The Man who Sees: The World of Ivan Stepanovich Sopochin

Ivan Stepanovich Sopochin lived his whole life following the traditional customs of his people, one of the branches of the Eastern Khanty, on a tributary of the Ob′, the Woki-rap-yagun (‘Fox-cliff river’), near Surgut. He remained a monolingual speaker of his dialect, and was a guardian of spiritual traditions. In his youth he was arrested for the practice of shamanism – though he called himself not a shaman, but a ‘man who sees’, who has visions. In the last years of his life (he died in 1993), he attracted many visits from researchers into shamanism and traditional culture. The present volume presents the research of some of the scholars who carried out field work or have studied Sopochin’s spiritual traditions, and marks a significant contribution to English-language research into Eastern Khanty shamanism and traditional culture.