Kryashens (Tatar keräshennär from Russian Kryashens; Kryashens, Tatar keräshen Tatarlars, keräşen tatarları) - an ethno-confessional group of Tatars of the Volga and Ural regions, profess Orthodoxy, live mainly in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, small groups in Udmurtia and in the Chelyabinsk region .

Currently, there is no consensus on the status of the Kryashens: in Soviet times they were officially considered part of the Tatar people; at the same time, a noticeable part of the Kryashen intelligentsia defends the opinion of the Kryashens as a separate people.

KRYASHEN HOLIDAY NARDUGAN - SALT

During the preparation of the All-Union census of the population of 1926, the Kryashens in the "List of Nationalities" were classified as "inaccurately designated nationalities." When developing the results of the census, in view of the everyday characteristics of the Kryashens and in the interests of local government, it was found useful not to classify the Kryashens as Tatars, but to take this population group into account separately. According to the All-Union Population Census of 1926, there were 101.4 thousand Kryashens.

Prior to the 2002 All-Russian Census, some employees of the IEA RAS suggested that the number of Kryashens could reach 200 thousand people. Currently, activists of Kryashen public associations in their speeches indicate that the number of Kryashens is 250-350 thousand people.

DAY OF THE ELDERLY PEOPLE IN THE KRYASHEN VILLAGE MELEKES

According to the traditional point of view on the problem of the emergence of the Kryashens, the formation of this ethno-confessional group as an independent community took place for a long time with the participation of Finno-Ugric and Turkic components. At the same time, despite the fact that during the period of the Volga Bulgaria and the Golden Horde, Turkic feudal lords and their surroundings of the Christian faith were known, and the fact that in a later period some Tatar aristocrats converted to Orthodoxy, there was no separate “Kryashen” ethnic formation.

The decisive influence on the formation of the Kryashens, as a separate community, was exerted by the process of Christianization of part of the Tatars of the Volga region in the second half of the 16th-17th centuries - starting with the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible in 1552 (the group formed at that time is called the "old-baptized" Tatars) and the process of Christianization of non-Russians the peoples of the Volga region in the first half of the 18th century (the new group of Tatars, formed at that time, is called the "newly baptized"). As a result, five ethnographic groups of the Kryashens were formed, which have their own specific differences: Kazan-Tatar, Yelabuga, Molkeev, Chistopol, Nagaybak (the last group of Nagaybaks stood out in 2002 as a separate nationality).

KRYASHEN HOLIDAY PITRAU - MAMADYSH DISTRICT

In the 1990s, alternative versions of the Kryashens ethnogenesis appeared, related to the fact that the Kryashens intelligentsia, which became more active, distancing itself from the generally accepted point of view about the forced baptism of the Tatars in the 15th-19th centuries, and as a result of this policy, the formation of the Kryashens ethnic group, attempted to scientifically substantiate provisions on the voluntary acceptance of Christianity by a part of the Bulgars.

WEDDING IN THE KRYASHEN CHURCH

One of these versions in the Orthodox media is put forward by the historian and theologian A. V. Zhuravsky. According to his version, baptized Tatars are not Tatars baptized in the 16th century, but are descendants of Turkic tribes, baptized no later than the 12th century, living in the Volga-Kama region and by the time of the fall of the Kazan Khanate were in a semi-pagan-semi-Christian state. A. V. Zhuravsky sees the justification for this hypothesis in the existence of some facts related to the history of Christianity in the Volga Bulgaria. So, for example, in an article in the Tatyana's Day newspaper, Zhuravsky, arguing this point of view, notes: from Orthodoxy. It is known that in the Bulgars there was an ancient Armenian (Monophysite) church, the ruins of which were already destroyed in Soviet times.” At the same time, the researcher notes that these issues do not seem relevant to official science, and therefore they are obliged to study church local history.

HOLY KRYASHENSKY KEY - D. LYAKI - SARMANOV DISTRICT OF RT

Another version was developed by the Kazan historian Maxim Glukhov. He believed that the ethnonym "Kryashens" goes back to the historical tribe of Kerchin - a Tatar tribe known as the Keraites and who professed Nestorian Christianity from the 10th century. At the end of the 12th century, the Keraites were conquered by Genghis Khan, but did not lose their identity. Participation in aggressive campaigns led to the appearance of Keraites in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Later, during the formation of independent Crimean and Kazan khanates, a large number of Keraites ended up in the Crimea and the Middle Volga. Their descendants still live in the eastern regions of Tatarstan, preserving the ethnonym in a somewhat deformed form, as a relic of historical memory.

CLOTHING KRYASHEN

Kryashens (baptized Tatars)

Number and placement

According to the All-Russian population census of 2002, there were 24,668 Kryashens in Russia. Most of them (18760 people) lived in the Republic of Tatarstan. Significant groups of Kryashens also live in the Republic of Bashkortostan (4510 people) and the Udmurt Republic (650 people).

