PSCRP-BESA Reports No 121 (March 25, 2025)
Saransk, the capital of the Republic of Mordovia, with a population of just over 300,000, is a provincial city by Russian standards. Most Russians know very little about the ethnic challenges facing Mordovia. Against the background of the growing wave of repressions against dissidents in the Russian Federation, the aggressive campaign against the Erzyan national movement, which was launched by the Russian authorities in October 2023, is, at first glance, an inconspicuous episode. Nevertheless, the Erzyan national movement deserves special consideration: the problems it is trying to solve are characteristic not only of the Republic of Mordovia. They are also relevant for other national autonomies located in the east of the European part of the Russian Federation, far from the state borders, where the peoples belonging to the Finno-Ugric linguistic group live: the Republic of Komi, the Republic of Udmurtia and the Republic of Mari El.
In Russia, the Erzyans are officially regarded as part of the Mordvin people, which also includes the Mokshans, despite the fact that these peoples speak different, though related languages, which have their own literary norms and are formally recognized, along with Russian, as the state languages of the Republic of Mordovia. At the same time, neither Mokshans nor Erzyans have a common endonym in their languages. “Mordva” is an exonym, the use of which is actively opposed by the Erzyan national movement.
The first written mention of Erzya is considered by some to be in a letter dated to 968 AD, by Joseph, the Khazar khagan, in the form of ”arisa.” Modern researchers believe that for the first time the name Erzya was mentioned by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani in the 14th century, in the form of “ardzhani”.
The collapse of the Golden Horde, under the rule of which the Erzyans had lived for about two centuries, led to the fact that from the end of the 14th century their land became a zone of constant military confrontation between the Moscow Principality and the Kazan Khanate, which lasted until the conquest of the latter by Ivan the Terrible in 1556.
Since the late 16th century, the Russian conquerors began to force the Erzyans into abandoning their traditional pagan religion and adopting Orthodox Christianity. In the 17th century Erzyans together with Tatars, Chuvash and Mari took part in uprisings against Russian conquerors, such as Stepan Razin’s uprising in 1667–1671. The modern Erzyan movement considers the commanders of the Erzyan detachments who took part in the uprising, Alena Arzamasskaya and murza Akai Bolyaev, as their national heroes. In an attempt to escape Russian oppression and avoid Christianization, the Erzyans moved en masse to the east, outside their traditional ethnic territory. By the middle of the 18th century, after the suppression of the Teryushev rebellion of 1743–1745, all Erzyans were nominally converted to Orthodoxy, but this Christianization was superficial. The last uprising in defense of the old Erzyan faith took place in 1804.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Erzyans were a typical “peasant people”, almost completely devoid of the urban educated elite, which retains its ethnic self-consciousness. After the February Revolution of 1917, the Mordovian Cultural and Educational Society was established in Kazan with the participation of the polymath and professor of Kazan University Makar Evsevyev (1864–1931). In 1920, the first newspaper in the Erzyan language “Chinya styamo” (“Dawn”) was published in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk).
As a result of the large-scale migration of the Erzyans outside their original ethnic territory, as well as the assimilation of a significant part of those who remained in their homeland by Russians, most of them found themselves outside the borders of the territorial autonomy created by the Bolsheviks in 1928 for the Erzyans and Mokshans — the Mordovian Autonomous District (since 1930 — the Mordovian Autonomous Oblast, since 1934 — the Mordovian ASSR). And even in this autonomy the majority of the population was Russian (60.53% according to the 1939 census), although some of these Russians undoubtedly had Erzyan and Mokshan roots.
The repressions of the 1930s — the “Case of the Union for the Liberation of Finnish Peoples” (most of the victims in this case were Udmurts, Komi and Mari) and especially the “Mordovian Case” — dealt the heaviest blow to the nascent Erzyan national intelligentsia. In the 1040s, during World War II, 240,000 inhabitants of Mordovia were sent to the front, primarily from rural areas where the Erzyan and Mokshan population prevailed. 131,000 of them were killed, which sharply weakened the demographic potential of the Mordovian rural population. In the post-war period the number of Mordvins (separate data on Erzyans and Mokshans are not available, but it is estimated that about two thirds of the total number are Erzyans) gradually decreased due to assimilation: 1, 285,000 according to the census of 1959, 1,263,000 according to the census of 1970, 1,192,000 according to the census of 1979, 1,154,000 according to the census of 1989. This process continued in the post-Soviet period.
