Religious Developments among the Volga Nations as a Model for the Russian Federation

Little is known in the world at large about the Finno-Ugrian and Chuvash peoples of the Volga region (Povolzh'ye). The Muslim republics of the Russian Federation-Tatarstan, Chechnya, Dagestan and others- are constantly in the news, but the areas at the heart of European Russia- Mordovia, Mari El, Udmurtia and Chuvashia- are known only by name even to Russians and in the West are not heard of at all. They were annexed to Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and slowly but surely both Christianised (having previously been pagan) and russified. Occasional national uprisings and independent spiritual and cultural life were quietly but harshly suppressed, and are now remembered by only a few specialists. The turn of this cen-tury saw a short period of national development resulting in the appearance of a national intelligentsia and the first fruits of artistic endeavours. Under the Bolsheviks these regions automatically became national autonomous republics and this enabled them to preserve their own languages and created the basis for national life. However, the mortal grip of the Communist Party and its Marxist-Leninist ideology froze this national awakening for another seventy years