- the name of the ethnic group inhabiting the Chuvash Republic with its capital in the city of Cheboksary, located in the European part of Russia. The number of Chuvashs in the world is slightly more than one and a half million people, of which 1 million 435 thousand live in Russia.
There are 3 ethnographic groups, namely: the riding Chuvashs inhabiting the north-west of the republic, the middle lower Chuvashs living in the north-east and the southern lower Chuvashs. Some researchers also talk about a special subgroup of the steppe Chuvash, living in the southeast of Chuvashia and in neighboring areas.
For the first time in written sources, the Chuvash people are mentioned in the 16th century.
In the scientific community, the origin of the Chuvash is still controversial, but most scientists agree that they, like the modern Kazan Tatars, are in fact the heirs of the Volga Bulgaria and its culture. The ancestors of the Chuvash are called the tribes of the Volga Finns, who mixed in the seventh-eighth centuries with the tribes of the Turks who moved to the Volga from the steppes of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov. During the time of Ivan the Terrible, the ancestors of the modern Chuvash were part of the population of the Kazan Khanate, without losing, however, some isolation and independence.
Origin of the ethnos
The origin of the Chuvash, which is based on a mixture of ethnic groups, was reflected in the appearance of the people: almost all of its representatives can be divided into Caucasians with blond hair and swarthy, dark-haired Mongoloids. The former are characterized by blond hair, gray or blue eyes and light skin, broad faces and a neat nose, while they are somewhat darker than Europeans. Distinctive features of the second group: narrow dark brown eyes, slightly pronounced cheekbones and a depressed nose. Facial features characteristic of both types: low nose bridge, narrowed eyes, small mouth.
Chuvashs have their own national language, which, along with Russian, is the official language of Chuvashia. The Chuvash language is recognized as the only living Turkic language of the Bulgar group. It has three dialects: riding (it is also called "okayuschy"), middle-low, and also grassroots ("swooning"). In the middle of the nineteenth century, the educator Ivan Yakovlev presented the Chuvash people with an alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet. The Chuvash language is studied in the schools of the Chechen Republic and its universities, local radio and television programs are broadcast in it, magazines and newspapers are published.
Religious affiliation
Most of the Chuvashs profess Orthodoxy, the second most important religion is Islam. However, traditional beliefs have a great influence on the formation of the worldview. Based on Chuvash mythology, there are three worlds: upper, middle and lower. The upper world is the abode of the supreme deity, here are the immaculate souls and the souls of unborn babies. The middle world is the world of people. After death, the soul of the righteous goes first to the rainbow, and then to the upper world. Sinners are thrown into the lower world, where the souls of the wicked are boiled. The earth, according to the Chuvash myths, is square and the Chuvash live in its very center. The “sacred tree” supports the sky in the middle, while at the corners of the earth square it rests on gold, silver, copper, and also stone pillars. Around the earth is the ocean, the waves of which are constantly destroying the land. When the destruction reaches the territory of the Chuvash, the end of the world will come. Animism (belief in the animation of nature) and worship of the spirits of ancestors were also popular.
The Chuvash national costume is distinguished by an abundance of decorative elements. Chuvash men wear a canvas shirt, trousers and a headdress; in the cold season, a caftan and a sheepskin coat are added. On the feet, depending on the season, felt boots, boots or bast shoes. Chuvash women wear shirts with chest medallions, wide Tatar trousers, and an apron with a bib. Of particular importance are women's headdresses: tukhya for unmarried girls and khushpu - an indicator of married status. They are generously embroidered with beads and coins. All clothes are decorated with embroidery, which serves not only as an adornment of the outfit, but also as a carrier of sacred information about the creation of the world, symbolically depicting the tree of life, eight-pointed stars and flowers. Each ethnographic group has its favorite colors. So, the southerners have always preferred bright shades, and the northwestern ones love light fabrics, Chuvash men of the lower and middle lower groups traditionally wear white onuchi, and representatives of the riding groups prefer black ones.
Chuvash traditions
The ancient traditions of the Chuvash have survived to this day. One of the most colorful rituals is a wedding. There are no official representatives of the cult (priests, shamans) or authorities at the traditional Chuvash wedding ceremony. Witness the creation of a family of guests. According to the canons, the bride should be about 5-8 years older than her husband. The concept of divorce does not exist in traditional Chuvash culture. After the wedding, lovers should be together for the rest of their lives. Funerals are considered an equally important rite: on this occasion, a ram or a bull is slaughtered and more than 40 people are invited to a richly laid funeral table. The holiday for many representatives of this people is still Friday, the day when they put on their best clothes and do not work.
In general, the Chuvash traditions emphasize the most characteristic features of the people - respect for parents, relatives and neighbors, as well as peacefulness and modesty. The very name of the ethnic group in most languages of the neighbors means "calm", "quiet", which is fully consistent with its mentality.
Faces of Russia. "Living Together, Being Different"
The Faces of Russia multimedia project has existed since 2006, telling about the Russian civilization, the most important feature of which is the ability to live together, remaining different - this motto is especially relevant for the countries of the entire post-Soviet space. From 2006 to 2012, as part of the project, we created 60 documentaries about representatives of various Russian ethnic groups. Also, 2 cycles of radio programs "Music and songs of the peoples of Russia" were created - more than 40 programs. Illustrated almanacs have been released to support the first series of films. Now we are halfway to creating a unique multimedia encyclopedia of the peoples of our country, a picture that will allow the inhabitants of Russia to recognize themselves and leave a picture of what they were like for posterity.
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"Faces of Russia". Chuvash. "Chuvash "Treasure"", 2008
General information
CHUVASH'I, Chavash (self-designation), Turkic people in the Russian Federation (1773.6 thousand people), the main population of Chuvashia (907 thousand people). They also live in Tataria (134.2 thousand people), Bashkiria (118.6 thousand people), Kazakhstan (22.3 thousand people) and Ukraine (20.4 thousand people). The total number is 1842.3 thousand people. According to the 2002 population census, the number of Chuvash living in Russia is 1 million 637 thousand people, according to the results of the 2010 census - 1 435 872 people.
The Chuvash language is the only living representative of the Bulgar group of Turkic languages. They speak the Chuvash language of the Turkic group of the Altai family. Dialects - grassroots ("rocking") and horseback ("okaya"), as well as eastern. Sub-ethnic groups - riding (viryal, turi) in the north and northwest, middle low (anat enchi) in the central and northeastern regions and grassroots Chuvash (anatri) in the south of Chuvashia and beyond. The Russian language is also widespread. The Chuvash have written for a long time. It was created on the basis of Russian graphics. In 1769, the first grammar of the Chuvash language was published.
At present, the main religion of the Chuvash is Orthodox Christianity, but the influence of paganism, as well as Zoroastrian beliefs and Islam, remains. Chuvash paganism is characterized by duality: belief in the existence, on the one hand, of good gods and spirits, headed by Sulti Tura (the supreme god), and, on the other hand, of evil deities and spirits, headed by Shuittan (devil). The gods and spirits of the Upper World are good, those of the Lower World are evil.
The ancestors of the riding Chuvashs (viryal) are the Turkic tribes of the Bulgarians, who came in the 7-8 centuries from the North Caucasian and Azov steppes and merged with the local Finno-Ugric tribes. The self-name of the Chuvash, according to one version, goes back to the name of one of the tribes related to the Bulgarians - Suvar, or Suvaz, Suas. They are mentioned in Russian sources from 1508. In 1551 they became part of Russia. By the middle of the 18th century, the Chuvash were mostly converted to Christianity. Part of the Chuvash, who lived outside of Chuvashia, converted to Islam and became Tatars. In 1917, the Chuvashs received autonomy: AO from 1920, ASSR from 1925, Chuvash SSR from 1990, Chuvash Republic from 1992.
The Chuvashs joined Russia in the middle of the 16th century. In the formation and regulation of the moral and ethical standards of the Chuvash people, the public opinion of the village has always played and is playing a big role (yal men drip - "what the fellow villagers will say"). Immodest behavior, swearing, and even more so, drunkenness, which was rare among the Chuvash until the beginning of the 20th century, is sharply condemned. There was lynching for theft. From generation to generation, the Chuvash taught each other: “Chavash yatne an sert” (do not shame the name of the Chuvash).
A series of audio lectures "Peoples of Russia" - Chuvash
The main traditional occupation is agriculture, in ancient times - slash-and-burn, until the beginning of the 20th century - three-field. The main grain crops are rye, spelt, oats, barley, less often wheat, buckwheat, and peas were sown. From industrial crops, flax and hemp were cultivated. Hop-growing was developed. Animal husbandry (sheep, cows, pigs, horses) was poorly developed due to the lack of fodder land. They have been engaged in beekeeping for a long time. Woodcarving was developed (utensils, especially beer ladles, furniture, gate posts, cornices and architraves of houses), pottery, weaving, embroidery, patterned weaving (red-white and multi-color patterns), sewing with beads and coins, handicrafts - mainly woodworking: wheel, cooperage, carpentry, also rope and rope, matting production; there were carpenters, tailors and other artels; at the beginning of the 20th century, small shipbuilding enterprises arose.
