Preserving the Voice of History: Tyumen Digitizes Siberian Folklore
A folklore scholar in Tyumen has launched the digital platform Perekrestok Traditsiy (Crossroads of Traditions), featuring authentic recordings of songs and tales from long-time residents of southern Tyumen Region. The project has already secured a grant from the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives.
A Folklorist from Tyumen
Liliya Dyomina teaches at the Tyumen State Institute of Culture and has spent more than thirty years collecting folklore from communities in the southern districts of Tyumen Region. Her fascination with traditional culture began during her student years, when, on the border of Belarus and Pskov Region, she first heard volochebnye ritual songs performed by an elderly local woman. That encounter shaped the trajectory of her professional life.
In 1990, Dyomina founded the folklore ensemble Rosstan – a word meaning a fork in the road or crossroads. The group specializes in performing songs of Russian old settlers of Siberia, known as chaldons, as well as material brought by migrants from the European part of Russia. In 2025, the ensemble marked its 35th anniversary. Its repertoire includes dozens of works that are no longer performed anywhere else.
Voices From Siberian Villages
The Perekrestok Traditsiy platform preserves the living voices of folklore bearers. Among the performers are Tanya Grishchenko, Anya Plotnikova and Polya Vorobyeva from Vikulovsky District. Their recordings were made in domestic settings during field expeditions, without studio processing or stylistic adaptation.
Each entry is accompanied by full metadata: the performer’s name, year of recording, location of the expedition and circumstances of the meeting. Researchers have access to musical transcriptions, song lyrics and dialect annotations. The result is not just an archive, but a fully fledged research tool for scholars of ethnic music and regional history.
A Map of Living Memory
The platform interface is built around an interactive map of Vikulovsky District. Users select a village and enter a digital archive of its residents’ memory. They can listen to wedding laments from the village of Uporovo, calendar ritual songs from Novoatyaly or folktales about taiga spirits from Kazanka.
This design makes folklore accessible not only to academics, but also to schoolchildren, local historians and descendants of Siberian families. A child can hear how a great-grandmother once spoke, while a philology student can study dialect features without traveling to a remote settlement.
The Ensemble Rosstan
Over three and a half decades, Rosstan has assembled a unique collection of chaldon songs – descendants of the first Russian settlers of Siberia in the 16th to 18th centuries. These communities освоили the taiga, built fortified settlements and developed a distinctive culture that adapted Russian traditions to harsh Siberian conditions.
The ensemble’s repertoire includes agricultural work songs, lamentations and wedding rituals infused with elements of shamanic belief. Many melodies existed only in oral tradition and were recorded by Dyomina in the final years of their bearers’ lives. Without this work, they would have vanished permanently.
A Presidential Fund Grant
The digital platform was created with support from a grant provided by the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives. The challenge was not only to gather materials, but also to systematize and classify them. Past expeditions left behind valuable recordings, yet without organization they remained buried in archives, inaccessible to the public.
On the platform, all materials are structured, standardized in metadata format and searchable by multiple parameters: genre, performer, year of recording and geographic reference. This architecture creates a foundation for expanding the project to other districts of Siberia.
From Vikulovsk to All of Siberia
At present, the map includes materials only from Vikulovsky District of Tyumen Region – one of the most folklore-rich areas. Plans call for expanding the platform to Omsk, Novosibirsk and Tomsk Regions, where communities of chaldon heritage also remain.
Dyomina’s initiative aligns with a broader national strategy to preserve intangible cultural heritage. The oldest folklore bearers are passing away, and digital technologies may represent the last opportunity to safeguard their voices for future generations.
Russia’s wealth lies not only in its history and landscapes, but also in the living memory of its people – and now that memory is gaining a form of digital immortality.
