In March 2019, Alexander Gabyshev, a 51-year-old native of Yakutia, announced his intention to walk more than 8,000 kilometers to Moscow. Gabyshev called himself a shaman—a person who, according to beliefs still prevalent in Yakutia and other regions of Siberia, can act as a mediator between spirits and ordinary people. However, while most shamans prefer to refrain from participating in politics, Gabyshev openly protested: he launched his march to exorcise Vladimir Putin, whom he considered a "demon," from the Kremlin.

Gabyshev's march became such an extraordinary event that national media outlets soon began covering it. At the same time, people began joining the shaman's journey. Soon, he was no longer walking alone, but with a motley crowd of supporters—from former criminals and ordinary workers to modern-day hippies and curious bloggers: together, they formed a kind of group portrait of the popular protest. Along the way, they encountered village elders and truck drivers, police officers and madmen, priests and other shamans. They quarreled, argued about the fate of Russia, and continued westward until they were stopped by the authorities. Shaman Gabyshev was forcibly sent to Yakutsk, where his confrontation with the state continued and took on new forms.

Why did Gabyshev's march attract so much attention? Does Gabyshev himself possess supernatural powers? What traditions did this action stem from—and how does it relate to the role shamanism plays in contemporary Russian life? How does the shaman's march fit into the traditions of Yakut resistance to Moscow—and into the context of Russian grassroots protest? In his book, historian Mikhail Bashkirov, who spent several months in 2019 alongside the shaman and his team, closely observing what was happening, tells Gabyshev's astonishing story, and through it, a story about the greater Russia beyond Moscow, the people within it, and the methods the modern Russian state uses to suppress those who try to oppose it.