The main types of settlements are villages and villages (yal). The earliest types of settlement are river and ravine, layouts are cumulus-nesting (in the northern and central regions) and linear (in the south). In the north, the division of the village into ends (kas), usually inhabited by kindred families, is characteristic. Street planning spreads from the 2nd half of the 19th century. From the 2nd half of the 19th century dwellings of the Central Russian type appeared. The house is decorated with polychrome painting, sawn carving, overhead decorations, the so-called "Russian" gates with a gable roof on 3-4 pillars - bas-relief carving, later painted. There is an ancient log building - las (originally without a ceiling and windows, with an open hearth), serving as a summer kitchen. Cellars (nukhrep), baths (muncha) are widespread. A characteristic feature of the Chuvash hut is the presence of onion trim along the roof ridge and large entrance gates.
Men wore a linen shirt (kepe) and pants (yem). At the heart of women's traditional clothing is a tunic-shaped kepe shirt, for viryal and anat enchi - made of thin white linen with rich embroidery, narrow, worn with a slouch; until the middle of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, anatri wore white shirts flared down, later - from motley with two or three assemblies from a fabric of a different color. Shirts were worn with an apron, among the viryals it was with a bib, decorated with embroidery and appliqué, among the anatri - without a bib, sewn from red checkered fabric. Women's festive headdress - a linen canvas surpan, over which the anatri and anat enchi put on a cap in the shape of a truncated cone, with headphones fastened under the chin and a long blade at the back (khushpu); viryal fastened with a surpan an embroidered strip of fabric on the crown of the head (masmak). A girl's headdress is a helmet-shaped hat (tukhya). Tukhya and khushpu were richly decorated with beads, beads, silver coins. Women and girls also wore headscarves, preferably white or light colors. Women's jewelry - dorsal, belt, chest, neck, shoulder straps, rings. The lower Chuvashs are characterized by a bandage (tevet) - a strip of fabric covered with coins, worn over the left shoulder under the right hand, for riding Chuvashs - a woven belt with large tassels with strips of calico, covered with embroidery and appliqué, and pendants made of beads. Outerwear - a canvas caftan (shupar), in autumn - a cloth undercoat (sakhman), in winter - a fitted sheepskin coat (kerek). Traditional footwear - bast bast shoes, leather boots. Viryal wore bast shoes with black cloth onuchs, anatri - with white woolen (knitted or sewn from cloth) stockings. Men wore onuchi and footcloths in winter, women - all year round. Men's traditional clothing is used only in wedding ceremonies or in folklore performances.
Traditional food is dominated by plant foods. Soups (yashka, shurpe), stews with dumplings, cabbage soup with seasonings from cultivated and wild greenery - goutweed, hogweed, nettle, etc., cereals (spelt, buckwheat, millet, lentil), oatmeal, boiled potatoes, jelly from oat and pea flour, rye bread (khura sakar), pies with cereals, cabbage, berries (kukal), flat cakes, cheesecakes with potatoes or cottage cheese (puremech). Less commonly, they cooked khuplu - a large round pie stuffed with meat or fish. Dairy products - tours - sour milk, uyran - buttermilk, chakat - cottage cheese curds. Meat (beef, lamb, pork, among the lower Chuvashs - horse meat) was a relatively rare food: seasonal (when slaughtering livestock) and festive. They prepared shartan - sausage from a sheep's stomach stuffed with meat and lard; tultarmash - boiled sausage stuffed with cereals, minced meat or blood. Braga was made from honey, beer (sara) was made from rye or barley malt. Kvass and tea were common in areas of contact with Tatars and Russians.
A rural community could unite the inhabitants of one or several settlements with a common land allotment. There were ethnically mixed communities, mainly Chuvash-Russian and Chuvash-Russian-Tatar. Forms of kindred and neighborly mutual assistance (nime) were preserved. Family ties were steadily preserved, especially within one end of the village. There was a custom of sororate. After the Christianization of the Chuvash, the custom of polygamy and levirate gradually disappeared. Undivided families were already rare in the 18th century. The main family type in the second half of the 19th century was the small family. The husband was the main owner of the family property, the wife owned her dowry, independently disposed of the income from poultry farming (eggs), animal husbandry (dairy products) and weaving (canvases), in the event of her husband's death she became the head of the family. The daughter had the right to inherit along with her brothers. In economic interests, the early marriage of the son and the relatively late marriage of the daughter were encouraged (therefore, the bride was often several years older than the groom). The tradition of the minority is preserved (the youngest son remains with his parents as an heir).
Modern Chuvash beliefs combine elements of Orthodoxy and paganism. In some areas of the Volga and Ural regions, pagan Chuvash villages have been preserved. The Chuvashs revered fire, water, sun, earth, believed in good gods and spirits, led by the supreme god Cult Tura (later identified with the Christian God) and in evil beings, led by Shuitan. They revered household spirits - "master of the house" (khertsurt) and "master of the yard" (karta-puse). Each family kept domestic fetishes - dolls, twigs, etc. Among the evil spirits, the Chuvashs were especially afraid and honored the kiremet (whose cult is still preserved). Calendar holidays included the winter holiday of asking for a good offspring of livestock, the holiday of honoring the sun (Maslenitsa), the multi-day spring holiday of sacrifices to the sun, the god Tur and ancestors (which then coincided with Orthodox Easter), the holiday of spring plowing (akatuy), the summer holiday of commemoration of the dead. After sowing, sacrifices were held, a rite of making rain, accompanied by bathing in a reservoir and dousing with water, after harvesting bread - prayers to the guardian spirit of the barn, etc. The youth arranged festivities with round dances in the spring and summer, and gatherings in winter. The main elements of the traditional wedding (groom's train, feast in the bride's house, her removal, feast in the groom's house, dowry redemption, etc.), maternity (cutting the umbilical cord of a boy on an ax handle, girls - on the riser or bottom of the spinning wheel, feeding the baby, now - lubricating the tongue and lips with honey and oil, transferring it under the protection of the guardian spirit of the hearth, etc.) and funeral and memorial rituals. The pagan Chuvashs buried the dead in wooden decks or coffins with their heads to the west, they put household items and tools with the deceased, a temporary monument was erected on the grave - a wooden pillar (oak for a man, linden for a woman), in the fall, during a general commemoration in the month of Yupa uyikh ("pillar month") built a permanent anthropomorphic monument of wood or stone (yupa). His removal to the cemetery was accompanied by rituals imitating burial. At the wake, memorial songs were sung, bonfires were lit, and sacrifices were made.
The most developed genre of folklore is songs: youth, recruiting, drinking, memorial, wedding, labor, lyrical, and also historical songs. Musical instruments - bagpipe, bubble, duda, harp, drum, later - accordion and violin. Legends, fairy tales and traditions are widespread. Elements of the ancient Turkic runic writing can be traced in tribal signs-tamgas, in ancient embroideries. Arabic writing was widespread in Volga Bulgaria. In the 18th century, writing was created on the basis of Russian graphics of 1769 (Old Chuvash writing). Novochuvash writing and literature were created in the 1870s. The Chuvash national culture is being formed.
T.S. Guzenkova, V.P. Ivanov
Essays
They don’t carry firewood into the forest, they don’t pour water into the well
"Where are you going, gray caftan?" "Shut up, wide mouth!" Don't be alarmed, this is not a conversation of some tipsy hooligans. This is a folk Chuvash riddle. As the saying goes, you can't guess it without a clue. And the hint is this: the action of this riddle does not take place in a modern house, but in an old hut. From time to time, the stove in the hut became gray ... Warm, warm ...
Here is the answer: the exit of smoke from the open door of the chicken hut.
Warmed up? Here are a couple more dashing Chuvash riddles.
Clay mountain, on the slope of the clay mountain there is a cast-iron mountain, on the slope of the cast-iron mountain there is green barley, a polar bear is lying on the green barley.
Well, this is not such a difficult riddle, if you strain, give free rein to your imagination, then it will be easy to guess. This is pancake baking.
First like a pillow, then like a cloud
Do not think that the Chuvash invented riddles a hundred or two hundred years ago. Even now they are not averse to composing them. Here is a good example of a modern puzzle.
First, as a pillow. Then, like a cloud. What is this?
Okay, let's not hurt. This is a parachute.
We learned something about the Chuvash. Find out what they have in mind.
