TO THE PROBLEM OF STUDYING THE PREREQUISITES OF THE NATIONAL STATEHOOD OF THE CHUVASH

Abstract

The article presents a historiographical analysis of methodological approaches to the concepts of “the service class Tatars”, “the service class Chuvash” and “the tribute Chuvash”. These social categories of the population of the late medieval period who lived in the territory of the Middle Volga region, including the Chuvash region, for a long period caused historians’ interest to the problem of their ethnicity. In the period of land expansion of the Moscow state and the formation of the Russian state (second half of the 16th–19th centuries), individual representatives of the Chuvash ethnos formed part of the ethnosocial category of service class people. As representatives of the military service class, they participated in military companies on the side of the Moscow state and drew duties of a security service for the protection of its south-eastern borders. In the middle of the 16th–17th centuries the Chuvash region became a territory of colonization and integration into the system of the Russian statehood. Moreover, the Chuvash land became one of the most important outposts in the process of expanding the territorial borders of Russia. The Chuvash, who were in the service corporation, took an active part in the events. The process of colonization and integration into the system of Russian statehood became a stage for the formation of prerequisites for the formation of the Chuvash ethnos, which later developed into a state-constituting one. It is in the era under consideration in the Chuvash region that the settlement structure, specifics of spiritual culture, economic and domestic life were formed, as well as the city-fortress Alatyr was built which was one of the leading strategic points of the Moscow state in the eastern direction.
 
 The retrospective analysis of the statehood history of the Chuvash prompts to have a new look at historical processes related to the prerequisites of its formation and, in particular, interaction with other peoples of the Middle Volga region, and to enrich ideas about the role of the Chuvash in the formation of a multinational Russian state.