Éva Schmidt spent the 1969/70 and 1970/71 academic years in Leningrad as an exchange student, and in addition to her university studies, she attended classes held for native Khanty and Mansi students at the Institute of the People of the North of the Herzen Pedagogical University. This is where she formed her first personal relationships. She became lifelong friends with one of the Khanty students, Taisija Stepanovna Seburova (02. 23. 1949 – 10. 19. 2020), and they traveled together to her native village, Tugijany for the winter holidays at the end of January 1970.

Éva Schmidt’s first expedition was not just an extraordinary adventure for her personally: it was also an exceptional opportunity in scientific history, given that no foreign researcher had been able to conduct field research among the Ob’-Ugrians since the existence of the Soviet Union. The only exception to this had been the journey that Wolfgang Steinitz took in 1935.

In spite of this being such a unique event, the sources available to us are quite scarce. People who knew Éva Schmidt might have heard her drop a few words about the adventurous trip: ’Wearing just a trench coat’, ’in -40 degrees’, ’accidentally’, ’with the Komsomol’s permission’; but not much more than this. This is why the journal that was recovered during the organization of the legacy, as well as the four rolls of negatives with some 120 photographs that were made during this time are of key importance.

After obtaining the necessary permits and documents –the reconstruction of which is impossible today – Taisija Seburova and Éva Schmidt traveled for the winter holidays together with many of their fellow students. The journal reveals to us the following travel itinerary: they set off from Leningrad to Tjumen’ on January 23, 1970, and flew on to Berёzovo the next day, then further on to Polnovat on January 26. From there they traveled to Tugijany by horse sleigh. They spent a week in the village, from where they traveled back together to Berёzovo via Polnovat. From here, Éva Schmidt traveled alone to Khanty-Mansijsk, while Taisija Stepanovna returned to Leningrad. Éva Schmidt flew back to Leningrad from Khanty-Mansijsk through Sverdlovsk. Another fact we learned from the journal is that Éva Schmidt’s tape recorder broke, so she did not make audio recordings on this journey. Her collection comprises the set of photographs – in addition to the experiences.

The winter of 1970 brought record cold to Western Siberia. According to the journal’s testimony, even the locals were struggling with the frost, so Éva Schmidt could gain a strong impression of the northern circumstances. She was given the opportunity of an in-person encounter with this world, about which she had plenty of theoretical knowledge, having read the literature, studied the language, corresponded with Khanty people, and read the Khanty newspaper. However, transferring in -45 degrees from a small aircraft to a horse sleigh, being dressed in a traditional fur coat and boots, being offered bear meat as a guest only after the spirits had been fed, hearing his dinner companions unexpectedly break into song for their own amusement, and then seeing them perform bear ceremony dances to her, are experiences she could only have personally in the field. She saw the daily life and material world of a small village by the Ob’. In the photos we find that the traditional object culture and and the ’Russian’ world of shops coexist, however, the presence of traditional objects was a noteworthy fact: from her journal we learn which house the sewing kit in the birch bar box were in, where the baby was lying in the birch bark cradle, and in the photos we see the simultaneous use of pieces of traditional attire and store-bought footwear and coats. The bases of the economy in Tugijany were fishing as well as cattle and horse husbandry, which Éva Schmidt had been familiar with in the way they were done in Hungary. This often served as a common basis during conversations and daily activities.

She reports great difficulties with understanding the Khanty language in the beginning. In the case of older Khanty and Mansi speakers, it was sometimes hard for her to even tell whether they were speaking their mother tongue or Russian with Ob’-Ugric intonation and accent. During her studies, she had learned the Middle Ob’ (Šerkaly) dialect spoken further south, so she found switching between this and the dialect spoken in Tugijany very challenging: „…the radio was broadcasting a 15-minute program in sharp Mid-Ob’ dialect, only it was very crackly. Even so, I understood it better than I did the locals...”

The week spent in Tugijany was mostly spent paying visits to the relatives with Taisija Seburova, and in turn they took their part in entertaining guests at home. The village residents also showed keen interest in her person, they interrogated her about family relations, comparing the two ways of life, and she even sang to the Khanty hosts. She got to know the local dialect, folklore, singing style, and met several excellent informants. During her subsequent trips, she collected valuable material from several residents of the settlement. From then on, Tugijany and its culture became the reference point that helped her organize the knowledge gathered in the other areas she subsequently traveled to. Thus, the first expedition was definitive in all respects.

A symbolic manifestation of the deep and intimate relationship that was formed with the village of Tugijany and its residents was that Taisija Stepanovna Seburova’s family adopted Éva Schmidt as their daughter. Taisija Stepanovna Seburova played a crucial role in the relationship that Éva Schmidt formed with the Khanty people. Their friendship lasted as long as they lived. Taisija Stepanovna recalls that in the fall of 1969, their teacher in Leningrad, Matrёna Pankratevna Balandina (Vakhruševa) informed them, the Khanty students, that a Hungarian girl would like to correspond in Khanty. They were not very enthusiastic, perhaps it was the connection with a foreigner that scared them. However, Éva Schmidt soon turned up in Leningrad in person, and started to attend classes with them. Taisija remembers being surprised that the new student was not using makeup, and was also less interested in the great museums of Russian culture than in making conversation with them in Khanty, about the Khanty. A result of their deepening friendship was the expedition to Tugijany in 1970, which was followed by Taisija’s trip to Hungary in 1971. Taisija Stepanovna lived in Khanty-Mansijsk and worked in Khanty cultural affairs: she was the editor of the journal Khanty Jasang for a long time, she published several papers by Éva Schmidt from her Khanty collections. She followed the work of the Belojarskij archive, participated at conferences and events. She continued helping Hungarian expeditions after Éva Schmidt’s death.

Her mother, Matrёna Grigor’evna Seburova (1919–1991) was Éva Schmidt’s host during her first visit to Tugijany. She spent a week with her then, and visited again in 1980 and 1982. They formed a close relationship; she called the woman her Khanty mother after just a few days. Matrёna Grigor’evna died in 1991. Éva Schmidt could only make it to Tugijany for the memorial event on the one-year anniversary of her death in 1992, to the house that was already uninhabited by then. In 1996, Éva Schmidt published an article in the Khanty Jasang newspaper, dedicated to the memory of Matrёna Grigor’evna Seburova, which we publish in full length here. In this, she included two songs [1980-TU-1; 1980-TU-3

], which were all she could record with her in 1980, and she told the story of their relationship. The woman with a difficult fate raised two daughters on her own, as her first husband died in World War II, and the second, who also had been to war, died early. Éva Schmidt also met Taisija’s sister, Jelizaveta in Polnovat in 1970, and she took a photo of the two girls.

Éva Schmidt was impressed by the knowledge of her ’Khanty mother’; she could see that she was also held in high esteem in Tugijany, that if a prayer had to be said or traditions needed to be recalled, she was the one to be called and asked. Thus, there was an excellent opportunity for Éva Schmidt to learn all this knowledge. And yet this was not how their cooperation developed: „Other women may have thought of talking to their daughters and sons, telling them stories and singing songs, but the children taken to boarding school would not listen to her back then. Even though a girl arrived to Madam Matra from 4000 kilometers away to listen, she still remained tongue-tied. I was too shy to pull the words from her by force, and now I am thinking, why did I not keep asking more intently.” It seems that, similarly to Éva Schmidt, Taisija Stepanovna also failed to record her mother’s intellectual legacy.