To find out more, listen to the story.
It is called like this: "Shirt made of linen".
One young widow got into the habit of an evil spirit. And so, and so the poor woman tried to free herself from him. I've lost my strength, but the evil spirit is not far behind - and that's all. She told her neighbor about her misfortune, and she said:
- And you cover the door with a shirt made of linen - it will not let an evil spirit into the hut.
The widow obeyed her neighbor, sewed a long shirt out of linen and hung it on the door to the hut. An evil spirit came at night, and the shirt said to him:
“Wait a minute, listen to what I have seen and experienced in my lifetime.
“Well, speak,” said the evil spirit.
“Even before I was born,” the shirt began its story, “and how much trouble I had. In the spring, the land was plowed up, harrowed, and only after that I, hemp, was sown. Some time passed - I was thrashed again. Only then I ascended, was born. Well, when it appeared, I grow, I reach for the sun ...
- Well, that's enough, probably, - says the evil spirit. - Let me go!
“If you start listening, let me tell you,” the shirt answers. “When I grow up and mature, they pull me out of the ground ...
“I understand,” the evil spirit interrupts again. “Let me go!”
“No, I haven’t understood anything yet,” his shirt doesn’t let him in. “Listen to the end ... Then they thresh me, separate the seeds ...
- Enough! - the evil spirit loses patience. - Let it go!
But at this time, a rooster crows in the yard, and the evil spirit disappears without visiting the widow.
The next night he flies again. And again the shirt does not let him in.
So where did I stop? she says. “Oh yes, on seeds. My seeds are peeled off, winnowed, put into storage, and what the seeds grew on - hemp - is first put in stacks, and then for a long time, for three whole weeks, they are soaked in water.
- Well, everything, or what? - Asks the evil spirit. - Let it go!
“No, not all,” the shirt replies. “I’m still lying in the water.” After three weeks, they take me out of the water and put me to dry.
- Enough! the evil spirit begins to get angry again.
“You haven’t heard the most important thing yet,” the shirt replies. Not only that: they also put it in a mortar and let three or four of us crush it with pestles.
— Let go! - the evil spirit begins to lose patience again.
“They beat all the dust out of me,” the shirt continues, “leaving only a clean body. Then they hang me on a comb, separate them into fine hairs and spin them. Strained threads are wound on a reel, then lowered into lye. Then it is difficult for me, my eyes are clogged with ashes, I don’t see anything ...
"I don't want to listen to you anymore!" - says the evil spirit and already wants to go into the hut, but at this time the rooster crows, and he disappears.
And on the third night an evil spirit appeared.
“Then they wash me, dry them, make skeins of me and pass them through a reed, weave them, and a canvas is obtained,” the shirt continues its story.
— Now something all! - says the evil spirit. - Let me go!
“There is still quite a bit left,” the shirt replies. And again, for the second time, they push me three or four together so that I become soft. And only after that they cut off from a piece, as much as necessary, and sew. It is only then that a seed placed in the ground becomes a shirt, with which the door is now hung ...
Here again a rooster crowed in the yard, and again the evil spirit had to get out without salty slurping.
In the end, he got tired of standing in front of the door and listening to shirt tales, since then he stopped flying to this house and left the young widow alone.
An interesting tale. With great meaning. The whole process of making a shirt is laid out in this fairy tale on the shelves. It is useful to tell this fairy tale to adults and children, but especially to students of agricultural universities and textile institutes. First grade, of course.
Do not shame the name of the Chuvash
And now we turn from fairy-tale affairs to historical affairs. There is also something to tell about the Chuvash themselves. It is known that the Chuvashs joined Russia in the middle of the century. There are currently 1,637,200 Chuvashs in the Russian Federation (according to the 2002 census). Almost nine hundred thousand of them live in Chuvashia itself. The rest live in several districts of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, in Samara and Ulyanovsk regions, as well as in Moscow, Tyumen, Kemerovo, Orenburg, Moscow regions of Russia, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
The Chuvash language is Chuvash. It is the only living language of the Bulgaro-Khazar group of Turkic languages. It has two dialects - grassroots (“swooning”) and horseback (“okaying”). The difference is slight, but clear, tangible.
The Chuvash ancestors believed in the independent existence of the human soul. The spirit of the ancestors patronized the members of the clan, and could punish them for their disrespectful attitude.
Chuvash paganism was characterized by duality: belief in the existence, on the one hand, of good gods and spirits, headed by Sulti Tura (the supreme god), and, on the other hand, of evil deities and spirits, headed by Shuittan (devil). The gods and spirits of the Upper World are good, those of the Lower World are evil.
The Chuvash religion in its own way reproduced the hierarchical structure of society. At the head of a large group of gods was Sulti Tura with his family.
In our time, the main religion of the Chuvash is Orthodox Christianity, but the influence of paganism, as well as Zoroastrian beliefs and Islam, remains.
The Chuvash have written for a long time. It was created on the basis of Russian graphics. In 1769, the first grammar of the Chuvash language was published.
In the formation and regulation of the moral and ethical norms of the Chuvash people, the public opinion of the village has always played and is playing a big role (yal men drip - "what the fellow villagers will say"). Immodest behavior, swearing, and even more so, drunkenness, which was rare among the Chuvash until the beginning of the 20th century, is sharply condemned. There was lynching for theft. From generation to generation, the Chuvash taught each other: “Chavash yatne an sert” (do not shame the name of the Chuvash).
Orthodox Chuvash celebrate all Christian holidays.
In food - seven different plants
Unbaptized Chuvashs have their own holidays. For example, Semik, which is celebrated in the spring. By this day, you need to have time to eat seven different plants, for example, sorrel, dandelion, nettle, hogweed, lungwort, cumin, gout.
Nettle is especially revered, because if you have time to eat nettles before the first thunder, then you won’t get sick for a whole year. It is also good for health to run out into the street during thunder and shake your clothes.
For Semik, the Chuvash people bake pies, brew beer and kvass, and also prepare brooms from young birch.
On the day of the holiday, they bathe in the bath, certainly before sunrise. By dinner, festively dressed up, everyone goes to the cemetery - to invite dead relatives to visit home. Moreover, men call men, women call women.
After Christianization, the baptized Chuvash especially celebrate those holidays that coincide in time with the pagan calendar (Christmas with Surkhuri, Maslenitsa and Savarni, Trinity and Semik), accompanying them with both Christian and pagan rites. Under the influence of the church in the life of the Chuvash, patronal holidays became widespread. By the beginning of the 20th century, Christian holidays and rituals in the life of the baptized Chuvash became predominant.
Chuvash youth also have their own holidays. For example, in the spring-summer period, the youth of the entire village, or even several villages, gathers in the open air for round dances.
In winter, gatherings are arranged in huts, where the senior owners are temporarily absent. At gatherings, girls are engaged in spinning, but with the arrival of young men, games begin, the participants in the gatherings sing songs, dance, and playfully talk.
In the middle of winter, the Maiden's Beer festival takes place. The girls brew beer together, bake pies, and in one of the houses, together with the young men, arrange a youth feast.
Three forms of marriage were common among the Chuvash: 1) with a full wedding ceremony and matchmaking, 2) a “leaving” wedding, and 3) kidnapping of the bride, often with her consent.
The groom is accompanied to the bride's house by a large wedding train. Meanwhile, the bride says goodbye to her relatives. She is dressed in girl's clothes, covered with a veil. The bride begins to cry with lamentations.
The groom's train is met at the gate with bread and salt and beer.
After a long and very imaginative poetic monologue, the eldest of the friends, the guests are invited to go into the courtyard to the laid tables. The treat begins, greetings, dances and songs of guests sound.
The groom's train leaves
The next day, the groom's train leaves. The bride is seated astride a horse, or she rides, standing in a wagon. The groom hits her three times (pretend) with a whip to “drive away” the spirits of the wife’s clan from the bride (Turkic nomadic tradition). The fun in the groom's house continues with the participation of the bride's relatives.
The first wedding night is spent by the young in a crate or in another non-residential premises. According to custom, the young woman takes off her husband's shoes. In the morning, the young woman is dressed in a women's outfit with a women's headdress "hush-pu". First of all, she goes to bow and makes a sacrifice to the spring, then she begins to work around the house, cook food.
The young wife gives birth to her first child with her parents.
In the Chuvash family, the man dominates, but the woman also has authority. Divorces are extremely rare. There was a custom of a minority - the youngest son always remained with his parents.
Many are surprised that, seeing off the deceased on his last journey, unbaptized Chu-vashi sing not only funeral songs, but also funny, even wedding songs. This has its own explanation. Pagans consider themselves children of nature. And so they are not afraid of death. It is not for them something terrible and terrible. It's just that a person goes to another world, and they see him off. Songs. Cheerful and sad.
