Valeriy Anatolyevich Yurchyonkov (born 1960) is a prominent Mordovian historian and popularizer of Erzya culture. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor. Author of works on the life of Inyazor Purgaz.
Co-chairman of the Public Chamber of Mordovia.
Director of the Research Institute of Humanities under the Government of the Republic of Mordovia.
Membership in Academies
Academician of the Academy of Political Sciences of the Russian Federation (2000). Academician of the International Academy of Sciences of Pedagogical Education (2008).
Awards
Honored Scientist of the Republic of Mordovia (2001). Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation (2008). Laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Mordovia (2005). Laureate of the weekly newspaper Literaturnaya Rossiya (2004).
The decree of the Head of the Republic of Mordovia, N.I. Merkushkin, awarding V.A. Yurchenkov the Order of Glory, 3rd degree, stood as a vivid testament to the high recognition of the historian and public figure V.A. Yurchenkov's contributions.
Public Activities
Member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, member of the Commission on Civil Society Development (since 2010). Co-chairman of the Public Chamber of the Republic of Mordovia (since 2008). Chairman of the Heraldry Commission under the Head of the Republic of Mordovia (since 2002). Chairman of the Mordovian Republican Branch of the Russian Society of Historians and Archivists (since 2006). Member of the Executive Committee of the all-Russian public movement "Association of Finno-Ugric Peoples of the Russian Federation" (since 2009).
V.A. Yurchyonkov on the Mordovian People
Literaturnaya Rossiya, No. 13. 30.03.2007. A HURRICANE ON ALL ROADS
In recent years, many people have been unable to shake the feeling that life is changing — changing rapidly and inexorably. What is more, the wheel of change is picking up speed. And yet there is something that links the ages and crosses the threads of historical fate. Maximilian Voloshin once wrote:
What changed? Only signs and figureheads.
The same hurricane on all roads:
In commissars — the folly of autocracy,
The explosions of revolution in the tsars.
The poet-thinker is right to see behind the changing of signs an unchanging essence. Whether this is good or bad is another question, but this immutable core forms the foundation of the history of Russian civilization.
Russia is often called an empire, considered a malign force in history. Recall Lenin's "prison of peoples" or Reagan's "evil empire." Not long ago, an anonymous author in some little newspaper published in Saransk wrote: "Russia, which for decades championed the breaking of colonial chains, continues to be a typical colonial power. It plunders not only the material but also the spiritual wealth of the non-Russian peoples under its rule." The Tatar writer Aydar Khalim — and note that he does not hide his name — calls Russia a beast whose belly ought to be sliced open and its foul innards spilled out. Such examples are beyond counting, but fortunately this is not the view of the majority.
There are no peoples on earth who do not take pride in their imperial past and present. An empire has its captivating qualities. This is perhaps especially true of Russia and the peoples living within it. It is no coincidence that the outstanding Russian historian and political thinker Ivan Ilyin wrote: "Russia is great, populous, and multiethnic, multifaith and vast. Many waters flow through it and different streams run within it. It has never been a single, homogeneous mass of people, nor will it ever be. And it was and will be an EMPIRE — unity within multiplicity, a state of spatial and everyday differentiation and, at the same time, organic and spiritual unity. It will continue to be built not by fear but by love, not by class arbitrariness but by law and justice, not by totalitarianism but by freedom."
And here the problem of the imperial people arises. The imperial type of ethnos takes shape historically, over the course of centuries. Such traits have been noted among Russians, Ukrainians, and Tatars. The majority of peoples, meanwhile, were seen as followers. Nikolai Danilevsky wrote that they form the background of historical development. This thesis was extended to the Mordva as well, who are among the indigenous inhabitants of central Russia. I venture to disagree with this nineteenth-century thinker and to offer a number of considerations on the matter — considerations that may be viewed both as conclusions from the material already presented and as theses toward an understanding of what follows.
The second half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth century were characterized by the economic development of lands and the incorporation of the Mordovian region into the political and social structure of the Russian estate-representative monarchy. During this period, imperial "absorption" of lands proceeded through the creation of unified structures (administrative-territorial divisions, specialized institutional organization at various levels of governance and justice, and so on), intensive agricultural and industrial colonization, and economic and socio-cultural modernization. As a result, the Mordovian region became fully integrated into the territorial structure of the future imperial center and came to be governed by the same policies applied to other provinces of the metropole. Strictly speaking, therefore, the center's relationship with the Mordva cannot be called imperial in the proper sense.
