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Russian language is Finnish-Ugric. Settlement of Finno-Ugric ethnic groups in Russia

The Finno-Ugric language group is part of the Ural-Yukagir language family and includes the peoples: Saami, Veps, Izhors, Karelians, Nenets, Khanty and Mansi.

Saami live mainly in the territory of the Murmansk region. Apparently, the Sami are the descendants of the most ancient population of Northern Europe, although there is an opinion about their resettlement from the east. For researchers, the origin of the Saami is the greatest mystery, since the Saami and the Baltic-Finnish languages go back to a common base language, but anthropologically, the Saami belong to a different type (Uralic type) than the Baltic-Finnish peoples, who speak languages that are closest to them. related, but mainly of the Baltic type. Since the 19th century, many hypotheses have been put forward to resolve this contradiction.

The Saami people are most likely descended from the Finno-Ugric population. Presumably in the 1500-1000s. BC e. the separation of the proto-Sami from a single community of carriers of the base language begins, when the ancestors of the Baltic Finns, under the Baltic and later German influence, began to move to a settled way of life of farmers and pastoralists, while the ancestors of the Sami in the territory of Karelia assimilated the autochthonous population of Fennoscandia.

The Saami people, in all likelihood, were formed by the merger of many ethnic groups. This is indicated by anthropological and genetic differences between the Saami ethnic groups living in different territories. Genetic studies of recent years have revealed common features in modern Saami with their descendants. ancient population Atlantic Coast Ice Age - Modern Basque Berbers. Such genetic traits were not found in the more southern groups of Northern Europe. From Karelia, the Saami migrated further north, fleeing from the spreading Karelian colonization and, presumably, from the imposition of tribute. Following the migrating herds of wild reindeer, the ancestors of the Sami, at the latest during the 1st millennium AD. e., gradually reached the coast of the Arctic Ocean and reached the territories of their current residence. At the same time, they began to switch to the breeding of domesticated reindeer, but this process reaches a significant extent only by the 16th century.

Their history over the past one and a half millennia is, on the one hand, a slow retreat under the onslaught of other peoples, and on the other hand, their history is an integral part of the history of nations and peoples that have their own statehood in which important role assigned to the taxation of the Saami tribute. A necessary condition for reindeer herding was that the Saami roamed from place to place, driving reindeer herds from winter to summer pastures. In practice, nothing prevented the crossing of state borders. The basis of the Sami society was a community of families that united on the principles of joint ownership of land, which gave them a means of subsistence. The land was allocated by families or clans.

Figure 2.1 Population dynamics of the Saami people 1897 - 2010 (compiled by the author based on materials).

Izhora. The first mention of Izhora is found in the second half of the 12th century, which refers to the pagans, who half a century later were already recognized in Europe as a strong and even dangerous people. It was from the 13th century that the first mention of Izhora appeared in Russian chronicles. In the same century, the Izhora land was first mentioned in the Livonian Chronicle. At dawn on a July day in 1240, the elder of the Izhora land, being on patrol, discovered the Swedish flotilla and hastily sent to report everything to Alexander, the future Nevsky.

It is obvious that at that time the Izhors were still very close ethnically and culturally with the Karelians who lived on the Karelian Isthmus and in the Northern Ladoga region, north of the area of the alleged distribution of the Izhors, and this similarity persisted until the 16th century. Pretty accurate data on the approximate population of the Izhora land were first recorded in the Scribe Book of 1500, but the ethnicity of the inhabitants was not shown during the census. It is traditionally believed that the inhabitants of the Karelian and Orekhovets districts, most of whom had Russian names and nicknames of the Russian and Karelian sound, were Orthodox Izhors and Karelians. Obviously, the border between these ethnic groups passed somewhere on the Karelian Isthmus, and, possibly, coincided with the border of the Orekhovets and Karelian districts.

In 1611, this territory was taken over by Sweden. During the 100 years that this territory became part of Sweden, many Izhorians left their villages. Only in 1721, after the victory over Sweden, Peter I included this region in the St. Petersburg province of the Russian state. At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, Russian scientists began to record the ethno-confessional composition of the population of the Izhorian lands, which were then already included in the St. Petersburg province. In particular, to the north and south of St. Petersburg, the presence of Orthodox residents is recorded, ethnically close to the Finns - Lutherans - the main population of this territory.

Veps. At present, scientists cannot finally resolve the issue of the genesis of the Veps ethnos. It is believed that by origin the Vepsians are connected with the formation of other Baltic-Finnish peoples and that they separated from them, probably in the 2nd half. 1 thousand AD e., and by the end of this thousand settled in the southeastern Ladoga region. Burial mounds of the X-XIII centuries can be defined as ancient Veps. It is believed that the earliest references to the Vepsians date back to the 6th century AD. e. Russian chronicles from the 11th century call this people the whole. Russian scribe books, lives of saints and other sources often know the ancient Veps under the name Chud. In the inter-lake area between the Onega and Ladoga lakes, the Veps lived from the end of the 1st millennium, gradually moving east. Some groups of Veps left the inter-lake area and merged with other ethnic groups.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Vepsian national districts, as well as Vepsian village councils and collective farms, were created in places where the people were densely populated.

In the early 1930s, the introduction of the teaching of the Vepsian language and a number of subjects in this language in elementary school began, textbooks of the Vepsian language based on Latin script appeared. In 1938, Vepsian books were burned, and teachers and other public figures were arrested and expelled from their homes. Since the 1950s, as a result of increased migration processes and the associated spread of exogamous marriages, the process of Veps assimilation has accelerated. About half of the Veps settled in cities.

Nenets. The history of the Nenets in the XVII-XIX centuries. rich in military conflicts. In 1761, a census of yasak foreigners was carried out, and in 1822, the "Charter on the management of foreigners" was put into effect.

Excessive monthly requisitions, the arbitrariness of the Russian administration repeatedly led to riots, accompanied by the destruction of Russian fortifications, the Nenets uprising in 1825-1839 is most famous. As a result of military victories over the Nenets in the XVIII century. first half of the 19th century the settlement area of the tundra Nenets expanded significantly. By the end of the XIX century. the territory of the Nenets settlement stabilized, and their numbers increased in comparison with the end of the 17th century. about twice. During the entire Soviet period, the total number of Nenets, according to censuses, also steadily increased.

Today, the Nenets are the largest of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. The proportion of the Nenets who consider the language of their nationality to be their mother tongue is gradually decreasing, but still remains higher than that of most other peoples of the North.

Figure 2.2 Number of Nenets peoples 1989, 2002, 2010 (compiled by the author based on materials).

In 1989, 18.1% of the Nenets recognized Russian as their native language, and in general they were fluent in Russian, 79.8% of the Nenets - thus, there is still a fairly noticeable part of the language community, adequate communication with which can only be ensured by knowledge of the Nenets language. The preservation of strong Nenets speech skills among young people is typical, although for a significant part of them the Russian language has become the main means of communication (as well as among other peoples of the North). A certain positive role is played by the teaching of the Nenets language at school, the popularization of national culture in the media, and the activities of Nenets writers. But first of all, the relatively favorable linguistic situation is due to the fact that reindeer herding - the economic basis of the Nenets culture - as a whole was able to survive in its traditional form, despite all the destructive tendencies of the Soviet era. This type of production activity remained entirely in the hands of the indigenous population.

Khanty- indigenous small Ugric people living in the north of Western Siberia. There are three ethnographic groups of the Khanty: northern, southern and eastern, and the southern Khanty mixed with the Russian and Tatar population. The ancestors of the Khanty penetrated from the south to the lower reaches of the Ob and populated the territories of the modern Khanty-Mansiysk and southern regions of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and from the end of the 1st millennium, on the basis of a mixture of aborigines and newcomer Ugric tribes, the ethnogenesis of the Khanty began. The Khanty called themselves more by the rivers, for example, "the people of Konda," the people of the Ob.

Northern Khanty. Archaeologists associate the genesis of their culture with the Ust-Polui culture, localized in the basin of the river. Ob from the mouth of the Irtysh to the Gulf of Ob. This is a northern, taiga commercial culture, many of whose traditions are not followed by modern northern Khanty.
From the middle of the II millennium AD. the Northern Khanty were strongly influenced by the Nenets reindeer herding culture. In the zone of direct territorial contacts, the Khanty were partially assimilated by the tundra Nenets.

Southern Khanty. They settle up from the mouth of the Irtysh. This is the territory of the southern taiga, forest-steppe and steppe, and culturally it gravitates more towards the south. In their formation and subsequent ethno-cultural development, a significant role was played by the southern forest-steppe population, layered on the general Khanty basis. The Russians had a significant influence on the southern Khanty.