Language and alphabet

There are four dialects in the Kryashens language:

1. dialect of the Kryashens of the Lower Kama region;

2. the conversation of the Zazan Kryashens;

3. speech of the Chistopol Kryashens;

4. the speech of the Molkeevsky Kryashens.

The Kryashens mostly speak a middle dialect of the Tatar language. The dialect of the Molkeev Kryashens is an exception; it is closer to the western dialect of the Tatar language. The main differences of the Kryashen language are a small number of Arabisms and Farsisms, the preservation of archaic Old Tatar words.

KRYASHEN SERVICE IN THE VILLAGE OF CHURA - KUKMOR DISTRICT OF RT

The Kryashens use the alphabet of N. I. Ilminsky, which differs from the modern Tatar alphabet. This alphabet was developed starting from 1862 and finally took shape by 1874. Compared to the Russian alphabet, the Ilminsky alphabet had four additional letters necessary to convey the sounds of the Tatar language. The official state authorities did not approve the alphabet. It was believed that the printing of literature is carried out in the "baptized Tatar dialect in Russian letters." In 1930, after the introduction of the yanalif, the use of the Ilyinsky alphabet was discontinued for several decades. The use was resumed in the early 90s of the XX century, when liturgical books and publications of Kryashen public organizations began to be published on it.

KRYASHEN SERVICE IN THE VILLAGE OF KOVALI, PESTRECHINSKY DISTRICT, RT

Printing and literature

Newspapers "Sugysh Khabarlyare" (Military news, 1915-1917. Editor - P. P. Glezdenev)

"Dus" (Friend; February 1916-1918. Editor - S. M. Matveev)

"Kryashen newspapers" (Kryashenskaya newspaper; January 1917 - July 1918. Editor - N. N. Egorov)

"Alga taba" (Forward; January-April 1919. Editor - M. I. Zubkov)

"Kereshen suze" (The word of the Kryashens; February 1993-2002)

"Tuganaylar" (Kindred; since 2002)

Kryashenskiye Izvestia (since 2009)

Magazines "Igen Iguche" ("Grain grower") (June-July 1918).

KRYASHEN GUSLI

Fiction

The most famous Kryashen poet of the 19th century is Yakov Yemelyanov, who received the nickname "singer Yakov" among the people. He began to try the pen while still studying at the Kazan Central Baptized Tatar School. The poet prepared two poetry collections, which were published under the general title “Poems in the Baptized Tatar language. Deacon Y. Yemelyanov stihlary" in 1879. Also known are such Kryashen writers as David Grigoriev (Savrushevsky), Dariya Appakova, N. Filippov, A. Grigoriev, V. Chernov, Gavrila Belyaev.

HOUSE IN KRYASHEN VILLAGE KOVALI

Self-identification and current situation

There are different views on the Kryashens; traditional is the opinion that the Kryashens are a kind of part of the Tatar people, it was defended by Glukhov-Nogaybek.

At the same time, among a noticeable part of the intelligentsia, there is an opinion about the Kryashens as a separate people.

... “The Old Kryashens, who lived in Christianity for a number of generations, remained in it, creating, as it were, a special nationality with the Tatar language, but with a peculiar culture.

The question of whether the Old Kryashens were baptized from Islam is still quite controversial. Observing their modern life and even language, one can say with a significant degree of probability that these Tatars were either not Muslims at all or were in Islam so little that it did not penetrate their way of life. The language of the Kryashens is considered by linguists to be cleaner than the Tatar language, littered with a colossal number of barbarisms: of Arabic, Persian and Russian origin... The Kryashens have preserved their ancient way of life almost entirely and can to a certain extent serve as a living remnant of the life that the Tatar masses had before the Russian conquest "...

- Vorobyov N. I. "Kryashens and Tatars", Kazan, 1929

Supporters of the fact that the Kryashens are a people separate from the Tatars also believe that since that time the life of the Muslim Tatars, under the influence and at the request of Islam, has changed as the latter penetrated into the masses. In addition to the language and way of life, the Kryashens, ethnically, have retained their original ancient qualities, while the modern Tatars in this sense, in many ways, in their opinion, are other peoples who have become Tatars, like the Chuvash, Mari, Udmurts, etc., who converted to Islam.

In order to make sure that modern Tatars and Kryashens represent related, but different peoples, perhaps, historical research is not even required, but it is enough, for example, to visit the Tatar and Kryashens villages in the same Tatar Republic and take a closer look at life in one and the other.

1. Modern Tatars and Kryashens are, although related, but two different nationalities, which is the result of their development over a number of centuries under various historical conditions.

2. The official annulment of the self-name "Kryashens" and forcing them to be called Tatars is a mistake and contradicts the basic principles of national policy<…>

3. It should be officially returned to the Kryashens people the right to exist as a separate original nationality, with the self-name "Kryashens" rooted in the minds of the people over a long historical period.

4. Thus, to give this nationality the opportunity to develop in a natural historical way, without artificial barriers, together and on an equal footing with the peoples of our Motherland ...

