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...peoples 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.
From physical anthropological and cultural evidence, the Kazan Tatars (as well as the Chuvash) are the heirs to the Volga Bulgarian legacy. They are the descendants of the population that stayed in the core of the Volga Bulgaria territory and, contrary to the Chuvash, they were linguistically assimilated by the dominant Kypchak ethnic groups (Vasil'ev and Matveeva 1986). Also unlike the Chuvash, the Kazan Tatar had a tradition of their own multinational empire--the Kazan Khanate state (1438-1552), the heir of the Golden Horde state (Hudjakov 1991). The elements of the nomadic Turkic tradition of the former Kypchak are much more evident in the Kazan Tatar culture compared to the culture of the Chuvash. The same may be said about the Kazan Tatar's closest language relatives, the Bashkir. The main difference in the ethnic history of these peoples lies in the substrate of the non-Turkic cultural texture that is present from early times in their respective territories (Rudenko 1955:25-30). The present territory of the Republic of Tatarstan generally coincides with the territory of Volga Bulgaria, the latter, interestingly enough, lying within the area of the Imenkovskaja archaeological culture (Goldina 1996:15). The point of interest lies in the fact that Imenkovskaja culture was created (partially) by the later descendants of the Zarubinetskaja culture, which ethnically is Baltic. In the Middle Volga region, the former Dnieper Baits mixing with the local Finno-Ugric population created a stable tradition of productive agriculture, which was inherited by the Proto-Bolgar conquerors from the seventh to the thirteenth century (Vasil'ev and Matveeva 1986:140-9; Matveeva 1981), and through them by the Kazan Tatar. The blend of various cultural traditions had created the background for the state civilization with numerous rich cities (Bolgar, Bilar, and Suvar being the largest), all of which were ruthlessly burned by the nomadic Tatar-Mongol invaders in the mid-thirteenth century. Naturally enough, the Kazan Tatar generally show more evident signs of Central Mongoloid phenotypic admixture than do the Chuvash, Besermyan, and Udmurt. This is even more true for the Bashkir. They, unlike the Kazan Tatar, did not acquire the ancient tradition of developed agriculture from their substratum ethnic groups, the Permian Finno-Ugrians and Ugors proper. The southern part of Bashkiria is a steppe, so up to the nineteenth century a considerable portion of the Bashkir population remained nomadic and were so-called tarkhans: free guardians of the Russian Empire's southern borders (Rudenko 1955:31-40).
In the second half of the second and the beginning of the first millennium BCE, some territories of the present Russian Federation (Novgorod, Pskov, and Leningrad regions), Eastern Latvia and the whole of Estonia were the zone of the Imitated Textile-impressed Pottery archaeological culture. This culture was a close relative of the Upper Volga variants of the Imitated Textile Ceramics culture (antecedents to the present-day Mordva and Mari peoples). That is why the closest linguistic relatives of the Baltic Finns (including the Finns proper) are the Mordva (Napolskih 1993:16).
The subsequent history of the Baltic and Volga Finns, however, was quite different. Having migrated, via Upper Volga and its tributaries, far to the west to the shores of the Baltic Sea, the ancestors of the present Baltic Finns came into close cultural interaction with ethnic groups quite different from those operating in the first century BCE in the Volga region. Among these groups, apart from the linguistically assimilated ancestors of the present day Lapps, were settlers from the eastern parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula (i.e., peoples who spoke languages preceding the First Consonant Shift of the Proto-Germanic people) and the Baits proper. The above-mentioned shift is usually dated by linguists at about the fifth century BCE, whereas the culture of the Stone Kurgans with box coffins (Steinkistengraber)--unmistakably Scandinavian in origin--began to appear in mass on the shores of Estonia starting from the first century of the first millennium BCE. Gradually, the people who had spread the Stone Kurgans culture merged with the Baltic Finns, the result of this merging being cultures of the Encircled Stone Graves (Tarandergraber) spreading from the shores of the Baltic Sea into the inner regions, on the one hand, and reaching southern Finland, on the other. The peoples who spread these cultures sprang from Finns and Scandinavians of unknown linguistic attribution, with admixture of the local Balts. Supposed Proto-Germans or Pre-Germans were culturally and linguistically assimilated, adding to present-day Finns and Estonians a considerable element of the lightly pigmented North Atlantic phenotype (Napolskih 1997:6-7).
Migration from Estonia to Finland and Karelia put an end to the short period of existence of the common Volga-Baltic Finn proto-language and began the formation of the Northern and Southern linguistic groups of the Baltic Finn language sub-sub-family. The Karelians, Veps, and Ingrians, unlike the Lutheran Estonians, Livs, and the majority of the Latvians, belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church for their entire Christian history, as Northern Russian (Novgorod) missionaries were the first to baptize them. The Estonians, Livs, and Votes belong to the Southern group. Vepsian is a distinct language within the Northern group. Historically, the Veps split from the Northern group in the beginning of the first millennium CE and occupied territories to the southwest of the Karelians. A part of their population contributed to the formation of the local groups of Karelians, those of Ludiks (Luudikid) and (to a lesser degree) Livviks (Livvikid) (Pimenov 1994:124). The Ingrians (one of their self-names is Karjalain, the same as among the Karelians) split from the rest of the Karelians in the late first to early second millennium CE. After settling in the Karelian Isthmus and the Neva and Izhora river basins, they started their southwestward movement in the eleventh century, reaching the Luga and Narova rivers in the twelfth century.
During that movement and later, the Ingrians assimilated a considerable number of the aboriginal Vote population (Shlygina 1994:159). The modern dialects of the Ingrian language had formed by the seventeenth century (Shlygina 2003:592-3). By the beginning of the twentieth century CE, all the Baltic Finns described here, apart from the Estonians and some groups of Karelians, had been heavily assimilated by the Russians while the Livs were almost totally assimilated by the Latvians. The ancestors of the Latvians came to the Baltic Sea shores from the south at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium BCE. By the beginning of the first millennium BCE the major tribal groups of the future Latvians had formed: the Kurshes, Latgals, Zemgals, and Sels. Though most of the Latvians are Lutherans, those of Latgalia (eastern Latvia) are predominantly Catholic. Historically, the Latvians of Latgalia were more influenced by the Russians than their brethren of the western part of the country. As well as the majority of other peoples of the Baltic Sea region, all the Latvians have been influenced by the Germans from the Middle Ages on.
The Moldovans are culturally Rumanians, although politically they have been separated from each other for the major part of their history (Vinokurov 1987; Lucht and Narumov 2001:575). The Moldovans speak Rumanian. All attempts of the Soviet authorities to create separate Moldovan norms of literacy failed (Lucht and Narumov 2001:575).
The Gagauz are descendants of various Turkic peoples including the Proto-Bolgars, Pechenegs, and Kypchaks (Kumans), with the evident admixture of the Bolgar Slavs, Moldovans, and Rumanians. Their language is of the Oguz group of Turkic languages, the faith being that of the Orthodox Christianity. They predominantly live in the south of Moldova, where they resettled from the Balkans in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century (Shabashov 1999).
The Karaim are descendants of the Turkicized ancient aborigines of the Crimea. They practice a variety of Judaism which was and is treated with contempt by Orthodox Talmudic Jews. The Karaim speak the Crimean Tatar language, which is a blend of Kypchak and Oguz Turkic dialects with a predominance of Kypchak. Some Karaim were resettled to the Trokaj (Troki) region of Lithuania by Duke Vitautas in 1392, after his raid in the Crimea (Hafuz 1994). The...
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