Mordvins

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Template:Short description {{#invoke:other uses|otheruses}} Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox ethnic group

Mordvins (also Mordvinians, Mordovians; Template:Langx; no equivalents in Moksha and Erzya) is an official term used in Russia and the Soviet Union to refer both to Erzyas and Mokshas since 1928.<ref name="Zamyatin 2022 page=88">Template:Harvnb</ref>

Names

File:1551 Venice Gastaldi-Descriptione de la Moscouia.jpg
Mordva populi (Mordva people) shown on a 1550 map by Giacomo Gastaldi as residing south of Kasimov and Nizhny Novgorod

While Robert G. Latham had identified Mordva as a self-designation, identifying it as a variant of the name Mari,<ref name=latham>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Anachronism inline Aleksey Shakhmatov in the early 20th century noted that Mordva was not used as a self-designation by the two Mordvinic tribes of the Erzya and Moksha. Nikolai Mokshin again states that the term has been used by the people as an internal self-defining termTemplate:Dubious to constitute their common origin.<ref name="CI">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Anachronism inline The linguist Template:Ill underlines that the Mordvins do not use the name 'Mordvins' as a self-designation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Feoktistov wrote "So-called Tengushev Mordvins are Erzyans who speak the Erzyan dialect with Mokshan substratum and in fact they are an ethnic group of Erzyans usually referred to as Shokshas. It was the Erzyans who historically were referred to as Mordvins, and Mokshas usually were mentioned separately as "Mokshas". There is no evidence Mokshas and Erzyas were an ethnic unity in prehistory".<ref>Feoktistov A. P. K probleme mordovsko-tyurkskikh yazykovykh kontaktov // Etnogenez mordovskogo naroda. – Saransk, 1965. – pp. 331–343</ref> Isabelle T. Keindler writes:

Gradually major differences developed in customs, language and even physical appearance (until their conversion to Christianity the Erzia and Moksha did not intermarry and even today intermarriage is rare.) The two subdivisions of Mordvinians share no folk heroes in common – their old folksongs sing only of local heroes. Neither language has a common term to designate either themselves or their language. When a speaker wishes to refer to Mordvinians as a whole, he must use the term "Erzia and Moksha"<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Early references

The ethnonym Mordva is possibly attested in Jordanes' Getica in the form of Mordens who, he claims, were among the subjects of the Gothic king Ermanaric.<ref>(Getica XIII, 116) "Among the tribes he [Ermanarich] conquered were the Golthescytha, Thiudos, Inaunxis, Vasinabroncae, Merens, Mordens, Imniscaris, Rogas, Tadzans, Athaul, Navego, Bubegenae and Coldae" — The Origin and Deeds of the Goths (116).</ref> A land called Mordia at a distance of ten days journey from the Petchenegs is mentioned in Constantine VII's De administrando imperio.<ref name="TLA">Template:Cite book</ref>

In medieval European sources, the names Merdas, Merdinis, Merdium, Mordani, Mordua, Morduinos have appeared. In the Russian Primary Chronicle, the ethnonyms Mordva and mordvichi first appeared in the 11th century. After the Mongol invasion of Rus', the name Mordvin rarely gets mentioned in Russian annals, and is only quoted after the Primary Chronicle up until the 15th–17th centuries.<ref>(Kirjanov 1971, 148–149) Laslo</ref><ref>Kappeler (1982) Taagepera</ref>

Etymologies

The name Mordva is thought to originate from an Iranian (Scythian) word, mard, meaning "man" (Persian مرد). The Mordvin word mirde denoting a husband or spouse is traced to the same origin. This word is also probably related to the final syllable of "Udmurt", and also in Template:Langx and perhaps even in Template:Langx.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref> Напольских В. В. Введение в историческую уралистику. Ижевск: УдмИИЯЛ, 1997. p. 37.</ref>

The first written mention of Erzya is considered to be in a letter dated to 968 AD, by Joseph, the Khazar khagan, in the form of arisa. More controversially, it is sometimes linked to the Aorsy and Alanorsi mentioned in the works of Strabo and Ptolemy. (However, the consensus view is that the Alans, a nomadic Iranian tribe from east Central Asia, were also known as the Aorsi/Alanorsi.) Estakhri, from the 10th century, has recorded among the three groups of the Rus people the al-arsanija, whose king lived in the town of Arsa. The people have sometimes been identified by scholars as Erzya, sometimes as the aru people, and also as Udmurts. It has been suggested by historians that the town Arsa may refer to either the modern Ryazan or Arsk<ref name="TLA"/> In the 14th century, the name Erzya is considered to have been mentioned in the form of ardzhani by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani,<ref>(Sbornik... 1941, 96) see László</ref> and as rzjan by Jusuf, the Nogaj khan<ref>(Safargaliev 1964, 12) László</ref> In Russian sources, the ethnonym Erza first appears in the 18th century.<ref>(Mokshin 1977, 47) László</ref>

