Pikshen, Pekshen (Erz. Pekshnya, Pikshnya velem) — an old historic village in the Bolshoboldinsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region, 5 km from the district centre, on the site of an ancient Mordvin settlement. A visit to Pikshen, with lunch and a demonstration of Erzya rites, is part of the programme for tour groups visiting Pushkin's Boldino.
From the point of view of the native Erzya, Pikshen consists of two streets: Verepe and Alope, and Kunshka tarka — the "centre of the village"; "Vere" — upper, "Alo" — lower, "pe" — beginning and end, "kshnya" — iron. Marvel at the Pekshnyansetne!
The choral ensemble "Chilisema" is active in Pikshen, and almost all the adult residents of the village take part in it; a museum of rural Erzya daily life and traditions of the 19th-20th centuries is being created.
The founding of Pikshen
The past of the village of Pikshen goes back deep into the centuries, perhaps into the millennia. Here, on the open ground by the river, was a convenient place for a small settlement.
The name of the village's founder has not come down to us, but it must be admitted that the decision he took was a wise one: he chose a site convenient in every respect. From a bird's-eye view the place looks like a person's right palm. The thumb is Kalmochey, the index finger is Palakslei, the middle finger, the longest of them all, is the river Echa, the ring finger is Syovonley, and the little finger is Chamashnoy. The village settled along the river, with the direction of the prevailing winds parallel to the row of houses. No hurricane is a threat to the village: the outermost houses shield it, as it were, with their own bodies, covering all those standing beside them.
There were a great many hurricanes in the 20th century. Old men (for example, P. K. Lyubayev) remember how a hurricane once tore the boy Tit Turshatov off the ground. He survived only because he was caught and tangled in the branches of a huge white willow standing nearby. But the most destructive "hurricanes" came from high-ranking officials. The village withstood that too.
The 1859 gazetteer published by the Central Statistical Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (ST PETERSBURG, 1863) lists "the village of Pikshen, on the river Ela, 53 versts from Lukoyanov". In all 122 households, 516 men, 595 women (children and old people were not counted at the time). There was no church then.
The climate of Pikshen
The village lies in a temperate climate conducive to longevity.
Daily life in Pikshen in the early 20th century
".. The move to the village of Pekshnya (Pikshen). The teacher and the pupils
"On 10 September 1907 the new teacher Anastasia Iosifovna Shilova arrives in the village of Pikshen to work at the parish school."
In those settlements that had churches with priests attached to them, the priests were regarded as the heads of the parish schools. In the village of Pikshen the head was my father. That is why, on the very first day she came to work, the new teacher came to us to present her appointment papers and to make our acquaintance. As Nastya recalls, and as I recall too, the new teacher came to us towards evening, when the whole family was in the dining room. We were having evening tea. Our family then consisted of five people: father, mother, myself - the 16-year-old eldest son, daughter Kleopatra, aged 10, and son Boris, aged 7. The second son, Alexander, aged 13, was studying at the church school in Pochinki and had already left for there.
Father looked through the teacher's papers and told her to begin lessons with the pupils at once. He acquainted her with the life and the needs of the population and introduced her to her pupils - his daughter Klena, a pupil of the third class, and his son Boris, who was entering the school. In conclusion, father wished the new teacher success in her work, and also said that the school and the teacher's apartment were heated with church firewood, and that the upkeep of the school (cleaning, stoking the stoves, washing the floors) would be done by the church watchmen, as had been the case before.
Our new acquaintance was invited to have tea, which she did not decline. On the whole we received her cordially, and that first meeting left a good impression in our family. Anastasia Iosifovna worked as a teacher at the Pikshen school for 16 years."
My future parents met during one of the hardest periods in my father's life. In May 1907 he, a 16-year-old youth, was expelled from the second class of the Nizhny Novgorod Theological Seminary - a secondary educational institution that trained priests. Such was the traditional path of the children of clergymen. They were to inherit their father's "occupation" and for that had to be educated at a theological seminary.
Nikolai began his studies at the seminary in the years 1905-1906. The seminarians did not stand aside from the revolutionary events. They began by convening an illegal congress of representatives of the country's theological seminaries and demanding changes in the order of instruction. During a search, the minutes of that congress were found on Nikolai. He was arrested for keeping illegal literature, since the congress had not been authorised by the government. Then he was expelled from the seminary, and expelled with a "wolf's ticket" (as they said in those days). This meant that he was deprived of the right to study further at any secondary educational institution in the country. He had to return to his parents in the village of Pikshen.
This village lies in the south of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. The population is Erzya. The people are hard-working and close-knit. They are engaged in farming. In the centre of the village there is a square, on which at that time stood a wooden church with a stone fence and two parish school buildings. At the end of the 19th century there were two such schools in the village - one for boys and one for girls, each with a three-year course of study. The boys' school was housed in a stone lodge. There were about forty pupils in all three classes. The girls' school was housed in a new building specially erected for it.
Across the road from the school, on the same square, stood the house for the priest, in which Mikhail Alexandrovich Podolsky lived with his wife Yekaterina Ivanovna (née Arkhangelskaya) and four children. Their house was wooden, large, with a terrace where in summer they dined and drank their evening tea. The house had a big garden with apple trees, cherries, blackthorn, plums and other berry crops, as well as an apiary and a bathhouse. My father's parents lived in this house from 1899 to 1930.
My mother came to this village in the autumn of 1907, an 18-year-old girl, to teach the peasant children of that remote corner. There had been few joys in Nastya's life. An orphan's childhood with a stepmother. During her school years, life among strangers. From the age of seventeen, an independent life and work in a remote Erzya village.
Mother recalled that when she began working she had only one change of underclothes and one dress. When her landlady invited her to wash in the bathhouse, she had nothing to change into. She had to put the same dress back on and wash the underclothes at once, and to do it so that the landlady would not see and would not tell people about the new teacher's poverty.
In Pikshen things were better as regards lodging. She lived in an apartment attached to the school. She also liked the family of the priest, who was considered the head of the parish school, that is, her superior. The pupils were almost all Mordvin children, but the teaching was conducted in Russian. Mother had to learn the Erzya language as well.
She strove to teach the children in a way that was both clear and interesting to them. She gave her pupils her knowledge and her best feelings — goodwill, attention, care, compassion for the poor and the destitute. And there were not a few poor children among her pupils. In flimsy clothes and shoes full of holes they came running to school even in the winter frosts, and mother warmed them in her room by the stove, with hot tea and with her kindness.
The teacher Anastasia Iosifovna Shilova among her graduates who had completed three grades of the Pikshen parish school.
An attractive young woman, neatly coiffed, in a light white blouse among the village boys, her pupils. Most of them have their hair cut "under a pot". For such a haircut a clay pot really was put on the head and the hair cut around its rim. The result was the simplest folk hairstyle. They are dressed in various ways. The boy sitting in front on the ground with inquisitive eyes is in a black shirt, his trousers tucked into boots. Behind him sits a pupil with bast shoes and white footcloths on his feet. These were wrapped around the feet instead of socks. Several are in zipuns — kaftans of coarse cloth. Two are in sheepskin (that is, made of sheep's fur) short coats without collars. Perhaps their fathers', for want of other clothing. For some reason there are only boys in the photograph, although parish schools had joint education of boys and girls.
Anastasia Iosifovna sits surrounded by her boy pupils. She wears a beautiful dark blouse with a large white collar. Her thick hair is braided into a plait wound around her head. The boys have pleasant, intelligent faces. They look on with curiosity. They are dressed in kosovorotka shirts belted with cords or narrow straps. One has a wide belt, evidently his father's. Most have their hair cut "under a pot". Beside the teacher stands a girl. This is Marusya, her younger half-sister on her father's side. From the age of four she has lived with her elder sister, because her mother (Anastasia Iosifovna's stepmother) had died.
