The Ethno-Confessional Factor in the Spiritual Revival of Tuva: a Social and Philosophical Analysis

Abstract

The article describes ethno-confessional processes in present-day Tuva and the spiritual revival that began in the 1990s. The paper discusses and examines the formation of a new cultural and moral system and the youth’s actual value paradigms. The authors emphasize the importance of preservation of the spiritual heritage of the past, including ethnic and religious forms of Tuvan traditional culture. The article also examines the relationships between religion and ethnicity, the peculiarity of Tuva as a multiconfessional region with quite a variety of religions. On the basis of the authors’ research, the current state of religiosity is described, including the phenomenon of religious syncretism. Thus, the current polyconfessional picture of religious life in the Republic of Tuva also determines prospects of further processes that take place as part of the situation. Polyconfessionality is quite a positive phenomenon which testifies of freedom of spiritual choice. The characteristic feature of modern Tuva’s religious life is that amid a significant growth in the numbers of believers and adherents of the historic ethnoconfessional communities, there are a number of confessions that had been unknown before. And those undoubtedly influence the spiritual, cultural, social and ethnopolitical processes in the region. Modern society must be competent enough to communicate with the diverse confessions, which requires that such phenomena be subject to comprehensive studies.

Keywords

• духовность
• традиционная культура
• традиция
• религиозный синкретизм