The earliest written mention of Moksha, in the form of Moxel, is considered to be in the works of a 13th-century Flemish traveler, William of Rubruck, and in the Persian chronicle of Rashid-al-Din, who reported the Golden Horde to be at war with the Moksha and the Ardzhans (Erzia)Template:Obsolete source. In Russian sources, 'Moksha' appears from the 17th century.<ref>(Mokshin 1977, 47)László</ref>

Restoration of Erzya and Moksha ethnonyms

Template:Main

Mokshas from Altä velä wrote a collective open letter to Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1991. Template:Blockquote

On the First Erzya and Moksha Peoples' Congress in 1989 the first point of the Congress Declaration was renaming Mordovia to the Erzya and Moksha Autonomous Republic and banning the term Mordva.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

History

File:Muromian-map.png
Eastern Europe c. 9th century Template:Legend Template:Legend Template:Legend Template:Legend

Prehistory

The Gorodets culture dating back to around 500 BC has been associatedTemplate:By whom with these people. The north-western neighbours were the Muromians and Merians who spoke related Finno-Ugric languages. To the north of the Mordvins lived the Maris, and to the south the Khazars. The Mordvins' eastern neighbors, possibly remnants of the Huns, became the Bulgars around 700 AD.Template:Citation needed

Researchers have distinguished the ancestors of the Erzya and the Moksha from the mid-1st century AD by the different orientations of their burials and by elements of their costumes and by the variety of bronze jewelry found by archaeologists in their ancient cemeteries. The Erzya graves from this era were oriented north–south, while the Moksha graves were found to be oriented south–north.<ref name="TLA"/>

Medieval and early modern history

The ancient Mordvins encountered the Bulgars around the 7th century and later on came under the influence of Volga Bulgaria, paying them tribute.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> In the 13th century, the Mongols conquered the region and the Mordvins were incorporated into the Golden Horde. In the late 14th century, the Principality of Moscow conquered much of the western Mordvin lands while the eastern portion was under the control of the Kazan Khanate. After Russia conquered the Kazan Khanate in 1552, all the Mordvins became Russian subjects. During Russian rule, the Mordvins experienced forced conversions to Christianity, displacement, migration out the region and the influx of Russian settlers to Mordvin lands, a process that led to them becoming a minority in the area.<ref name=":1" />

In the 17th century, the Mordvins, Chuvash, and Mari staged a rebellion against Russian rule. After being suppressed, many Mordvins fled out of the area to escape reprisal and headed eastward past the Volga to more remote areas with weak Russian influence. Meanwhile the Mordvins that stayed eventually became serfs under the Russians, with the local economy being tied to agriculture. Failed rebellions would sporadically occur due to the working conditions the Mordvins were under. The Mordvins began rapidly assimilating to Russian culture until the emergence of Mordvin nationalism in the late 19th century.<ref name=":1" />

File:016 Description of all the Russian state-dwelling peoples.jpg
Mordovian woman, 1781

Modern history

Although the Mordvins were given an autonomous territory as a titular nation within the Soviet Union in 1928, Russification intensified during the 1930s, and knowledge of the Mordvin languages by the 1950s was in rapid decline.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Mordvins, like other indigenous peoples of Russia, experienced a rise in national consciousness. Aleksandr Sharonov compiled the Erzya national epic called Mastorava, which stands for "Mother Earth", first published in 1994 in the Erzya language (it has since been translated into Moksha and Russian). Mastorava is also the name of a movement of Mordvin national revival founded by Template:Ill of the Mordovian State University and others.<ref>Tatiana Mastyugina, Lev Perepelkin, Vitaliĭ Vyacheslavovich Naumkin, Irina Zviagelskaia, An Ethnic History of Russia: Pre-revolutionary Times to the Present, Greenwood Publishing Group (1996), Template:ISBN, p. 133; Timur Muzaev, Ėtnicheskiĭ separatizm v Rossii (1999), p. 166ff.</ref>

The first All-Russian Congress of the Mordvins (March 1992) demanded, among other things, constitutional recognition of Erzya and Moksha languages as the state ones, as well as the restoration of these languages as language of instruction, first, in primary schools, and then expanded into secondary schools. The congress elected the Revival Council. The Council was split due to various contradictions, one of them being whether the Mordvin language should be unified or Moksha and Erzya must continue their development separately.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Languages

Template:MainThe Mordvinic languages, a subgroup of the Uralic family, are Erzya and Moksha, with about 275,000 native speakers together. Both are official languages of Mordovia alongside Russian. The medieval Meshcherian language may have been Mordvinic, or close to Mordvinic. Erzya is spoken in the northern and eastern and north-western parts of Mordovia, as well as in the adjacent oblasts of Nizhny Novgorod, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Orenburg, and Ulyanovsk, and in the republics of Chuvashia, Tatarstan, and Bashkortostan. Moksha is the majority language in the western part of Mordovia.