Chuvash songs are really different. There are folk songs. In turn, they are divided into household (lullabies, children's, lyrical, table, comic, dance, round dance). There are ritual, labor, social and historical songs.
Among folk musical instruments, the following are common: shakhlich (pipe), two types of bagpipes, kesle (harp), Varkhan and Palnaya (reed instruments), parappan (drum), khankarma (tambourine). Violin and accordion have long become familiar.
And the Chuvash people love such fairy tales, in which truth and reality are easily intertwined. Fairy tales, in which there is more fiction than truth. If we use modern language, then these are fairy tales with elements of the absurd. When you listen to them, they clear your brain!
More fiction than truth
One day my grandfather and I went hunting. They saw a hare, began to chase him. We beat with a club, we cannot kill.
Then I hit him with a Chernobyl rod and killed him.
Together with my grandfather, we began to lift it - we can’t lift it.
I tried one - picked it up and put it on the cart.
Our cart was drawn by a pair of horses. We whip the horses, but they cannot get up from their place.
Then we unharnessed one horse, the other was lucky.
We arrived home, began to remove the hare from the cart with my grandfather - we couldn’t remove it.
I tried one and removed it.
I want to bring him in through the door - he doesn’t climb, but he freely passed through the window.
We gathered to boil a hare in a cauldron - it does not fit, but put it in a cauldron - there is still room left.
I asked my mother to cook a hare, but she began to cook but did not keep track: the water boiled violently in the pot, the hare jumped out, and the cat, right there, ate it.
So we did not have to taste the hare.
But we made a good story!
Finally, try to guess another Chuvash riddle. It is very complex, multi-stage: on an unplowed fallow field, next to an ungrown birch, lies an unborn hare.
The answer is simple: lies ...
Do you feel what the wise Chuvashs are getting at? An unborn lie is still much better than a lie born ...
Chuvash (Chuvash. Chăvashsem) is a Turkic people, the main population of the Chuvash Republic (Russia). The number is about 1.5 million, of which 1 million 435 thousand in Russia according to the results of the 2010 census. Approximately half of all Chuvash living in Russia live in Chuvashia, the rest live in almost all regions of Russia, and a small part outside the Russian Federation, the largest groups in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine.
According to recent studies, the Chuvash are divided into three ethnographic groups:
riding Chuvash (viryal or turi) - northwest of Chuvashia;
middle-low Chuvash (anat enchi) - northeast of Chuvashia;
lower Chuvashs (anatri) - south of Chuvashia and beyond;
steppe Chuvashs (khirti) - a subgroup of grassroots Chuvashs identified by some researchers living in the southeast of the republic and in adjacent regions.
Traditional clothing clearly reflects the historical development, social and natural conditions of existence, aesthetic preferences, as well as ethno-group and ethno-territorial features of the Chuvash people. The basis of women's and men's clothing was a white kĕpe shirt.
It was made from one piece of hemp (grained) canvas, folded in half and sewn along the longitudinal line. The sides were closed with straight inserts and wedges, expanding the silhouette of the shirt down. Straight and narrow sleeves 55-60 cm long were sewn in at a right angle and complemented by a square gusset.
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Women's shirts had a height of 115-120 cm and a central chest slit. They were ornamented with embroidered patterns on both sides of the chest, along the sleeves, along the longitudinal seams and along the hem. The contour of the patterns was made with black threads, red prevailed in their colors, green, yellow and dark blue were additional. The main patterns were breast rosettes kĕskĕ or rhomboid suntăkh figures (pushtĕr, kÿnchĕk, kĕsle) made of red homespun or chintz ribbons.
Men's shirts had a height of 80 cm and were more modestly ornamented. The right-sided chest incision was distinguished by stripes of an embroidered pattern and red ribbons, as well as a triangular red patch.
At the end of the 19th century, shirts made of colored homespun canvas ulach in blue or red checks spread among the lower group of anatri. They were decorated with chintz stripes on the chest and shoulders, and along the hem - 1-2 frills of colored factory-made fabric or colored homespun canvas. Over the shirt they tied an apron chĕrçitti - ornamented, made of white canvas or colored, made of red, blue, green motley. Riding Chuvashs wore a white sappun apron with a bib, decorated with patterns on the hem.
They girded with 1-2 piçihkhi belts and covered the back of the figure with pendants of various types: ancient decorations made of pipes and black fringe hÿre, embroidered sară accessories, on the sides - paired pendants yarkăch. Until the 20th century, the Chuvash had a special type of swing ritual clothing such as a traditional robe - a white straight-backed shupăr. It was distinguished by long narrow sleeves and rich ornamentation with a combination of embroidery and appliqué at the top, along the sides and along the hem. An obligatory accessory for women's and men's clothing was white yĕm pants with a wide step, ankle-length or higher.
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Festive and ritual headdresses are varied and decorative. The girls wore rounded tukhya hats, decorated with beaded embroidery and silver coins. Married women always covered their heads with a surpan - a white stripe of thin canvas with ornamented ends that went down to the shoulder and along the back. On ordinary days, a similar in shape, but narrower puç tutri (or surpan tutri) headband was tied over the surpan, and on holidays - an elegant khushpu headdress, which was distinguished by rich coin decoration and the presence of a vertical back part. In terms of shape, 5-6 local types of khushpu can be distinguished: cylindrical, hemispherical, rounded with a small top, like a high or low truncated cone, as well as a tight-fitting hoop.
A single ensemble with elegant headdresses was made up of jewelry made of coins, beads, beads, corals and cowrie shells. They had a symbolic, functional and aesthetic significance, differing in women's and girlish ones, and according to their location on the figure - into head, neck, shoulder, chest, waist.
Outerwear and shoes
As demi-season clothes, they used empty robes, săkhman caftans, fitted kĕrĕk fur coats for winter, long voluminous sheepskin coats or straight-backed cloth chapan were worn for long trips. Men's hats did not differ in variety: there were cloth hats with fields, fur hats çĕlĕk.
Casual shoes were bast shoes woven from lime bast (çăpata), which the riding Chuvash wore with black cloth onuchs, and the grassroots - with white woolen or cloth stockings (tăla chălha). Festive shoes were leather boots or shoes, in the riding group - high boots in an accordion. From the end of the 19th century, high lace-up leather boots for women began to appear. White, gray and black felt boots served as winter shoes.
Like most peoples of the Volga region, children's clothing was similar to adult clothing, but did not have rich ornamentation and iconic decorations.
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Since the 1930s, traditional clothing has been replaced by urban clothing everywhere. However, in the rural environment, national complexes are preserved to this day almost everywhere, especially in remote areas. They are mainly used as festive and ceremonial clothing, as well as in folklore and stage activities. The traditions of the folk costume are developed in the work of many folk craftsmen and artists, in the work of folk art craft enterprises.
Modern fashion designers do not reconstruct the traditional outfit, but create image costumes based on associative representations and the study of museum originals. They strive to understand the origin and meaning of patterns, to preserve the value of handicraft and natural materials. The most active and talented ones participate in prestigious contemporary fashion competitions at the regional and Russian levels.
Rural craftsmen make festive costumes for national weddings in villages and cities. These "updated" outfits sometimes use authentic khushpu headdresses and jewelry. They still retain their importance as the most important semantic, aesthetic and sacred center of the Chuvash costume.
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SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND PHOTO:
Team Nomads.
Official portal of the authorities of the Chuvash Republic
Brief Chuvash Encyclopedia
Ashmarin N. I. Bulgarians and Chuvashs - Kazan: 1902.
Ashmarin N. I. Ancient Bulgarians. - Kazan: 1903.
Braslavsky L. Yu. Orthodox churches of Chuvashia - Chuvash book publishing house. Cheboksary, 1995
Dimitriev V. D. Peaceful annexation of Chuvashia to the Russian state of Cheboksary, 2001
Ivanov L. M. Prehistory of the Chuvash people
Ivanov V. P., Nikolaev V. V., Dimitriev V. D. Chuvash: ethnic history and traditional culture Moscow, 2000
Kakhovsky V. F. The origin of the Chuvash people. — 2003.
Nikolaev V. V., Ivanov-Orkov G. N., Ivanov V. P. Chuvash costume: from antiquity to the present / Scientific and artistic edition. - Moscow - Cheboksary - Orenburg, 2002. 400 p. ill.
Nikolsky N.V. A short course in the ethnography of the Chuvash. Cheboksary, 1928.
Nikolsky N.V. Collected Works. - In 4 volumes - Cheboksary: Chuv. book. publishing house, 2007-2010.
The peoples of Russia: a picturesque album, St. Petersburg, printing house of the Association "Public Benefit", December 3, 1877, art. 317
Petrov-Tenekhpi M.P. On the origin of the Chuvash.
