Peoples Russians Assimilated in the Past Now Recovering Their Earlier Identities

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, March 6 – The disappearance of non-Russian cultures as a result of Moscow’s assimilationist policies continue to attract attention, but there is another trend which may prove to be equally or even more important: the revival of groups Russians had only incompletely assimilated and their reconstitution as separate peoples.

 

            One of these, N”yola Kulomzin, who identifies himself as a Moscow-based specialist on local histories, is the Merya people which was Russified about 300 years ago but whose members now recognize themselves as different from Russians on the basis of toponomy, onomastics, and even anthropology (rufabula.com/author/moskovskj_kraeved/387).

 

            This should not disturb anyone because “the contemporary Russia people is a super-ethnos composed of the parts of peoples and cultures who have disappeared,” he says; but it frightens many because it suggests that assimilation is not a one-way street and that a nation which has assimilated others in the past may be assimilated by others or dissolve in the future.

 

            Most of the time, Kulomzin says, “the organizers of such cultural movements are from the well-educated intellectual elite which recognizes that without a national culture no region or the people who live on it will have a future.”  And consequently, the actions of “these young patriots” should be welcomed for their contribution to “a good future” for the entire country.

 

            Few of them have gone as far as becoming national movements, despite what some in the center fear, and they have not always been successful, in large part because they are based on reliable histories but on false premises. The Burtases of Penza oblast and Mordvinia are an example: their actual origins are very different from what they think.

 

            .But he continues, “there exist other movements which have under them reliable historical-cultural potential such as the Chuds (Vologda and Arkhangelsk Russians), the Polovtsian-Kipchaks (Belarusian Russians), and the Baltic Slavic historical lands of the Vyatichis and Krivichis (Western Russians).’

 

            And while Kulomzin does not mention it, the fact that some of these identities cross what are now international borders means that some in the Russian government may view them as a potential resource if Moscow seeks to project power into those countries. Indeed, it could mean that some of these groups enjoy official sponsorship at least covertly at the present time.

 

             In another post, he explains how he came to be interested in the Merya people who live in the Moscow region and why he thinks this is anything but an intellectual dead end, despite the attitude of some around him that attempts “to revive the traditions of a Finno-Ugric tribe which disappeared long ago are senseless” (merjamaa.ru/news/merja_zdes_i_sejchas/2015-03-05-989).

 

            Focusing on local traditions enriches the understanding of the Motherland, he says, and prevents it from becoming simply an abstraction offered on television.  And it is part of a more general effort to protect the environment human as well as natural from despoliation, a combination that may explain part of its attraction for many.

 

            “In our days,” Kulomzin argues, “the return of people to their local roots is becoming ever more clearly marked,” and that trend in turn is allowing them to “again acquire a Motherland which is really worth protecting and defending from those things which destroy it,” a view based on an understanding of the country and nation as things distinct from the state.