Besides the school subjects, Anastasia taught the girls housekeeping — to cook food, to sew, knit and embroider; she read books aloud to them. And her pupils responded with attachment and love. Many years later, when we were living in Lukoyanov, I remember bearded men — mother's former pupils — calling on us. They had kept many fond memories of their time at school and of their teacher.
This connection was not broken almost until the end of mother's life. The last time mother was in Pikshen was in 1963 — she went by car together with father, Maria Viktorovna, Lyova and Natasha. She looked at her school. The building had survived. She called on her pupil Nastya (Nasta in Erzya). She met with other pupils of hers. They all recalled their school years with pleasure and said that mother had taught them so well that they still remembered everything. But today's pupils, their children and grandchildren, for some reason very quickly forget what they are taught at school. The last time mother saw Nasta was in 1972, when she came to father's funeral.
In appearance mother was a very comely young woman with curly hair and kind brown eyes. She was sociable, cheerful, a good storyteller, she loved and understood humour and joked herself. She read a great deal and was a splendid needlewoman. Every year she subscribed to the magazines "Niva", "Zhivopisnoye obozreniye", "Vestnik Yevropy", "Vestnik znaniy". These magazines came with supplements of collected works of the Russian classics. In this way she assembled a good library. After mother and father left Pikshen, this library remained with grandfather. In 1930 it was confiscated along with his other belongings.
Mother had a good ear and an alto (mezzo-soprano) voice. She played the guitar and the balalaika. When I grew older, I began to sing along with her. The two of us sang in two voices. I especially remember how mother sang the romance "Over the Blue Waves of the Ocean" to words by Lermontov.
While working in Pikshen mother received a salary of 7 roubles a month at first, and later 10 roubles. She lived very frugally. There was no help from her family. And when in 1908 her stepmother died (the second wife of her father Iosif Fyodorovich) and he married for the third time, mother, remembering her own orphaned childhood with a stepmother, took in her younger sister Marusya, who was not yet four. Semyon and Anna, who were older, stayed with their father and stepmother. She was a harsh and unkind woman. Anna told me how the stepmother would keep her at home instead of letting her go out and set her a large task of knitting stockings or socks.
And if she then found even a small flaw in the work, she would unravel everything that had been knitted and make her knit it all over again from the very beginning. Anyuta shed many tears. A few years later the stepmother died of cancer. She had no children. When she was gravely ill, my mother came and nursed her. Iosif Fyodorovich was widowed once again. Having outlived three wives, he never married again. Soon, in 1916, at the age of 60, he died.
Chapter 5. Anastasia and Nikolai
After his expulsion from the seminary Nikolai returned home to the village of Pikshen. He occupied himself with household matters and helped his parents with the farm. Together with his father he mastered beekeeping. He carried out meteorological observations. He read a great deal, including the magazine "Vestnik", intended for village teachers.
From Nikolai's "Autobiographical Notes":
"The teacher A. I. Shilova sometimes called on us together with her younger sister Marusya, whose mother had died, leaving three orphans. Marusya was four years old at the time. Anastasia Iosifovna took Marusya in and brought her to Pikshen. After the girl's arrival they began to visit us more often, since Marusya usually played with my younger brother Boris (he was three years older than she was).
The grown-ups meanwhile read newspapers and magazines, talked, and exchanged opinions about various events. In the summer of 1908 the idea finally took shape in my mind of sitting, that autumn, the examination for the title of teacher of elementary schools. In September, when lessons began at the school, I asked Anastasia Iosifovna for permission to attend her lessons at the school. In this way I acquainted myself in practice with teaching.
In October my father and I went to the town of Lukoyanov, where I successfully passed the examinations and received the title of teacher of public schools. Before long I had occasion to apply the knowledge I had acquired in practice. For several months I worked as a private tutor in the family of I. Ya. Peters, the owner of a farmstead in Lukoyanov uyezd. I taught his three children. The lessons went well, but were broken off because of disagreements with Peters's wife, a cantankerous woman.
In the winter of 1908-1909 I returned to Pikshen. As before, Anastasia Iosifovna called on us once or twice a week. It was then that we began to play cards, preference. We taught her too. Father understood the game better than any of us, mother played more weakly than father, and I played rather poorly. Nevertheless, the four of us played and so whiled away the winter evenings. Although we played for money, the stakes were so "small" that the losses and winnings over an evening did not exceed 15-20 kopecks on average.
After the winter holidays, in January 1909, I began calling in at the school in the evenings to see Anastasia Iosifovna. Together we read the magazine "Vestnik znaniya" and began to study the international language Esperanto. For me it was easy, since I had studied Greek, Latin and French, and most Esperanto words had roots borrowed from those languages. It was harder for Anastasia Iosifovna, since she had not studied foreign languages. But she too made good progress.
Once during our conversations I expressed the thought that it would not be a bad thing for her to raise her teaching qualification, and for that to set about preparing to sit the examination for four grades of a girls' gymnasium. That certificate gave the right to teach in an elementary school. I also offered my help in studying Russian and arithmetic. Anastasia Iosifovna approved of my idea, and we began our lessons. We studied once or twice a week until the summer holidays, and then in the new school year in the evenings at Anastasia Iosifovna's apartment."
Nikolai persistently strove to obtain a complete secondary education, so as to study afterwards at a higher educational institution. He learned about Ilyinsky's private real school in Nizhny Novgorod, which admitted all comers, including those expelled from state (that is, government) educational institutions.
In the autumn of 1909 he entered the fifth grade of this school (there were six grades in all).
From Nikolai's "Autobiographical Notes": "After the end of the school year at Ilyinsky's school I came home to Pikshen for the summer holidays and received a letter from Anastasia Iosifovna (she had gone to her father at the Batmas farmstead). She wrote that in the spring she had travelled to Arzamas, had there passed the examinations for the fourth grade of a girls' gymnasium and received the corresponding certificate. It was pleasant to receive such news, since it was I who had suggested to her the idea of sitting such an examination and I had also taken part, if only a small one, in preparing for the examinations. So our friendship began. In 1910-1911 we exchanged photographs."
These photographs have survived. On Nikolai's photograph is the inscription: "In token of friendship", 28 April 1911. On Anastasia's photograph is written: "I give this in memory of our friendship". 1910.
Anastasia is in a dark dress with a great many folds and a narrow strip of white lace showing at the top of the stand-up collar. Just as befits a strict teacher. But her eyes betray her kindness. On her neck is a chain, from which a small watch would usually hang. Anastasia had none. Its absence is neatly concealed by the size of the photograph. Nikolai is a handsome young man in a good suit and a white shirt with a high collar. He wears a pince-nez on a cord. His gaze is thoughtful, but firm..."
E. N. Podolskaya's memories of her mother
Poems about Pikshen
Пикшня велем
Авакай, корьмакай,
Монь Пикшня велем.
Кода монень паро:
Аштят икелем. Тон минек чачтымизь
Невтик маней чинть
Ды панжик эрямонь
Келей валдо кинть.
Мороюткось:
Эряк тон ламо пингеть,
Монь эрзянь вел ем.
Ды кадык лембе кедьсэть
Улезэ кедем.
Эрямонь кинть лангсо
Кастыть парт ломанть.
Ульнесть толсо-ведьсэ,
Но сынь эзть ёма.
Андыцянь-симдицянь
Шнамо лем кандат.
Масторсонть ломантнень
Тон кшиде андат.
Мороюткось:
Умонь шкасто Пушкин
Инжекс теть сакшнось.
Сон паро арсемат
Тонеть ёвтакшнось.
Ней пурьгинечиркесь
Циторды велькссэть,
Прок Изнямонь арка
Ашти менельсэть.
Мороюткось:
Эряк тон ламо пингеть,
Монь Эрзянь велем.
Кадык лембе кедьсэть
Свал эжни кедем.
