NESTLED along the northern border of Mongolia, Tuva is easy to miss. There are no direct flights from Moscow; the only ways in are turbo-prop planes from nearby Siberian cities or a long drive through the surrounding mountains. Most of the region’s 308,000 people are native Tuvans, a Turkic people some of whom still practice a traditional nomadic lifestyle. Shamanism and Buddhism remain more widespread than Orthodox Christianity, Russia’s dominant religion. As Oksana Tyulyush, artistic director of the Tuvan National Orchestra, quips, “God is a long way up and Moscow is a long way away.”
Russians typically know little of the region, which lived under Mongol or Chinese rule for most of its history. Between 1921 and 1944 Tuvans enjoyed a brief run of de jure independence as Tannu Tuva, or the Tuvan People’s Republic, which delighted philatelists by issuing a series of oddly shaped stamps. After the end of the second world war, the Soviet Union moved in, making Tuva an official protectorate at the request of local authorities. (When Soviet officials came to distribute passports, they found that everyone in the home village of…
The Economist: Europe