Eastern Khanty. Settle in the Middle Ob and along the tributaries: Salym, Pim, Agan, Yugan, Vasyugan. This group, to a greater extent than others, retains the North Siberian features of culture, dating back to the Ural population - draft dog breeding, dugout boats, the predominance of swing clothes, birch bark utensils, and a fishing economy. Within the limits of the modern habitat, the Eastern Khanty quite actively interacted with the Kets and Selkups, which was facilitated by belonging to the same economic and cultural type.
Thus, in the presence of common cultural features characteristic of the Khanty ethnos, which is associated with the early stages of their ethnogenesis and the formation of the Ural community, which, along with the mornings, included the ancestors of the Kets and Samoyed peoples, the subsequent cultural "divergence", the formation of ethnographic groups, to a greater extent was determined by the processes of ethno-cultural interaction with neighboring peoples. Mansi- a small people in Russia, the indigenous population of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug. The closest relatives of the Khanty. They speak the Mansi language, but due to active assimilation, about 60% use the Russian language in everyday life. As an ethnic group, the Mansi formed as a result of the merger of local tribes of the Ural culture and Ugric tribes moving from the south through the steppes and forest-steppes of Western Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan. Two-component nature (a combination of cultures of taiga hunters and fishermen and steppe nomadic cattle breeders) in the culture of the people is preserved to this day. Initially, the Mansi lived in the Urals and its western slopes, but the Komi and Russians forced them out in the Trans-Urals in the 11th-14th centuries. The earliest contacts with Russians, primarily Snovgorodites, date back to the 11th century. With the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state at the end of the 16th century, Russian colonization intensified, and by the end of the 17th century, the number of Russians exceeded the number of the indigenous population. The Mansi were gradually forced out to the north and east, partially assimilated, and in the 18th century they were converted to Christianity. The ethnic formation of the Mansi was influenced by various peoples.

In the Vogulskaya cave, located near the village of Vsevolodo-Vilva in the Perm region, traces of the Voguls were found. According to local historians, the cave was a temple (pagan sanctuary) of the Mansi, where ritual ceremonies were held. In the cave were found bear skulls with traces of stone axes and spears, shards of ceramic vessels, bone and iron arrowheads, bronze plaques of Permian animal style depicting an elk-man standing on a lizard, silver and bronze decorations.

The book tells about the languages, peoples, migratory movements of the Finno-Ugric peoples. About how the Finno-Ugric community arises, beliefs, customs, rituals are formed. Various historical and ethnographic sources are involved. Brief grammars of some Finno-Ugric languages are given.

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The following excerpt from the book Finno-Ugric peoples. Languages, peoples, migrations, customs (Andrey Tikhomirov) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

Compiler Andrey Tikhomirov

ISBN 978-5-4490-9797-2

Created with the intelligent publishing system Ridero

Finno-Ugric languages

The Finno-Ugric languages (or Finno-Ugric languages) are a group of languages that are closely related to the Samoyedic languages and form, together with the latter, a large genetic Uralic language family.

The Finno-Ugric languages are divided into the following branches: Hungarian, represented by the Hungarian language; Ob-Ugric, consisting of the Mansi and Khanty languages spoken in the northern part of the Ob River basin; Baltic-Finnish with languages: Finnish, Estonian, Liv, Vod, Veps, Izhora and Karelian; Sami, represented by the Sami language, which is spoken by the Sami (Lapps) living on the Kola Peninsula, in the northern part of Finland, Sweden and Norway; Mordovian with two main dialects - Erzya and Moksha; Mari, consisting of meadow-eastern and mountain dialects; Perm, including the Udmurt language and the Komi language with the Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak and Komi-Yazva dialects.

Samoyedic languages, a family (according to other classifications, a group) of languages as part of the genetic community of the Uralic languages. Includes languages: Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, almost extinct Kamasin, extinct Mator (Motor), Karagas and Taigi. Samoyeds, outdated. - Samoyeds, (annalistic - Samoyed) (from Sameemne, in the Sami language - the land of the Saami), 1) The old Russian name for the Saami and other peoples of the North of Russia and Siberia. 2) An obsolete name for all Samoyed peoples.

In addition, the so-called Ural race stands out, which occupies an intermediate position between the Mongoloid and Caucasoid races. Characterized by straight dark hair, dark eyes, sometimes a flat face, a strongly developed epicanthus (narrow nose with a concave back). It is now distributed in western Siberia (Khanty, Mansi, northern Altaians, etc.).

Siy Eniko, Hungarian Language Course, Second Edition. Tankyonkiado, Budapest, 1981, p. ten. Szíj Enikő, Magyar nyelvkönyv, Második kiadas, Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1981, oldal 9

The Hungarian language is in close genetic relationship with the Ob-Ugric languages, making up the Ugric group of Finno-Ugric languages. The Hungarians, who once lived close to the Khanty and Mansi, occupied the modern territory only in the 9th century. All other Finno-Ugric languages form the Finnish group or the Baltic-Finno-Permian group.

Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian are developed literary languages, and they have an old script. Mordovian, Mari, Udmurt, Komi, Khanty and Mansi as literary languages were formed only in the 20-30s. 20th century.

In the 2nd half of the 14th century. In the Komi language, ancient Permian writing was created, which fell into decline in the 18th century. Ancient Permian writing - writing created in the 14th century. missionary Stefan of Perm on the basis of one of the ancient dialects of the Komi language. A special alphabet was compiled on the model of Greek and Slavic-Russian, translations of some liturgical books were made. Now out of use. At present, small monuments of it have survived in the form of inscriptions on icons and in handwritten books, lists of alphabets, etc. A valuable source for the study of ancient Permian writing is the list of liturgy (the so-called Evgeniev-Lepekhinsky texts), rewritten in the 17th century. Russian alphabet from Old Perm, which is a coherent text of about 600 words. This writing in the 14-17 centuries. enjoyed a certain popularity among Russian Moscow scribes, who used it as a secret writing.

Ancient Permian writing

The most ancient written monuments are Hungarian (13th century), Komi (14th century),

Finnish (15th-16th centuries).

Common to modern Finno-Ugric languages are some conjugation, declension and word-formation affixes inherited from the Finno-Ugric language, as well as several hundred common roots. In the Finno-Ugric vocabulary for individual languages, regular sound correspondences are observed. However, the modern Finno-Ugric languages, due to a long isolated development, have diverged far from each other.

friend both in their grammatical structure and in the composition of the vocabulary; they also differ greatly in sound characteristics. From common grammatical features the following can be noted: an agglutinative grammatical structure, the use of postpositions (instead of the prepositions of the Indo-European languages), the absence of prefixes (the exception is the Hungarian language), the invariability of adjectives in the position before the word being defined (the exception is the Baltic-Finnish languages). Most Finno-Ugric languages have vowel harmony. The vocabulary of individual languages was influenced by various languages neighboring peoples, as a result of which the composition of foreign borrowings is not the same in different languages; so, for example, in the Hungarian language there are many Turkic and Slavic words, and in the Finnish language there are many Baltic, Germanic, Swedish and ancient Russian borrowings.

Modern Finns (suomalayset) speak Finnish, which belongs to the western, Baltic-Finnish group of Finno-Ugric languages. Anthropologically, they belong to the Baltic type of the Caucasoid race.

Arkhipova N.P. and Yastrebov E.V. in the book “How the Ural Mountains were discovered”, Chelyabinsk, 2nd ed., South Ural book publishing house, 1982, p. 146-149, tell about the journey of the Hungarian linguist and geographer Antal Reguli to the Northern Urals in the 40s. 19th century: “Even as a student, Reguli thought about the origin of the Hungarian language and the Hungarian people. Why does his country speak a language so different from the languages of neighboring countries? Where are the origins of the Hungarian language, where did the ancestors of modern Hungarians come from in South-Eastern Europe? Reguli heard that the Hungarians allegedly come from the Urals. However, this had to be proven. Having visited Northern Finland, he was struck by the relationship between the Finnish and Sami (Lapland) languages, on the one hand, and Hungarian, on the other. To continue studying Finno-Ugric languages and ethnic ties, Reguli decided to go to Russia. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences gave him 200 forints (which was equal to 200 gold rubles) for scientific research. In 1841, he arrived in St. Petersburg, where he quickly mastered the Russian language, and continued to improve his knowledge of the languages of the northern peoples.

Reguli realized that in order to find out the position of the Hungarian language in the system of languages of the Finno-Ugric group, its origin, it is necessary to penetrate into the central and eastern regions of European Russia, the Urals and the Trans-Urals. lived there mysterious people Mansi (Voguls), then little known in Europe. On October 9, 1843, the traveler left for the Urals through Moscow. On October 27 he arrived in Kazan. Along the way, Reguli collects material about the language and life of the Mari (Cheremis), Udmurts (Votiaks) and Chuvash. November 14, 1843 Reguli arrives in Perm, from where he began his wanderings through unexplored lands. Leaving Solikamsk on November 20, 1843, Reguli crossed the watershed of the Ural Mountains, reached the upper reaches of the Tura River, from where he headed north along the eastern slope of the ridge to the upper reaches of the Lozva River. After living for about three months among the Mansi, he leaves for Verkhoturye, then to Irbit and further to the Tavda and Tobol rivers. In the spring of 1844, along the waterway, in places on horseback or on foot next to a loaded horse, Reguli headed up the Konda River, then up the Pelyma River. Following along the eastern slope of the Urals along the Severnaya Sosva River, it reaches the headwaters of the Lyapina River and its tributary Khulga in the Subpolar Urals. Along the way, Reguli collects valuable material about the way of life, life and language of the Mansi and Khanty. The tales and songs he recorded reveal spiritual world these peculiar northern peoples. Wandering through a sparsely populated area, almost unknown to geographers, Reguli draws up schematic maps indicating the names of mountains, rivers and settlements. On September 29, 1844, having reached the Arctic Circle, Reguli arrived in Obdorsk (now Salekhard), then a small village consisting of only 40 houses. By that time, the Ob had already frozen over, and Reguli on reindeer along the tundra was heading to the northern tip of the Ural Mountains, reaching on October 21, 1844, the coast of the Kara Sea and the Yugorsky Shar Strait. This was the northernmost point (69°45" N) of his journey. In November, he arrives in the basin of the Usa River, in the region inhabited by the Komi (Zyryans), and continues his research here. From there, having crossed the Ural Mountains, Reguli goes to the mountains. Berezovo, but does not linger here, and along the Northern Sosva it goes up to the mouth of the Kempage. Following further along the Northern Sosva, he reaches the sources of this river (at 62 ° N), inhabited by the Mansi, and only after that again goes to the mountains. Berezovo. Here Reguli winters, putting his diaries in order. Reguli's trip through the Urals and Trans-Urals took place in very difficult conditions: there was not enough equipment, there were no necessary instruments. The Hungarian scientist traveled by boat along turbulent rivers, on horseback along mountain steeps, in sleds pulled by deer or dogs, and often on foot. Usually he was accompanied by guides - Mansi, Khanty or Nenets. The inquisitive researcher was always close to the feelings and thoughts of ordinary people, he singled out and highly appreciated the noble features of their behavior and morals. Contrary to the prevailing ideas about “savages” at that time, Reguli argued: “There are features in the life of uncultured peoples that deserve universal recognition. In their social life there are such phenomena that indicate compassion and the absence of malevolence. From Berezovo, Reguli sends information about his research to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and to St. Petersburg. In a letter to K. M. Baer, he reports that he has established an undoubted connection between the Mansi language and the Hungarian language. In the Mansi-Hungarian dictionary compiled by Reguli, there were 2600 Mansi words.