Public opinions of the people of Pikshen
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It may be a coincidence, but in the Erzya villages of Permeyevo and Pikshen in the Bolshoye Boldino district strange things happened after the crosses were put up:
These actions will bring death to the villages; the residents of these villages still remember such examples, Mikhalko Maidan, Lvovka, Lobaski, Ivanovka, Pavlovka and so on, where schools and administrations were closed. Everyone is ready to make donations to churches, but who is ready to help the school? By putting a cross on the graves of your ancestors, are you not putting a "cross" on the whole Erzya people?... |
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The life of the Mordva as seen through the people of Pikshen
We reproduce here separate fragments of the book "Pikshen". The author is Vasily Nikiforovich Lyubayev (Kiryon Minkan Vasya), Sarov, 2009.
Pikshen is an old Erzya village whose inhabitants moved in the 17th century from the village of Arzhadeyevo (Orzhadeyevo), Karsun uyezd, Simbirsk Governorate. This direction of migration — from the south-east to the north-west — untypical for the Erzya in that period, may be connected with the wish of the Erzya community to settle once again near revered places. The majority of the Erzya who preserved their self-identity had earlier been forced to move east and south-east.
In the west, the border between the lands of the Erzya and the Moksha was considered to be the The Oka River; the northern border ran along the Oka and the Volga, the eastern one along the Sura, and the southern one along the boundaries of forests, steppes and ravines. At various times their neighbours were the Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans and Oghuz, and the Tatars. To the north and north-east their neighbours were the Mari (Cheremis). To the east, beyond the Sura, were the Chuvash and the Bulgars.
Dwelling
Research by Russian scholars has established that the original form of the permanent dwelling was the dugout type, which developed along the scheme: dugout - semi-dugout - above-ground log building. The last two types possibly developed in parallel. The most ancient and the simplest in plan was the single-chamber dwelling (kudo). The latter were rectangular log huts of various sizes and layouts, differing in complexity. It is essentially these that have survived to our own day: wooden, of log construction, on a post foundation.
Until 1965 the roofing material was straw. In many photographs taken by D.Ya. Diveykin in those years, surviving straw roofs can be seen. Until the beginning of the 20th century houses were heated in the "black" manner: stoves were built without chimneys for the smoke to escape; there was an opening a little below the ceiling, but the smoke could not escape through it completely, and double doors were made to draw it off. While the stove was being fired, the outer door (the full height of the doorway) was opened, while the inner one (half the height of the doorway) remained closed. Here is what a resident of our village, Milyaeva Evdokiya Evdokimovna, born in 1897, wrote: "My father's house had no chimney, and neither did the others: Bashaev Andrey's, Pepel Dmitry's.
The smoke came out into the room of the house. The family was large. It was cold in the house." And here is another account. The newspaper "Kolkhoznaya tribuna" of 25 November 1972: "Here, for example, is what Natalya Semyonovna Turshatova, a pensioner, says about those same houses: "In the old days the housing was plain and poor, the stoves were fired in the black manner: the smoke went out through the doors. In a hut like that thirty-five of us lived - from the oldest to the youngest. Five brothers with their wives, the father-in-law with the mother-in-law, and all of them with a heap of children. We slept on the floor, and in cold weather the livestock was kept right there too. We usually ate on the floor as well, because there was not enough room at the table".
Until the middle of the 20th century houses with shutters were to be found in the village, which is characteristic of Ukraine.
The religion of the Erzya and baptism
In M. Khramov's book "The Land Where Pushkin Visited" (p. 168) it is written that to the Pikshen cemetery the Mordva "from afar", from beyond the forest, "brought their dead to bury them together with their kinsmen"... It should also be said here that our stan was also called the Chukaly one. In 1629 Mordva from various settlements of the then Nizhny Novgorod and Ardatov Uyezd gathered at Chukaly with their wives and children to pray "over their forefathers". The suspicious Moscow government saw a political motive in this gathering and carried out a strict investigation. It turned out that this gathering was not the first: around 1580 the Mordva had also gathered at Chukaly. ...
Answering a question of the Nizhny Novgorod missionary committee about the composition of the population and the state of religiosity of his parishioners, the priest A. Raevsky reported in 1886: "The parish of the village of Pikshen consists of 1500 souls (735 men and 765 women) of the Mordva of the Erzya tribe, including 11 Russian families, who were resettled by the landowner some 80 years ago from the village of Pustoshki of Sergach uyezd, and part of them from his estate, the village of Gnezdilovo of Oryol governorate. These Russians have become Mordvinized and represent a kind of mixture of Mordva-Russians both in domestic life and in religious notions. The predominant language is Mordvin, and religious notions represent a mixture of Christianity, Mordvin paganism and Russian folk superstitions. Subsequently the said families completely became Mordvinized" (Mozharovsky A. "Russo-Mordva on Nizhny Novgorod Soil", "Nizhegorodskie gubernskie vedomosti" 1893 no. 36, pp. 1-3). ...
On the lands of Alatyr uyezd (the southern part of the present-day Nizhny Novgorod region) only two villages held out and were not subjected to Russification. And earlier almost 10% of the entire Mordvin population of the uyezd had been utterly wiped from the face of the earth by the troops and detachments of the feudal-serfowning government. F.I. Leontyev, sent to pacify the Alatyr Mordva by Yury Dolgoruky, reported to his superior: "in the Arzamas... and in the Ardatov uyezds on this (that is, the left) side of the Alatyr there are no bands of brigand people anywhere, and the Mordva of those... villages who fought with your, the great sovereign's, men of war hid themselves after the fight in those villages, and he, the counsellor nobleman and voivode, ordered those villages to be burned, and the brigand... people burned up in those villages". ("The Alatyr Mordva according to the censuses of 1624 - 1721", Saransk, 1936, Mordgiz.) ...
From the 16th century Orthodox churches and monasteries began to be erected on Mordvin territory, generously endowed by the tsarist government with water, arable and forest lands. A task was set before them: to carry out the baptism of the Mordva at an accelerated pace, and not only of the Mordva - to confirm the Chuvash, Tatars, Udmurts and Mari in the Christian faith as well. The process at times took on a fierce character. In 1656 the Mordva killed Misail, Archbishop of Ryazan, an assistant of Nikon; after this, decrees of the tsars were issued granting privileges to the Mordva in the case of voluntary baptism. From those who did not wish to accept baptism it was ordered to "exact payment from the non-believers remaining unbaptized in those places", and physical measures were applied: "mercilessly with rods, so that others should not dare to do the like in future". It had been noted before this that the newly baptized Mordva "are not firm in the Christian faith, do not come to God's churches and do not keep spiritual fathers".
Other methods were also applied that helped the cause of Christianization - namely the enlistment of priests who knew the Mordvin language. The people had a poor command of Russian, and besides, the Mordva did not want to have another religion. The Great Creator, the Almighty Sun-God - the Maker of all that exists, Ineshkipaz. The faith of the Erzya is entirely bound up with nature, with the surroundings in which a person lives. It is natural, logical and sensible. It dictates to a person such norms of life as make it possible to preserve harmony in everything. The land Mastorava was a temple for them. In the Erzya faith a human being is a free child of God, all people are equal and alike before God, he is in each of us, he is around us. This religion tolerates no intermediaries, it rejects a priestly caste. That is why the church that serves the authorities, and the authorities that serve the church, do not accept it. ...
The decree of 1740 laid down the procedures of baptism. The baptizing was to be done by special protopopes. The godfathers were to be "Russian people of old stock". It was prescribed to encourage mixed marriages between Russians and newly baptized Mordva. It was forbidden to give the newly baptized their former "pagan" names. Surnames were likewise assigned in the Russian manner, after the names of the Russian "godfathers", and those who persisted were driven into a river or a pond with the help of armed men, made to plunge into the water three times, and on coming out each had to approach the protopope present for "anointing with chrism". ...
More than 200 years have passed since the day the villagers were baptized, but the inhabitants have preserved some of the Mordvin names and nicknames, since they were easier to use. Mostly the nicknames bore the names of wild beasts, animals and birds: Surkan, Ozyazun, Chavkan, Kuyarun and so on. In Pikshen the pagan name Kobay has been preserved. ...