- I. G. Maksimov "Kryashens", 1967

The question of the origin and status of the Kryashens became more active before the 2002 All-Russian Population Census. In October 2001, the Kryashens adopted a declaration of self-determination, a year later approved by the Interregional Conference of the Kryashens of the Russian Federation. It said that the “single Tatar ethnos” turned out to be the same ideological myth as the “single Soviet people”. The issue went beyond the historical and cultural and became political. So in the article “On the Tatars-Kryashens” in the newspaper “Star of the Volga Region”, Zaki Zainullin accused the “chauvinistic, Moscow Russian-nationalist leadership” of trying to divide the Tatar people, of inciting the Kryashens to declare themselves a separate nation. "We can't be divided! During the Russian census, we Tatars must declare: We are Tatars!

Kazan Islamic scholar Rafik Mukhametshin argued that the existence of the Kryashens is beneficial to Moscow. In his opinion, the interests of the Tatars, the second largest nationality of the Russian Federation, can be ignored only by dividing the Tatar people. “In Tatarstan, 52% are Tatars. But if you take away the Kryashens, then they will become a minority in their own republic, which will become just a province.”

Pavel Pavlov, an Orthodox priest from the Kryashens, finds the very idea of ​​“returning” to Islam offensive: “Over the past five years, there have been many calls in the press for us to return to the fold of Islam, that we will be forgiven. It works, drop by drop - the neighbors start saying, 'Why do you go to church? Come with us to the mosque." But if we are Orthodox, why should we apologize?”

STUDENTS OF THE KAZAN KRYASHEN SCHOOL

Famous representatives of the Kryashens

Agapov, Vitaly Vasilyevich - People's Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan, composer.

Asanbaev, Nazhib - people's writer of Bashkortostan, poet, playwright.

Vasiliev, Vladimir Mikhailovich - opera singer (bass), Honored Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan, soloist of the TAGTOiB named after. M. Jalil and THF them. G. Tukaya.

Gavrilov Pyotr Mikhailovich - Soviet officer, major, hero of the defense of the Brest Fortress, Hero of the Soviet Union (1957).

Ibushev, Georgy Mefodievich - People's Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan, soloist of the THF named after. G. Tukaya.

Kazantseva, Galina Alexandrovna - People's Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan.

Karbyshev, Dmitry Mikhailovich - Lieutenant General of the Engineering Troops, Professor of the Military Academy of the General Staff, Doctor of Military Sciences, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Timofeev, Vasily Timofeevich - missionary, educator, teacher, first Kryashen priest, head of the Central Baptized Tatar School, employee of N. I. Ilminsky.

KARAMZIN'S ancestor was a baptized Tatar - KARA MURZA

culture

Ethnographers note that according to the peculiarities of the language and traditional culture, five ethnographic groups of the Kryashens can be distinguished:

Kazan-Tatar

Yelabuga,

Molkeyevskaya,

Chistopol and

nagaibakov,

each of which has its own characteristics and its own history of formation.

These names (except nagaybaks) are rather conditional:

The Kazan-Tatar group belonged to the Kazan province (in the Kazan, Laishevsky and Mamadysh counties); Samara; Ufimskaya; Vyatka provinces, in the latter in the Malmyzh district (this is the most numerous and ancient group).

The Molkeevsky Kryashens of the Kazan province lived in the Tetyushsky and Tsivilsky districts (now the Apastovsky district).

The Chistopol group was concentrated in the same province, in the region of Western Zakamye (Chistopolsky and Spassky counties),

The Yelabuga group belongs to the Yelabuga district (formerly the Vyatka province).

The Nagaybak group was located on the lands of the Upper Ural and Troitsk counties.

STREET IN THE KRYASHEN VILLAGE MELEKES - TUKAEVSKY DISTRICT OF RT

According to the main elements of culture, the Kryashens are close to the Kazan Tatars, although certain groups of the Kryashens are also related by origin to the Mishars. Many characteristic features of the traditional life of the Kryashens have already disappeared. Traditional clothing has survived only as family heirlooms. The life of the Kryashens experienced a strong influence of urban culture. Although even today such a unique art form as the Tatar Christian shamail lives in the cities.

One of the leaders of the Ethnographic Society of the Kryashens was the writer and historian Maxim Glukhov-Nogaybek

________________________________________________________________________________________________

SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND PHOTO:

http://www.missiakryashen.ru/

http://www.perepis-2010.ru/results_of_the_census/tab5.xls

Sokolovsky S.V. Kryashens in the 2002 All-Russian Population Census. - Moscow, 2004, pp. 132-133.

http://www.regnum.ru/news/1248213.html

http://www.otechestvo.org.ua/main/20066/2414.htm

1 2 3 Tatar encyclopedia: V 5.t., - Kazan: Institute of the Tatar encyclopedia of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, 2006. - V.3., C.462.

Iskhakov D.M. Tatar nation: history and modern development. Kazan: Magarif, 2002, Section 2. Kryashens (historical and ethnographic essay)

Tatars (Series "Peoples and Cultures" RAS). M.: Nauka, 2001. - P.16.