Chuvash // Bashkortostan (Atlas). — M.: Design. Information. Cartography, 2010. - 320 p. — ISBN ISBN 5-287-00450-8
Chuvash // Peoples of Russia. Atlas of cultures and religions. — M.: Design. Information. Cartography, 2010. - 320 p. — ISBN 978-5-287-00718-8
One of the most numerous peoples of the Volga region, has long become "one's own" in the family of Russian peoples.
It is all the more curious to know that its history and origin are the subject of fierce battles between historians and anthropologists!
The Chuvash were related to a variety of peoples of the past and present, and they have no direct relationship with anyone.
So who are they really?
The invisible people of the Volga region
Despite the fact that the Volga region was on the outskirts of ancient civilizations, its peoples were well known.
The Mordovians, Maris and Cheremis are mentioned long before the Slavs!
Herodotus and Jordan write about the well-recognized signs of these peoples, but not a word about the Chuvashs ...
The Arab traveler Ibn-Fahdlan, in the 10th century, described in detail the local peoples, but did not see the Chuvash.
The Khazar king Joseph, wrote to his Jewish fellow believer in Spain, about the subject peoples, but again without the Chuvash!
And even in the 13th century, the Hungarian monk Julian and the famous Rashid-ad-Din crossed Chuvashia far and wide, but they did not see such a people.
Nevertheless, there is a stable version that the Chuvashs are not just the indigenous inhabitants of these places, but even the descendants of Attila's Huns!
Riders of Attila or peaceful farmers?
Hun hypothesis
Traditionally, the Chuvash are considered the descendants of the people suar suvar
, which was related to the Khazars and Bulgars, formed somewhere in the steppes of Central Asia and came to Europe together with the Huns.
Some Savirs, as part of the Sarmatian world, are mentioned by Strabo, and in myths Siberian Tatars, there is a legend about how they conquered these lands from the people soir who went west.
Thus, the Savirs could be one of the eastern branches of the Sarmatians, who met early with the Turks and Huns, after which they came to Europe under the banner of Attila, being already a highly mixed people.
After the murder of Attila and the defeat of his sons in the battle with the Gepids, at Nedao, the remnants of the Huns went to the Black Sea region, and from there further to the east, where, having mixed with the native Finno-Ugrians, they became the Chuvash.
As evidence, the undoubtedly Turkic language of the Chuvash and the pronounced mixed Mongoloid appearance are given, and, in general, nothing more!
Bulgar hypothesis
Another version derives the Chuvash from the population of the Volga Bulgaria, which fell apart after Batu conquered it and a certain part of the tribe settled in present-day Chuvashia.
DNA genealogy speaks in favor of the version - showing a large percentage of R1A haplotypes in the Chuvash and Bulgars, which makes both Sarmatians related.
But linguists are strongly against it, since the Bulgars spoke a typical Western Turkic language, which is related, but very different from Chuvash.
These are cousins, not direct relatives.
Khazar version
There are reasons to suspect the strongest Khazar influence on the Chuvash: a huge number of parallels in the Chuvash language with the language of the Jewish rulers of Khazaria (about 300 similar words).
Even the name of the supreme deity "Toram" suspiciously coincides with the holy book of Judaism.
In the 19th century this version was very popular
The Chuvash and their ethnonym "Chuvash" were taken out of the Khazar Khaganate. They acquired it during the uprising of the Kavars, when a split occurred among the Khazars.
As is known, the uprising of the Kavars took place shortly after the religious reform of Khagan Obadya, who elevated Judaism to the rank of state religion.
This uprising was raised by the Muslim Khazars, outraged by the granting of privileges to the Jews and the infringement of their own rights.
It was then that the Khazar people split into two branches: into rebels, nicknamed kavarami(from the Chuvash word kavar"conspiracy, conspirators, fronde") and on peaceful Khazars who did not participate in the rebellion and were nicknamed Chuvash(from Chuvash-Turkic-Iranian juash, yuash(“peaceful, meek, quiet”).
Anthropology of the Chuvash
Chuvash - usually have mixed Caucasian-Mongoloid features.
And prevail, oddly enough for this region, mixes with southern Caucasians, and not in the northern ones, like the Mordovians or Permians.
Caucasoid, in general, prevails and typical Mongoloids do not exceed 10% of the population.
But the appearance of the Chuvash is quite recognizable: small or medium height, with dark eyes and hair, dark skin, a wide and flattened face, small eyes and a short, wide nose.
In men, the growth of beards and mustaches is weakened, in women there is often excessive accumulation of male-type fat in the area of the shoulders and abdomen.
The length of the body is greater than the length of the legs, the shape of the head is round with a massive front part and a slightly pronounced chin.
Chuvash language
With all the influence of the Khazar words, as well as the differences between the written language of the Volga Bulgaria and the Chuvash, the language of this people is unequivocally recognized as Turkic and the only living language of the Bulgar group.
Who are the Chuvash and from whom did they originate?
Today it is obvious that the Chuvashs have a large share of the haplotypes of the Indo-European population, and very ancient ones - the Andronovites of Western Siberia, who were the ancestors of the Altai Scythians and Sarmatians, as well as the Avars.
This people mixed early with the early Turks: the Huns, and then the Bulgars and Khazars.
Then they were joined by the indigenous inhabitants of the Volga region, close to the Finno-Ugric peoples, and possibly the West Siberian Ugric-Ostyaks took part in the formation of this people.
From such a cocktail of backgammon, a very mixed ethnic group was obtained, where the obvious Mongoloid signs of the people are combined with the Turkic language, Finno-Ugric customs and the obvious influence of the Tatar-Mongols and Khazars on the Chuvash language base.
Tretyakov P. N.
The question of the origin of the Chuvash people in the light of archaeological data * // Soviet ethnography. - 1950. - Issue. 3. - S. 44-53.
One of the most complex and unexplored questions of the ancient and early medieval history of the USSR is the question of the origin of the peoples of our country. Bourgeois science, proceeding in solving ethnogonic questions from racist ideas and nationalist tendencies, has extremely complicated and confused this question. Soviet historical science solves it completely anew, accumulating relevant factual materials and examining them in the light of Marxism-Leninism, in the light of the works of V. I. Lenin and J. V. Stalin on the theory of the national question.
Soviet science proceeds from the basic theoretical proposition that the process of the formation of peoples and nationalities is a historical process. It is determined primarily by internal socio-economic conditions, depends on the level of their development.
The nature of the ethnogonic process also depends on the specific historical situation. Together with ethnic traditions, the significance of which should not be underestimated, concrete historical conditions largely determine the specific (national) form of culture of this or that people, this or that nationality.
Of outstanding importance for research in the field of the origin of peoples and nations are the works of I. V. Stalin, devoted to questions of language and linguistics, which were a major new contribution to the theory of historical materialism. In these works, I. V. Stalin showed that the views of Acad. N. Ya. Marr on language as a superstructure, as a phenomenon of the class order, his views on the development of language, which have received considerable distribution among not only Soviet linguists, but also representatives of historical disciplines, have nothing in common with Marxism. In his work, I. V. Stalin widely revealed the foundations of the Marxist theory of language as a tool for communicating people, a social phenomenon directly related to the production and other activities of people in society, but generated by no means by one or another economic system of society, not by one or another stage public life. "Language is not generated by this or that basis, the old
* The studies published here on the ethnogenesis of the Chuvash people are reports read by the authors at the session of the Department of History and Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Chuvash Research Institute of Language, Literature and History on January 30-31, 1950. The articles were already in the set when they were published the works of I. V. Stalin “Regarding Marxism in Linguistics”, “On Some Questions of Linguistics” and “An Answer to Comrades”, the most valuable indications of which the authors tried to take into account.
or a new basis, within a given society, but the entire course of the history of society and the history of bases over the centuries. It was created not by any one class, but by the whole of society, by all classes of society, by the efforts of hundreds of generations.
It is known that language is one of the most important features that define a tribe, nationality, nation. It constitutes the national form of their culture. Therefore, the views of N. Ya. Marr on the development of language, uncritically perceived by historians and archaeologists dealing with the origin of the peoples of our country, led to a number of erroneous constructions in this area as well. A typical example is the question of the origin of the Chuvash people, which was considered N. Ya. Marr, as a basically Japhetic people, preserving in its language the features of the Japhetic stage.
JV Stalin showed that the "theory" of the stage development of language, from which N. Ya. Marr proceeded, does not correspond to the actual course of language development, is a non-Marxist theory. Thus, clarity was also introduced into the question of the origin of the Chuvash people, and broad scientific prospects opened up before research in this area.