The comparatively painless and chronologically early process of incorporating the Mordva into the Russian state determined the ethnos's participation in the very genesis of the empire as such, and meant there was no sharp conflict between ethnic and national consciousness. Initially, the building of the empire was synonymous with the absorption of peripheral lands and their colonization — a process in which Mordovian peasants joined for a whole range of reasons (agrarian overpopulation, flight from the encroaching feudal order, Russian landlord colonization, Christianization, and so on). Yet despite the predominantly subjective character of these motivations, Mordovian settlers objectively contributed, alongside Russians, to the formation of the imperial system and the absorption of peripheral lands. They actively participated in Russia's "frontier" life, making their contribution to the constructive aspects of Russian colonization — the emergence of a new social identity, new ethnic relations, new landscapes, and a regional economy and material culture.
In the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century, the Mordva settled the Penza-Saratov region. They then moved on into more southerly territories as well.
These migrations led to the formation of ethnically mixed settlement patterns among the Mordva both within and beyond their ethnic homeland. Mordovian villages were often situated alongside Russian ones, and in some places alongside Tatar, Chuvash, and Bashkir settlements. Not infrequently they had mixed populations. Thus, the Mordva of Samara Governorate in the 1860s lived in 278 villages, of which 144 were considered purely Mordovian, 108 had a mixed Mordovian-Russian population, and the remaining 26 were settled by varying proportions of Mordva, Tatars, Bashkirs, Russians, and Chuvashs. In Kazan Governorate at the end of the nineteenth century, in the territory of three districts (Spassky, Tetyushsky, Chistopolsky), the Mordva lived in 23 villages, only 9 of which were purely Mordovian.
The dispersed and ethnically mixed character of Mordovian settlement allows it to be characterized as a Russian people from a geopolitical standpoint. All the more so because in Siberia, the Far East, and especially in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, Mordovian settlers were perceived by the local population as people from the center of Russia — as ethnically Russian, as agents of central authority — which gave rise to a corresponding reciprocal reaction in the form of elements of imperial consciousness.
The Mordovian people gradually and without great difficulty adapted to the initially unfamiliar socio-economic and politico-ideological realities, creating for themselves the conditions for a more or less comfortable existence within the empire. Evidence of this comfort and highly favorable conditions for existence can be found in the rapid numerical growth of the Mordovian ethnos during the imperial period — one can speak of a demographic "explosion."
At the beginning of the eighteenth century (1719), there were 107,400 Mordva living in the empire, representing 0.7 percent of the total population of the country. By 1914–1917, the figure had reached 1,187,900. In other words, over two centuries of existence within the empire, the Mordovian population grew elevenfold. The average annual growth rate throughout the entire nineteenth century was on a par with that of Russians and other peoples of the empire.
Favorable conditions and rapid population growth allowed the ethnic structure of the Mordovian ethnos to take its final shape — a structure defined by Professor Nikolai Mokshin as binary, that is, dual, comprising two sub-ethnic groups: the Moksha and the Erzya. Each sub-ethnos, while regarding itself as Mordva, simultaneously possessed its own distinct self-consciousness and self-designation (sub-ethnonym). The recognition of this division of the Mordva into sub-ethnic groups became established in Russian scholarly and public practice as early as the eighteenth century. As far back as 1762, Pyotr Rychkov wrote: "…The Mordva call themselves Mokshi… There are, however, some among them who are called Erzya and differ somewhat from the Moksha in language." This was subsequently noted by the leaders of the Russian Academy of Sciences expedition of 1768–1774, Ivan Lepyokhin and Peter Simon Pallas. But in the end, it is not the fact itself that matters, but the fact that they reflected yet another crucial tendency — the tendency of the sub-ethnic groups toward expansion.
