Tyutchev’s reports as models. Tyutchev was prominent in Munich society and came to know Friedrich Schelling and other luminaries. He married in succession two German women, neither of whom spoke Russian.
Politically, Tyutchev belonged to the Right. Not really a Slavophile in the precise meaning of that term, he stood with the Petrine imperial government, where he served as a censor (a tolerant one, to be sure) as well as a diplomat. He may be best described as a member of the romantic wing of supporters of the state doctrine of Official