Routes of A. Reguli (compiled by N. P. Arkhipova): 1 - the first part; 2 - the second part; northern borders: 3 - agriculture; 4 - scaffolding established by Reguli

Reguli processed the most valuable material brought from the Urals throughout his subsequent life. He also prepared the main work "The Vogul Country and Its Inhabitants", published in 1864 in Hungarian in Budapest after the death of the author. Reguli attached great importance the study of the name of the area, in a modern toponymy, which makes it possible to judge the settlement of peoples in the past. He also built his ideas about the origin and history of such settlement on the basis of a comparative analysis of languages, taking into account ethnographic data. Reguli established the genetic connection of the Finno-Ugric languages, which include the languages of the Hungarians, Finns, Mansi, Khanty, Komi and Mari. He was particularly struck by the similarities between the Mansi and Hungarian languages. He came to the conclusion that the Hungarians descended from ancestors who lived long ago in the Northern Urals and in the Trans-Urals, in the territory now inhabited by the Mansi. These statements of Reguli are basically accepted by modern linguists. According to them, the ancestral home of the Ugrians was located in a wooded area in the Kama basin and somewhat to the south. In the first half of the first millennium BC, tribes emerged from the Ugric community, which later became the ancestors of the Hungarians. The rest of the Ugrians remained in this territory for a long time, and in the XII-XV centuries, part of the tribes moved beyond the Urals. In general, Reguli's journey through the Urals and the Urals lasted about a year and a half (arrival in Solikamsk - November 1843, departure from Berezovo - March 1845). The length of his path was 5.5 thousand km. Previously, not a single scientist has conducted such lengthy and detailed studies here, nor has he explored such a vast territory. Reguli's journey through the little-known territory aroused interest in the study of the nature and population of the Northern Urals and contributed to the development of the study of the Finno-Ugric peoples.

Ulla-Maya Kulonen, Professor

Finno-Ugric Department of the University of Helsinki

Finnish is part of the group of Baltic-Finnish languages belonging to the Finno-Ugric, or Uralic family of languages. Finnish is the most widely spoken language in this group. It is followed by Estonian. The Baltic-Finnish group belongs to the westernmost branches of the Finno-Ugric language family; further west, only the Sámi languages in central and northern Norway extend. In the east, the Finno-Ugric family of languages reaches the Yenisei and the Taimyr Peninsula, in the south it is represented by the Hungarians.

Modern Finno-Ugric languages and territories of their distribution

The languages belonging to the Finno-Ugric family are spoken by a total of about 23 million people. But many of these languages, with the exception of Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, are the languages of the national minorities of the Russian Federation and are on the verge of extinction. The territory of Russia is also limited by the Karelian, Vepsian, Ludic languages, the remnants of the Izhorian dialects and the Votic language (all of them belong to the Baltic-Finnish group). Although the Karelians have their own republic, which is part of the Russian Federation, they make up only 10 percent of the population of Karelia, and a significant part of the Karelians live outside the republic, in the Tver region. The creation of a unified Karelian script has so far been significantly complicated by the division of the language into several dialects that are very different from each other. When creating a literary language, many Uralic languages face the same problem.

So, the Baltic-Finnish language group includes seven languages, but the most common and therefore the most viable are only Finnish and Estonian. These languages are close relatives, and a little training is enough for, for example, a Finn and an Estonian to learn to understand each other to some extent, although the Estonian language seems simply incomprehensible to a Finn at first. These two languages are not as close to each other as, for example, Scandinavian. But still this group consists of successors of languages more or less close to each other.

The group of Sami languages constitutes a single geographical and linguistic entity. In the coastal zone (100-200 km wide), their territory of distribution extends from the coast of the North Sea in central Norway to the east of the Kola Peninsula. Consequently, the Saami live in four states: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia. There are ten Sami languages in total. Largest number carriers has the North Sami, common in the territories of all three Scandinavian countries. Between the Sami languages, in essence, there is only one clear boundary dividing the Sami languages into Western and Eastern. With the exception of this dividing line, the languages of adjacent territories are close to each other and allow neighbors to understand each other.

It is not possible to give an exact number of Saami, as the definitions of Saami vary from country to country. Estimates range from 50,000 to 80,000 people. Most of them live in Norway, the least - in Russia (about 4,000 people, among which there are only about 1,500 native speakers of the Sami language). Many small Saami languages are on the verge of extinction (Ume and Pite in Sweden, Babin in Russia).

AT central Russia three main groups of Finno-Ugric languages can be distinguished: Mari, Mordovian and a group of Permian languages. Mari is divided into three main dialects, which can also be considered separate languages. For them, it was not possible to create a single script. There are two Mordovian languages: Erzya and Moksha, whose speakers in total are about a million. Thus, after the Finns and Hungarians, the Mordvins make up the third largest language group: almost the same as the Estonian. Erzya and Moksha have their own script. There are three Perm languages: Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Perm and Udmurt.

Mordva, Mari, Komi and Udmurts have their own republics, but they live in them as national minorities. Two-thirds of the inhabitants of the Mordovian Republic are representatives of other nationalities, primarily Russians and Tatars. The main part of the Mordovians lives on vast territory east of their republic, up to the Urals. There are only about 670,000 Mari people, half of whom live in the Republic of Mari El. The largest separate group of Mari outside the republic (106,000 people) lives in the east, in Bashkiria. Only 500,000 of the one and a half million inhabitants of Udmurtia are ethnic Udmurts. Another quarter of the representatives of this nationality lives outside the republic, primarily in the neighboring Kirov and Perm regions, as well as in the Tatar and Bashkir republics.

On the basis of both linguistic and cultural characteristics, Komi can be divided into two groups: Komi-Zyryans and Komi-Permyaks, each of which has its own territory: Komi-Zyryans - the Republic of Komi, exceeding the territory of Finland by about a third, and Komi-Permyaks - national district on the southern edge of the Republic

Komi. The total number of Komi is about half a million people, including 150,000 Komi-Permians. About 70% of both groups of the population speak their native language.

If linguistically the group of Ugric languages is one, then geographically it is very fragmented. The linguistic connection of Hungarian with the Ob-Ugric languages, whose speakers live in Siberia, has often been considered (and continues to be considered) doubtful, but on the basis of facts relating purely to the history of the language, an indisputable relationship of these languages can be revealed. In addition to Hungarian, the Ugric group includes the Ob-Ugric languages - Khanty and Mansi, whose speakers live on a vast territory in western Siberia along the Ob River and its tributaries. Khanty and Mansi in total number less than 30,000, of which less than half speak their native language. The geographical remoteness of these languages from each other is explained by the fact that the Hungarians, during the migration of peoples, went south and found themselves far from their ancient habitats located in the Urals. The Ob Ugrians, in turn, apparently settled relatively late in the vast taiga territories of the north, and the northernmost Khanty reached the tundra, where they mastered reindeer husbandry, adopting it from the Samoyeds, who had long lived there. Khanty and Mansi have their own national district, among whose inhabitants the share of these indigenous peoples is only a few percent.

Currently, the Samoyedic group includes four northern and one southern languages. Previously, there were more southern Samoyedic languages, but by the beginning of the last century they for the most part merged with the Turkic languages of Siberia. At present, the southern Samoyeds are represented by only 1,500 Selkups living on the Yenisei to the east of the Khanty. The largest group of northern Samoyeds are the Nenets, who number about 30,000.

Common structural features and general vocabulary

So, the roots of the Finnish language go back to the so-called. Finno-Ugric proto-language, from which all the above-mentioned languages historically originated. In favor of a common proto-language, first of all, the structural features of these languages, as well as their common basic vocabulary, speak.