Wikipedia.

http://melekes.edusite.ru/p13aa1.html

On the Kryashen icons, the Mother of God is depicted in a national dress. In her arms is Alla Uly, which in Tatar means the Son of God.
Kryashensky icon "Our Lady with the Child"

They turn to God as Muslims - "Alla" and celebrate the Tatar holiday Sabantuy. They speak and write in Tatar. They have been living among Muslim Tatars for centuries, but they are Orthodox.

They call themselves "kereshen" - Kryashens, and most of them live in Tatarstan. As a rule, the Kryashens are called "baptized Tatars" - "chukyngan" or "tere", which in Tatar has a somewhat disparaging connotation - like "baptized". At the same time, many consider them to be those Tatars who were forced to convert from Islam to Christianity in the 16th century, after the victory of Ivan the Terrible over the Kazan Khanate. The Kryashens are very offended by this and repeat that they have never been Muslims and voluntarily adopted Christianity back in the time of the Volga Bulgaria, being a Turkic pagan people.

One way or another, a rather peculiar situation has developed in the region - people with common roots, the same script and language have been living side by side for centuries, differing only in their faith. However, this difference becomes the main one.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Orthodox missionary Nikolai Ilminsky created an alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet for the Kryashens, so that they would not be “tatarized” and could study in their own, not Islamic schools and better understand Orthodox worship. Since then, the revival and fixation of Kryashen traditions began, and later all Tatars began to use the Kryashen alphabet.

At the dawn of Soviet power, in the censuses of the 1920s, the Kryashens were considered a separate people. They studied in their schools, published books, and participated in divine services. They celebrated Orthodox holidays, but did not forget about the folk Tatar ones. However, later, having begun to claim national and cultural autonomy, they also lost their former status: as a result of Stalin's policy, the Kryashens had their passports changed and recorded as Tatars. Add to this the closing of churches, the oppression of small nationalities. Under such conditions, it was not easy for the Kryashens to preserve their identity.

Changes began since the time of perestroika: for almost 20 years in Tatarstan, divine services have been again celebrated in the Kryashen language, and in 1996, priest Pavel Pavlov became rector of the Kazan Kryashen parish, the Tikhvin Church. Once one of the most famous in Kazan, the church in Soviet times, as usual, was adapted for a warehouse, a hostel and a workshop. Before Father Paul, she appeared as shabby walls and the faces of saints with gouged out eyes on the vaults... For many years, the parish community has been restoring the church, and work is still underway.

The whole country started talking about the Kryashens before the 2002 census. The main question was: to consider the Kryashens a separate people or not? Shortly before the census, they adopted a declaration of their self-determination. From the Tatar side, in turn, protests were heard so that they would not divide a single people, but would be recorded as Tatars and not spoil their statistics for the republic. If the Tatars were in the minority in their region, it would be much more difficult for the leadership to continue the long-term struggle for the autonomy of the republic. That is why there was so much agitation and controversy. Later they talked about various violations during the census. One way or another, the Kryashens still got the right to declare themselves, and they counted 24 and a half thousand. They themselves call the figure 300 thousand.

Now the Kryashens are striving to keep their name, to pass on their traditions and religion to children. Three years ago, the New Testament was first completely translated into the Kryashen language, and a Prayer Book was recently published. Revival is not easy - the Kryashen villages without state support are gradually falling into decay, and in the cities the Kryashens are mostly assimilated.

However, it should be noted that more and more young people do not hide the fact that they are Kryashens. Filling out questionnaires on their pages on the Internet, they write "Kryashen" most often in the "religion" column. Why? After all, it would seem that they are Orthodox? Most likely, this is their desire to designate precisely their religious identity, to realize their place in such a motley environment, where it is often said that they “neither fish nor fowl” or “left Muslims, but did not come to Christians.”

Naturally, such disagreements cannot be avoided. Most Tatars identify themselves as Muslims. Therefore, in the attempts of Tatarstan to stand apart, to gain independence, the Orthodox Kryashens often find themselves out of work. For 20 years they managed to achieve the creation of only one large cultural center, and no more than ten parishes in the republic.

If the Kryashens of Tatarstan are primarily occupied with the process of their self-determination, then the metropolitans are also concerned with questions of a different kind. The Moscow community of Orthodox Tatars is not numerous. It operates at the Church of the Holy Apostle Thomas, not far from the Kantemirovskaya metro station. The rector of the temple, Priest Daniil Sysoev, is known for his active missionary work. Now a missionary center is being created at the temple for all diasporas, primarily Asian ones. The purpose is quite noble - to show that in Orthodoxy there are no national and ethnic boundaries. However, some of Father Daniel's methods, such as harsh remarks against Muslims, sometimes cause an ambiguous reaction even among the Orthodox clergy.

In the Moscow community there are both Kryashens and representatives of other Tatar ethnic communities, including former Muslims. And unlike the Kazan Kryashen services, here many take off their shoes and take a bath, and you can participate in the service while sitting on the carpet.