In our view, the Mordva should be characterized as a pulsating ethnos. The point is that throughout history, the external and internal conditions of the Mordva's existence changed repeatedly, and this caused the sub-ethnic groups (Moksha and Erzya) to periodically begin developing in relative independence. They received an impulse toward the unfolding of their internal forces and resources, and a tendency emerged for the sub-ethnic groups to grow into fully distinct, if related, ethnic entities. At other times, conversely, the sub-ethnic groups found themselves in conditions requiring the pooling of efforts and consolidation in the face of danger. In such cases, the tendency was for the sub-ethnic groups to contract and consolidate into a single ethnos — the Mordva. Internal aspirations and ambitions were sacrificed to the common interest. In this way there emerged the situation of a pulsating ethnic system that alternately expands and contracts. During the imperial period, the tendency toward the expansion of the sub-ethnic groups apparently predominated, as evidenced both by the settlement patterns of the Mordva and by their population growth.
The Mordovian ethnos was drawn into the orbit of the Russian state at a time when religion was one of the fundamental criteria of national-state identity, and Christianization was a matter of state policy. The central authority established a clear legislative framework for the activities of the Orthodox Church and the status of other faiths. Russian law provided for the recognition of the primacy and dominance of Orthodoxy. At the same time, the principle of freedom of religion for members of other confessions, including pagans, was acknowledged. Legislation defined the procedure for joining the dominant church, a system of privileges for the newly baptized, and measures to prevent "falling away" from Orthodoxy. The officially recognized principles for bringing non-believers into the fold were "persuasion," "gentleness," and "good examples" — not coercion. The duty of drawing people to the Orthodox Church rested primarily with parish priests, who "in cases of particular necessity" were to "enter into agreement with the civil authorities."
The adoption of Orthodoxy by the Mordva served as a kind of ideological justification and realization of their existence within the Russian state. Through the medium of religion, the Mordva fully entered the system that bound ethnic groups together within a unified spatio-temporal continuum, and the degree of their comfort within it increased significantly. Moreover, the ethnos gained access to a great tradition that had selected from among the full range of values those most deserving of priority.
The existence of the Mordovian ethnos within the Russian Empire was accompanied by processes of assimilation that had begun as early as the eighteenth century. These processes were reinforced by an imperial policy of Russification, whose stated aim was the integration of the Mordva into the Russian community and their transformation into full-fledged Russian citizens. The Minister of Public Education, Count D.A. Tolstoy, stated: "The ultimate goal of the education of all non-Russian peoples living within the borders of our fatherland must unquestionably be their Russification." A similar position was held by Nikolai Ilminsky, who wrote: "We take the Russian man as our ideal and strive to instill this ideal in the non-Russian peoples. The Russian ideal is, above all, Orthodoxy — which is why we insist so strongly upon it. Orthodoxy is the fundamental, root, most essential element of Russian nationhood. Once a non-Russian person has consciously and sincerely embraced Orthodoxy — with both mind and heart — he has already become Russian." Yet the arsenal of means the government employed in implementing the Russification policy was practically limited to the school alone. It was constrained by the general backwardness of the country, the inefficiency of the administrative system, and the delayed pace of modernization.
Thus there emerged a peculiar interweaving of the natural demographic processes of assimilation and the imperial policy of Christianization and Russification. However, it must be borne in mind that other factors were also at work. For example, in their interaction the Mordva and Russians were never simply face to face with each other alone. Alongside Russian culture, Tatar culture also exerted an influence, at times serving as a rival and an alternative model for emulation. This gave rise to a distinct ethnographic group within the Mordovian ethnos — the Karatays. The first to report on their existence was Ivan Lepyokhin, who relayed a conversation with Mordovian peasants: "They also told us of… a kind of Mordva called Karatays, of whom only three villages exist in Kazan District." Research in the nineteenth century showed that the Karatays had formed as a result of substantial Tatar influence and actual acculturation.
But it seems the time has come to draw conclusions — the more so since the dry style of presentation has already rather tired the interested reader.
How the world changes! And how I myself change!
I am known by one name alone —
Yet what is called by my name
Is not only me. We are many. I am alive.
So that my blood may not have time to cool;
I have died more than once. Oh, how many dead bodies
I have separated from my own.
These lines by Nikolai Zabolotsky capture the situation precisely, though they were written on an entirely different occasion and in a different context. The Mordva changed together with the world, together with the Empire. The Mordva became an imperial people.