1
The theory of the origin of the Chuvash people, currently accepted by most Soviet historians and linguists, is the complete opposite of the bourgeois concepts that existed before. According to the latter, the Chuvash people were seen as a fragment of the once supposedly existing Turkic world. His immediate ancestors, according to bourgeois scholars (A. A. Kunik, A. A. Shakhmatov, N. I. Ashmarin and others), were the Volga Bulgarians, a people who came to the Volga from the Azov steppes and founded the Volga or Kama Bulgaria. The mentioned scientists proceeded from the fact that among the modern peoples living within the territory of Volga Bulgaria, only the Chuvash people discover ancient Turkic features in their language. Another argument in favor of the Bulgarian theory was several individual Chuvash words and names found on Bulgarian gravestones with Arabic inscriptions. Bourgeois science had no other data in favor of the Bulgarian theory.
The shakiness of the factual data on the basis of which the Bulgarian theory was built is quite obvious. In the light of the news of ancient authors, it is indisputable that the Volga Bulgaria did not differ from all other states of antiquity - it was by no means a national state, but included a number of different tribes within its borders.
Volga Bulgaria was undoubtedly only an insignificant step forward in comparison with the states of Caesar or Charlemagne, which I. V. Stalin characterizes as “military-administrative associations”, “a conglomerate of tribes and nationalities that lived their own lives and had their own languages” 2 . Volga Bulgaria included both local and newcomer tribes, different speech was heard in the Bulgarian cities. The Bulgarians proper, that is, the population that came to the Volga-Kamie from the Azov steppes, also by no means constituted an ethnically single group. Based mainly on archaeological as well as historical data, it is currently established that the population of the Eastern European steppes in the second half of the first millennium AD. e. was a very complex ethnic formation. It was based on various Sarmatian-Alanian tribes, mixed with the Turkic elements represented,
1 I. Stalin. Concerning Marxism in Linguistics, Ed. Pravda, M., 1950, p. 5.
2 Ibid., p. 11.
firstly, in the Hunnic hordes of the 4th-5th centuries AD. e. and, secondly, in the Avar hordes that penetrated Europe in the 6th century AD. e. This combination of Sarmatian-Alanian and Turkic elements is perfectly revealed by the materials of the North Caucasian, Don and Donetsk (Salt-Mayak) settlements and cemeteries. The same exactly mixed Sarmatian-Alano-Turkic material culture was brought by the Bulgarians of Asparuh to the Danube, where, judging by the materials of excavations in the ancient Bulgarian cities of Pliska and Preslav, it persisted for two or three generations before dissolving in the local Slavic environment.
Thus, the question of the origin of the Chuvash people was by no means resolved by the Bulgarian theory. The statement that the Chuvashs are Bulgarians was tantamount to an attempt to construct an equation from two equally unknown quantities.
When characterizing the Bulgarian theory of the origin of the Chuvash people, one cannot, however, confine oneself to pointing out the weakness of its factual basis and theoretical depravity. This theory arose and became widely used, first of all, as a nationalist theory, meeting the interests of the Pan-Turkists, on the one hand, and the Chuvash nationalists, on the other. The Bulgarian theory was an integral part of the pan-Turkic legend about the ancient Turkic people, who allegedly played an exceptional role in the historical process; this myth about the great-powerful state of the Bulgarian-Chuvash, dominating all other peoples of the Volga region. It is not for nothing that the enemies of the Soviet people in the first years after October widely propagated this theory, trying to sow national discord between the Turkic-speaking peoples and the great Russian people, between the Chuvash people and other peoples of the Volga region.
2
It is known that almost all the peoples of the Volga region consist of two or more parts. These are the two main groups of the Mordovian people - Moksha and Erzya, to which are added Tyuryukhan, Karatai and Shoksha. The Mari retained a distinct division into mountain and meadow. The Chuvash people also consists of two main parts, differing from each other in language and material culture. We are talking about riding Chuvashs - "viryal", occupying the northwestern part of Chuvashia, and Nizovs - "anatri", living in the southwestern half of the Chuvash land. The third Chuvash group - "anat-enchi", located between the first and second, is considered by most ethnographers not as an independent part of the Chuvash people, but as a result of mixing viryal and anatri. It must be assumed that traces of ancient tribes are preserved in the complex composition of the peoples of the Volga region, and their study can shed bright light on the issues of ethnogy. It is especially interesting at the same time that this division of the Chuvash people into two parts has a long prehistory dating back to the 2nd millennium BC. e.
To characterize the ancient tribes of northwestern Chuvashia, we currently have the following archaeological material.
1. Near Kozlovka, near the village of Balanovo, a vast burial ground 3 was discovered and explored, and in the Yadrinsky district near the village of Atlikasy, a barrow 4 dating back to the middle of the second millennium BC. e. and belonging to the group of archaeological sites common in the Upper Volga region and called Fatyanovo
3 O. N. Bader, A burial ground in the Karabay tract near the village of Balanovo in Chuvashia, Soviet Archeology, vol. VI, 1940.
4 P. N. Tretyakov, From the materials of the Middle Volga expedition, Communications of the State. acad. history of material culture, 1931, no. 3.
named after the burial ground near the village of Fatyanovo, Yaroslavl region. The Fatyanovo tribes were the first pastoral tribes in the Upper Volga region, possibly also familiar with agriculture. These were the first tribes in these places who got acquainted with metal - copper and bronze. T. A. Trofimova's assumption about the southern, Caucasian origin of the population that left the Balanovsky burial ground, 5 which still needs to be verified, even if it turns out to be true, does not change the essence of the matter. The culture of the Balanovites - their economy and way of life - had a distinct northern, forest character.
2. Numerous mounds of the second half of the second millennium BC are known in the same part of the Chuvash ASSR. e., called Abashevsky by the name of s. Abashevo, Tsivilsky district of the Chuvash ASSR, where they were first studied in 1925 by VF Smolin 6 . As studies of subsequent years showed, the Abashevo tribes lived not only in the northern and central regions of Chuvashia, but also far beyond them (in the northern, northwestern and northeastern direction). Abashev mounds are known on the Lower Oka near Murom 7, in the Upper Oka basin near the village. Ogubi 8 and on the shore of Lake Pleshcheyevo 9. In the form of a hoard, typical Abashevsky things - bronze tools and jewelry made of bronze and silver were found in the Urals near the Upper Kizil. The sites of ancient settlements are also known there, which, as is assumed, belonged either to the Abashevites, or to tribes close to them in culture 10 .
3. Within the Chuvash ASSR, along the banks of the Volga and Sura, several ancient settlements of the first millennium BC are known. e., characterized by the so-called "mesh" or "textile" ceramics, the same as is known on numerous. settlements and settlements in the basin of the Oka and the Upper Volga.
4. Around with. Ivankovo on Nizhnyaya Sura 11 and near the village of Kriushi on the banks of the Volga at the mouth of the river. Anish 12 burial grounds of the beginning and middle of the first millennium BC were investigated. e., close to the well-known ancient Mordovian, Murom, Mari and Meryan burial grounds of the same time. Near with. Yandashevo in the lower reaches of the river. Tsivil found bronze decorations of the Pyanobor appearance 13 , common at the turn and at the beginning of our era among the tribes of the Kama and Povetluzhye.
5. In the same northern and northwestern regions of the Chuvash ASSR, belonging to the Viryal Chuvash, several dozen settlements of the middle and second half of the first millennium AD are known. e. 14 Settlements are miniature fortifications, usually located on capes of a high bank. During excavations, they found pottery molded without the help of a potter's wheel, weights from nets and bones of livestock. In general appearance, these settlements and the finds made on them closely resemble similar monuments of the neighboring Mordovian land.
6. Finally, one should point out the numerous kivĕ-çăva - languages
5 See T. A. Trofimova, On the issue of anthropological connections in the era of the Fatyanovo culture, Soviet Ethnography, 1949, No. 3.
6 V. F. Smolin, Abashevsky burial ground in the Chuvash Republic, Cheboksary,
7 Excavations by B. A. Kuftin. State. Hermitage Museum.
8 Excavations by V. I. Gorodtsov. State. Historical Museum.
10 "Archaeological research in the RSFSR 1934-1936", 1941, pp. 131-136.
11 See P.P. Efimenko, Middle Volga Expedition 1925-1927, Communications of the State. Academy of the History of Material Culture, vol. II, 1929.