The de facto head and reader of the community, Yevgeny Bukharov, sees no departure from Orthodoxy in this. These are "national elements". Although they rather see the influence of a completely different - Islamic - religious tradition ...

According to Bukharov, the Kryashens can serve as a kind of link between the Orthodox and the Muslim Tatars, so the Kryashens can be successfully involved in missionary work in the Muslim environment. In turn, the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan calls for the return of "forcibly baptized" Tatars to Islam.

Many historians have emphasized the influence on the Eastern Slavs of the harsh continental nature and the endless plain, open to devastating enemy raids. Hence - fortitude and patience, the ability to put up with losses, a penchant for the famous "maybe", Russian breadth and scope to the extreme - but also the desire for central power, which is dictated by the instinct of self-preservation. This combination of freemen and national instinct creates the phenomenon of the Russian Cossacks, who pushed the borders of Russia to the Pacific Ocean.

However, it would be in vain to look for the meaning of Russian civilization in the Eurasian theories, born out of the fascination with the Russian space. On the contrary: the vast expanse of Russia is a consequence of its special spiritual vocation. And it can be realized only on the scale of Orthodox historiosophy. Therefore, we will not touch upon the little-studied, full of secrets and vague conjectures, the past of our people in the ancient mainstream of the Aryan civilization. Let us confine ourselves to the place of Russia in the Christian era, in which only the answers to the mysteries of history are revealed, both conscious of us and unknown, but latently influencing our world vocation.

The history of the baptism of Russia, described in the Russian chronicles, looks like a miraculous confluence of a whole chain of providential events: the visit of the Apostle Andrew in the 1st century. Slavic lands and his prediction about the greatness of the future Orthodox city of Kyiv; the miraculous defense of the Mother of God of Constantinople from the raid of the Russian knights Askold and Dir in 860 and their subsequent baptism (the first baptism of Russia) with the dispatch of the first bishop from Constantinople to Russia; acquisition by the labors of St. Cyril and Methodius Gospels in their native Slavic language; the baptism of Grand Duchess Olga in 946; the liberation of Russia in the 960s. from the yoke of the Jewish Khazaria ...

Khazaria was a most interesting historiosophical phenomenon: an artificial bastion of the “mystery of lawlessness”, which conquered Russia at the beginning of the 9th century. and set it against Orthodox Byzantium, but in the end, this providentially served the fact that Russia saw its main enemy in the Jews, which is reflected in folk epics, and did not accept their religion.

The chronicle describes the conscious choice of faith by princely ambassadors, struck by the unearthly beauty of Orthodox worship; the cure of Grand Duke Vladimir from blindness during baptism in the Crimea and his moral transformation, which made a huge impression on the people; mass voluntary baptism of the people in 988 ... (In the same era in the Western "Roman Empire" baptism was most often "fire and sword".)

Apparently, Orthodoxy so naturally and deeply entered the soul of our ancestors because their paganism was already more predisposed to this. Unlike the Romans and Greeks, whose developed philosophy resisted the new religion, Russia was childishly pure in this respect - and perceived Orthodoxy as an obvious, harmonious and all-encompassing Truth about the meaning of being, with which primitive pagan beliefs could not compete.

