Ethnographic atlas XXXI: peoples of easternmost Europe

In the current installment of the Ethnographic Atlas, we present formalized data (following Murdock's scheme) on seventeen peoples of the European part of the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union not covered by any of the previous installments of the Ethnographic Atlas. Different peoples of the sample were integrated into Russia in different historical periods, from medieval (the Ingrians, Karelians, Veps, Votes) to early modern (the Besermyan, Bashkir, Chuvash, Kazan Tatar, Mordva, Udmurt) to modern (the Gagauz, Estonians, Lithuanian Karaim and Tatar, Latvians, Livs, Moldovans). Some of them have always remained within Russia's borders (the Besermyan, Bashkir, Chuvash, Ingrians, Karelians, Kazan Tatar, Mordva, Udmurt, Veps, Votes), while others departed after the fall of the Russian Empire, during the 1920s and 1930s, and live outside of Russia today. After the break up of the USSR, there arose the independent republics of Estonia (the Estonians), Latvia (the Latvians and Livs), Lithuania (the Lithuanian Karaim and Tatar), and Moldova (the Gagauz and Moldovans) (Kizilov 1984; Tishkov 1998). OVERVIEW The reviewed peoples belong to the following cultural blocks: Finno-Ugrian: Permic (the Udmurt and Besermyan) and Finn (the Erzia Mordva, Veps, Livvik Karelians, Ingrians, Estonians, Livs, Votes); Turkic (the Kazan Tatar, Lithuanian Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Lithuanian Karaim); Indoeuropean: Baltic (the Latvians), and Romanic (the Moldovans). The Besermyan speak a dialect of the Udmurt language. The Erzia Mordva as Volga Finns are linguistically closer to the Baltic Finns than to the Permians (the Udmurt and Besermyan). Among Baltic Finns two groups are represented: Northern and Southern. The Karelians and Ingrians belong to the former and are linguistically very close to the Finns proper. In fact, Finnish linguists consider Ingrian to be a dialect of Finnish (see Shlygina 2003:593). The Veps also belong to the Northern group. The Votes and Livs together with the Estonians represent the Southern group of the Baltic Finns. The Udmurt belong to the Permian group of the Finno-Ugrian linguistic family together with the Komi-Zyryan and Komi-Permiak. They are ethnographic heirs of the local Anan'ino and Pjanobor archaeological cultures of the eighth to the third century BCE (Vladykin 2000:433). By their origin, the Besermyans are a small group of southern Udmurts, having taken refuge among the northern Udmurts in the wake of political turmoil caused by the Tatar-Mongol destruction of the Volga Bulgarian state, the defeat of the Golden Horde state by the armies of Tamerlan, and other violent political events. Having settled outside the former territory of Volga Bulgaria, they retained a clearly defined cultural identity and their own self-name, which ultimately stems from the Arabic [muslimun.sup.a] (via Persian mosalman and corrupted Turkic busurmen). Although pagans originally, they had never actually been Muslims (Russians superficially Christianized them starting from the mid-eighteenth century CE) (Napolskikh 1997:52-3; Goldina 1996:19). Much more numerous than the Besermyan, the Chuvash are also descendants of the refugee population that fled to the outskirts of the Volga Bulgaria and mixed there with the Mari. Their language, being the only survivor of the early Bolgar (Proto-Bolgar), has won over the local Finno-Ugrian languages and dialects, and their culture in general being a blend of early Turkic and Finno-Ugric traditions. To the beginning of the twentieth century, they retained a considerable portion of the Proto-Bolgar paganism (Vorobjev 1956:30-5; Salmin 1994:162-4, 186, 272). Like the Besermyan and Udmurt, they were more or less Christianized beginning with the mid-eighteenth century. Together with the Gagauz, they are among the very few Christianized Turkic peoples. Also apart from the Chuvash and Gagauz, all the other Turkic peoples of the present installment speak the languages of the Kypchak group, being thus the descendants of the populations linguistically assimilated by the main population of the Golden Horde. …