Nikolay Ivanovich Anoshkin (Erzya name — Anoshoñ Tumay; January 1948 – June 2021) was a Lukoyanov artist, wood carver, and local historian, founder of the Erzyanskoy Kultury Museum in Lukoyanov and the Erzya Ethnopark near the selo of Novosyolki.[1][2][3] He was born in the Erzya village of Sherstino in Gaginsky District and did not know a word of Russian until he was seven; for the rest of his life he devoted himself to keeping Erzya culture visible — carving wooden figures, painting pictures, and building a museum.[2][4]
The village of Sherstino and his first language
Anoshkin was born in January 1948 in the Erzya village of Sherstino in Gaginsky District, where only the Erzya Language was spoken. "Until I was 7, when the time came to go to school, I did not know a single word of Russian," he recalled.[2]
During the Soviet years he worked as a commercial artist and decorator.[2] His paintings would later depict the burial mound where the women of the Anoshkin clan had prayed; he himself believed that thanks to those prayers, all the men of the clan returned alive from the Great Patriotic War.[5] Sherstino is one of the Erzya villages in the south of the Region where the native language held on in everyday life longer than it did in school.[2]
The Museum That Wasn't
The idea for the museum was born during perestroika: together with director Mikhail Savlev, Anoshkin decided to assemble an exhibition about the Erzya in Lukoyanov. The museum opened in November 1992 at the District House of Culture; Savlev became its first director, and later Anoshkin took over the collection.[1][2]
He made the paintings, frames, display boards, and replicas of ritual objects with his own hands.[2] It is the only museum in the country dedicated exclusively to the Erzya; in time it became a branch of the Lukoyanov Museum of Local History.[2]
The founder himself acknowledged that the institution "is not properly valued by the local authorities": the collection spent years crammed into corridors.[2] For more about the museum itself, see the article on the Erzya Culture Museum.
Wooden Gods
Anoshkin's second endeavor is an ethnopark in the floodplain of the Shnara and Yezhata rivers, by a venerated spring near the selo of Novosyolki. The first sculptures were erected in the summer of 2010, the park was officially opened in 2012, and it has continued to evolve ever since.[3][6]
Anoshkin carved the figures together with his son Nikolay — also an artist and wood carver.[3][5] On a hectare of parkland rose images of the supreme god Ineshkipaz and his helpers, Vedyava and Viryava, a monument to the ancestors, inyzor Purgaz, Erzya Folk Heroes, and in the summer of 2012 — memorial plaques to ten heroes of the Erzya people.[3][6]
He worked neither on commission nor with public funding: year after year the park was built by the Anoshkins themselves and with money from fellow countrymen.[6] Once a year the park hosts the interregional festival "Erzyan Lismapryа", which Anoshkin also stood at the origins of.[6]
| What | Where and Since When |
|---|---|
| Museum of Erzya Culture | Lukoyanov, since November 1992 |
| Ethnopark sculptures | near the village of Novosyolki; the first ones — summer 2010 |
| Memorial to the Heroes of the Erzya People | ethnopark, summer 2012 |
| Paintings | private collections, Mordovian University, Fond spaseniya erzyanskogo yazyka (Fund for the Preservation of the Erzya Language) |
| Park sculpture carving competition named after him | Lukoyanovskiy District, since 2023 |
Paintings
He considered painting a matter of the soul and gave many works away. "The very first painting I ever made was a portrait of my grandmother," Anoshkin recalled. "I always painted for the soul — I gave many works to private collections, to Mordovian State University, to the Fund for the Preservation of the Erzya Language."[5]
In February 2018, for his seventieth birthday, he presented a solo exhibition of 65 works — portraits, landscapes, and still lifes — at the Lukoyanov Local History Museum. The central theme was his own people: figures in Erzya dress, sacred ritual sites, and the ancestral burial mound itself.[5]
He had no favorite painting — "the way a parent has no favorite child."[5] He spent the following winter painting new works for his second solo exhibition, scheduled for July 2021, but did not live to see it: he passed away in June.[7] Among his final canvases was one that stood apart — "The Sea," which the artist never got to see.[7]
Nikolay Ivanovich was not simply a local historian, but a man deeply in love with his home land, and with the culture and way of life of the Erzya people. He was a devoted champion, an ideological inspiration, and a treasure trove of knowledge
Legacy
The exhibition he had been preparing opened in July 2021 without him — it was opened by his son, Nikolay Anoshkin Jr. Family members, friends, and colleagues attended; Mikhail Bezaev, chairperson of the council of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Association of Finno-Ugric Peoples, spoke about the establishment of the museum and the creation of the ethnopark, noting that Anoshkin and Tatyana Fedoseyeva had been among the founders of the Lukoyanov festival of Mordva culture.[7]
The head of the culture department, Larisa Semyina, promised at the time to establish a wood-carving competition in the name of Nikolay Anoshkin — and the promise was kept. In 2023, the project "Heritage of the Ancestors — a competition of park sculpture carvers in memory of N. I. Anoshkin" won a regional grant; on July 12, a round table titled "Facets of Mastery" was held at the local history museum, and beside the Center for Cultural Development, masters from Nizhny Novgorod Region, Penza Region, and Mordovia carved new figures in front of the townspeople.[8]
The finished sculptures were taken to the ethnopark: on the bank of the pond stood Vedyava, the goddess of water, and beneath a spreading tree stood Viryava, the guardian of the forest.[9] Thus the park that Anoshkin began continues to grow at the hands of other carvers — and this is the finest form of remembrance for a man who carved his gods himself.[8][9]
Sources
- zem-nn.ru — "Zemlya Nizhegorodskaya" — Alexander Skopinsky. The Erzya: a close-knit people, December 20, 2012 (archive)
- nazaccent.ru — "Natsionalny Aktsent" — Anna Fish. At the sight of idols, shout! July 30, 2015 (archive)
- autotravel-nn.ru — Erzya Ethnopark in Lukoyanovskiy District: an open-air museum-ethnopark (archive)
- nnwelcome.ru — Tourist Portal of Nizhny Novgorod Region — Lukoyanov Museum of Erzya Culture (archive)
- lukgazeta.ru — "Lukoyanovskaya Pravda" — Larisa Steshina. A play of heartfelt colors, February 2018
- lukgazeta.ru — "Lukoyanovskaya Pravda" — Larisa Steshina. Ten eventful years: the history of the "Erzyan Lismapryа" festival, July 2020 (archive)
- lukgazeta.ru — "Lukoyanovskaya Pravda" — Larisa Steshina. In memory of a master, July 2021 (archive)
- lukgazeta.ru — "Lukoyanovskaya Pravda" — Larisa Steshina. A park sculpture carving competition is held in Lukoyanov, July 14, 2023
- lukgazeta.ru — "Lukoyanovskaya Pravda" — Larisa Steshina. "Lismapryа" gathers friends again: the XIII festival, July 29, 2023