There were cases in Mordvin villages where the priests did not give the children royal names. The Mordva are not entitled to bear royal names, they believed. ...
However difficult the baptism of the villagers may have been, the bulk of them accepted Orthodoxy, came to know the names of the saints and to visit places holy for the Orthodox. Our forebears walked from Pikshen to Sarov, visiting the place where Seraphim of Sarov lived. There were people who lived by his rules in solitude and in the forest. ...
Not far from Zavidovka in a large forest (Oreshka vir), in a deep ravine where the water does not freeze even in winter, a monk of a comparatively young age lived in a dugout. In winter one of the Yastrebovs (their farmstead was there) discovered him and persuaded him to move to the village until spring. He put him up in a bathhouse. His toes were frostbitten, he was thin. He held out until spring, then went off somewhere. Nadezhda Ivanovna was still little, and remembered that the monk paid attention to the bathhouse where the women washed on Saturdays and showed an interest in them. ...
Burials came to be oriented in accordance with the Christian faith, with the feet towards the sunrise - the coming of Christ to earth from the east. In our time believers and non-believers are buried in the same cemetery. During the Great Patriotic War many crosses were sawn down, burned, and used as firewood by the inhabitants of the nearby houses. ...
To this day some inhabitants ask before their death to be taken into the forest to beg forgiveness of Viryava for having sometimes broken branches without need. Many women, setting off somewhere on business, say on leaving the house: "Atyat, babat pomogado, lezdado" (Grandfathers, grandmothers, help us, give aid). They say that it helps. Try it, turn to them more often, do not forget that in your family there lived hard-working, kind people. They, just as we do, rejoiced and grieved, and each in his own way turned to God, be it in the forest or at the cemetery with both hands raised. ...
The young N.A. Dobrolyubov, having visited the Mordva in Nizhny Novgorod governorate, wrote the following: "To keep company with boyars is honourable, with priests is holy, and with the Mordva, though a sin, is best of all". No, Father Nikolai, it is no sin. ...
The old people advise young people never to do harm to any religion, not to destroy temples and churches. History shows that this does not pass without a trace. Patriarch Nikon suffered at the end of his life, and the people of Pikshen who twice took part in dismantling the church suffered too. A neighbour's culture enriches his neighbour, and religion is a part of culture.
Clothing and adornments
As for men's clothing, the main parts of the male costume were the shirt and the trousers, which for everyday wear were made of unbleached hemp cloth, and for holidays of fine linen, and later of factory-made fabrics. They were trimmed with embroidery that bordered the neck and chest openings, the cuffs and the hem. In spring and autumn they wore the suman and the chapan. The buttons were wooden sticks about 30 mm long. Later fur coats appeared, which were worn without jackets and were made individually with an exact fit to the body, so that the wind should not get in. Caps were both of fur, covered with cloth on top, and, in summer, of hempen canvas.
Women's clothing (panar, palya, pokay) was far more complex than the men's, with a great deal of embroidery done in woollen thread (such as the collar, the sleeves, the hem, though a richly embroidered shoulder part was also common). An obligatory part of the traditional women's costume was the apron. It was worn both on ordinary days and on holidays. Some women born before the revolution wear them to this day. Belts knitted on needles were used. The outer clothing was likewise the suman, and later fur coats with gathers. The headwear is interesting: there is the forehead band (patsya konya), and the wreath of paper flowers, kerchiefs, bands, caps, coifs, cloths (prya rutsya), hair covers and so on. The main and traditional footwear was bast shoes (kart); in the spring flood wooden blocks, wooden slats, were fastened to them. The footwear was worn with woollen stockings and foot wrappings. In spring canvas stockings were put on. Later leather boots appeared, then rubber ones and leather footwear.
It should be noted that after the baptism of our forebears the appearance, the colour of the cloth and the cut of the clothing changed sharply. The nearness of Russian villages hastened the Russification of the villagers and hastened the change in the style of dress. In 1892, when V.G. Korolenko came to our village, no elements of Mordvin dress caught the eye, as they did in the neighbouring Mordvin village: "In Raksazhon, in the hut of the village elder, I saw a whole flower-bed of Mordvin women in fanciful Mordvin costumes...".
The ancient traditions of applied art in our village found their vivid embodiment in embroidery, sewing, in the making of adornments from beads, buttons, metal and shells, and in the artistic working of wood.
The main adornment of clothing, especially women's, was embroidery. Shirts, some kinds of outer open-fronted garments, headwear, aprons, hip adornments and so on were decorated with embroidery. The main colours were red and blue.
The girls exchanged experience and learned from one another, each trying to learn to embroider, spin and weave beautifully. The lads noticed this and were the first to court those whose thread was finer and more even, whose patterns were more beautiful and more intricate.
Farming
The implements for working the land, as among other peoples, were the saban plough and square four-cornered harrows, on which weights were sometimes laid so that they would go deeper into the soil. All these implements were made of wood; local blacksmiths made the iron shares and the mouldboard for them. Not everyone could make a saban plough, or a sukhovatka harrow, or a sokha (it was also called the Great Russian sokha). Sowing was done by hand.
The harvest was gathered mainly with sickles (tarvaz). The blade of the sickle usually had a serrated working edge and was 3 cm wide in the middle. These tarvaz were used right up to our own time. In some households they have been preserved; they are good for cutting nettles to prepare feed for piglets. The sheaves were put into stacks and ricks that were set up on the threshing floor. In summer there was no time to process them, but in winter there is the opportunity for it. The farmers Kuznetsov, Dokukin and Romanov (Tsaryok) worked in this manner, using the labour of the inhabitants of Pikshen.
For harvesting they used scythes with rakes. This is a very heavy implement; it was used mainly by men, and by very strong men. From time immemorial grain was threshed on threshing floors. For this, a layer of earth the thickness of the root system of the grass was removed with iron spades, the area was cleared, watered, sprinkled with ashes and tamped down so that the floor would not crack (chopped straw or chaff was added during the tamping). Sheaves for threshing were laid with the ears towards one another, and the threshing was done by hand with flails. The grain was cleaned when there was a wind, being tossed up with wooden shovels.
For grinding, hand mills and windmills were used. Hand mills were of two kinds: in some the upper stone was turned by hand, in others there were toothed gear drives, where it was easier and the output was higher.
Flour and grain were stored in barns, in large wooden bins and chests. In Pikshen there were barns where the community's grain was kept against a time of famine. In exchange, steelyards were used as scales; they were wooden, beautifully turned, or of iron. Farm produce was quite often sold by the measure - a wooden cylindrical vessel holding two buckets.
An important place in the economy was held by cattle breeding, animal husbandry and beekeeping. There was a horse in almost every family. It was the draught power.
The cow (skal) was raised for the needs of the household. There was no particular breed. As for sheep and goats, they were of white and black colouring. Pigs too were of the simple Russian breed; they were kept only where there was grain. There was a saying on the subject that if you have grain left over, get yourself a piglet. Our forebears raised chickens, ducks and geese (used mainly for the needs of their own families).
Several families kept bees. In her letter, Evdokia Evdokimovna Milyaeva, born in 1897, wrote that the Ivankan family (the Bogdanovs) treated people to honey and mead. My mother, born in 1908, used to tell that the Ivankan family had an apiary in the Sevonlei ravine. Cherry trees still grow there, the site of the little house has survived, and the purest water seeps out of the ground. According to her, the hives were hollow-log ones and stood outdoors all year round. At the end of July they would light the Russian stove in the little house, melt the combs in cast-iron pots and separate the honey from them, and that honey differed from today's honey in both taste and medicinal properties.
Everyone who sowed buckwheat tried to take land closer to the apiaries, knowing that a buckwheat flower lives for only one day, and that if no bee visits it there will be no grain and no good harvest; in some places the beekeepers were paid a little money for this. Old beekeepers say that the end of the world will be told by the behaviour of the bees. The bees will pass out of life before man does.
