Sabantuy

Sabantuy is a Tatar, Idel-Uralian, Bashkir and Kazakh ('Sabantoy') summer festival, that dates back to the Volga Bulgarian epoch.

[1] Tatar-speakers call the holiday Sabantuy (Сабантуй, [sʌbɑnˈtuɪ]), or, more correctly, Saban tuyı (Сабан туе, [sʌˈbɑn tuˈjɯ]) - plural form: Sabantuylar [sʌbɑntuɪˈlɑr].

However, they moved Sabantuy to the after-sowing season, thus merging it with the ancient summer festival Cıyın (Cyrillic: Җыен, [ʑɯɪˈɯn]).

Recently, Moscow announced plans to nominate Sabantuy for the inclusion into the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity list in 2007.

The main distinctive elements of Sabantuy include the traditional sporting competitions such as köräş (Tatar wrestling), horse racing, race-in-sack, pillar-climbing, egg-in-spoon-in-mouth-racing, sacks-battle on the crossbar, pot smashing [1], finding a coin in a qatıq (a beverage made from sour milk), and other contests.

Many cities in Europe and Asia that have major Tatar diasporas, such as Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tallinn, Prague, Istanbul, Kyiv and Tashkent, also hold Sabantuylar.

During his visit to Kazan in the mid-1990s Boris Yeltsin became the center of attention at a Sabantuy when he took part in a traditional competition in which the participants try to crash a clay pot while being blindfolded.

Vladimir Putin took part in a humorous competition during which he tried to dip his face into a jar full of sour milk in order to fish out a coin without using his hands.