Due to differences in phonology, lexicon, and grammar, Erzya and Moksha are not mutually intelligible, to the extent that the Russian language is often used for intergroup communications. The two Mordvinic languages also have separate literary forms. The Erzya literary language was standardised in 1922 and the Mokshan in 1923.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Both are currently written using the standard Russian alphabet.

Reconstruction of Mordvin language

The Moksha and Erzya languages are closely related, therefore they are thought to share a common ancestry. As to the degree of the languages' proximity, Arnaud Fournet presumes that if Moksha and Erzya had been a single language, they started to diverge 1500 years ago—the same time as French and Italian divided.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Serebrenikov proves that Moksha preserves more archaic forms than those existing in Erzya.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Classification

Until ca. 2010s most Finnic linguists considered Mordvinic and Mari languages as a single subdivision of the so-called Volga-Finnic branch of the Uralic family. Currently, this approach is rejected by most scholars,<ref>Piispanen, Peter S. Statistical Dating of Finno-Mordvinic Languages through Comparative Linguistics and Sound Laws: Fenno-Ugrica Suecana Nova Series. 15 (2016). P. 1-18</ref> and Mordvinic and Mari are considered distinct from each other: Mordvinic languages are believed to have a common ancestor with Balto-Finnic languages (Estonian and Finnish), while the Mari languages are closer to the Permic languages.Template:Citation needed

Ethnic structure

Template:Multiple image The Mordvins are divided into two ethnic subgroups<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="MEM">Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Obsolete source and three further subgroups:<ref name=latham /><ref>Mokshin (1995), p. 43. Latham in his account of the "Native Races of the Russian Empire" (1854) divided the Mordvins into three groups, viz. the Ersad, on the Oka River, the Mokshad, on the Sura River and the Karatai, in the neighbourhood of Kazan.</ref>Template:Obsolete source

Mokshin concludes that the above grouping does not represent subdivisions of equal ethnotaxonomic order, and discounts Shoksha, Karatai and Teryukhan as ethnonyms, identifying two Mordvin sub-ethnicities, the Erzya and the Moksha, and two "ethnographic groups", the Shoksha and the Karatai.<ref>"the ethnic structure of the Mordva people at present reveals two subethnoses – Erzia and Moksha – and two ethnographic groups – so-called Shoksha and Karatai" Mokshin (1995), p. 43</ref>Template:Obsolete source

Two further formerly Mordvinic groups have assimilated to (Slavic and Turkic) superstrate influence:

Demographics

File:Ареал расселения мордвы в Волго-Уральском регионе. По данным Всероссийской переписи населения 2010 года..png
Mordvins in the Volga-Urals region (2010 Russian census)

Latham (1854) quoted a total population of 480,000.<ref name=latham /> Mastyugina (1996) quotes 1.15 million.<ref name="EHR">Template:Cite book</ref> The 2002 Russian census reports 0.84 million.

According to estimates by Tartu University made in the late 1970s,Template:Citation needed less than one third of Mordvins lived in the autonomous republic of Mordovia, in the basin of the Volga River.

Others are scattered (2002) over the Russian oblasts of Samara (116,475), Penza (86,370), Orenburg (68,880) and Nizhni Novgorod (36,705), Ulyanovsk (61,100), Saratov (23,380), Moscow (22,850), Tatarstan (28,860), Chuvashia (18,686), Bashkortostan (31,932), Siberia (65,650), Russian Far East (29,265).Template:Citation needed

Populations in parts of the former Soviet Union not now part of Russia are: Kyrgyz Republic 5,390, Turkmenistan 3,490, Uzbekistan 14,175, Kazakhstan, (34,370), Azerbaijan (1,150), Estonia (985), Armenia (920).Template:Citation needed

Mordvins in Russia (1926–2021)
Census 1926 1939 1959 1970 1979 1989 2002 2010 2021
Population 1,306,798 1,375,558 1,211,105 1,177,492 1,111,075 1,072,939 843,350 744,237 484,450
Percentage 1.41% 1.27% 1.03% 0.91% 0.81% 0.73% 0.59% 0.54% 0.37%