And here is what A. Smirnov, a scholar of Kazan University who studied the life of the Mordvins of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, wrote:
"Credit must be given to the Mordvins: they do not shun teaching their children to read and write, as the Russians do in some villages of Lukoyanov uyezd. The Mordvins are excellent householders: their grain always grows better than the Russians', their cattle are larger and better fed than Russian cattle. The Mordvins are good market gardeners: as soon as the wheeled roads open they are already carrying round the Russian villages the early green onion they have grown in their cattle sheds. In general it must be said that the Mordvins of Lukoyanov uyezd are a most agreeable people" ("The Land Where Pushkin Stayed", p. 39).
Crafts in an Erzya village
To store food and processed produce, our ancestors used vessels of clay and wood. Earthenware was bought at the market in Bolshoye Boldino. Craftsmen from Bolshoye Kazarino made all kinds of vessels from clay: cups, mugs, jugs, milk pots and even pipes, which were used for chimney flues. Much of the wooden ware they made themselves or bought when it was brought in from Semyonov. For processing foodstuffs they used grain grinders, mortars, troughs and so on. For churning butter they used the pivtem par; for preparing cabbage and for cutting up meat, cucumbers and mushrooms they used tubs and troughs. For gathering berries and mushrooms they used bark boxes and baskets.
For our ancestors the main crafts were of these kinds: working wood, wool and plant fibre. Wood went into making numerous household objects, utensils, means of transport and the wooden parts of tools. These were wooden spoons, salt cellars, wooden bowls, plates, buckets in which the water, especially in summer, stayed cool for a long time, the loom, the fittings for the loom, carts with wooden wheels, sledges, skis and much else.
A very complex and physically hard process is the spinning of wool. The technology of spinning involves a large number of devices made of wood. The loom itself and its fittings are a very complex creation of the masters. They were made by very talented people. On these devices they prepared fine threads from wool and hemp. Then they wove broadcloth and linen fabrics.
In our village the making of homespun cloth and linen fabrics came to an end after the process of dekulakisation, when everything was subjected to collectivisation and many masters of their trade were deported. The last time cloth was produced on these looms in the village was by my mother after the end of the war in 1947 - fabric for a coat, from which my father sewed coats for me and for my elder brother Mikhail.
After harvesting, hemp and flax were spread out on the meadows and kept like that for up to six weeks. Quite often the hemp was placed in ponds, but never in the river: the water goes bad and all the fish rot. Vatrakshprud pond mainly served this purpose.
In our village there are many people who were specially engaged in some kind of production.
Artistic woodwork is found in the village nowadays only among enthusiasts; it is used mainly to decorate houses.
Family and children
Right up to the 20th century the Mordvins had two forms of family: the large patriarchal one and the small individual one. The large family took in several generations of descendants in the male line together with their wives, and all of them lived together in one household, worked their fields in common, and ate and clothed themselves from common stores. The number of family members sometimes reached several dozen people. The head of the patriarchal family is the oldest man (pokshtya), the guardian of the whole economic order, while his wife is occupied with "purely women's affairs". Large families lived in several houses standing on one homestead in a common connection: Pyotr Ivanovich Yamushev and Andrei Ivanovich Yamushev, Andrei Ivanovich Lyubaev and Yefrem Pavlovich Lyubaev, Sergei Stepanovich Ruzavin and Semyon Stepanovich Ruzavin, and so on. After the death of the householder the families sometimes broke up into small ones, the division being carried out by the eldest son. In the small families features of the patriarchal order continued to be preserved, and there were cases of small families returning into large ones.
The Mordvins had a law of polygamy, though not like that of the Muslims. Regardless of his financial means, by ancient Mordvin custom the wife of a man who had died became the wife of his brother, who was obliged to care for his children as for his own. This is a very humane arrangement; the Mordvins always remembered that a child without a father is like a feather in the wind. The making of marriages was a matter not so much for the young people as for their parents, who paid attention to the property standing of the girl's family, to her industriousness, her health and her family tree. In our village many girls were taken from Starye Selishchi, Chukaly, Protasovo, Varmazeika, Petrovka, Roksashon, Aleksandrovka and Permeyevka, and girls from Piksheni were married off into those villages. All the marriages linking the villages came about mainly on the initiative of the parents and very often without the consent of the young people; this survived until 1925.
Special respect was enjoyed in our village, both earlier and after the war, by the midwife grandmothers. They are still remembered: T. I. Doronina, F. I. Svyatkina. Births usually took place in the bathhouse. All the inhabitants of the village were born in bathhouses. If it happened that a woman gave birth somewhere else, sometimes in the field during fieldwork, her child was without fail washed in the bathhouse. Perhaps that is also why the people of Piksheni did not steam themselves in Russian stoves, as in other villages, but had a bathhouse. Not everyone had the means to have a bathhouse; such families used their neighbours', and sometimes as many as 14 families washed in a single bathhouse.
Both in tsarist times and in the first half of the last century there were many children in village families, sometimes as many as 11 little ones. There were families where they turned to God to take one or two away. Children were born and grew up, there was no great watching over them, and they slept wherever they could. In every house without exception palatya - sleeping platforms - were fixed to the ceiling, and it was mainly the children who slept there. In this way the passages were cleared at night and in the early hours, since almost everyone slept on the floor. Each brother with his family occupied his own corner of the house with his little ones.
The smallest children were kept as far out of the way as possible in cradles hung from the ceiling. The palatya have survived to our own day at the house of Vasily Mikhailovich Kambaratov; the rest of the villagers tried to get rid as quickly as possible of everything connected with the old times and hurried to acquire the way of life of the new age.
In the Mordvin view, the choice of a lucky name was of great importance for the newborn's future fate. The villagers remembered that a name is a character, and a character is a fate. Before Christianisation the name in the village was usually given by the midwife or by the child's father, after baptism by the priest, and in Soviet times it was sometimes suggested at the village soviet while the birth certificate was being filled out. In 1933 Pavel Kirillovich Lyubaev, at the age of 14, helped to draw up birth certificates at the village soviet; there was no longer a priest in the village. One woman asked him to find a name for her daughter.
She was given the name Arina. A day later the mother came in tears and began begging for the certificate to be redone and the name changed: the old women had explained to her that in Piksheni there had lived a very poor woman, Syoman Orya, and that her daughter would follow in her footsteps. It turns out that Arina is the Mordvin name Orya. They began explaining to her that this name is famed throughout the whole of great Rus, that it was borne by the nurse of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, a kind, hard-working and wise woman. The woman kept repeating her own: "But she was not rich, she was only a nurse." And so the name had to be changed for her.
The little ones were looked after mostly by elder brothers and sisters and by the old men and old women. The most effective means of upbringing was to bring children into the working life of the family as early as possible. That was, after all, the right thing. Different families had all sorts of approaches to raising the young, and this was not only the father's boundless power over the children but also the influence of the father's authority. In the family of Terenty Semyonovich Bogdanov (30 people, the Ivankan family) the women prepared breakfast for the men in the morning. The most nourishing food was put on the table, tastier than that for the other members of the family, since the men were going off to heavy work that lasted from daylight until dark. When the children got up and the infirm members of the family woke, the women set another table for them and for themselves. Boys of 10 or 11 tried to wake earlier, to sit down at the father's table and to go off to work with the men; they felt themselves to belong to the male half.
Cookery
Our ancestors used mainly the produce of their own households: bread and various kinds of baked goods from unleavened and leavened dough with various fillings. The fillings used were potato, porridge, cabbage, onion, carrot, mushrooms, fruit, berries from the garden and from the forest, and on the great feast days meat and fish. The favourite dishes of our ancestors were pancakes, home-made noodles and shchi. There were different kinds of shchi (kapstayam), soups (vetsayam) and fish soup. Before the potato appeared, a great deal of turnip was eaten boiled, which L. N. Tolstoy was very fond of. From oats, peas and rye they made kissels. From hemp and flax seed they obtained oil (kansyuro lem). There was an oil press in the village, and more than one. An important place in our ancestors' diet was held by meat, milk, eggs and fish.