The Perestroika period saw the activation of the Erzyan national movement. In 1989, the Public Center “Velmema” (“Revival”) was established. Its leader, the poetess Mariz Kemal (Raisa Kemaykina), put forward the slogan “Two languages — two peoples”, rejecting the Soviet-era concept of a unified Mordovian nation as artificial. However, a few months later, with the support of the republican authorities, the united Erzya-Mokshan movement “Mastorava” (“Native Land”) was created. In 1992, it initiated the First All-Russian Congress of the Mordovian people.
In 1993, the opponents of the concept of a unified Mordovian nation, who had left the Mastorava movement, created the Erzyan Mastor (“Country of the Erzyans”) movement. A year later, the movement began publishing its own newspaper under the same name. In 1995, Nuyan Vidyaz (Evgeny Chetvergov) created the Foundation for the Salvation of the Erzyan Language. In the same year, the First Congress of the Erzyan people was held in Saransk, which, among other things, put forward the demand to create an Erzyan territorial autonomy within the Russian Federation. The Foundation initiated the Day of the Erzyan Language, celebrated annually on April 16, the birthday of Anatoly Ryabov (1894–1938), professor of linguistics and creator of the Latinized alphabet for the Erzyan language.
The Erzyan national movement was closely connected with the revival of traditional Erzyan religion, which posed a conflict between it and the Russian Orthodox Church. As early as 1990, Erzyan public prayers were resumed. An important stage in the actual reconstruction of the traditional beliefs of the Erzyans on the basis of folklore was the writing of the epic “Mastorava” (published in Erzyan in 1994, later translated into Mokshan, Russian, Hungarian and Finnish) by folklorist and poet Professor Sharonon Sandra (Alexander Sharonov) of Mordovian University. In 1999, for the first time since 1629, an all-Erzyan prayer Ras’ken’ Ozks was held (one of the organizers of Ras’ken’ Ozks in this and subsequent years was Yogan’ Min’ka (Mikhail Chetvergov), the second defendant in the current case against Erzyan activists). It elected the council of Erzyan elders “Atyan Ezem” and its head, who received the ancient title of Inyazor. In 2004, the head of the Republic of Mordovia, Mokshan Nikolai Merkushkin, signed a decree granting Ras’ken’ Ozks an official status on the republican level. A year later, he also signed a decree awarding the title of laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Mordovia to Sharonon Sandra, the author of the epic “Mastorava”.
On the surface, the Erzyan national movement seems to have achieved notable success despite the fact that its demand for territorial autonomy for the Erzyans was not satisfied. However, the toughening of the Russian Federation’s policy towards the national movements of non-Russian peoples living on its territory became apparent from the first years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. Against this background, in 2006, Inyazor Kshumantsyan Pirguzh (Grigory Musalyov) (1940–2024) made a report at a seminar of non-profit Finno-Ugric organizations in Helsinki, in which he sharply criticized the national policy of the Russian Federation. In 2023, he was detained by the FSB but did not live to see trial.
Over the following years, the authorities increased pressure on the Erzyan national movement, which, having lost the support of the republican authorities of Mordovia, became increasingly active in the diaspora, outside the Russian Federation. In this regard, in 2019, Atyan Ezem decided to elect Bolyaen Syres (Alexander Bolkin), the organizer and head of “Erzyan Val” (“Erzyan Word”), the society of Erzyans of Ukraine, founded in 2011, as the new Inyazor. He was a colonel in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and fought against Russian aggression as part of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in Donbass. Kshumantsyan Pirguzh traveled to Kyiv on purpose to officially hand over his authority. The new Inyazor was not wearing the traditional Erzyan national dress, but instead a defiantly plain outfit. “We are not a folklore group,” he asserted, “Our goal is to create a modern Erzyan secular European state. Thus, the Erzyan national movement took the path of uncompromising confrontation with Russia.