Recently, in connection with the well-known events in Tatarstan - the arson of churches in settlements where Orthodox Tatars live, in some cases calling themselves Kryashens, not without the participation of certain federal-level forces around this distinctive ethno-confessional group, another hype has arisen that clearly has a political context. As has been repeatedly written in the republican press, certain federal forces each time begin to play the Kryashen "card" when it is necessary for political radicals from the Moscow center who are interested in undermining the stability of our republic. Apparently, in this case, these forces decided to take advantage of the situation that had arisen or created before starting the operation to eliminate the post of president in the Republic of Tatarstan, which was obviously illegal due to the fact that the question of the organization of power in our country, according to the constitutional norms of the Russian Federation, belongs to the republican keeping. It is clear that such a dirty work requires a smoke screen and all sorts of explosives... Surprisingly, the activities of Muslim radicals who feed this political line fit perfectly into this scheme. It is very regrettable that some of the baptized Tatars, who consider themselves Kryashens, fell for this bait. True, it is encouraging that the Kryashen radicals are clearly not supported by the supporters of the moderate line in the Kryashen-Tatar social movement, who are clearly in the majority.
In the heat of these battles, where organizations such as RISS and Orthodox radicals wedged in, overexcited representatives of the Kryashen radicals (A. Fokin, M. Semenova, and others) decided to seize the leadership of the Baptized Tatar movement, including using various myths. These myths, which have arisen by no means today, are constantly torpedoed in order to substantiate the ideologeme about the “specialness” of the Kryashens, about their completely different origin from the Tatars. This point of view is very often based on the myth about the formation of the ethno-confessional community of the Kryashens in ancient times, almost starting from ancient Turkic times.
What do we really have? If we proceed from Russian statistics, then by the beginning of the 18th century we have 17 thousand baptized Tatars - this is exactly how the representatives of this group were called then in Russian historical sources. It should be borne in mind that this group of Orthodox Tatars are those who are called "old-baptized", that is, they were converted to Orthodoxy before the beginning of the 18th century. Taking into account the general demographics of the population of Russia in the 16th - early 18th centuries, when the country's population doubled, with a reverse calculation based on the dynamics of the Russian population, the total number of old-baptized by the middle of the 16th century could not have been more than 8 - 9 thousand people. In reality, there were even fewer of them, because Christianization took place in the 17th century. Thus, in the person of the old-baptized, and they constitute the core of the Kryashens, we are dealing with a very small group. When forming views on the origin of the Kryashens, this demographic reality must be constantly kept in mind.
In order to more clearly imagine how the group of Kryashens was formed, one should refer to the documents. Let's start with the letter of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich to Kazan in 1593. It says: “... in our fatherland in Kazan and in the Kazan and Sviyazhsk districts, newly baptized people live ... (who) do not carry the dead to the church, they put them in their old Tatar cemeteries.” Further, the Metropolitan of Kazan and Astrakhan Hermogenes complains to the tsar that “the newly baptized do not accept the teachings and do not lag behind the Tatar customs ... they grieve well that they have fallen behind their faith.” The question is, who were these "newly baptized", if they had Tatar customs and they sought to bury their dead in "Tatar", that is, Muslim cemeteries? The answer is clear - they were baptized Tatars. But how they were baptized can be seen from other documents of that era. For example, this is what is said in the Novgorod Chronicle: “...the Kazan Tatars from Moscow were brought to Novgorod, and others were brought to Novgorod... and all the Tatars were 60; Yes, of the same summer, three new prisons were set up in the city, and Tatars were imprisoned in them”, “... on the first Tuesday of January, they gave diyak, in the monasteries of the Tatars, who were in prison and wanted to be baptized; who did not want to be baptized, otherwise they were thrown into the water ... ”Here is the first way of converting the Tatars to Christianity: either you are baptized, or into the water (hole). The following example from the petition of the Romanov service Tatars (they were from the Edigey family) dated 1647 to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich: “... the Romanovsky governor ... put us ... in prison and tortured us, put us in chains and iron, and forced us ... to be strongly baptized into the Orthodox Christian faith ... and we ... want to be in our infidel faith. The king then replied that it was impossible to baptize by force, that it was necessary to convert them to Christianity "by kindness and encouraging them with the sovereign's salary." And from the decree of 1681 it is clear what happened: “... who Romanov and Yaroslavl Murzas and Tatars were baptized into the holy Orthodox Christian faith, they ... were ordered to give relatives of their estates for baptism ... And those who were not baptized were sent from Moscow to Uglich ... and if they want to be baptized, they are ordered to baptize, and give them estates and estates. Everything is clear - there is direct economic pressure: you were baptized - you kept your wealth, you refused - your estates and estates were taken away from you. Many were baptized in this way to show this, let's look at one genealogy (it is just connected with the descendants of Edigei named above) of the branch of the Yusupov princes.
Prince Yusuf (from the main family of Edigei) dies in 1556. Sons: Il Murza, Chin Murza, Seyush Murza (come to Russia).
From Seyush Murza: 1) Korep Murza, his son Biy Murza (baptized Ivan).
II. Zhdan Murza, his son Kan Murza (baptized Ivan).
III. Akas Murza, his son Ak Murza (baptized Aleksey).
Serdega Murza (baptized Peter).
IV. Ishteryak Murza.
V. Islam Murza.
VI. Abdul Murza (by baptism Dmitry).
VII. Ibrahim Murza (by baptism Nikita).
VIII. Baim Murza.
You see, very soon the noble Nogai Tatars turn first into Orthodox Tatars, and then completely into Russified Tatars. The mechanism was very simple, and it will be shown on a specific example: “... take care that they ... go to church ... they kept images in their houses and wore crosses and priests ... they called the spiritual fathers to the houses they would have laid the dead at the church, and the newly baptized themselves would marry and marry their children to Russian people and among themselves to the baptized and give their daughters for Russian people and newly baptized, but they did not convert to the Tatar faith from the peasant faith ... "This is from the royal order of 1593 to Metropolitan Hermogenes. It is clear that mixed marriages were used to reinforce the results of the Christianization of the Tatars, so assimilation proceeded faster. And if nothing helped, they used the following approach: "... and who are newly baptized Christian faiths to hold tight ... they will not teach, and you would have ordered them to be humbled, imprisoned and beaten, and imprisoned in the glands and in the chains ... "There was also one way of Christianization, which is noted in the royal order to Archbishop Gury of 1555: ... and which Tatar comes to guilt and runs away to him (to Gury. - D.I.) from disgrace ... and wants to be baptized, and the governors back to him don’t give it back, and baptize him ... ”In this case, the Tatars who were guilty of something, in order to escape punishment, could accept Christianity.
Thus, there were quite a lot of ways to convert the Tatars to Christianity after the Russian conquest of the Kazan Khanate. According to historical sources, there is no need to invent some kind of mythical ancestors for the Kryashens. Moreover, a century and a half after the capture of Kazan, the Russian authorities, acting in close connection with the Orthodox Church, could definitely convert to Christianity that small group that we see in historical sources by the beginning of the 18th century.
The above does not mean at all that there are no non-Tatar ethnic components in the baptized Tatars, they are, in particular, Finno-Ugric inclusions. But the thing is that Muslim Tatars also have these inclusions. For example, Tatar ethnographers have established that in the northern regions of Zakazan, near almost every Tatar settlement, there are places called Keremets, as our neighbors Mari, Udmurts, and Chuvashs call places of pagan prayers. Therefore, representatives of these peoples lived there and in some cases became part of the Tatars. But they became part of the Tatars even before some of the Tatars, including those with non-Tatar roots, were Christianized. This is proved by the fact that all baptized Tatars are Tatar-speaking. Therefore, it is completely incorrect to “construct” the Kryashen “specialness”, using the possibility of non-Tatar inclusions in the composition of the baptized Tatars.
Hence the conclusion: any arguments about the long historical roots of the baptized Tatars are absolutely groundless and, from a scientific point of view, belong to the category of myth-making. In fact, the baptized Tatars formed into a special ethno-confessional community for other, but completely understandable historical reasons. This issue requires separate consideration, which will be done in the continuation of this publication.

