Country: Russia
Group: Chuvash
Date Finalized: 4/11/2022
Team: Deneb Bobadilla (lead), Gabby Staker, William Nicholson
Content Warning: forced labor, forced displacement
Approximate Time Period: 1552 – 1990
The Chuvash are a Turkic ethnic group, most of whom live in the Chuvash Republic of the Russian Federation (Arutyunova & Zamyatin, 2020). In 1552, Russia conquered the Chuvash territory, and over the centuries many Chuvash lost control over their land to immigrant Russian nobles and landholders. This disrupted the Chuvash traditional agricultural lifestyle, and many Chuvash were forced to become bonded laborers on farms, in the timber industry, and on barges. The Russian church and state also engaged in Christianization and Russification of the Chuvash people, with Russification continuing into and throughout the Soviet period (Arutyunova & Zamyatin, 2020).
The 1990s brought a revival of the Chuvash language and culture, and their law stipulates that their president must be a Chuvash-speaker (Minority Rights Group, 2020). The 1991 Language Law and the 1992 Education Law recognized the right of citizens to receive basic secondary education in their native language The numerical dominance of the Chuvash ethnic group in their republic made legitimation of ethnic revival policies much simpler. Even though the Constitution designated Russian as the state language of the entire country, it also recognized the right of republics to have their constitutions and to establish their state languages. New policies implemented Chuvash language in schools and universities, as well as Chuvash quotas to music and art university applicants (Titova 2015). The Chuvash National Congress (CNC) protested the announcement of President Putin’s plans to terminate the election of regional governors in 2004, which would have allowed the federal centre to ignore the language requirements of republican leaders envisioned in Chuvash law. In September 2012, the government of the Chuvash Republic approved a 2013-2020 programme to promote popular interest in the language. Like other communities whose languages are endangered, Chuvash representatives have expressed alarm about the potential implications of any draft language law that would reduce opportunities for minority language learning.
4. Data Quality 2 / 3. There is limited published literature that provides evidence for the ethnocide of the Chuvash in the Russian federation.
Sources
- Arutyunova, E., & Zamyatin, K. (2020). An Ethnolinguistic conflict on the compulsory learning of the state languages in the republics of Russia: policies and discourses. The International Journal of Human Rights, 25(5), 832–852. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2020.1804368
- Minority Rights Group. Chuvash Chuvash. Chuvash – Minority Rights Group. (2020, December). https://minorityrights.org/minorities/chuvash/
Titova, T., & Egorova, O. (2015). The Chuvash people of Kazakhstan: Dynamics of quantity and reasons of migration. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s5p275 - Valeyev, D. Zh. (2000). The Role of Bashkortostan National Sovereignty in the Russian Multinational State. Russian–American Relations, 252–262. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230535749_14