The first decree of the new Inyazor was the creation of the Atyan Ezem Secretariat operating outside the Russian Federation, ensuring the permanent functioning of the Council of Elders as a representative body of the Erzyan people. In 2021, Syres Bolyaen spoke at the 20th session of the UN Permanent Forum on indigenous issues (under the quota of Ukraine). In his speech, he accused Russia of ethnocide of indigenous non-Russian peoples and Erzyans in particular.
In the summer of 2022, after the beginning of the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine, another all-Erzyan prayer Ras’ken’ Ozks was held in Mordovia. Russian security forces searched those who attended in order to prevent the flying of the white-red-black Erzyan national flag (based on the colors of traditional embroideries), which had previously been flown at this ceremony without hindrance. In the fall of 2022, the first Erzyan congress was held in the Estonian town of Otepää, which was attended by activists in exile. The congress adopted a resolution according to which “the preservation of the Erzyan people, their development and the realization of their national, economic, political and other rights are possible only in the independent state of Erzyan Mastor.
The creation of Erzyan Mastor is the main goal of the Erzyan national movement. The Congress sees the state of the Erzyans as absolutely independent, ruled by law, democratic — a federal republic of Erzyan Mastor. (…) Until the declaration of independence of Erzyan Mastor, the struggle of the Erzyan people for self-determination is led by the national self-government bodies and personally by Inyazor”. The congress proposed a map of a hypothetical state, which according to the its supporters, in addition to the territory of the Republic of Mordovia, should include the Penza and Ulyanovsk oblasts, as well as some districts of the Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan and Samara oblasts, i.e. territories with significant Erzyan and Mokshan populations present or formerly present in the recent past.
Thus, for example, Erzyan Mastor is supposed to include Dalnekonstantinovsky district of Nizhny Novgorod oblast, where, according to the 2010 census, 95.3% of the population is Russian, while the Mordvins (Erzyans and Mokshans) make up only 0.8%. The logic behind it is the fact that in the past — up until the 1920s — most of the population here was made up of Teryukhans, representatives of the ethnographic group of Erzyans, which was almost completely assimilated by Russians during the 20th century.
Given that there was no significant influx of population from outside into the Dalnekonstantinovsky district, it is only logical to assume that the overwhelming majority of the local Russian population has Erzyan roots. Nevertheless, given that the territory claimed by the Erzyan national movement is currently inhabited not only by Erzyans, but also by Russians, Mokshans, Tatars, Chuvashs, etc., it is assumed that Erzyan Mastor will be, as already mentioned, a federative state. The Erzyan national movement advocates the return of assimilated descendants of Erzyans to their Erzyan roots. The current Inyazor himself, who was born in the city to a mixed family (his mother is Russian), does not hide the fact that as a child he heard Erzyan speech mainly when he visited his paternal grandmother in the village.
Since the Erzyan activists emphasize that they do not intend to forcefully incorporate anyone into their future state, it can be assumed that the Erzyan Mastor map they adopted is extremely optimistic. However, there is more to the problem than that. The geographical position of Mordovia, as well as Mari El, Udmurtia and the Komi Republic in the very heart of the European part of the Russian Federation, far from its state borders, implies that the plans of their national movements to create their own independent states are realistic only in case of the collapse of Russia in its present form and the formation of new states in its place, based on ethnic or regional principles. This is the main line of action chosen by the Erzyan national movement amidst the full-scale war in Ukraine. In this regard, the Erzyan national movement, together with a number of other ethnic and regionalist movements, became in May 2022 one of the founders of the Free Nations League, which rejects the idea of a “beautiful Russia of the future” and openly calls for “decolonization”, i.e., the disintegration of Russia.
Inyazor of the Erzya people Bolyaen Syres has become one of the unofficial leaders of the Free Nations League over the past two years. In his regular video speeches on YouTube and other platforms, he addresses not only his people, but also representatives of other peoples of Russia, rightly believing that the chance for the Erzyans and other Volga-Finnish peoples to achieve independence can only come to fruition in an alliance with other peoples oppressed by the Russian Federation.