Belarusian rituals, ornaments, and the Belarusian language everywhere. How a descendant of settlers made a village near Lake Baikal Belarusian again, and why this may soon end
In the deep Siberian taiga, where it takes several hours to reach the nearest major city, wooden houses display signs with red Belarusian ornaments, inscriptions on billboards and buildings are in Belarusian, and the local administration organizes traditional Belarusian rituals. This is not a movie set, but the reality of a Siberian village that relies solely on the stubbornness of one descendant of Belarusian settlers, who consciously defends his roots.
The Belarusian ritual "Hukannie viasny" (Calling of Spring) in Turgenevka. In the background, a Belarusian inscription "Turgenevka — forward!" Photo: "Potok"
The Russian publication "Potok" published a large report about 44-year-old Viktor Sinkevich, the head of the Siberian village of Turgenevka in the Irkutsk region.
Siberian Belarusiana
This settlement was founded in 1909 by Belarusian settlers who moved east during the Stolypin reforms. Today, Sinkevich is the last elected head of the village, as the Russian local self-government reform will soon abolish this position.
However, the most interesting layer of this story is how a local official transformed a depressed territory into a true cultural oasis, where Belarusian identity not only survives but is being reconstructed anew.
Viktor Sinkevich is a descendant of Belarusian settlers who moved to Turgenevka following the Stolypin reform. Photo: "Potok"
Viktor Sinkevich's workplace is not in a classic office with a Russian flag, but in a model library. Among the shelves with comics and encyclopedias, a separate shelf is entirely dedicated to books in the Belarusian language. Even the plants here stand in pots adorned with Belarusian national ornaments. The same red-and-white pattern decorates the house numbers on all homes along Turgenevka's main streets.
The model library in the village was opened only a few years ago. Previously, the building housed a collective farm shop; now, its walls, as the Center of Belarusian Culture, are decorated with Belarusian ornaments. Photo: "Potok"
The head himself reads Belarusian-language literature in his free time, though he admits he does so with a dictionary. Moreover, Sinkevich has a whole box of Belarusian publications hidden away, which he plans to unpack only when his administrative powers finally expire.
The Belarusian ritual "Hukannie viasny" (Calling of Spring) in Turgenevka. In the background, a billboard in Belarusian "Flourish, Turgenevka." Photo: "Potok"
His principled stance is also evident in institutional steps: in 2022, when re-elected for a second term as an independent candidate, he officially registered the public organization "Belarusians of Bayanday District."
Furthermore, thanks to his efforts, Turgenevka became the first rural territory in the region to conclude a twinning agreement with a foreign settlement – the Belarusian agricultural town of Motol in the Brest region, from where guests periodically visit Siberia.
The walls of the Center for Belarusian Culture are adorned with Belarusian ornaments. There are several versions as to why the village is called Turgenevka: possibly in honor of the writer Ivan Turgenev, another variant is that a man named Turgen allocated the land to the Belarusian settlers. Photo: "Potok"
Belarusian Authenticity vs. Bureaucracy
Belarusian culture in the village is not only present in the form of artifacts; it is alive. In spring, Turgenevka traditionally hosts the Belarusian ritual of "Hukannie viasny" (Calling of Spring). In the center of the village, an artificial birch tree is erected, decorated with paper garlands and baked lark-shaped birds.
Viktor's wife, Natallya, puts on a long checkered skirt and leads a round dance — a "marazhulya" — in which not only ethnic Belarusians but also local Buryats participate.
The rituals are observed with ethnographic precision. During the celebration, a high school student buries a clay pot with barley porridge in the snow. Then, a small Snow Maiden doll is burned. According to Belarusian beliefs, which Natallya explains to the villagers, old things should be thrown into this fire to get rid of everything bad from the previous year.
The middle son of the village head, tenth-grader Oleg Sinkevich, considers himself Belarusian and wears a vyshyvanka (embroidered shirt). Photo: "Potok"
The middle son of the head, tenth-grader Oleg, who wears a vyshyvanka under a black hoodie with a cyberpunk skull, helps light the bonfire, which the children enthusiastically comment on with shouts of: "Everything burned, only a braid remained!" It all concludes with a communal frying of scrambled eggs over the fire, with the unrestrained children drinking raw eggs straight from the shell.
The Belarusian ritual "Hukannie viasny" (Calling of Spring) in Turgenevka. Photo: "Potok"
For Sinkevich, preserving historical truth is a matter of principle, which sometimes leads to conflicts with regional authorities.
When an original Belarusian house was moved to the ethnographic museum in the neighboring district center of Bayanday, Viktor was outraged that the museum staff whitewashed it inside. He directly told the director that Belarusians never whitewashed houses from the inside.
However, the district mayor, an ethnic Buryat for several generations, insisted on his own way, as he had his own "vision" of how a Belarusian house should look.
Conflict of Identities
Former students bring items related to Belarusian everyday life from their homes to the Turgenevka ethnographic museum. Photo: "Potok"
The local ethnographic museum in Turgenevka itself is another center for preserving memory. At the entrance hangs a list of the first 55 Belarusian settlers, among whom only one woman is indicated. Former schoolchildren traditionally donate household peasant items to the museum for their graduation.
In the exhibition, a wooden bed from the early 20th century, brought disassembled directly from Belarus, a weaving loom (krosny), and a cross-stitched portrait of Lenin harmoniously coexist.
At the same time, Sinkevich has no illusions about the total Belarusification of the population. He openly admits that he and his associates largely "actively impose" Belarusian culture in the village. While his son Oleg confidently considers himself Belarusian, an ordinary seventh-grader chopping wood in the neighboring yard admits to journalists that he does not feel Belarusian and does not attend the festivities.
The Belarusian ritual "Hukannie viasny" (Calling of Spring) in Turgenevka. Photo: "Potok"
The Belarusian ritual "Hukannie viasny" (Calling of Spring) in Turgenevka. Photo: "Potok"
As Viktor himself notes, if the administration stops organizing festivals, the sky won't fall, because most people simply don't need it; they prefer the more familiar Russian Maslenitsa.
But for Viktor, it's a matter of his own mission. His great-grandfather once cleared the taiga here to build the village, and now the last head of Turgenevka faces a choice.
If his position is finally abolished by the state machine, he will be left with either raising chickens and fighting windmills, or accepting the offer from his Belarusian twin-town partners.
They have long been calling him to move to Motol, promising him an official apartment, gas, and hot water – everything he couldn't secure for his Siberian Belarusian island.
Belarusian national culture can flourish even in the icy taiga, but only as long as there is a true master there whom the state does not hinder.
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