Peoples of Nizhny Novgorod — the peoples inhabiting the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. The expression goes back to the appeal made by the zemstvo elder Kuzma Minin to his fellow citizens in the autumn of 1611 — "O, brethren and friends, all peoples of Nizhny Novgorod."[1] The peoples considered indigenous to the region are Russians, Tatars, Mordva, Chuvash, and Mari; according to the 2020 census, 3,119,115 people lived in the region, of whom 2,448,926 were Russians.[2]
Who lived here before the Russians
In the first half of the first millennium AD, tribes of the Merya, Muroma, Meschera, Mari, Moksha, and Erzya were taking shape in the area between the Volga and the Oka.[3] The Muroma, the Merya, and the Meschera had merged into the Russian population by the late Middle Ages; the Erzya and the Moksha survived as two branches of the Mordva — with distinct identities, literary languages, and notable differences in appearance and customs.[3]
The first mentions of the Mordva appear in Jordanes in the sixth century and in Russian chronicles from the eleventh century onward.[3] Large patriarchal families were headed by a kud-atya, clans by a pokshtay, tribes by a tyushta, and tribal confederations by inyazors and otsyazors; one of them, Purgaz, waged war against the Vladimir princes for these lands.[3]
Peoples of the Region
The Nizhny Novgorod Mordva are the seventh-largest regional group of their people in the country: Mordovia itself has 290,800, while the Region has 7,400 out of a national total of 484,500.[3] The Mari in the Region number 2,900, out of 423,800 nationwide.[4]
| People | Persons |
|---|---|
| Russians | 2,448,926 |
| Tatars | 26,685 |
| Armenians | 9,547 |
| Mordva | 7,432 |
| Ukrainians | 6,260 |
| Azerbaijanis | 5,041 |
| Chuvash | 4,584 |
| Uzbeks | 4,105 |
| Roma | 3,246 |
| Mari | 2,919 |
| Tajiks | 2,915 |
| Yazidis | 2,103 |
| Belarusians | 1,633 |
| Jews | 1,472 |
| Georgians | 1,077 |
| Moldovans | 773 |
| Germans | 552 |
Teryukhane
The Mordva-Teryukhane — an Erzya group who lived in the Teryushevskaya volost on the lands of what is now the Dalnekonstantinovsky District and partly the Kstovsky and Bogorodsky Districts — have a particularly distinctive history.[5] The first to draw attention to them was the writer and ethnographer Pavel Ivanovich Melnikov, known by his pen name Andrey Pechersky.[5]
By the seventeenth century, Russian peasants had begun plowing the vacant lands, the Mordva were transitioning from forest trades to grain farming, adopting Orthodoxy and gradually merging with their neighbors. Traditional dress was still worn here in the 1970s, but today only a small number of Teryukhane descendants remain, and those are almost entirely assimilated.[5] In 2015, an expedition from Lobachevsky University and the Dalnekonstantinovsky local history museum worked in Bolshoye Teryushevo, Margush, Tatarskoye, Makrashcha, and Maloye Seskin; the collected tools, jewelry, ceramics, shushpany, and embroidered cuffs were displayed at an exhibition in June 2017.[5]
In reference works, the Teryukhane are listed among the Russified local groups of the Mordva, alongside the Karatays of Tatarstan, who adopted the Tatar language.[3]
Mishar Tatars
The Muslim community of the Region is composed primarily of Mishar Tatars. Their roots are linked to several states of the Volga Region — from Volga Bulgaria and the Golden Horde to the Astrakhan and Kasimov khanates; the scholar Sergey Senyutkin describes the Nizhny Novgorod Mishars as an amalgam of several civilizational strata.[6]
Of the sixty Tatar settlements recorded for the seventeenth century, only 33 have survived as Tatar settlements within the boundaries of the present-day Region.[6] Among the oldest villages are Safadzhay, founded in 1451, as well as Petryaksy, Ovechiy Ovrag, and Murzitsy.[6] Today the Region has more than sixty mosques, the Medina publishing house, the Husain Faizkhanov Islamic Institute, and the Makhinur madrassa.[6]
Of the 60 Tatar settlement sites recorded for the 17th century, only 33 have survived as Tatar communities within the present-day Nizhny Novgorod Region.
The Vetluga Mari and Their Sacred Groves
Mari of the Region belong to the northwestern, Vetluga group of the people; they live in the northeastern part of the region, in the Tonshaevskiy, Tonkinskiy, Shakhunskiy, Voskresensky, and Sharangskiy Districts along the Vetluga.[4]
Surviving from pre-Christian beliefs are sacred groves known as kyusoto. More than sixty have been documented in Nizhny Novgorod Region: 26 sites in Sharangskiy District, 24 in Tonshaevskiy District, five each in Vorotynsky and Voskresensky Districts, and four Tipayevskiye groves in Tonkinskiy District.[7] Some of them were placed under protection as monuments of regional significance in 1996; in certain groves, rituals are still performed today involving offerings of bread, ritual scarves, and money.[7]
The Origin of the Expression
In the autumn of 1611, the zemsky starosta (elected community elder) Kuzma Minin addressed the Nizhny Novgorod residents with the words "O, brethren and friends, all the Nizhny Novgorod peoples."[1] By "peoples" he meant the inhabitants of the land — Russians and their non-Orthodox neighbors, who joined the militia together.[1] For more details, see the article Minin's Appeal.
to spare nothing, to sell our own homesteads, to pledge our wives and children, and to entreat whoever would stand up for the true Orthodox faith and become our leader
See also
Sources
- Vremya N — Four Centuries of the Exploit of Minin and Pozharsky. National Unity Day (archive)
- nazaccent.ru — National Accent (archive)
- bigenc.ru — Mordva — Great Russian Encyclopedia (GRE)
- bigenc.ru — Mari — Great Russian Encyclopedia (GRE) (archive)
- museum.unn.ru — Exhibition "Mordva-Teryukhane: Evidence of the Past" — Lobachevsky University Museum — Exhibition "Mordva-Teryukhane: Evidence of the Past" (archive)
- dumrf.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
- komanda-k.ru — Sacred Groves of Nizhny Novgorod Region — Mari Forest Walkers — 31.01.2017 — Komanda… (archive)