In the structural features of the Finno-Ugric languages, a foreigner can easily recognize the features of the Finnish language: first of all, when declining words, endings that have grammatical functions are added to them, while prepositions are not used, as, for example, in English and other Germanic languages. Let's give an example: autossa (auto-ssa) - "in the car", autolla (auto-lla) - "by car". The abundance of case endings in Finnish is often seen as specific feature, combining Finnish and Hungarian; in Hungarian there are about twenty case endings, in Finnish - 15. The features of word modification include personal endings of verbs during conjugation, for example, tanssin (tanssi-n) - “I dance”, tanssit (tanssi-t) - “you dance”, hyang tanssia ( tanssi-i) - "he/she dances", as well as possessive suffixes derived from the same basic elements, for example autoni (auto-ni) - "my car", autosi (auto-si) - "your car", and , moreover, connecting with case endings: autollani - “in my car”, autosassi - “in your car”. These features are common to all Finno-Ugric languages.

The general vocabulary consists, first of all, of the basic concepts related to a person (including the names of the community, relatives), the human body, the main functions, and the surrounding nature. The basic concepts also include root grammatical words, such as pronouns, prepositions and postpositions, expressing direction and location, as well as small numbers. Words related to culture and crafts reflect the concepts of hunting, fishing and collecting the gifts of nature (for example, yousi - “bow”, nuoli - “arrow”, yanne - “string”; pato - “dam”, emya - “needle”. Features of spiritual culture were embodied in the word noita, which means shaman, although in modern Finnish it means “witch”.

Indo-European contacts: common past and present

There are only about three hundred root words dating back to the Finno-Ugric proto-language in the modern Finnish language, but if we take into account their derivatives, then the number of ancient vocabulary will increase many times over. Many words of the basic vocabulary came into Finnish from the Indo-European language systems, which shows that the Finnish language and its predecessors were at all stages of development in contact with the Indo-European languages. Part of the borrowed vocabulary is common to several Finno-Ugric languages, and the oldest established cases of borrowing can be attributed to the period of the Finno-Ugric and Indo-European proto-languages. The number of such words is small, and there are only a few reliable cases: perhaps the most indisputable is the word nimi - “name”. This layer of borrowed vocabulary also includes the words vesi - "water", muudya - "sell", ninen - "woman". So, the oldest borrowed words belong to the period before the collapse of the Indo-European proto-language - probably in the first half of the fourth millennium BC.

FINNO-UGRIAN LANGUAGES, one of two branches of the Uralic family of languages (along with Samoyedic). Finno-Ugric languages are spoken in parts of eastern Europe and northern Asia. They are divided into two large groups: Finnish-Perm and Ugric. The Ugric languages include: Hungarian, Mansi (Vogul) and Khanty (Ostyak); each of them consists of several dialects. Finno-Permian languages are divided into two groups: Permian, which includes the Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak and Udmurt (Votyak) languages, and Finno-Volga, which includes four subgroups: Baltic-Finnish, Mari, Mordovian and Sami languages. The Baltic-Finnish subgroup includes Finnish (Suomi), Estonian and several other minor languages.

Of the approximately 24 million Finno-Ugric speakers, about half speak Hungarian; These are the inhabitants of Hungary and the regions adjacent to it. The emergence of Hungarian writing dates back to the 13th century, the first written monument, Halotti Bezed (eulogy), is a valuable linguistic source. Finnish - the main representative of the Finnish subgroup of languages - is used in Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Russia; its written tradition begins with the translation of the Bible by Mikhail Agricola in 1542. Mansi (Vogul) and Khanty (Ostyak) are spoken in the Ob River region, c. 5 thousand in Mansi and approx. 25 thousand - in Khanty. Komi and Udmurt are spoken in the northeast of the European part of Russia, as well as somewhat to the south, between the Vyatka and Kama rivers. Komi is spoken ok. 356 thousand people, in Udmurt - approx. 546 thousand Maris (numbering about 540 thousand) are divided into two groups living on the right and left banks of the upper reaches of the Volga. To the south of the Mari live Mordovians (Mordovians), whose number is approx. 1.2 million people In the northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, especially on the Kola Peninsula, live Laplanders (Saami), who speak the Saami language, whose relationship with related languages is one of the mysteries of the Finno-Ugric languages.

Attempts were made to establish the relationship of the Uralic language family with other language families - Altaic, Yukagir, Indo-European, and even with Japanese and Dravidian languages. So, some structural similarity was found between the Altaic languages (primarily Turkic), on the one hand, and Finno-Ugric, on the other. In particular, the presence of vowel harmony was noted both in Turkic and in some, although not in all, Finno-Ugric languages. The study of Finno-Ugric languages is of great importance not only for linguistics, but also for folklore and comparative literature. According to the Nostratic hypothesis developed by Russian scientists (V.M. Illich-Svitych, V.A. Dybo, S.A. Starostin and others) since the mid-1960s, the Uralic family of languages is part of the so-called Nostratic macrofamily, - which also includes Indo-European, Afroasian, Kartvelian, Dravidian and Altaic languages.

The Komi language is part of the Finno-Ugric language family, and with the Udmurt language closest to it, it forms the Permian group of Finno-Ugric languages. In total, the Finno-Ugric family includes 16 languages, which in ancient times developed from a single base language: Hungarian, Mansi, Khanty (Ugric group of languages); Komi, Udmurt (Permian group); Mari, Mordovian languages - Erzya and Moksha; Baltic - Finnish languages \u200b\u200b- Finnish, Karelian, Izhorian, Vepsian, Votic, Estonian, Liv languages. A special place in the Finno-Ugric family of languages is occupied by the Sami language, which is very different from other related languages.

Finno-Ugric languages and Samoyedic languages form Ural family languages. Amodian languages include Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, Kamasin languages. The peoples speaking Samoyedic languages live in Western Siberia, except for the Nenets, who also live in northern Europe.

More than a millennium ago, the Hungarians moved to the territory surrounded by the Carpathians. The self-name of the Hungarians Modyor has been known since the 5th century. n. e. Writing in the Hungarian language appeared at the end of the 12th century, and the Hungarians have a rich literature. The total number of Hungarians is about 17 million people. In addition to Hungary, they live in Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria, Ukraine, Yugoslavia.

Mansi (Voguls) live in the Khanty-Mansiysk district of the Tyumen region. In Russian chronicles, they, together with the Khanty, were called Yugra. Mansi use writing on a Russian graphic basis, have their own schools. The total number of Mansi is over 7,000 people, but only half of them consider Mansi their native language.

Khanty (Ostyaks) live on the Yamal Peninsula, the lower and middle Ob. Writing in the Khanty language appeared in the 30s of our century, however, the dialects of the Khanty language are so different that between representatives different dialects communication is often difficult. Many lexical borrowings from the Komi language penetrated into the Khanty and Mansi languages

The Baltic-Finnish languages and peoples are so close that speakers of these languages can communicate among themselves without an interpreter. Among the languages of the Baltic-Finnish group, the most common is Finnish, it is spoken by about 5 million people, the self-name of the Finns is Suomi. In addition to Finland, Finns also live in the Leningrad region of Russia. Writing arose in the 16th century, from 1870 the period of the modern Finnish language begins. The epic "Kalevala" sounds in Finnish, a rich original literature has been created. About 77 thousand Finns live in Russia.

Estonians live on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, the number of Estonians in 1989 was 1,027,255 people. Writing existed from the 16th century to the 19th century. two literary languages developed: South and North Estonian. In the 19th century these literary languages converged on the basis of Middle Estonian dialects.

Karelians live in Karelia and the Tver region of Russia. There are 138,429 Karelians (1989), a little more than half speak their native language. The Karelian language consists of many dialects. In Karelia, Karelians study and use the Finnish literary language. The most ancient monuments of Karelian writing date back to the 13th century; in the Finno-Ugric languages, in antiquity this is the second written language (after Hungarian).

The Izhorian language is unwritten, it is spoken by about 1,500 people. The Izhors live on the southeastern coast of the Gulf of Finland, on the river. Izhora, a tributary of the Neva. Although the Izhors call themselves Karelians, it is customary in science to single out an independent Izhorian language.

Vepsians live on the territory of three administrative-territorial units: Vologda, Leningrad regions of Russia, Karelia. In the 30s, there were about 30,000 Vepsians, in 1970 - 8,300 people. Due to the strong influence of the Russian language, the Vepsian language differs markedly from other Baltic-Finnic languages.

The Votic language is on the verge of extinction, since there are no more than 30 people who speak this language. Vod lives in several villages located between the northeastern part of Estonia and the Leningrad region. The Votic language is unwritten.

Livs live in several seaside fishing villages in northern Latvia. Their number in the course of history, due to the devastation during World War II, has sharply decreased. Now the number of Liv speakers is only about 150 people. Writing has been developing since the 19th century, but at the present time Livs are switching to the Latvian language.

The Saami language forms a separate group of Finno-Ugric languages, since there are many specific features in its grammar and vocabulary. The Saami live in the northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. There are only about 40 thousand of them, including about 2000 in Russia. The Sami language has much in common with the Baltic-Finnish languages. Sami writing develops on the basis of different dialects in Latin and Russian graphic systems.

Modern Finno-Ugric languages have diverged so much from each other that at first glance they seem completely unrelated to each other. However, a deeper study of the sound composition, grammar and vocabulary shows that these languages have many common features that prove the former common origin of the Finno-Ugric languages from one ancient parent language.