Cultures, folklores and mythologies

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File:Etno Kudo Toramasj terdi DSC 0941.jpg
An Erzya ritual performance in Podlesnaya Tavla, Mordovia

According to Tatiana Deviatkina, although sharing some similarities, no common Mordvin mythology has emerged, and therefore the Erza and Moksha mythologies are defined separately.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In the Erzya mythology, the superior deities were hatched from an egg. The mother of gods is called Ange Patiai, followed by the Sun God, Chipaz, who gave birth to Nishkepaz; to the earth god, Mastoron kirdi; and to the wind god, Varmanpaz. From the union of Chipaz and the Harvest Mother, Norovava, was born the god of the underworld, Mastorpaz. The thunder god, Pur’ginepaz, was born from Niskende Teitert, (the daughter of the mother of gods, Ange Patiai). The creation of the Earth is followed by the creation of the Sun, the Moon, humankind, and the Erza. Humans were created by Chipaz, the sun god, who, in one version, molded humankind from clay, while in another version, from soil.

In Moksha mythology, the Supreme God is called Viarde Skai. According to the legends, the creation of the world went through several stages: first the Devil moistened the building material in his mouth and spat it out. The piece that was spat out grew into a plain, which was modeled unevenly, creating the chasms and the mountains. The first humans created by Viarde Skai could live for 700–800 years and were giants of 99 archinnes. The underworld in Mokshan mythology was ruled by Mastoratia.

Latham reported strong pagan elements surviving Christianization.<ref name=latham /> The 1911 Britannica noted how the Mordvins: Template:Blockquote

Religion

Template:Main Erzya practices Christianity (Eastern Orthodox and Lutheranism brought by Finnish missionaries in the 1990s) and a native religion.Template:Cn

National representative bodies

On 1 May 2020 the Aťań Eźem approved new system of national representative bodies. Statute on creation and functioning of national representative bodies of Erzya people consists of six chapters, describing aims and tasks of Erzya national movement, its governing bodies, their plenary powers and structure. According to the document, national movement directed by Promks – convention of delegates from Erzya political parties and public organizations. Convention forms Aťań Eźem, that is operative between Promks sessions and elects Inyazor, who presents Erzya people and speaks on behalf of all the nation. In the event that there are any legal limitations for creation and operation of national parties (such prohibition exists in Russian Federation nowadays), then plenary powers of Promks are carried by Aťań Eźem. The main objective of Promks, Aťań Eźem and Inyazor, is to provide and defend national, political, economic and cultural rights of Erzya, including right to national self-determination within national Erzya territories.<ref>Erzya approved structure of their national representative bodies http://idel-ural.org/en/archives/erzya-approved-structure-of-their-national-representative-bodies/</ref>

Genetics

Autosomally, Mokshas and Erzyas show homogeneity.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref> About 11% of their ancestry is Nganasan-like.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":0" /> This East Eurasian component is typical for Uralic-speaking populations.<ref name=":0" /> They also have high level of Steppe-related admixture, as it can be modelled to be about half of their ancestry.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Appearance

File:Erzya women.jpg
Erzya women of Penza Oblast dressed in traditional costumes

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica<ref name="EB1911">Template:Cite EB1911</ref> noted that the Mordvins, although they had largely abandoned their language, had "maintained a good deal of their old national dress, especially the women, whose profusely embroidered skirts, original hair-dress large ear-rings which sometimes are merely hare-tails, and numerous necklaces covering all the chest and consisting of all possible ornaments, easily distinguish them from Russian women."

Britannica described the Mordvins as having mostly dark hair and blue eyes, with a rather small and narrow build. The Moksha were described as having darker skin and darker eyes than the Erzya, while the Qaratays were described as "mixed with Tatars".

Latham described the Mordvins as taller than the Mari, with thin beards, flat faces and brown or red hair, red hair being more frequent among the Ersad than the Mokshad.<ref name=latham />

James Bryce described "the peculiar Finnish physiognomy" of the Mordvin diaspora in Armenia, "transplanted hither from the Middle Volga at their own wish", as characterised by "broad and smooth faces, long eyes, a rather flattish nose".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

List of notable Mordvins

Erzyans

Mokshans

«Почему Саранск? Мы мордва. Предки Василия Макаровича из Мордовии, мы знаем, что сначала они переселились в Самарскую область, а затем в Алтайский край.»

["Why Saransk? Because we are Mordvin. The ancestors of Vasily Shukshin came from Mordovia; we know they first settled in Samara Oblast and then in Altai Krai"]

</ref>

See also

References

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Bibliography

Further reading

Mordovia news

Mordvin toponymy

Template:Finno-Ugric peoples Template:Ethnic groups of Russia Template:Authority control

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