Bolshoye Seskino (in documents — Bolshoye Seskino) — a village in Dalnekonstantinovsky District on the Shishleyka and Kirmet rivers, formerly in Teryushevskaya volost of Nizhny Novgorod Uyezd.[1][2] Both leaders of the Teryukhan uprisings came from this village: Nesmeyán Vasilyev, who led the Teryushevsky Uprising of 1743, and Alekseyev Kuzma, whom the Teryukhans of the early 19th century called Kuzka-bog ("Kuzka the God").[3][4] In Erzya, the village was known as Poksh Seskevele.[4]
Origins of the village
A local tradition recorded in the village itself traces its founding to two Erzya brothers nicknamed the Seskins: they each chose a convenient spot in the forest about two kilometers apart, others began settling around them, and so Bolshoye Seskino and Maloye Seskino came into being.[5] Archival records about the village survive from the 17th century.[5]
The consolidated "Lists of Populated Places" describes Bolshoye Seskino as a privately owned village on the Shishleyka and Kirmet rivers and a pond, 64 versts from the uyezd town, on the left side of the highway, along the tributaries of the Ozyornaya River: 118 households, 243 men, and 306 women. The inhabitants belonged to the parish of two churches in the selo of Sarley — the Church of the Dormition and the Church of St. Nicholas.[1]
The village belonged to Countess de Saint-Priest, daughter of Prince Georgy Gruzinskiy: Teryushevskaya volost had been granted to the Georgian princes in 1700 and remained in their family's possession.[4]
| Entry | Value |
|---|---|
| Type | proprietary village |
| Location | on the Shishleyka and Kirmet rivers and a pond |
| Distance from the district town | 64 versts |
| Households | 118 |
| Inhabitants | 243 men, 306 women |
| Parish | Uspensky and Nikolsky churches of the selo of Sarley |
1743: Nesmeyán Vasilyev
When on 18 May 1743 Bishop Dimitry (Sechenov) ordered the burning of the Mordva cemetery near the church at Sarley, the inhabitants of Seskin were the first to confront the bishop's convoy.[3] Within a few hours, up to five hundred people had gathered at the Sarley ravine, armed with rifles, spears, arrows, and clubs.[3]
The uprising was led by an Erzya man from Bolshoye Seskin named Nesmeyán Vasilyev; his closest associates are named as Pumraz Semyonov, Shatres Plakidin, Kotryan Andryushin, and Druzhina Tsyanayev. Government troops delivered the decisive battle near the village of Lapshikha on 26 November 1743; the leaders were taken prisoner, and Nesmeyán Vasilyev was publicly burned at the stake in Sarley.[3]
Officially, the baptism of the volost (township) was completed by the mid-eighteenth century, but the old faith did not disappear: it persisted alongside the new one for another century and a half.[4][6]
…from the unbaptized village of Seskin, in a large gathering of unbaptized idolaters, armed with weapons and clubs, shouting their thieving war-cries, they carried out a robber's attack upon the convoy of His Grace
Kuzka-God
Half a century later the village produced a second leader for the Teryukhans. A serf named Alekseyev Kuzma, a forty-five-year-old potash worker, preached in 1808–1810 the imminent end of the age and the return of the Mordva faith — and with it the liberation of the Mordva from their masters and from their dues.[4][6]
He preached sitting in a tree in a sacred grove, while the rites were performed at a kerem (sacred grove shrine) near Maloye Seskin. The Nizhny Novgorod Criminal Court chamber convicted him, and he was exiled to Irkutsk Governorate; in the Teryukhan villages he lived on as Kuzka-God — a folkloric figure whose associated sites were still being pointed out to schoolchildren in the mid-twentieth century by the teacher Mikhail Zhukov.[4][6]
Keli, Kirmet, Molby
The names of the urochishche localities near both Seskins reveal what these places were before baptism. An onomastic survey of 1978–1980 recorded in Bolshoye Seskin a part of the village called Keli (Cells), and nearby a stream called Kirmet, a forest called Kuzmery, a stream called Shishlei, and a hill called Vshivaya Gorka.[2]
In the same record, Maloye Seskinо is listed alongside the forest and ravine called Molby, Mordovskoye Pole, the same Kirmet and Kuzmer, while the village itself bears a second, derogatory name — Chertovka.[2] Kirmet belongs to the same class as keреmet, a sacred site of Mordva prayer; Molby speaks for itself.[2][6]
Maloye Seskino was among the sites of the former Teryushevskaya Volost surveyed by a 2015 expedition: its finds — tools, weapons, horse harness, ornaments, ceramics — are on display at the exhibition "Mordva-Teryukhane: Evidence of the Past."[7]
The village today
Bolshoye Seskino remains a village of Dalnekonstantinovsky District; Erzya speech has been absent here for more than a century — the Teryukhane lost their language earlier than any other group of the Mordva, yet retained their rituals, costume, and distinct identity.[6][8]
For the Erzya of Nizhny Novgorod Region, this is one of the key points on the map: two uprisings within a single century came out of one village, and both were not about faith in the narrow sense, but about the right to live on their own terms.[3][4]
Sources
- nashipredki.com — NashiPredki — Village of Bolshoe Seskino, Nizhny Novgorod Uyezd: an extract from the compendium "Lists of Populated Places", parishes and archival documents (archive)
- opentextnn.ru — Otkrytyy Tekst — I. L. Mininzon. Onomastics of the Teryukhans (field notes, 1978–1980) (archive)
- dangralas.ru — Lapshikha: a compendium of materials on the Teryushevskaya Volost, with the Synod decree of 7 July 1743 and an essay on the course of the uprising (archive)
- ngiamz.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Museum-Reserve — A. V. Sorokina. "His stance was one of good deeds." Mikhail Vasilyevich Zhukov (archive)
- uistoka.ru — U Istoka — History of the village of Bolshoe Seskino (archive)
- vostlit.info — Russkoye Obozreniye — A. Titov. The Teryushevsky Revolt. No. 9, 1893: consistory promemorias and interrogation transcripts (archive)
- museum.unn.ru — Lobachevsky University Museum — Exhibition "Mordva-Teryukhane: Testimonies of the Past", 30 June 2017 (archive)
- opentextnn.ru — Otkrytyy Tekst — P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky. Sketches of the Mordva, introduction ("Russkiy Vestnik", 1867) (archive)