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages are part of the Altaic language family. Turkic languages: about 30 languages, and with dead languages and local varieties, the status of which as languages is not always indisputable, more than 50; the largest are Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Uighur, Tatar; the total number of Turkic speakers is about 120 million people. The center of the Turkic area is Central Asia, from where, in the course of historical migrations, they also spread, on the one hand, to southern Russia, the Caucasus and Asia Minor, and on the other, to the northeast, to eastern Siberia up to Yakutia. The comparative historical study of the Altaic languages began as early as the 19th century. Nevertheless, there is no generally accepted reconstruction of the Altaic parent language, one of the reasons is the intensive contacts of the Altaic languages and numerous mutual borrowings, which make it difficult to apply standard comparative methods.

Ethnogenesis of the Finnish race.

In modern science, it is customary to consider the Finnish tribes together with the Ugric ones, uniting them into a single Finno-Ugric group. However, the studies of the Russian professor Artamonov, devoted to the origin of the Ugric peoples, show that their ethnogenesis took place in an area covering the upper reaches of the Ob River and the northern coast of the Aral Sea. At the same time, it should be noted that the ancient Paleosian tribes, related to the ancient population of Tibet and Sumer, acted as one of the ethnic substrates for both the Ugric and Finnish tribes. This relationship was discovered by Ernst Muldashev with the help of a special ophthalmological examination (3). This fact allows us to speak of the Finno-Ugric people as a single ethnic group. However, the main difference between the Ugrians and the Finns is that different tribes acted as the second ethnic component in both cases. So the Ugric peoples were formed as a result of the mixing of the ancient Paleasians with the Turks of Central Asia, while the Finnish peoples were formed as a result of the mixing of the former with the ancient Mediterranean (Atlantic tribes) supposedly related to the Minoans. As a result of this mixing, the Finns inherited from the Minoans a megalithic culture that died out in the middle of the second millennium BC due to the death of its metropolis on the island of Santorini in the 17th century BC.

Subsequently, the settlement of the Ugric tribes took place in two directions: downstream the Ob and to Europe. However, due to the low passionarity of the Ugric tribes, they only in the 3rd century AD. reached the Volga, crossing the Ural Range in two places: in the area of \u200b\u200bmodern Yekaterinburg and in the lower reaches of the great river. As a result, the Ugric tribes reached the territory of the Baltic States only by the 5th-6th century AD, i.e. just a few centuries before the arrival of the Slavs on the Central Russian upland. While the Finnish tribes lived in the Baltics, at least starting from the 4th millennium BC.

At present, there is every reason to believe that the Finnish tribes were the bearers of an ancient culture, which archaeologists conditionally call the "culture of funnel-shaped goblets." This name arose due to the fact that a characteristic feature of this archaeological culture is special ceramic goblets that are not found in other parallel cultures. Judging by the archaeological data, these tribes were mainly engaged in hunting, fishing and raising small cattle. The main hunting tool was a bow, the arrows of which were equipped with bone tips. These tribes lived in the floodplains of large European rivers and occupied, during their greatest distribution, the northern European lowlands, which were completely freed from the ice sheet about V-th thousand. BC. The well-known archaeologist Boris Rybakov describes the tribes of this culture as follows (4, p. 143):

In addition to the agricultural tribes mentioned above, who marched into the territory of the future "ancestral home of the Slavs" from the Danube south, because of the Sudetenland and the Carpathians, foreign tribes also penetrated here from the North Sea and the Baltic. This is the "Funnel Beaker Culture" (TRB), associated with megalithic structures. She is known in Southern England and Jutland. The richest and most concentrated finds are concentrated outside the ancestral home, between it and the sea, but individual settlements are often found along the entire course of the Elbe, Oder and Vistula. This culture is almost synchronous with the pricked, Lendel, and Tripolye cultures, coexisting with them for more than a thousand years. The peculiar and rather high culture of funnel-shaped goblets is considered the result of the development of local Mesolithic tribes and, in all likelihood, non-Indo-European, although there are supporters of attributing it to the Indo-European community. One of the centers of development of this megalithic culture lay probably in Jutland.

Judging by the linguistic analysis of the Finnish languages, they do not belong to the Aryan (Indo-European) group. Well-known philologist and writer, professor at Oxford University D.R. Tolkien devoted much time to studying this ancient language and came to the conclusion that it belongs to a special language group. It turned out to be so isolated that the professor constructed on the basis of the Finnish language the language of the mythological people - the elves, whose mythical history he described in his fantasy novels. So, for example, the name of the Supreme God in the mythology of the English professor sounds like Ilyuvatar, while in the Finnish and Karelian languages it is Ilmarinen.

By their origin, the Finno-Ugric languages are not related to the Aryan languages, which belong to a completely different language family - Indo-European. Therefore, numerous lexical convergences between the Finno-Ugric and Indo-Iranian languages testify not to their genetic relationship, but to deep, diverse and long-term contacts between the Finno-Ugric and Aryan tribes. These connections began in the pre-Aryan period and continued in the pan-Aryan era, and then, after the division of the Aryans into "Indian" and "Iranian" branches, contacts were made between the Finno-Ugric and Iranian-speaking tribes.

The range of words borrowed by the Finno-Ugric languages from Indo-Iranian is very diverse. This includes numerals, kinship terms, animal names, etc. Particularly characteristic are the words and terms associated with the economy, the names of tools, metals (for example, “gold”: Udmurt and Komi - “zarni”, Khant and Mansi - “weeds”, Mordovian “sirne”, Iranian. “early ", modern Osetinsk. - "zerin"). A number of correspondences were noted in the field of agricultural terminology (“grain”, “barley”); From the Indo-Iranian languages, the words common in various Finno-Ugric languages \u200b\u200bare borrowed to designate a cow, heifer, goat, sheep, lamb, sheepskin, wool, felt, milk and a number of others.

Such correspondences indicate, as a rule, the influence of the more economically developed steppe tribes on the population of the northern forest regions. Examples of borrowing into the Finno-Ugric languages from the Indo-European languages of terms related to horse breeding ("foal", "saddle", etc.) are also indicative. The Finno-Ugric peoples got to know the domestic horse, apparently as a result of ties with the population of the steppe South. (2, 73 pp.).

The study of the basic mythological plots shows that the core of Finnish mythology differs significantly from the general Aryan one. The most complete presentation of these plots is contained in the Kalevala - a collection of Finnish epic. The protagonist of the epic, unlike the heroes of the Aryan epic, is endowed not only and not so much with physical, but with magical power, which allows him to build, for example, a boat with the help of a song. The heroic duel is again reduced to competitions in magic and versification. (5, p. 35)

He sings - and Youkahainen
Up to the thigh he went into the swamp,
And up to the waist in a quagmire,
And up to the shoulders in loose sand.
That's when Youkahainen
I could comprehend with my mind
That went the wrong way
And took the path in vain
Compete in song
With the mighty Väinämöinen.

The Scandinavian "Saga of Halfdan Eysteinsson" (6, 40) also reports on the outstanding witchcraft abilities of the Finns:

In this saga, the Vikings meet in battle with the leaders of the Finns and Biarms - terrible werewolves.

One of the leaders of the Finns, King Floki, could shoot three arrows from a bow at the same time and hit three people at once. Halfdan cut off his hand so that it flew into the air. But Floki held up his stump, and his hand stuck to it. Another king of the Finns, meanwhile, turned into a giant walrus, which crushed fifteen people at the same time. The Biarmian king Harek turned into a fearsome dragon. The Vikings with great difficulty managed to deal with the monsters and take possession of the magical country of Biarmia.

All these and many other elements indicate that the Finnish tribes belong to some very ancient race. It is the antiquity of this race that explains the “slowness” of its modern representatives. After all, what ancient people the more life experience he has accumulated, and the less he is vain.

Elements of the culture of the Finnish race are found mainly among the peoples living along the shores of the Baltic Sea. Therefore, otherwise the Finnish race can also be called the Baltic race. It is characteristic that the Roman historian Tacitus in the 1st century AD. pointed out that the people of the Aestians, living on the shores of the Baltic Sea, have many similarities with the Celts. This is a very important remark, because it was through the Celtic culture that the ancient Finnish nation managed to preserve its historical heritage. In this sense, the most interesting, from the point of view of studying ancient Finnish history, is the Frisian tribe. In ancient times, this people lived on the territory of modern Denmark. The descendants of this tribe still live in this territory, although they have long lost their language and culture. However, the Frisian chronicle “Hurrah Linda Brook” has survived to this day, which tells how the ancestors of the Frisians sailed to the territory of modern Denmark after a terrible catastrophe - the flood that destroyed Plato's Atlantis. This chronicle is often cited by atlantologists as confirmation of the fact of the existence of a legendary civilization. As a result, the version about the antiquity of the Baltic race receives one more confirmation.

Also, each nation can be identified by the nature of its burials. The main funeral rite of the ancient Balts is laying the body of the deceased with stones. This rite has been preserved in both Ireland and Scotland. Over time, it was modified and was reduced to the installation of a tombstone on the grave.

Such a rite indicates the existence of a direct cultural connection between the Finnish/Baltic race and megalithic structures found mainly in the Baltic Sea basin and in the adjacent territories. The only place that falls out of this area is the North Caucasus, however, there is an explanation for this fact, which, however, cannot be given within the framework of this work.

