| Summary: | This chapter describes multiple ways Turkic, Mongolian, Russian, and other citizens in the three republics have interacted with each other, neighboring peoples, and Moscow authorities. It looks at multileveled horizontal and vertical ties that are crucial to any federal system, and to the health of a struggling civic society. The chapter considers key themes and trends by analyzing economic contexts, legacies of Eurasianism, Turkic-Mongolic language politics (including Russian-Slavic backlash), youth camps and festivals, and the rise of the spiritual movement Tengrianstvo in the context of Buddhist and Russian Orthodox revivals. Historical, linguistic, and religious ties expressly reformulated for new post-Soviet times enable us to think more deeply about the interrelationship between transnational cultural identities and economic-political activities. The chapter also features the dramatic appearance in 2018–2019 of a new “rabble-rousing” Sakha leader-shaman named Alexander Gabyshev. Alexander, a suffering widower and former plumber, began walking from Yakutsk, the capital of Sakha Republic, on a protest journey to Moscow that went through Buryatia.
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