Chuvash and Russians Increasingly Live in Separate ‘Parallel’ Worlds, Khuzangay Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 10 – An abnormal situation has arisen in Chuvashia, Atner Khuzangay says. The Chuvash and the Russians living in separate “parallel” worlds and do not interact with each other as they did a generation ago.  That impoverishes both and must be fought.

            In an interview given to the IdelReal portal, the Chuvash philologist and activist – he was the first president of the Chuvash National Congress, the author of the republic’s sovereignty declaration, and a leader of the General Assembly of the Organization of Unrecognized Peoples and Nations – explains why and what the Chuvash must do (idelreal.org/a/29583308.html).

                “it is not a problem to learn Russian in Chuvashia,” the Christian Turkic republic of the Middle Volga, Khuzangay says. “The problem is learning Chuvash in Chuvashia.” There are no Chuvash schools and only a small public Chuvash-langauge milieu, and many Chuvash are giving up, certain that their own language has no future. 

            The Russian state is exploiting such attitudes, he continues. Right now, “the model of the state realized in the 19^th century is being reborn. Remember Uvarov’s formula – ‘autocracy, Orthodoxy, and nationality.’ We have only one nationality – Russian, and the rest of us are quietly becoming aliens.”

            “Orthodoxy is with us a semi-state religion. And signs of autocracy are also present – in the country, one man decides everything,” the Chuvash philologist says.

            The Chuvash have become accustomed to all this, he continues. “They exist independently from what is or isn’t in the state. They are indifferent to what is taking place above them. We already long ago learned to live independently from the state,” Khuzangay continues. But that doesn’t mean the Chuvash shouldn’t try to revive a Chuvash language space.

            And also, the Chuvash need to work to integrate the Russian language space with it. Right now, the situaiton is to put it mildly “strange.”  “No one translates Chuvash writers into Russian. Russian writers in Chuvashia and Chuvash writers live separately. But there should be interaction among them.”

            “To the Russian Drama Theater in Cheboksary, Chuvash don’t go, and Russians do not go to the Chuvash Drama Theater.”  When he was growing up, Khuzangay says, this was not the case.  Chuvash need to learn many languages, including Russian; but Russians living in Chuvashia need to learn Chuvash – just as anyone who lives somewhere must.

            Repression has ended many of the possibilities of the 1990s, he says with regret. But “the Chuvash people must become a normal subject of international law. This doesn’t mean that the Chuvash Republic will be an independent state – that is hardly possible – but the Chuvash must formulate their own ideas and worldview at the level of international standards.’

            We must be a modern nation, Khuzengay says. “Not an aboriginal ethnos with strange customs but a normal civilized people which has an ancient culture, writing system, literature, art, music, theater and films. We have all of this, but we must learn how to present them to the world and enter into the international cultural space by various worthy means.”

            We must develop new standards, “even not Russian but world” standards, he continues.  “Unfortunately, the level of thought among the Chuvash remains provincial … We must get away from that.” Things are quiet now, but there is a lot of work to be done even though achieving national goals will take a long time.