As a result, we can state the fact that one of the essential elements of the ethnic substratum of the modern Baltic peoples is the ancient Finnish race, whose origin is lost in the depths of millennia. This race went through its own, different from the Aryan, history of development, as a result of which it formed a unique language and culture, which are part of the genetic heritage of the modern Balts and Finns.

individual tribes.

The vast majority of ethnographers agree that the tribes that inhabited northeastern Europe and adjacent territories, immediately before the start of the Slavic and German colonization of this region, were Finno-Ugric in their ethnic composition, i.e. by the 10th century A.D. Finnish and Ugric elements in the local tribes mixed quite strongly. The most famous tribe that lived on the territory of modern Estonia, after which the lake is named, located on the border of the Slavic and German colonization zones, is Chud. According to the legends, the monsters possessed various witchcraft abilities. In particular, they could suddenly disappear in the forest, they could be under water for a long time. It was believed that the white-eyed miracle knew the spirits of the elements. During Mongol invasion Chud went into the forests and disappeared forever from the chronicle history of Russia. It is believed that it is she who inhabits the legendary Kitezh-grad, located at the bottom of Beloozero. However, in Russian legends, the more ancient dwarf people who lived in prehistoric times, and in some places lived as a relic until the Middle Ages, are also called Chud. Legends about the dwarf people are usually spread in those areas where there are clusters of megalithic structures.

In Komi legends, this undersized and dark-skinned people, for whom the grass seems like a forest, sometimes acquires animal features - it is covered with wool, miracles have pig legs. Miracles lived in a fabulous world of abundance, when the sky was so low above the earth that miracles could reach it with their hands, but they do everything wrong - they dig holes in the arable land, feed cattle in a hut, mow hay with a chisel, reap bread with an awl, store threshed grain in stockings, pushing oatmeal into the hole. A strange woman insults Yen because she soils the low sky with sewage or touches it with a yoke. Then En (the Komi demiurge god) raises the sky, tall trees grow on the earth, and white ones do not replace miracles. tall people: miracles leave them in their pits underground, because they are afraid of agricultural tools - a sickle, etc ...

... There is a belief that miracles have turned into evil spirits that hide in dark places, abandoned dwellings, baths, even under water. They are invisible, leave traces of bird paws or children's feet, harm people and can replace their children with their own ...

According to other legends, Chud are, on the contrary, ancient heroes, which include Pera and Kudy-osh. They also go underground or turn to stone or are imprisoned in the Ural mountains after Russian missionaries spread a new christian religion. Ancient settlements (kars) remained from the Chud, Chud giants could throw axes or clubs from one settlement to another; sometimes they are also credited with the origin of lakes, the foundation of villages, etc. (6, 209-211)

The next numerous tribe was Vod. Semenov-Tyanshansky in the book “Russia. A complete geographical description of our Fatherland. Lake District" in 1903 wrote about this tribe as follows:

“Vod once lived to the east of the Chud. This tribe is ethnographically considered transitional from the western (Estonian) branch of the Finns to other Finnish tribes. Vodi settlements, as far as one can judge from the prevalence of Vod names, occupied a vast area ranging from the river. Narova and to the river. Msta, reaching in the north to the Gulf of Finland, in the south going beyond Ilmen. Vod participated in the union of the tribes that called the Varangian princes. For the first time, it is mentioned in the "Charter on Mostech", attributed to Yaroslav the Wise. The colonization of the Slavs pushed this tribe to the coast of the Gulf of Finland. Vod lived in harmony with the Novgorodians, participating in the campaigns of the Novgorodians, and even in the Novgorod army a special regiment consisted of "leaders". Subsequently, the area inhabited by Vodya became part of one of the five Novgorod regions under the name "Vodskaya Pyatina". From the middle of the 12th century, crusades of the Swedes began in the country of the Vodi, which they call "Vatland". A number of papal bulls are known to encourage Christian preaching here, and in 1255 a special bishop was appointed for Watland. However, the connection between the Vod and the Novgorodians was stronger, the Vod gradually merged with the Russian and became strongly channeled. The remains of the Vodi are considered to be a small tribe "Vatyalayset", living in the Peterhof and Yamburg districts.

It is also necessary to mention the unique Seto tribe. Currently, it lives on the territory of the Pskov region. Scientists believe that it is an ethnic relic of the ancient Finnish race, which was the first to inhabit these lands as the glacier melted. Some national features of this tribe allow us to think so.

The Karela tribe managed to preserve the most complete collection of Finnish myths. So the basis of the famous Kalevala (4) - the Finnish epic - is based mostly on Karelian legends and myths. The Karelian language is the oldest of the Finnish languages, containing the minimum number of borrowings from languages belonging to other cultures.

Finally, the Livs are the most famous Finnish tribe that has retained its language and culture to this day. Representatives of this tribe live on the territory of modern Latvia and Estonia. It is this tribe initial period the formation of the Estonian and Latvian ethnic groups was the most civilized. Occupying the territory along the coast of the Baltic Sea, the representatives of this tribe entered into contacts with the outside world earlier than others. For several centuries, the territory of modern Estonia and Latvia was called Livonia, after the estate of this tribe.

Comments.

It can be assumed that the description of this ethnic contact, which took place in ancient times, was preserved in the Kalevala in the second rune. (1), which indicates that a hero of small stature in copper armor came out of the sea to help the hero Väinämöinenen, who then miraculously turned into a giant and cut down a huge oak that covered the Sky and eclipsed the Sun.

Literature.

Tolkien John, The Silmarillion;
Bongard-Levin G.E., Grantovsky E.A., "From Scythia to India" M. "Thought", 1974
Muldashev Ernst. "Where did we come from?"
Rybakov Boris. "Paganism of the Ancient Slavs". - M. Sofia, Helios, 2002
Kalevala. Translation from Finnish Belsky. - St. Petersburg: Publishing house "Azbuka-classics", 2007
Petrukhin V.Ya. "Myths of the Finno-Ugric peoples", M, Astrel AST Transitbook, 2005

Finno-Ugric peoples

Finno-Ugric peoples: history and culture. Finno-Ugric languages

Komi

The people of the Russian Federation numbering 307 thousand people. (2002 census), in former USSR- 345 thousand (1989), indigenous, state-forming, titular people of the Komi Republic (capital - Syktyvkar, former Ust-Sysolsk). A small number of Komi live in the lower reaches of the Pechora and Ob, in some other places in Siberia, on the Karelian Peninsula (in the Murmansk region of the Russian Federation) and in Finland.

Komi-Permyaks

The people in the Russian Federation numbering 125 thousand. people (2002), 147.3 thousand (1989). Until the 20th century were called Permians. The term "Perm" ("Permians"), apparently, is of Vepsian origin (pere maa - "land lying abroad"). In ancient Russian sources, the name "Perm" was first mentioned in 1187.

Do you

Along with skalamiad - "fishermen", randalist - "inhabitants of the coast"), an ethnic community of Latvia, the indigenous population of the coastal part of the Talsi and Ventspils regions, the so-called coast of the Livs - the northern coast of Courland.

Mansi

people in the Russian Federation, the indigenous population of the Khanty-Mansiysk (from 1930 to 1940 - Ostyako-Vogulsky) Autonomous Okrug of the Tyumen Region (the district center is the city of Khanty-Mansiysk). The number in the Russian Federation is 12 thousand (2002), 8.5 thousand (1989). The Mansi language, together with Khanty and Hungarian, constitutes the Ugric group (branch) of the Finno-Ugric language family.

Mari

The people of the Russian Federation numbering 605 thousand people. (2002), the indigenous, state-forming and titular people of the Republic of Mari El (the capital is Yoshkar-Ola). A significant part of the Mari lives in neighboring republics and regions. In Tsarist Russia, they were officially called Cheremis, under this ethnonym they appear in Western European (Jordan, VI century) and Old Russian written sources, including the Tale of Bygone Years (XII century).

Mordva

The people in the Russian Federation, the largest of its Finno-Ugric peoples (845 thousand people in 2002), are not only indigenous, but also the state-forming, titular people of the Republic of Mordovia (the capital is Saransk). Currently, one third of the total number of Mordovians lives in Mordovia, the remaining two thirds live in other regions of the Russian Federation, as well as in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Estonia, etc.

Nganasany

The people of the Russian Federation, in pre-revolutionary literature - "Samoyed-Tavgians" or simply "Tavgians" (from the Nenets name Nganasan - "tavys"). Number in 2002 - 100 people, in 1989 - 1.3 thousand, in 1959 - 748. They live mainly in the Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenetsky) Autonomous Okrug Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Nenets

The people in the Russian Federation, the indigenous population of the European North and the north of Western Siberia. Their number in 2002 was 41 thousand people, in 1989 - 35 thousand, in 1959 - 23 thousand, in 1926 - 18 thousand. forests, eastern - the lower reaches of the Yenisei, western - the eastern coast of the White Sea.

Saami

People in Norway (40 thousand), Sweden (18 thousand), Finland (4 thousand), Russian Federation (on the Kola Peninsula, according to the 2002 census, 2 thousand). The Saami language, which breaks up into a number of strongly divergent dialects, constitutes a separate group of the Finno-Ugric language family. In anthropological terms, among all the Saami, the Laponoid type prevails, formed as a result of the contact of the Caucasoid and Mongoloid large races.

