2024-03-18 06:52:34
In 2019, the Yakut shaman Alexander Gabyshev set out on an eight thousand kilometer long journey from eastern Russia to Moscow in order to expel there President Vladimir Putin. He is said to have been ordered by God, according to whom Putin is not a man, but a demon. Along the way, other Russians joined the shaman, and Gabyšev became a local celebrity. Starting next week, a film charting his story will be shown at the One World festival.
The documentary The Shaman’s Story was originally supposed to be a kind of road movie. “We thought we would follow his journey to Moscow, spend two years with him on the journey and observe how other people join him,” describe the first vision of the film’s directors and spouses, Beata and Mikhail Bashkirov, in an interview for Aktuálně.cz. The One World Human Rights Film Festival, which will screen the film, starts next Wednesday.
Bashkirov is originally an anthropologist who works on shamans, so his wife asked him to participate in the film with her. She herself was born in Yakutsk, Siberia, where the shaman also comes from. But she also has Ukrainian roots and filmed for example about Euromaidan or the conflict in Donbass. “Initially, I didn’t want to shoot this because I thought it was just another anti-Putin film. But then I understood that it was something important,” she says.
Shaman Gabyshev, according to his own words, learned one day that he had to eradicate Putin from Russia, otherwise a disaster would occur not only in this country, but throughout the world. He therefore decided to set out on foot from his native Yakutsk to Moscow. Although at first almost no one knew about him, gradually more and more people or Russian bloggers who made videos about his journey on YouTube and other social networks joined him.
Some people believed that he was a real shaman and that it was his divine mission, some Russians liked that he wanted to rid them of Putin, and some were simply fascinated by his actions, Beata Bashkirovová describes. But a circle of his most faithful began to form around the shaman, who constantly surrounded him, even if they often disagreed with each other.
Open and intelligent
But according to the creators of the documentary, the shaman got along with everyone. “He was very open and kind. He often repeated that people must forgive each other, that it is not good to seek revenge,” adds the director, and her husband nods. “He always tried to understand everyone he talked to.
He also struck them as a very educated man, which contrasts strongly with the vast poverty of the region shown in the documentary. “We felt that he had a good education, because he knew a thousand stories, a thousand myths, he understood Christianity and the Yakut religion very well,” describes Mikhail Bashkirov.
Gabyshev was stopped at the border of Buryatia by shamans from the organization Tengeri, which is financially supported by the local government. They reproached the Yakut colleague that political activity was against shamanic laws and that if he continued, he would be deprived of the title of shaman. “You can think what you want about me, but I am a shaman, a warrior, and I keep going even if you block my path,” he answered them.
According to the creators, however, it continues the Russian tradition of jurodivs, i.e. people who experience faith in God unconventionally and too strongly. This is a Christian tradition and so-called foolishness for Christ. “It doesn’t only draw on traditional shamanism, but also follows, for example, the Russian saint Basil the Blessed or someone like Joan of Arc,” they add. The man thus stands astride the many religious traditions from which he draws.
War will come
But the Russian authorities did not see it that way. After about six months of wandering, when Gabyšev and his entourage traveled about two thousand kilometers, their camp was surrounded. Men burst into the shaman’s tent and took him away. After a few days, when his followers had no idea where he was, he appeared back in Yakutsk, where he began his wanderings.
In July 2021, after several trials, the authorities sent him to a psychiatric clinic against his will after the court found him “mentally incompetent”. He is still in a psychiatric hospital and is given very strong drugs there. Most recently, last September, the court refused to transfer him to another psychiatric hospital, where the conditions are not so strict.
“It’s criminal psychiatry. It’s a tradition of the Soviet Union to lock up people who are against the government, against the regime in psychiatry,” warn the filmmakers, according to whom the shaman is completely mentally healthy.
But they add that Gabyšev does not seem like any other person, because shamans are a little different, think and perceive the world differently, but that is precisely why they are shamans. “So now Russia will punish people only for what religion they have,” he says angrily.
Gabyshev planned to go to Moscow for two years and depose Putin in 2021. “He claimed that if he failed, war would come. I thought he was describing some kind of spiritual war. But then the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022,” she adds Bashkirova.