Damir Iskhakov,
Doctor of Historical Sciences,
head of the Center for Ethnological Monitoring.

Kazan State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

Department of History and Cultural Studies.

SUMMARY ON THE TOPIC

Baptized Tatars

Completed by a student of group 04-101

Mustafin Marcel Maratovich .

Checked by Associate Professor Minnikhanov F.G.

Kazan-2010.

Plan

Introduction

Chapter I "A Brief Historical Outline".

Chapter II "Number, resettlement and formation of features of culture and life of the Kryashens".

Chapter III "General characteristics of the economy"

Conclusion.

List of used literature.

Introduction

The centuries-old history and original culture of the Tatars of the Middle Volga have long attracted the attention of not only specialists, but also a wide circle of the public both in our country and abroad. In recent years, dozens of papers have been published on these issues.

Works devoted to the ethnographic study of traditional culture are well known. Attention to this topic is determined by the great importance of ethnographic data in the development of theoretical and practical problems of ethnogenesis and cultural history.

However, until now, researchers are mainly interested in two large ethnographic groups of Tatars of the Middle Volga region - Kazan Tatars and Mishars. Meanwhile, the interpretation of ethnogenetic questions is especially effective when data are involved either from a poorly studied group of people, or from a group whose culture has noticeable differences.

One of these groups is a small part of the Tatar population of the Middle Volga region - "Kryashen Tatars", formed as a result of baptism in the middle of the 16th-early 17th centuries. It should be noted that in the literature and sources of the 16th-17th centuries. Kryashen Tatars are known as "newly baptized". At that time, this name extended to all Christianized peoples of the region. In the 17th century, a division into "newly baptized" and "old baptized" appeared. The category of the latter included newly baptized draft Tatars who had special benefits for baptism.

In the second half of the XVIII-XIX centuries. the names "newly baptized Tatars" and "old baptized Tatars" took root. The first name was understood as a group of Tatars, Christianized since the beginning of the 18th century. and later. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. almost all of them converted to Islam again. "Old-baptized Tatars" - a group whose ancestors were baptized in the period from the middle of the 16th to the beginning of the 18th century. In modern literature, they are often referred to as "Tatars-Kryashens" or simply "Kryashens". In what follows, for brevity, we will use the latter term.

The Kryashens are mainly settled on the territory of the Tatar ASSR. Their settlements are also found in the Udmurt, Chuvash, Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, in the Kirov and Chelyabinsk regions. Some of them live in different cities of our country. They speak, like the Kazan Tatars, in the middle dialect of the Tatar language. In culture and life, the Kryashens had features that distinguish them from other groups of Tatars of the Middle Volga region. In particular, researchers note that they preserve ancient (often ancient) forms of language, songs, traditions, customs, personal names. The original material culture was no exception.

However, it has not yet become the subject of a special study. This circumstance justifies the importance of collecting, systematizing and analyzing all the elements of the material life of the Kryashens.

Such work will expand and enrich the ethnographic characteristics of the general Tatar culture and more fully illuminate the origins of the formation of its ethnographic specificity. The object of this study is the material culture of the Kryashens settled in the modern administrative regions of the Tatar ASSR, with the exception of a few villages located on the right bank of the Volga and on the border with the Chuvash ASSR, the population of which differs sharply from other Kryashens. These are the so-called Molkey Kryashens. In terms of language, they are Mishars, and in everyday life they are almost completely identical with the lower Chuvash. The territory of the Tatar ASSR is part of the Volga-Ural ethnographic zone, which is distinguished by ethnic diversity.