Selkups

The people in the Russian Federation numbering 400 people. (2002), 3.6 thousand (1989), 3.8 thousand (1959). They live in the Krasnoselkupsky district of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of the Tyumen region, in some other areas of the same and Tomsk region, in the Turukhansky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, mainly in the interfluve of the middle reaches of the Ob and Yenisei and along the tributaries of these rivers.

Udmurts

The people of the Russian Federation numbering 637 thousand people. (2002), the indigenous, state-forming and titular people of the Udmurt Republic (the capital is Izhevsk, Udm. Izhkar). Some Udmurts live in neighboring and some other republics and regions of the Russian Federation. 46.6% of Udmurts are city dwellers. The Udmurt language belongs to the Permian group of Finno-Ugric languages and includes two dialects.

Finns

The people, the indigenous population of Finland (4.7 million people), also live in Sweden (310 thousand), the USA (305 thousand), Canada (53 thousand), the Russian Federation (34 thousand, according to the 2002 census ), Norway (22 thousand) and other countries. They speak the Finnish language of the Baltic-Finnish group of the Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language family. Finnish writing was created during the Reformation (XVI century) based on the Latin alphabet.

Khanty

The people of the Russian Federation numbering 29 thousand people. (2002), lives in Northwestern Siberia, along the middle and lower reaches of the river. Ob, on the territory of the Khanty-Mansiysk (from 1930 to 1940 - Ostyako-Vogulsky) and Yamalo-Nenets national (since 1977 - autonomous) districts of the Tyumen region.

Enets

The people in the Russian Federation, the indigenous population of the Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug, numbering 300 people. (2002). The district center is the city of Dudinka. The native language of the Enets is Enets, which is part of the Samoyedic group of the Uralic language family. The Enets do not have their own written language.

Estonians

The people, the indigenous population of Estonia (963 thousand). They also live in the Russian Federation (28 thousand - according to the 2002 census), Sweden, the USA, Canada (25 thousand each). Australia (6 thousand) and other countries. The total number is 1.1 million. They speak the Estonian language of the Baltic-Finnish group of the Finno-Ugric language family.

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The peoples of the Finno-Ugric language group

The Finno-Ugric language group is part of the Ural-Yukagir language family and includes the peoples: Saami, Veps, Izhors, Karelians, Nenets, Khanty and Mansi.

The Saami people, in all likelihood, were formed by the merger of many ethnic groups. This is indicated by anthropological and genetic differences between the Saami ethnic groups living in different territories. Genetic studies of recent years have revealed common features among the modern Saami with the descendants of the ancient population of the Atlantic coast of the Ice Age - the modern Basque-Berbers. Such genetic traits were not found in the more southern groups of Northern Europe. From Karelia, the Saami migrated further north, fleeing from the spreading Karelian colonization and, presumably, from the imposition of tribute. Following the migrating herds of wild reindeer, the ancestors of the Sami, at the latest during the 1st millennium AD. e., gradually reached the coast of the Arctic Ocean and reached the territories of their current residence. At the same time, they began to switch to the breeding of domesticated reindeer, but this process reaches a significant extent only by the 16th century.

Their history over the past one and a half millennia is, on the one hand, a slow retreat under the onslaught of other peoples, and on the other hand, their history is an integral part of the history of nations and peoples that have their own statehood, in which an important role is given to the taxation of the Saami tribute. A necessary condition for reindeer herding was that the Saami roamed from place to place, driving reindeer herds from winter to summer pastures. In practice, nothing prevented the crossing of state borders. The basis of the Sami society was a community of families that united on the principles of joint ownership of land, which gave them a means of subsistence. The land was allocated by families or clans.

Figure 2.1 Population dynamics of the Saami people 1897 - 2010 (compiled by the author based on materials).

In the 1920s and 1930s, Vepsian national districts, as well as Vepsian village councils and collective farms, were created in places where the people were densely populated.

Figure 2.2 Number of Nenets peoples 1989, 2002, 2010 (compiled by the author based on materials).

Khanty- a small indigenous Ugric people living in the north of Western Siberia.

Volga Center of Finno-Ugric Peoples' Cultures

There are three ethnographic groups of the Khanty: northern, southern and eastern, and the southern Khanty mixed with the Russian and Tatar population. The ancestors of the Khanty penetrated from the south to the lower reaches of the Ob and populated the territories of the modern Khanty-Mansiysk and southern regions of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and from the end of the 1st millennium, on the basis of a mixture of aborigines and newcomer Ugric tribes, the ethnogenesis of the Khanty began. The Khanty called themselves more by the rivers, for example, "the people of Konda," the people of the Ob.

In the Vogulskaya cave, located near the village of Vsevolodo-Vilva in the Perm region, traces of the Voguls were found. According to local historians, the cave was a temple (pagan sanctuary) of the Mansi, where ritual ceremonies were held. Bear skulls with traces of stone axes and spears, shards of ceramic vessels, bone and iron arrowheads, bronze plaques of the Perm animal style depicting an elk man standing on a lizard, silver and bronze jewelry were found in the cave.

Finno-Ugrians or Finno-Ugric- a group of peoples with related linguistic features and formed from the tribes of northeastern Europe since the Neolithic inhabited Western Siberia, the Trans-Urals, the northern and middle Urals, the territory north of the upper Volga, the Volgookska interfluve and the middle Volga region until midnight of the modern Saratov region in Russia.

1. Title

In Russian chronicles they are known under the unifying names chud and Samoyeds (self-name suomaline).

2. Settlement of Finno-Ugric ethnic groups in Russia

On the territory of Russia there are 2,687,000 people belonging to the Finno-Ugric ethnic groups. In Russia, the Finno-Ugric peoples live in Karelia, Komi, Mari El, Mordovia, Udmurtia. According to chronicle references and linguistic analysis of toponyms, the Chud united several tribes: Mordva, Murom, Merya, Vesps (Whole, Vepsians) and etc..

The Finno-Ugric peoples were an autochthonous population of the Oka-Volga interfluve, their tribes were the Estonians, all Merya, Mordovians, Cheremis were part of the Gothic kingdom of Germanarich in the 4th century. The chronicler Nestor in the Ipatiev Chronicle indicates about twenty tribes of the Ural group (Ugrofiniv): Chud, Livs, waters, yam (Ӕm), all (even North of them on the White Lake sit Vѣt Vѣs), Karelians, Yugra, caves, Samoyeds, Perm ), cheremis, casting, zimgola, kors, nerom, mordvinians, measuring (and on Rostov ѡzerѣ Merѧ and on Kleshchin and ѣzerѣ sѣdѧt mѣrzh same), murom (and Ѡtsѣ rѣtsѣ where to flow into the Volga ҕzyk Svoi Murom) and Meshchery. Muscovites called all local tribes Chud from the indigenous Chud, and accompanied this name with irony, explaining it through Moscow weird, weird, strange. Now these peoples are completely assimilated by Russians, they have disappeared from the ethnic map modern Russia forever, adding to the number of Russians and leaving perhaps a wide range of their ethnic place names.

These are all the names of the rivers with ending-wa: Moscow, Protva, Kosva, Silva, Sosva, Izva, etc. The Kama River has about 20 tributaries whose names end with na-va, means "water" in Finnish. Muscovite tribes from the very beginning felt their superiority over the local Finno-Ugric peoples. However, Finno-Ugric toponyms are found not only where these peoples today make up a significant part of the population, form autonomous republics and national districts. Their distribution area is much larger, for example, Moscow.

According to archaeological data, the settlement area of the Chud tribes in Eastern Europe remained unchanged for 2 thousand years. Starting from the 9th century, the Finno-Ugric tribes of the European part of present-day Russia were gradually assimilated by Slavic colonists, immigrants from Kievan Rus. This process formed the basis for the formation of modern Russian nation.

The Finno-Ugric tribes belong to the Ural-Altai group and a thousand years ago they were close to the Pechenegs, Polovtsy and Khazars, but were at a much lower level of social development than the rest, in fact, the ancestors of the Russians were the same Pechenegs, only forest. At that time, these were the primitive and most culturally backward tribes of Europe. Not only in the distant past, but even at the turn of the 1st and 2nd millennia, they were cannibals. The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC) called them androphages (devourers of people), and Nestor the chronicler already in the period of the Russian state - Samoyeds (Samoyed).

The Finno-Ugric tribes of a primitive gathering and hunting culture were the ancestors of the Russians. Scientists argue that the Muscovite people received the greatest admixture of the Mongoloid race through the assimilation of Finno-Ugric peoples who came to Europe from Asia and partially absorbed Caucasoid admixture even before the arrival of the Slavs. A mixture of Finno-Ugric, Mongolian and Tatar ethnic components led to the ethnogenesis of Russians, which was formed with the participation of the Slavic tribes Radimichi and Vyatichi. Due to ethnic mixing with the Finns, and later the Tatars and partly with the Mongols, the Russians have an anthropological type that is different from the Kievan-Russian (Ukrainian). The Ukrainian diaspora jokes about this: "The eye is narrow, the nose is plush - completely Russian." Under the influence of the Finno-Ugric language environment, the formation of the Russian phonetic system (akanye, gekanya, ticking) took place. Today, "Ural" features are inherent to one degree or another in all the peoples of Russia: medium height, broad face, snub-nosed nose, and a sparse beard. The Mari and Udmurts often have eyes with the so-called Mongolian fold - epicanthus, they have very wide cheekbones, a liquid beard. But at the same time blond and red hair, blue and gray eyes. The Mongolian fold is sometimes found among Estonians and Karelians. Komi are different: in those places where there are mixed marriages with grow up, they are dark-haired and braced, others are more like Scandinavians, but with a slightly wider face.