Of the drinks, the most widespread was pure, made from granulated sugar or honey; it was brewed in our village too. The recipe was as follows: boiled water was poured into small oak barrels (30 litres in volume), granulated sugar was added along with yeast and hops, the bung was driven in very tightly, and after 16 days, when the fermentation had finished, it was carefully opened. The pure is ready.
Mordvin braga was considered an ancient drink. The process of making braga is very complex and laborious. It was made in large tubs. It had its degrees of strength. We children, having had our fill of skiing, would come home and, instead of shchi, liked to eat braga with black bread. In the tub it always had a head of foam. Grown men after big celebrations would with great pleasure polish off the thickest part of the braga (the lees), all but licking the walls of the tub. Among the non-alcoholic drinks kvass (poza) was widespread. The technology of making it is simpler.
Attitudes to food, the ways of taking it and the technology of preparing it are various, and they fall as it were into periods: before the baptism of the Mordvins, after the baptism and in modern times.
During the sacrifice at the "molyans" the best part of the meat was offered to the gods: "As soon as the animal has breathed its last," wrote V. N. Maynov, "the leaders of the sacrifice cut off its tongue and its loin and burn them there and then under the sacred tree. The rest of the meat they put into cauldrons and boil without any seasoning, and divide among all the participants of the molyan." From far off there came down to us a dish, selyanka, which is considered a national dish. In Saransk, at the Natsional restaurant, this dish can always be ordered. The secrets of making selyanka have been preserved and enlarged upon by Galina Grigoryevna Lyubaeva; while she is making it the whole neighbourhood is filled with the magical smell of selyanka.
Some baked goods, however, were taken up after conversion to Christianity. Thus, on 9 March they baked "larks", and on the Wednesday of the fourth week of the fast, "crosses". At the Ascension they made flat cakes on which crosswise stripes were marked, symbolising a ladder. At Shrovetide they baked pancakes. As children we would climb onto the roof of the house with these "larks", showing them to the sun and waiting for the birds, the larks, to appear from the south; the winter was so very long and had grown wearisome, and we wanted spring to come sooner.
A special place at the "molyans" was given to the fried-egg dish. It was cooked at home and the women took it to the cemetery. This tradition has survived to our own day. Eggs were considered a symbol of fertility.
Pure was a ritual drink and was invariably part of the sacrificial food during the "molyans". Sacred pure was made from a mixture of honey, hops and barley, which was brewed like ordinary beer.
Festivals
The inhabitants of Piksheni are very rich in festivals, which fall as it were into groups: pre-Christianisation, Christian, Soviet, occupational and patronal ones.
Mordvin folk festivals were most closely bound up with economic activity, they were timed to the agricultural calendar, and many of them remained and were kept by our ancestors even after baptism, the ritual of the festivals holding firmly in the life of the people.
The beginning of the festivals was held to be the time when the sun began to rise higher and higher, when it begins to give warmth, and this is none other than the Christmas festivals (Roshtuvan prazdnik, Roshtuvan kudo). By the calendar this is 25 December, when the Catholic church marks the Nativity of Christ. With us this festival gradually shifted to 6 and 7 January, when the villagers began to mark the birthday of Christ in church. Both in those years and now, the people marked these festivals with songs and merry games, with animal masks, especially bear ones, with fortune-telling and carolling.
Many festivals belong to this season: New Year, Christmas, Epiphany, Shrovetide. Here there are fir trees, riding in horse-drawn sleighs, bathing on the eve of Epiphany in the ponds. To this day the people of Osinovka bathe in the icy water at Epiphany near the house of Ivan Vasilyevich Lyubaev.
Before Christianisation, on the day of Epiphany people drove Shaitan out of the community, the one who kept them from living in peace; they drove him out with noise, with blows on the walls of the house and on metal objects, and with fire. Many bonfires were burnt in the village.
Epiphany, the day of the baptism of Jesus Christ according to the Christian faith. It means going to church, it means that in every house the lamps were lit before the icons, that grown-ups and children prayed in the morning, and it means the festive table.
Shrovetide is the last festival of winter. The sun warms more strongly, spring is coming to take winter's place, people drive out the winter. In earlier times this festival was held on Shrovetide hill. People rode down the hills and played games. On these days they baked pancakes and treated one another to them. Nowadays the children are given rides on horses, merry games and jokes are organised, and a straw figure is burnt. In our time we made the festivities for ourselves. The most convenient place for them was Osinovka, where from the melting snows ice often formed on the hill. Simple roundabouts made from a cart wheel, sledges and levers. As they spun they picked up great speed, and few of us could keep our seat on the sledge.
Maslenitsa is the end of winter and the beginning of the Great Lent. From that moment on, no dish containing products of animal origin appears on the table in a peasant house. For all seven weeks the peasant table holds meatless shchi, potatoes without butter, plain porridges, cabbage with cucumbers. Tomatoes began to be planted in Piksheni in the 1960s. From that day milk was collected in large wooden vats kept in the cellar, chapamo lovso was made, sour cream was churned into butter and handed over to the state. This is the hardest time for the growing generation.
Fist fights
We have lost an ancient tradition - the fist fights. The "Mordvin fisticuffs" took place in Piksheni on the day of Maslenitsa, and in other Mordvin villages and settlements twice a year, including on the day of Holy Trinity. The "Mordvin fisticuffs" are still held today in some Mordvin villages of the Penza region.
In Piksheni the fist fights took place in the middle of the village. The battleground was the boundary that ran from the house of Alexander Mikhailovich Marfin. Children began, then the adults joined in under the supervision of the "watchers". The Mordvins had a code of honour: no hitting below the belt, do not touch a man who is down, use nothing but your fists. God forbid one of the opponents should put something other than fists to use - that lad would be in serious trouble. The fight ended by mutual consent of the fighters. It could be stopped at any moment by raising a hand or at the discretion of the "watcher".
There was the notion of "wall against wall": the men living in Verepe against the men living in Alope. The Osinovka men did not take part on either side, only enthusiasts joined in. It was said that men lived in the village who were forbidden to strike with the right hand, because blows from it had caused deaths. After the fights there was no question of any anger or of deliberately smashing someone's face, nor could there be. Right up to the next Maslenitsa the talk was all about the skilful fist fighter.
People's memory has kept the names of residents who stood out for their particular strength and agility; they bore the nickname "bukan konya" (bull's forehead) - Mikhail Yamushev (Tilkin Misha), Sergyon Tosha, Semon Filya. After these men performed, the site of the fight would begin to shift towards Lenin Street, sometimes reaching almost the end of the village. It is hard to imagine how the men of that street felt. Adrenaline fills the whole soul. How could one not come out and help one's own lads!
Seasonal customs
The spring-summer cycle is also rich in customs:
Palm Sunday is the time of nature's awakening; people and livestock were struck with willow branches - so as to rouse in every living organism the processes and forces of growth and movement after the winter sleep.
Easter is one of the main Christian holidays, in Mordvin Inechi (the great day). On this day the Mordvins held a commemoration of their ancestors, asking for help in obtaining a good harvest and for people and livestock to be kept from illness and every evil. It is said that the Mordvins celebrated this holiday even earlier - these are the days of the equinox, after all. It was precisely in this period that the sun began to warm more strongly, nature came into bloom, and the sowing began.
In Piksheni a great many people always gathered near the church. The adults, mainly women, rolled eggs. Fried eggs were one of the main dishes of the ritual meals; during the meeting and seeing-off of Easter the women went to the graves with fried eggs.
In the morning very rich food appeared on the table: eggs, fried eggs, meat soups, shchi, potatoes with butter. After a seven-week fast, taking such food put the body completely out of order. The desire was to make up for lost time as quickly as possible.