The centuries-old economic and cultural ties of the Turkic, Finno-Ugric and Slavic tribes and peoples contributed to ethnic infiltration and cultural and domestic mutual influences. This had a rather strong impact on the formation of the material culture of all the peoples of the region.

Therefore, the essential task of the study is an attempt to determine the place that the Kryashens and their material culture occupy among other peoples and cultures of the Middle Volga region, and also, based on the analysis of material culture, to express some thoughts about the formation of this group of Tatars and their cultural and everyday features.

In this regard, the work focuses on the characteristics of common and distinctive phenomena in the material culture of the Kryashens in comparison with the corresponding data of other groups of Tatars, as well as the neighboring non-Turkic population. As far as possible, the origin and development of the elements, the material life of the Kryashens are shown.

Chapter #1

BRIEF HISTORICAL OUTLINE

After the accession of the Middle Volga region to the Russian state, missionary activities were launched, which had the goal of converting the non-Christian peoples of the region, primarily the Tatars, to Orthodoxy. To carry out this work, which is important from the point of view of the political interests of the tsarist government and the aspirations of the church itself, already in 1555 the Kazan-Sviyazhsk diocese was established, endowed with broad rights and material resources. In the orders of the tsar and the metropolitan, the head of the new diocese, Guria (for example, the Tsar's "Remembrance of the Order" of May 1555), is advised to carry out Christianization primarily by peaceful means: by bribery, appeasement.

The government was afraid of complicating the already tense political situation in the region. First of all, the baptism was accepted by the former Kazan princes and part of the Tatar feudal nobility - princes and murzas, who even before the fall of Kazan adhered to the Moscow orientation. Of these, the government tried to create for itself a supporting social group. They were included in the general group of “newly baptized servicemen”, exempted from yasak, encouraged with monetary salaries, local dachas from the palace land fund. For all this they had to promote the colonial policy of the autocracy. The participation of the “newly baptized” in the suppression of the Kazan revolt of 1556 is known. In 1557, as a support force, they were settled near the city of Laishev, an important military point for that time, and in the 70s, 34 “newly baptized” were in the administrative service in Kazan. Perhaps this category of "newly baptized" contributed to the forced Christianization of the population dependent on it.

So, in the legends that have come down to us, it is said that during the time of Ivan the Terrible, three brothers of a princely family lived in Kazan, two of them, Iskak and Nyrsu, were baptized, and both brothers converted many of their Mukhamedan relatives to Christianity. The number of these "newly baptized" was small, and they, endowed with the rights of the Russian nobility, apparently became Russified. Later, the bulk of the “newly baptized” were “newly baptized yasash”, some of whom began to be classified as members of the service class.

This is how the “newly baptized servicemen” arose. N. Firsov considered them to be the lower strata of the “newly baptized servicemen”, cast into archers and Cossacks. The government, seeking to create economic antagonism between the baptized and the unbaptized, provided newly baptized servicemen with local estates from the lands of the yasak Tatars. Later, in the 17th-18th centuries, this group of Kryashens was equalized in rights with the rest of the yasak population, their lands were lost, and they themselves in the 19th century. were classified as state peasants.

It should be emphasized that in the second half of the seventeenth century. although the government managed to create faithful servants from a small group of Murzi princes, the task of separation was not achieved. The bulk, regardless of religious affiliation, continued to live in friendship and harmony. In 1593, Metropolitan Germogen, in a report to Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, complaining about the complete absence of the Christian faith among the “newly baptized”, pays special attention to the relationship of the population: with votyaks together, and they eat and drink with them at the same time, and many of the bad Tatar customs are kept shamelessly by the newly baptized, but they do not keep the peasant faith and do not get used to it.

It is significant that the Russian population, including the former “Polonyaniki” (Russian people freed from the Tatar captivity), did not support missionary activity and preferred to live with the local population in good neighborly relations: “Many Russian Polonyaniki and non-Polonyaniki live among the Tatars and among the Cheremis and Chuvash and they drink with them and eat sodnovo and their mate. .. and those de people also fell away of the Christian faith, turned into the Tatar faith among the Tatars, ”the same report wrote. Thus, the friendly relations that developed in the region between the local residents turned out to be stronger than the activities of the missionaries. sharply changes tactics in the direction of strengthening administrative pressure. It is recommended that “newly baptized” violators of the Christian faith be “humbled, imprisoned and beaten”, settled in a special settlement in Kazan, married to Russians, etc. cover the class orientation of this policy, it is associated with the religious question.

A number of government decrees are issued (decree of 1628, the Cathedral Code of 1649, decrees of May 16, 681, March 31, 1963, and also from 1713 to 1715) in which the right to own land and peasants remains with the Tatar murzas and princes only if they accept their Christianity. The decrees themselves do not touch upon the issue of the baptism of Tatar peasants, since the government cherishes the hope that the baptized Murzas will help in the Christianization of the population subordinate to them. However, this solution method did not bring the desired results to the government.