The nations won't forgive us

– Zoya Bairovna, the fundamental series "Monuments of Folklore of peoples of Siberia and Far East" has three Tuvan volumes . How did this immense work originate?

– It is more accurate to say: not how, but who. Doctor of philological sciences, Professor Soktoyev started it all.

In 1983, Alexander Badmayevich moved from Buryatia to Novosibirsk, and be3came the organizer of the Siberian people's folklore section, the first director of Philology institute of the Siberian section of Russian Academy of Sciences. And he founded the series "Monuments of Folklore of peoples of Siberia and Far East"; the plan was for sixty volumes.

She is one of those who know what to do with their life and what to do in this life to fill it with meaning and content.

Literaturologist and folklorist Zoya Samdan is not a desk scholar. She has spent thirty-seven years collecting oral Tuvan folk art - tales and myths.

And Tuvan story-tellers, speaking in their native language and in Russian, have added their voices to members of other nations in the multi-volume series "Monuments of Folklore of Peoples of Siberia and Far East" - a huge project of Russian scholars from various republics that was begun in 1983 and continues to this day.

The epic connected with her work on two volumes of this series - "Tuvan folk tales" and "Myths, legends and traditions of Tuvans" - she considers a gift of fate.