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Dyilgayak or Chaga-Bayram: public debate in Altai in the early 1990s (based on materials from the newspaper Altaidyng Cholmony)
Chemchieva, Arzhana P., Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Researcher, Institute of Archeology and Ethnography SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia, chemchieva@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3090-859X
Summary
This article reconstructs the public debate on the indigenous Altai New Year celebration, which unfolded on the pages of the newspaper Altaidyng Cholmony in the early 1990s. The study aims to delineate the principal axes of discussion regarding the holidays Dyilgayak and Chaga-Bayram, to characterize the positions adopted by various participants, and to trace the dynamics of the debate over time. The research employs both quantitative and qualitative content analysis of publications issued by the newspaper between 1989 and 1993. At the initial stage of the revival of the New Year tradition, popular memory preserved two variants of the holiday: a winter observance (Chaga-Bayram) and a spring observance (Dyilgayak). No consensus existed regarding the appropriate date for the celebration. Due to the consistent position advanced by the newspaper’s editorial board and a segment of the Altai intelligentsia — who favoured alignment with the lunar calendar of Buddhist peoples — Chaga-Bayram was accorded priority. In this context, Dyilgayak came to be conceptualized as a spring holiday not associated with the New Year. This stance attained official status later and, for several decades, shaped the positioning of both holidays within the festive calendar of the Altai Republic.
Keywords: New Year, festive tradition, lunar calendar, Shamanism, Burkhanism, Buddhism, content analysis, Altai Republic.
© Chemchieva A.P., 2026
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Received 02.04.2026
Accepted 04.06.2026
Article is published: 15.09.2026
Funding. The research was carried out within the framework of project No. FWZG-2025-0011, research project No. 125021001826-6 “Ethnocultural and Ethnosocial Processes among the Peoples of Siberia and the Far East in the 17th–21st Centuries: Formation and Dynamics”.
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