HISTORICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC IDENTITY OF THE CHUVASH

Abstract

The article deals with some issues of the ethnicity’s self-preservation in the space-time coordinates of history. Attention is paid to those significant milestones when an ethnic group and its leaders had to make fateful decisions. The author assumes that the concepts of «historical identity» and «ethnic identity» are closely related to the terms «ethnicity» and «ethnic self-awareness». According to the author, ethnic identity implies the connection of one’s «Ego» and «WE» with one’s history, traditions and language. The article provides a brief analysis to clarify the connection between the history of an ethnic group and its identity. It is emphasized that a person is prone to know the history of his family, birthplace, his nationality, and he is interested in the features of the ethnic group of which he considers himself a part. He wants to get an answer to the questions: who were the historical neighbors, what transformations took place over the past 20 centuries in the history of his ancestors, who they were originally, whether all these components can be reconstructed. For example, the article points out incompatibility of the ethnonym «Bulgar» with the ethnonym «the Sabirs – the Sapirs – the Savirs – the Suvars – the Suvash – the Chuvash» from the etymological point of view. In addition, neither the Bulgars nor the Savirs ever lived in the Asian part of Eurasia. The Sabirs were first mentioned and recorded by Claudius Ptolemy in the Caucasus in the second century. At the very least, we have no facts or other historical and philological grounds to identify the Chuvash as the historical heirs of the Bulgars. The article highly evaluates the historical role and the «female power» of the Savir ruler Boa (rix), as well as calculates the number of the Savir tribe as of the VI century. The Savirs were extremely competent in technical terms when besieging and destroying fortresses. Their ramming tools were popular with both the Persians and the Byzantines. The novelty of the research consists in a concise but systematic analysis of the historical identity of the Chuvash people from ancient times to the present day.