Burkhanism

Burkhanism, known endonymically as Ak Jang ( ; ), is an indigenist new religious movement that flourished among the Altai people of Russia's Altai Republic between 1904 and the 1930s. The Russian Empire was suspicious of the movement's potential to stir up native unrest and perhaps involve outside powers. The Soviet Union ultimately suppressed it for fear of its potential to unify Siberian Turkic peoples under a common nationalism.

Originally millenarian, charismatic and anti-shamanic, the Burkhanist movement gradually lost most of these qualities—becoming increasingly routine, institutionalized (around a hierarchy of oral epic singers) and accommodating itself to the pre-existing Altaian folk religion. It exists today in several revival forms.