The children got up very early and went to collect eggs. In every house the doors were open. During the war there was poverty, there were no hens; in some houses they gave sweets, here and there dried sweets made from red beetroot, and elsewhere simple home-made pies. On that day the teachers forbade the pupils to collect eggs. On the day of Epiphany candles and lamps burn in every house before the icons. For that day everyone tried to get the children something new, to buy a shirt, trousers or shoes. In those days very merry games went on in the large thawed patches and meadows: lapta, catch.
All the games were of a mass character, and here the children acquired very valuable qualities: agility, running speed, dexterity, endurance, the ability to win and the ability to bear the feeling of being defeated, the ability to give this or that piece of information or a signal to the team members in time, and one had oneself to hit the ball with the bat and send it as far as possible, to create the conditions for the team to win. People say that in Great Rus every three-hundredth woman gives birth to a famous commander, but the trouble is that these qualities do not always show themselves out of the environment in which a young man grows up. The games that existed in the villages fostered the development of commanders' talents. In the country's history the greater part of the talented commanders came from rural areas. In the village, in games, they gained the first skills that helped them become such.
The last great holiday of the spring cycle was Trinity. By this time the peasants finish the sowing. In earlier times the Mordvin peasants prayed in these days and asked Ineshkepaz for rains, for the shoots to come up evenly, for the birds not to settle on the fields and destroy the seed. Before Trinity the carpenters repaired the log frames of the springs and repaired the dams. The Osinovka girls and lads went to the felling ground, brought back soft lime branches, dressed a girl from head to foot in these branches and, with songs and games, went along the rows of houses, sticking tree branches into the window frames of the houses.
One case, or example, is interesting: how the rules of conduct during Christian holidays entered the consciousness of our residents. This story was told by Ekaterina Stepenovna Ruzavina: "The Ruzavins' bathhouse stood on the bank of the river almost on the spot where the bathhouse of Sergei Nikolayevich Vildyaksin stands now. It was roofed with straw, and instead of plank floors there was also straw. There was straw on the floor of the entrance room too. The men washed, then the children, and after the bathing procedures the women. Such was the order, and it still exists today. We lived poorly, some women had only one dress in all. During the washing they would launder it, hang it to dry, and after the bathhouse put on clean clothes.
The women washed in the bathhouses for a long time. And wouldn't you know it! The straw in the entrance room caught fire, the roof caught fire and the bathhouse too. The women, sensing smoke and seeing flames, jumped out of the bathhouse and ran to the river; there was not so much water, but they tried to hide in it what they had, or to press themselves against the bank until someone brought them something to wear."
It was only then that they realised they were washing on the feast of Elijah's Day. In Piksheni no one ever arranged bathhouses on these holidays. Nowadays everyone has rushed to the churches, it has become fashionable. Everyone is told that one must not work on holidays. Our grandmothers used to say that while a service is going on in church it is best not to work. Life does not stop; everything that is done on weekdays must be done on holidays too, but with a small change.
Rules of hunting, fishing and gathering
Our ancestors made use of the forest's gifts, gathering mushrooms, berries, wild apples and nuts. They hunted, using pitfall traps, various snares and traps. In the 19th century hunting guns appeared. Large forests grew in our area. My grandmother told me that bears were once found in our forests, and it has also been preserved in memory that some local hunter went hunting with his dog and his gun. Suddenly a bear attacked him, knocked the gun aside and began to maul the hunter. The dog threw itself at the bear and drew the threat onto itself. Freed, the hunter ran away, leaving both the dog and the gun in the forest. He came home, exhausted, and lay down on the porch. After a while the dog returned, all wounded, its hide in shreds, and, seeing its master asleep, threw itself on him and strangled him. "For hunting the Mordvins specially kept borzois or hounds. In winter he deliberately sets out to hunt and course hares, foxes, wolves..." ("Mordva", p. 71).
Today everything has changed. Man, willingly or unwillingly, destroys the fauna, forgetting that the Almighty Lord, or Ineshkipaz, laid upon man the duty to preserve and increase everything around us. Decades of the wrong use of fertilisers have wiped out the stone loaches and gudgeons in the river. We used to catch them with a home-made rod. The hook was made from copper wire, there was no fishing line but an ordinary white thread, the float was of wood, and the rod handle of hazel. The small fry took the worm eagerly. Compare that with modern rods - even with them we cannot catch fish.
On the steep banks there were many sand martins' nests; the bats have vanished and been destroyed, and the swallows are not to be seen. These birds caught flies and mosquitoes, of which there were fewer than there are today, and some of them carry diseases.
The generations of people who lived before us helped animals and birds survive; if man had not destroyed them, they would have survived on their own, they are made that way by nature. I was fortunate to live about 25 years with my grandfather, while others' grandfathers died of hunger in the famine year of 1944. I shall never forget how he scolded my brother, Ivan Nikiforovich, for not leaving a single cluster of rowan berries for the birds in the autumn. We always prepared rowan for the winter. All our lives we leave fruit on the fruit trees, on the upper branches of the garden, for the birds. Today hunters can stack hay in the forests, prepared in summer, for the elk; for the wild boar, wolves, foxes and hares they can clean out the springs - one could give many examples of how to help them survive and breed actively. Today's hunters (and they are not from our village) use everything possible for hunting: "Buran" snowmobiles, and mobile telephones, and electronic fishing rods. Tomorrow micro-aircraft with video cameras will come into use: what is used for military purposes will be turned on the animals. Nowadays no hare tracks are to be seen in the snow in winter.
The bears disappeared long ago, the forest has been cut down over large areas, and for this reason no owls are to be seen either. Our forests are joined to the Sarov forests, where bears are still found today.
"Saving culture is one more business of business" (Birzha, No. 8 of 9 March 2011)
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In 2010 the Nizhny Novgorod Region created and managed to register more than 1500 items of intellectual property, yet only a handful are in use — such was the governor's complaint at the recent gathering of business captains at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. And shortly before that, lending Valery Shantsev's forthcoming statement a symbolic character, the roof of the Museum of the Nizhny Novgorod Intelligentsia at 127 Gorkogo Street went to pieces: under the weight of snow and underfunding, the ceiling collapsed in the building of the only typological museum-apartment of the Russian intelligentsia on the planet, covering the more than modest furnishings of this sanctuary of Nizhny Novgorod thought with the marks of desolation. The age offers the business community an unambiguous conclusion: following an old Nizhny Novgorod tradition, take the faltering cause into your own hands. Is investing in culture (rather than, say, in boilers running on wood pellets) a profitable occupation for small and medium-sized business?
