First Moksha Blogger Appears, Harbinger of Rose of New National Movement in Middle Volga

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 5 – National movements historically have dated their origins to the moment at which they were able to launch a newspaper to spread the ideas of intellectual founders to a broader population. In the new Internet age, it may very well be that bloggers will perform this role in a post-print world.

            To the extent that is true, the appearance of the first blogger from among any national group is a seminal event; and in the case of communities which are seeking both greater internal cohesion and broader recognition by others of their uniqueness such people may now play an especially significant role.

            That appears to be the case with Oksana Belkina, who has been profiled by the Uralistica portal as “the first Moksha blogger” in an article subtitled “In the beginning was the word … and the word was Mokshan” (news.uralistica.com/?p=12304). She has been blogging in Moksha for about a year and as such is already playing an outsized role for her nation.

            Belkina, now 22, was born and grew up in a family in Mordvinia which spoke Mokshan at home. She early on decided to become a philologist and received a degree in that at Moscow State University. She began publishing in and serving as a correspondent for Moksha-language publications both print and electronic.

            Disappointed that the two Moksha public sites were being updated so rarely, she decided to launch her own, focusing initially on language issues alone and then broadening her blog to include discussions of social and political themes. (She was prompted t take that step, she recunts by a competition for Finn-Ugric bloggers.)

            Her blog, Varma (Moksha for ‘wind’), now has 226 subscribers and many more visitors (m.vk.com/varma_moksha). Since moving to Finland earlier this year, Belkina has also begun a videoblog which is posted on Facebook and Youtube (facebook.com/people/Оксана-Белкина/100035712286271 and youtube.com/channel/UCnyHrROX-WNaKP2EQVoRi8w).

            These different places attract different people with the VKontakte page visited most often by Moksha in Mordvinia and the others by Finno-Ugrics living elsewhere, she says.  Belkina regrets that her linguistic community is less active than the Erzya in Mordvinia or than the Udmurts but says that her experience shows that there is real interest in Moksha.

            According to most expert assessments, roughly a third of the slightly more than 400,000 Mordvins are from Moksha backgrounds although the number who speak that language as opposed to Erzya or Russian is relatively small. Belkina and others like her may help to change that.