12 See P. N. Tretyakov, Monuments of the ancient history of the Chuvash Volga region, Cheboksary, 1948, pp. 55-56.
13 See ibid., p. 53.
14 See ibid., pp. 46ff., 65ff.
cemeteries of the 16th-18th centuries, known everywhere in the land of the Chuvash-Viryal. The study of the remains of a female costume originating from the Kivĕ-çăva reveals some features that bring the ancient Viryal costume closer to the Mari. Such a detail of the costume is, in particular, a tassel of thick woolen cords suspended from the back of the headdress, studded with bronze tubes - threads. According to T. A. Kryukova, one such Chuvash dress is in the collections of the State Ethnographic Museum in Leningrad. A well-known parallel with the ancient monuments of the Mari are also numerous Chuvash "Keremetishcha" of the 16th-18th centuries, as well as kivĕ-çăva, known everywhere in the land of the Chuvash-viryal.
As a result of the above review of the archaeological sites of the northwestern part of the Chuvash land, we can conclude that this part of Chuvashia has been inhabited since ancient times by tribes closely related in their material culture to the neighboring, more northern, western and eastern Volga population - the population of the forest spaces of the Middle and the Upper Volga region. It can also be argued that this population is genetically associated with that part of the Chuvash people, which is called "viryal" and which to this day has retained in its life many features similar to the culture of the neighboring Mari, and partly the Mordovian and Udmurt peoples. It is not possible to give a more definite picture of the ethnogonic process in this part of Chuvashia given the current state of the sources. We do not know in what relation to each other the tribes that left the above groups of archaeological sites stood - whether they constituted a continuous chain of autochthonous development or whether they were tribes of different origins that succeeded each other on the territory of Chuvashia. It is also likely that not all groups of archaeological sites in northwestern Chuvashia have been identified and studied by us at the present time. However, it is difficult to assume that future discoveries could shake the main conclusion is the conclusion about the local origin of the Chuvash tribes that are part of the Chuvash-viryal, and that their ancestors were closely related to other forest tribes.
3
Archaeological monuments of the southern part of the Chuvash Republic, belonging to the Anatri Chuvash, are known much worse than antiquities in the region of the Viryal Chuvash. However, even the little that we have at the present time allows us to assert that, starting from the distant past, there lived a population markedly different from that described above. Tribes associated with the more southern regions, with the steppe Middle Volga region, have long lived here.
At a time when in the second millennium BC. e. Abashev tribes lived in the northern part of the Chuvash territory, in the south there were tribes with a different culture, well known from research carried out by Soviet archaeologists in the Kuibyshev and Saratov regions and called Khvalynsky 15 . Two such Khvalyn mounds were explored by P.P. Efimenko in 1927 in the village. Baybatyrevo, Yalchik district, on the bank of the river. Boules. In one of them there were 16 graves containing burials accompanied by characteristic pottery and other items, in the other - one grave 16 . Unlike the Abashevo barrows, the Khvalyn barrows have
15 P. S. Rykov, On the Question of Bronze Age Cultures in the Lower Volga Region, Izv. Institute of Local Lore at the Saratov Institute, vol. II, 1927.
16 P. N. Tretyakov, Monuments of the ancient history of the Chuvash Volga region, p. 40.
They are of considerable size, vague outlines and do not form large groups. Such mounds are known in a number of places along the Bula, Kubna and other rivers of southern Chuvashia. Near the mounds in the territory of southern Chuvashia there are remains of settlements of the Khvalyn tribes. One of them, located in the tract Vekhva-syrmi near the village. Baibatyrev, was subjected to small studies in 1927, during which fragments of pottery and bones of domestic animals were found: cows, horses, sheep and pigs.
Studies of recent years, carried out in various parts of the Middle Volga region, have shown that the Khvalyn tribes, who occupied in the second millennium BC. e. a huge area on both sides of the Middle and partly the Lower Volga, should be considered as the ancestors of two vast population groups known in the Volga region in the subsequent time - in the first millennium BC. e. One of them were settled pastoral and agricultural tribes who left the Khvalynsk, Saratov and Kuibyshev settlements. They are usually considered as the oldest Mordovian, and perhaps Burtas tribes.. The other troupe was Savromatian-Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoral population, which arose in the steppe Volga region on the basis of local tribes of the Bronze Age in conditions of wide contact with the population that lived east of the Volga.
In what ways the ethnogonic process went during this period on the territory of southern Chuvashia is still unknown, since no archaeological monuments of the first millennium BC are known. e. not found there. It seems, however, undeniable that the Sarmatization process closely affected the population of the Chuvash Volga region.
This question is of particular interest because Sarmatian-Alanian tribes of the Eastern European steppes in the middle of the first millennium AD. e., as is known, were subjected to Turkization. This happened as a result of the penetration into Europe first of the Hunnic nomadic hordes, then the Avars, etc. Most of them were nomadic population of the territory of modern Kazakhstan, related to the European Sarmatian tribes. They carried with them, however, the Turkic language, which during this period - the period of military democracy, tribal unions and the "great migration of peoples" - became the dominant language of the nomadic population of the Eurasian steppes.
From this it can be assumed that the Turkization of some tribes of the Volga-Kama is a very old phenomenon, which began in the middle of the first millennium AD. e. Bulgarians who appeared in the Volga-Kama region in the 7th-8th centuries. n. e. and representing the Turkicized Sarmatian-Alanian population of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov, were by no means an ethnic group completely alien to many local tribes. Their arrival probably did not cause fundamental changes in the course of the ethnogonic process in the Volga-Kama region, but only strengthened and completed what had begun much earlier.
This, apparently, explains the difference in the fate of the Bulgarian tribes - the tribes of the conquerors - in the Danube and Volga Bulgaria. On the Danube, the Bulgarians of Asparuh very soon dissolved and disappeared without a trace, along with their language, in the local Slavic environment. On the Volga, where they, as well as on the Danube, undoubtedly constituted a minority in comparison with the local population, the Turkic language won. It happened, firstly, because the process of Turkization has already affected the tribes of the Volga region, and, secondly, because here the Bulgarians met with a number of different tribes, while on the Danube they fell into a homogeneous Slavic environment standing at a higher stage of historical development.
A serious influence on the development of the culture and language of all local tribes was exerted by the emergence in the Volga-Kama region of a number of large trade and craft cities linking Eastern Europe with the countries of the Middle East.
Asia. It was at this stage of the historical life of the tribes of the Volga region that both the process of Turkization and the process of consolidation of the ancient tribes into larger ethnic formations had to end.
At the same time, it is interesting to note that the culture characteristic of the Bulgarian kingdom was not represented on the territory of the whole of Chuvashia, but mainly in its southern part - in the land of the Chuvash-Anatri. There, in the river basin. Bules and Kubni, Bulgarian settlements are known - the remains of large cities surrounded by high ramparts and small, but strongly fortified castles. An example of a settlement of the first type is the huge Bulgarian fortification near the village of Deusheva on Sviyaga, which has a circumference of about two kilometers. Feudal castles were the settlement near the village of Bolshaya Toyaba on the river. Bule, settlement near Tigishevo on the river. Big Bule, Yaponchino settlement in the lower reaches of the river. Kubni and others. Numerous rural settlements of the Bulgarian period are known around them. In the same places, linking the settlements and rural settlements into a single system, powerful earthen ramparts stretch for tens of kilometers along the rivers, the same as in other places of Volga Bulgaria. They were intended to protect the possessions of the Bulgarian nobility from enemy invasions 17 .
In the northern regions of the Chuvash ASSR, the remnants of the Bulgarian culture are almost unknown. At present, it is possible to name only two points - a small rural settlement at the mouth of the river. Anish near Kozlovka, where characteristic Bulgarian dishes and some other things of the 10th-13th centuries were found. 18, and the city of Cheboksary, where similar finds were found. There are no settlements of a Bulgarian character and ramparts on the land of the Chuvash-Viryal. The settlements of a completely different nature, noted above when listing the archaeological sites of northwestern Chuvashia under item 5, belong to the same time there.
From this we can conclude that in the Bulgarian time the Chuvash people as a whole had not yet formed. The ancient differences between northern and southern populations were still quite strong. There is no doubt, however, that the Bulgarian time, with its class society and statehood, with urban life, trade relations and other peculiar features of the economy and life, should have created favorable conditions for the cultural and ethnic rapprochement of individual parts of the Volga-Kama population.
It can be thought that the subsequent XIV-XVI centuries were the time when the process of the formation of the peoples of the Volga-Kama region, including the Chuvash people, in general terms, reached its completion. Ancient differences did not disappear without a trace; they were preserved both in language and in material culture, and they are preserved at the present time. But they have long faded into the background, obscured by those cultural phenomena that were becoming common to the entire Chuvash population. So the Chuvash language, territory and cultural community gradually developed - elements of the Chuvash nation.
“Of course, the elements of a nation - language, territory, cultural community, etc. - did not fall from the sky, but were created gradually, back in the pre-capitalist period,” Comrade Stalin points out. "But these elements were in their infancy and at best represented only a potential in the sense of the possibility of forming a nation in the future under certain favorable conditions" 19 .