A working model of the total integration of the cultural, governmental and business communities, producing a mutually beneficial public resonance, was proposed by the "Nizhny Novgorod Encyclopedia" in January 2011 together with the business community of the Erzya village of Pikshen, which is part of the tourist route of Bolshoye Boldino. Our correspondent attended the expert round table — the finale of an unusual content festival devoted to the thematic Week of the Peoples of Nizhny Novgorod. Journalists learned about the open "Nizhny Novgorod Encyclopedia" — an innovative way of accelerating the region's information exchange in keeping with the standards of the European Union and Encyclopedia Dramatica — on 30 April 2010, after listening to a short address to the Nizhny Novgorod Press Club aboard the motor ship "Georgy Zhukov". At that time, with the support of the regional portal "NNOV", the work of the "Nizhny Novgorod Chronicles" team was released into open access — a free encyclopedia, expanded from a regional standpoint and allowing anyone to edit its material. Before that the team had worked behind closed doors, monitoring regional memes — stable units of information from which the structure of regional meanings was later to be reconstructed. The work continues to this day without state or overseas investment, and it is going briskly. Six months ago the encyclopedia was known only to the "spiders" of Yandex and Google; now it has appeared at the "Rossiya Edinaya" forum, is gathering material and connecting experts in remote corners of the region. "Our experts are chiefly businessmen and unique specialists who invest insider information into the encyclopedia," says the project's founder Sergey Dresvyannikov. "The task of a regional wiki is to reflect what is alive in the life of the region in a single publicly accessible body of information, to reveal the coordinating meanings (which is why our articles begin with the heading 'The essence of the phenomenon') and to identify effectively operating clusters of 'implementers': communities, institutions, simply skilled people, patriots of their land — and, I stress, genuine professionals — in order to bring their capabilities and commercial offers together in a single catalogue. An understanding of the real state of affairs — what for, to whom and why one can turn in the region in practical terms — gives life in the wellness style; this subject concerns business, and this subject is itself a business." The traffic of the encyclopedia's site can be monetized through banner advertising among a premium audience. We are in the "Stary Teatr" café. The winner of the recent "Week of the Peoples of Nizhny Novgorod" competition — the witty, thoughtful chronicler of his native historic village in the Bolsheboldinsky District, author of the three-hundred-page biographical book "Pikshen", Vasily Nikiforovich Lyubaev (in the Erzya language — Kiryon Minkan Vasya) — came not so much for the first prize, a mobile telephone with a GPS navigator, as to share the experience of Pikshen self-government. From the experts' questions there emerges a picture of a community living in the wellness style, staying true to itself both in the city and in the countryside. Among the guests of the Encyclopedia's experts were the head of the administration, the head of the library, the singer of songs in the Erzya language Lyubov Doronina, and the businessman and builder Yury Kuzmich Turshatov, who lives in Nizhny Novgorod in an original tower-style house and who helped publish the book and promote information about traditional Mordvin culture in various media. The guests are accomplished people who carry themselves with dignity and form a social network of Pikshen natives — how unlike the average torn and humiliated village stripped of its traditional culture! The evening's guests and the experts are greeted by friends of the Encyclopedia — OAO "Karavay": the director and the head of the marketing department. A cake in the shape of a lamb appears on the table. "We support culture because everything begins with bread," says Elena Grigorenko. "Bread itself is the image of all traditions taken together and their beginning. Every event takes place around the loaf — festive ones and sorrowful ones alike. Over the past four years we have taken part in various events, but we are very fond of museums: the Museum of Folk Arts and Crafts on Pokrovka, the museum at Shchelokovsky Khutor — it is alive, something is always happening there, people get unique experiences there that you cannot get anywhere else. And in Pikshen everything is even more alive. People there live as if in a museum. I have visited various countries and noticed how well they preserve their traditions. What appeals to me is that in the streets of Tokyo, for example, you can see women in kimonos getting into modern vehicles against the backdrop of all those highways. You look — and a shiver runs through you. And in the park there are many such women, and it is not a demonstration but life. You get the feeling that you have been carried in a time machine from the 21st century into the 16th, the 18th, the 12th... That is why I would very much like our own national character and centuries-old traditions not to stand in the way of progress either. The second winner of the competition is Valentin Zelenov, a resident of the village of Vladimirskoye on Lake Svetloyar. He reported a great deal of information about Mari culture and the arrangement of the sights around the lake, and drew attention to the optical theatre being built in Vladimirskoye. (The encyclopedia's article on this subject may now be called the most detailed on the Russian internet.) He was unable to come to the general celebration. His prize — fireworks — will be delivered by the Encyclopedia's delivery service. EXPERT COMMENTARY Zinoviev Alexander Yuryevich, psychologist, full member of the All-Russian Professional Psychotherapeutic League, expert of the "Nizhny Novgorod Encyclopedia": The influence of ethnic culture on society should be all the more weighty the further we move into the information age. Taking part in rituals delegates to the young an enormous responsibility for representing their kin worthily. To the people of Nizhny Novgorod I would recommend trips to visit the Pikshen cultural centre, to the Pushkin places. A journey into a healthy society, into an integral social space of positive emotions, may become a factor that will help the people of Nizhny Novgorod cope with ever-increasing stress. The main psychological role of a journey is a radical change in a person's inner state. It is a trip in search of the spirit of freedom and justice. Alexey Groza, director of the "Voskresenskoe Povetluzhye Nature Park" nature park, expert of the "Nizhny Novgorod Encyclopedia": Settled by the Mari, the Old Believers and free rivermen, Povetluzhye was called by Lomonosov one of the most mysterious places of the Russian Empire. And Lake Svetloyar has always served as the keeper of the "radiant city", while the settlement beside it (until the 17th century The Lyunda River, now Vladimirskoye) played the role of a crossroads of spiritual traditions. The history of this is shown by our museum and educational complex "Kitezh Rus". The process I record here is the transition from mythological, pre-Christian thinking to noospheric thinking, in which a human being is part of reasonable nature and is subordinated to it. True, today's demoralization of society shows us a different model. But we know that Russians will get through this time as well. As the issue went to press... The authors of the "Fairytale Map of Russia" project, who are trying to establish the birthplaces of fairy-tale characters, have determined the homeland of the Golden Fish — it turned out to be the village of Bolshoye Boldino, lost among the boundless fields of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, the NTA "Privolzhye" news agency reported on 17 February. It was here that Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin wrote the well-known "Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish", and here too that he wrote — or, as they say, wrote down from the legends of the Erzya — more than fifty other well-known works, including "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel". Following the Ulyanovsk governor Sergey Morozov, who declared his region the homeland of Kolobok, the ideas of the ethnohouse have won the favour of the governor of the Kirov Region Nikita Belykh, who noted a few days ago in his internet blog that "the Vyatka Kikimora will become another regional brand". The Arkhangelsk Region has been recognized as the homeland of the Snowman and Ivanushka the Fool, the Sverdlovsk Region as that of Danila the Craftsman, and the Tyumen Region as that of the Little Humpbacked Horse. According to the project's head, Mr Kozlovsky, in terms of its fairy-tale and tourist potential the Nizhny Novgorod Region could become the most popular and recognizable in the country. "All the more so since the plans of the local authorities are already known. To attract tourists they intend to build in the Bolsheboldinsky District a 'City of Pushkin's Fairy Tales' with a complex of attractions based on the classic's works, a children's theatre and a 'Golden Fish' water park." |
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Authentic Pikshen tales about UFOs (Komsomolskaya Pravda in Nizhny Novgorod)
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On the first night the author of these lines managed to capture only three multicoloured rays coming from a strange luminous point.
On the second night the camera captured "dancing ducklings" gradually turning into zigzags. On the second night the camera captured "dancing ducklings". <..> Before leaving Pikshen, our correspondent was struck by how matter-of-factly the local pensioners speak about UFOs. Many of them wake up before the morning glow and so become eyewitnesses of strange phenomena. — UFOs usually appear here in the east, shortly before dawn, — Raisa Turshatova told our correspondent. — In the still-black sky there hangs a ball of fire, which sometimes moves from side to side. In our village they have already made up a tale that a year before the end of the world a ball of fire will hang in the east. On the last day of humanity, aliens will arrive on that ball, put all the earthlings inside it and take them away to their home. Those who tell this are convinced that the tale was invented not by local idle talkers but by the Maya Indians many, many centuries ago. |
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Pikshen village
- Pikshen telephone code: 83138
- OKATO code: 22209824000
Excursions
Interesting facts
- Pikshen lies along the Echa River, but there is no such word in the Erzya language. One can, however, speak with complete confidence of an Erzya name for the river, now lost: Elelei. Compare other names near the village — Selelei, Salyalei, Elelei and Vele (village) in Erzya: very close and even logical.
- If one considers the distance between the Kalmochei cemetery and the village, the conclusion suggests itself that the first settlers stopped where the centre of the village now stands.
- Lyubaev Vasily Nikiforovich (Kiryon Minkan Vasya) compiled and, in 2009, with the support of T. F. Gorshkov, M. V. Terentyev, M. I. Turshatov and Yu. K. Turshatov, published a 268-page book about Pikshen (UDC 947.1(471.341), BBK 63.3 (2Рос-4Ниж), Л93)