the mystery of the missing mordvans

[w martin]

dear richard,

well, my knowledge about mordva is extremely limited. but i have
found a couple of interesting websites on mordvinian stuff, and i
think i may have, if not an answer to your query, at least a
direction of inquiry.

the problem seems to be one of designation and recognition.
"mordovian" refers to an administrative region, but because it
effaces any distinction between that region's two populaces, the
erzya and the moksha, it, along with the existence of any common
"mordvinian language," is rejected by those who identify themselves
principally as one or the other (at least according to mariz kemal,
an erzyan poet, at http://www.suri.ee/inf/erzaen.html, who claims
that young erzyans would rather be registered "under virtually any
nationality -- most often russian" than under a "nickname"). granted,
this perspective may not be shared by all, but it may give a clue as
to why i can't go out now and pick up a loaf of bread from the
mordovian bakery on the corner or drink kvass with those guys at the
mordovian national home on friday nights.

actually, the fact that there is no "little mordovia" in chicago
probably is due as much to numbers as anything. i suspect that there
simply isn't a critical mass of any one russian-federated finno-ugric
people in north america (and given the divide-and-conquer protocoll
of the ussr, there probably isn't in russia either). if i were a
north american erzya or moksha and also knew that i was, i'd probably
tell people i was russian, or maybe even finnish, to make things
easier on them; and maybe i'd also choose to live in a russian, or
even a finnish, neighborhood; and my children would probably grow up
thinking they were russian, or perhaps finnish. i wonder if there are
any sociological studies out there of this kind of default or double
assimilation particular to small nationalities; clearly their
circumstances would be different than those of the poles or
hungarians, etc. and something like that might provide the basis for
a methodology. at any rate, i suspect you'd have to go to some other
community first to find them; and maybe you'd even have to start in
russia and track the peregrinations of a few erzya/moksha/mordvan
families to see where they ended up in north america.

it reminds me of a new york times article recently on the apparent
drastic decrease in the francophone population of louisiana. the 2000
census had a box to be checked off for "french-canadian," but nothing
for "french," "francophone," "cajun," or "acadian" (or whatever had
been used in previous censuses). the cajuns/acadians there didn't
recognize themselves as "french-canadians" (having never been
french-canadian, after all), so they identified themselves as
something else. incidentally, acadians of nova scotia don't recognize
themselves as french-canadians either, since to do so would efface
any difference between them and the quebecois as well as the
particularities of their own history. but i guess i'm getting
off-topic now....

here are a few websites i found that might be of interest.

finno-ugric stuff

http://www.suri.ee

http://www.helsinki.fi/~jolaakso/fgrlinks.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/3818/finnugr.html


mordva/mordovia/mordvinia...

http://www.torama.ru/eng/links.php3?type=1

http://www.nns.ru/regiony/mordov.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/mordo.html


next: tuvans!

bill martin



At 4:49 PM -0400 9/14/01, Richard Sylvester wrote:
>I wonder if you know of any Mordvinian communities over here,
>or have any information about their presence in North America.

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