In the future, the history of the Chuvash people proceeded in close
17 See P.N. Tretyakov, Monuments of the ancient history of the Chuvash Volga region, pp. 58-61.
18 See ibid., p. 62.
19 I. V. Stalin, The National Question and Leninism, Soch., vol. 11, p. 336.
interaction with the history of the Russian people. This refers to the pre-revolutionary time, when the economic life of the Chuvash people, which was one of the oppressed nationalities of tsarist Russia, developed within the framework of the all-Russian economy, which was facilitated by the location of Chuvashia on the banks of the Volga, the most important economic artery of the country. Especially here we have in mind the years of the Great October Socialist Revolution, when the Chuvash people, together with the great Russian people, rose up against a common enemy, and the Soviet era, when, as a result of the victory of socialism in the USSR, the Chuvash people formed into a socialist nation.
4
The question of the origin of the Chuvash people can only be satisfactorily resolved if it is considered inextricably linked with the question of the origin of all other peoples of the Volga-Kama region and, first of all, with the question of the origin of the Tatar people.
As a result of the work of Soviet archaeologists, ethnographers, anthropologists and linguists, it has now been established that the paths of the ethnogenesis of the Kazan Tatars were basically the same as the paths of the Chuvash ethnogenesis. The Tatar people formed as a result of the long development of local tribes and their mixing with the Turkic-speaking Bulgarian elements that penetrated the Volga-Kama region in the last quarter of the first millennium AD. e. A certain role in the Tatar ethnogenesis was undoubtedly also played by the Tatar-Mongol conquest, especially the formation of the Kazan Khanate on the ruins of Volga Bulgaria. During this period, Kipchak (Polovtsian) elements penetrated into the local environment, making up the bulk of the population of the European part of the Golden Horde 20 .
Establishing a significant commonality of the ethnogonic destinies of the Chuvash and Tatar peoples, it is necessary to answer another question: how should the differences between these peoples be explained, why in the Volga-Kama region, in place of the Bulgarian state, not one Turkic-speaking people, but two - Chuvash and Tatar? The resolution of this question goes far beyond the framework of archaeological data and can be given mainly on the basis of ethnographic and linguistic materials. Therefore, we do not pretend in the least to solve this problem and dwell on it only because a certain trend has emerged here, which cannot be reconciled in any way.
We are talking about the attempts of some researchers to turn the Bulgarian heritage into an object of division between the Tatar and Chuvash peoples, while it is obvious that it is the same common property of both peoples, which is the heritage of Kievan Rus for the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples. These attempts took place, in particular, at a scientific session on the origin of the Tatar people, held in Moscow in 1946.
So, A.P. Smirnov, who, on the basis of archaeological data, gave a very convincing picture of the ethnogenesis of the Tatar people in the above plan, sees the difference between the Tatars and the Chuvashs in that the Tatars are the descendants of the supposedly proper Bulgarians, while the Chuvashs are the descendants of the Bulgarian Suvar tribe 21 . Such a conclusion, supported by some other researchers, is, however, in conflict with the concept of A.P. Smirnov himself. This contradiction concludes
20 Collected. "The Origin of the Kazan Tatars", Kazan, 1948.
21 See ibid., p. 148.
it is not only that the newcomers - the Bulgarians - again turn out to be the main ancestor of the Tatar and Chuvash peoples here, which does not correspond to the actual data, but that the Bulgarians themselves are depicted in fact as two monolithic ethnic groups, which in reality was not . As mentioned above, the Bulgarian tribes of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov were a very diverse formation ethnically. It is, of course, not necessary to assume that Bulgarians and Suvars existed within Volga Bulgaria, with its lively trading life, as two different ethnic groups.
It is impossible not to dwell on the attempts of some Tatar linguists to consider the Tatar people as direct descendants of the Volga Bulgarians, and the Chuvash - only as one of the tribes that were part of the state of Volga Bulgaria. “The Kazan Tatar language is a direct continuation of the Bulgar language,” says A. B. Bulatov. “It is impossible to conclude,” he declares here, “about the Chuvashs that they are direct descendants of the Bulgarians” 22 . Archaeological evidence strongly protests against ideas of this kind. We saw above that on the territory of Chuvashia there were Bulgarian cities, powerful earthen ramparts stretching for tens of kilometers, and castles of the Bulgarian nobility. In southern Chuvashia was the center of one of the Bulgarian principalities; it was by no means a remote province of Volga Bulgaria. Similar urban and rural feudal centers were also located on the territory of Tataria, where the local population mixed with the Bulgarian. In some regions of Tataria, as well as in the north of Chuvashia, there are places where there were no Bulgarian cities and feudal possessions. The population living here undoubtedly retained its ancient specific features of culture for a long time. What is the basis for putting the Chuvash people in a different relationship to the Bulgarian inheritance than the Tatar people?
According to Turkologists, the Chuvash language is the oldest among the Turkic languages 23 . On this basis, some linguists draw conclusions about some special antiquity of the Chuvash people. According to R. M. Raimov, the Chuvash are the remnant of some ancient people, the Bulgarians are the descendants of the Chuvash, and the Tatars are the descendants of the Bulgarians. As an argument in favor of this fantastic view, R. /L. Raimov cites ethnographic data. The culture, way of life and language of the Chuvash people of the post-Bulgarian period, in his opinion, allegedly stood at a lower level of development than the culture, way of life and language of Volga Bulgaria 24 .
All this, of course, is deeply erroneous and theoretically untenable. There was no ancient Chuvash people, preceding Volga Bulgaria in the era of the primitive communal system, and could not be. It is impossible to compare the culture of the Chuvash village of the post-Bulgarian period with the culture of the Bulgarian trading cities, as well as with the culture of the feudal Bulgarian nobility and, on this basis, conclude that the Chuvashs were at a lower cultural level than the Bulgarians. When R. M. Raimov says that the Chuvash could be considered as the descendants of the Bulgarians only if “the level of culture that was achieved in the Bulgar period was preserved among the Chuvash people”, he is completely in captivity of the notorious theory of a single stream and idealizes the Bulgarian past. The little that we know about the village of Bulgarian times testifies to a very primitive patriarchal way of life, the level of which was incomparably lower than the old Chuvash way of life, which allows us
22 Collected. "The Origin of the Kazan Tatars", Kazan, 1948, p. 142.
23 See ibid., p. 117.
24 See ibid., p. 144.
restore archeology, ethnography and folklore. When discussing the issue of the origin of the Tatar people, Sh.P. Tipeev was absolutely right when he said the following: “The Bulgarian state was a cultural state in the past. I believe in it conditionally. Yes, the old Bulgar and the new Bulgar-Kazan were cultural centers in the Volga region. But was the whole of Bulgaria a cultural center?... I think that Bulgaria was not a culturally integral entity. Old Bulgar and new Bulgar (Kazan), predominantly with a population of Bulgar tribes, stood out as flourishing trading centers among the barbarian tribes that were part of this state” 25 .
How is it possible to explain the difference between the culture and language of the Chuvash and Tatar peoples? Why did two Turkic-speaking peoples arise in the Volga-Kama region, and not one? Our assumptions regarding this issue in the most brief terms are as follows.
In the middle of the first millennium A.D. e. in the Volga-Kama, on the border of the forest and steppe zones, various tribes lived, the southern (conditionally Sarmatian) group of which began to undergo Turkization. In Bulgarian times, when the inhabitants of the Azov steppe penetrated here, when class society and statehood arose here and trading cities connected with the East appeared, the process of Turkization intensified significantly, capturing a wider (not only conditionally Sarmatian) circle of local tribes. In linguistic and ethnic terms, all the Volga-Kama tribes developed during this period in a general direction, to a certain extent, just as in the era of Kievan Rus all East Slavic tribes developed in a general direction.
The local tribes, which later became part of the Tatar people and lived lower along the Volga than the ancestors of the Chuvash, have long been much more connected with the world of the steppes than the latter. The process of Turkization could not help but unfold more vigorously here. And at a time when, among the ancestors of the Chuvash people, this process did not go beyond the level that was achieved in the era of Volga Bulgaria, among the ancestors of the Tatar people, it continued later. Back in the era of Volga Bulgaria, Pecheneg-Oguz and Kipchak (Polovtsian) elements penetrated here. During the Tatar-Mongol conquest and during the existence of the Kazan Khanate in the Volga-Kamie, the influx of Kipchak elements, which dominated the European part of the Golden Horde, could not but continue. Kipchak elements almost did not penetrate into the environment of the ancestors of the Chuvash people. Their language developed on local and old Turkic foundations. This circumstance, apparently, explains why not one Turkic-speaking people was formed in the Volga-Kama region, but two - Chuvash and Tatar.