According to the studies of the Meryanist Orest Tkachenko, "In the Russian people, on the maternal side associated with the Slavic ancestral home, the father was a Finn. On the paternal side, the Russians descended from the Finno-Ugric peoples." It should be noted that according to modern studies of the Y-chromosome halotypes, in fact, the situation was the opposite - Slavic men married women of the local Finno-Ugric population. According to Mikhail Pokrovsky, the Russians are an ethnic mixture in which the Finns own 4/5, and the Slavs - 1/5. The remnants of the Finno-Ugric culture in the Russian culture can be traced in such features that are not found among other Slavic peoples: women's kokoshnik and sundress , men's shirt-kosovorotka, bast shoes (bast shoes) in the national costume, dumplings in dishes, the style of folk architecture (tented buildings, porch), Russian bath, sacred animal - bear, 5-tone scale of singing, a-touch and vowel reduction, paired words like stitches, paths, arms and legs, alive and well, such and such, turnover I have(instead of I, characteristic of other Slavs) the fabulous beginning "once upon a time", the absence of a mermaid cycle, carols, the cult of Perun, the presence of a cult of birch, not oak.

Not everyone knows that there is nothing Slavic in the surnames Shukshin, Vedenyapin, Piyashev, but they come from the name of the Shuksha tribe, the name of the goddess of war Vedeno Ala, the pre-Christian name Piyash. So a significant part of the Finno-Ugric peoples was assimilated by the Slavs, and some, having adopted Islam, mixed with the Turks. Therefore, today ugrofins do not make up the majority of the population, even in the republics to which they gave their name. But, having dissolved in the mass of Russians (Rus. Russians), the Ugrofins have retained their anthropological type, which is now perceived as typically Russian (Rus. Russian) .

According to the overwhelming majority of historians, the Finnish tribes had an extremely peaceful and meek disposition. By this, the Muscovites themselves explain the peaceful nature of the colonization, stating that there were no military clashes, because written sources do not remember anything like that. However, as the same VO Klyuchevsky notes, "in the legends of Great Russia, some vague memories of the struggle that flared up in some places survived."

3. Toponymy

Toponyms of Meryan-Yerzyans origin in Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Ivanovo, Vologda, Tver, Vladimir, Moscow regions account for 70-80% (Veksa, Voksenga, Elenga, Kovonga, Koloksa, Kukoboy, lekht, Meleksa, Nadoksa, Nero (Inero), Nuks, Nuksha, Palenga, Peleng, Pelenda, Peksoma, Puzhbol, Pulokhta, Sara, Seleksha, Sonohta, Tolgobol, otherwise, Sheksheboy, Shehroma, Shileksha, Shoksha, Shopsha, Yakhrenga, Yahrobol(Yaroslavl region, 70-80%), Andoba, Vandoga, Vokhma, Vokhtoga, Voroksa, Lynger, Mezenda, Meremsha, Monza, Nerekhta (flicker), Neya, Notelga, Onga, Pechegda, Picherga, Poksha, Pong, Simonga, Sudolga, Toyehta, Urma, Shunga, Yakshanga(Kostroma region, 90-100%), Vazopol, Vichuga, Kineshma, Kistega, Kokhma, Ksty, Landeh, Nodoga, Paksh, Palekh, Scab, Pokshenga, Reshma, Sarokhta, Ukhtoma, Ukhtokhma, Shacha, Shizhegda, Shileksa, Shuya, Yukhma etc. (Ivanovsk region), Vokhtoga, Selma, Senga, Solokhta, Sot, Tolshmy, Shuya and others. (Vologda region), "Valdai, Koi, Koksha, Koivushka, Lama, Maksatikha, Palenga, Palenka, Raida, Seliger, Siksha, Syshko, Talalga, Udomlya, Urdoma, Shomushka, Shosha, Yakhroma etc. (Tver region), Arsemaky, Velga, Voininga, Vorsha, Ineksha, Kirzhach, Klyazma, Koloksha, Mstera, Moloksha, Motra, Nerl, Peksha, Pichegino, Soima, Sudogda, Suzdal, Tumonga, Undol etc. (Vladimir region), Vereya, Vorya, Volgusha, Lama, Moscow, Nudol, Pakhra, Taldom, Shukhroma, Yakhroma etc. (Moscow region)

3.1. List of Finno-Ugric peoples

3.2.
FINNO-UGRIAN PEOPLES

Personalities

Ugro-finans by origin were Patriarch Nikon and Archpriest Avvakum - both Mordovians, Udmurts - physiologist V. M. Bekhterev, Komi sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, Mordvins - sculptor S. Nefedov-Erzya, who took the name of the people with his pseudonym; Pugovkin Mikhail Ivanovich is a Russified Merya, his real name sounds in Meryansky - Pugorkin, the composer A.Ya. Eshpay is a Mari, and many others:

Sources

Notes

Map of the approximate settlement of the Finno-Ugric tribes in the 9th century.

Stone gravestone with the image of a warrior. Ananyinsky burial ground (near Yelabuga). VI-IV centuries. BC.

The history of the Russian tribes that inhabited the Volga-Oka and Kama basins in the 1st millennium BC. e., differs significantly originality. According to Herodotus, the Boudins, Tissagets and Iirks lived in this part of the forest belt. Noting the difference between these tribes from the Scythians and Savromats, he points out that their main occupation was hunting, which delivered not only food, but also furs for clothing. Herodotus especially notes the equestrian hunting of the Iirks with the help of dogs. The information of the ancient historian is confirmed by archaeological sources, indicating that hunting really occupied a large place in the life of the studied tribes.

However, the population of the Volga-Oka and Kama basins was not limited to those tribes mentioned by Herodotus. The names given by him can only be attributed to the southern tribes of this group - the immediate neighbors of the Scythians and Savromats. More detailed information about these tribes began to penetrate into ancient historiography only at the turn of our era. Tacitus probably relied on them when he described the life of the tribes in question, calling them Fens (Finns).

The main occupation of the Finno-Ugric tribes in the vast territory of their settlement should be considered cattle breeding and hunting. Slash-and-burn agriculture played a secondary role. characteristic feature The production of these tribes was that, along with iron tools that came into use from about the 7th century. BC e., tools made of bone were used here for a very long time. These features are typical of the so-called Dyakovskaya (between the Oka and Volga), Gorodets (southeast of the Oka), and Ananyinskaya (Prikamye) archaeological cultures.

The southwestern neighbors of the Finno-Ugric tribes, the Slavs, during the 1st millennium AD. e. significantly advanced into the area of \u200b\u200bsettlement of Finnish tribes. This movement caused the movement of part of the Finno-Ugric tribes, as the analysis of numerous Finnish river names in the middle part of European Russia shows. The processes in question took place slowly and did not violate the cultural traditions of the Finnish tribes. This makes it possible to link a number of local archaeological cultures with the Finno-Ugric tribes already known from Russian chronicles and other written sources. The descendants of the tribes of the Dyakovo archaeological culture were probably the Merya and Muroma tribes, the descendants of the tribes of the Gorodets culture were the Mordovians, and the origin of the chronicle Cheremis and Chud goes back to the tribes that created the Ananyin archaeological culture.

Many interesting features of the life of the Finnish tribes have been studied in detail by archaeologists. The oldest method of obtaining iron in the Volga-Oka basin is indicative: iron ore was smelted in clay vessels that stood in the middle of open fires. This process, noted in the settlements of the 9th-8th centuries, is characteristic of the initial stage of the development of metallurgy; later ovens appeared. Numerous products made of bronze and iron and the quality of their manufacture suggest that already in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. e. among the Finno-Ugric tribes of Eastern Europe, the transformation of household industries into crafts, such as foundry and blacksmithing, began. Of other industries, the high development of weaving should be noted. The development of cattle breeding and the beginning of the emergence of handicrafts, primarily metallurgy and metalworking, led to an increase in labor productivity, which in turn contributed to the emergence of property inequality. Nevertheless, the accumulation of property within the tribal communities of the Volga-Oka basin was rather slow; because of this, up to the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. tribal settlements were relatively weakly fortified. Only in subsequent centuries the settlements of the Dyakovo culture were strengthened by powerful ramparts and ditches.

The picture of the social structure of the inhabitants of the Kama region is more complex. The inventory of burials clearly indicates the presence of property stratification among local residents. Some burials dating back to the end of the 1st millennium allowed archaeologists to suggest the appearance of some kind of inferior category of the population, possibly slaves from among prisoners of war.

Territory of settlement

On the position of the tribal aristocracy in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. one of the brightest monuments of the Ananyinsky burial ground (near Yelabuga) testifies - a tombstone made of stone with a relief image of a warrior armed with a dagger and a war hammer and decorated with a hryvnia. The rich inventory in the grave under this slab contained a dagger and a hammer made of iron, and a silver hryvnia. The buried warrior was undoubtedly one of the tribal leaders. The isolation of the tribal nobility especially intensified by the II-I centuries. BC e. It should be noted, however, that at that time the tribal nobility was probably relatively few in number, since low labor productivity still greatly limited the number of members of society who lived off the labor of others.

The population of the Volga-Oka and Kama basins was associated with the Northern Baltic, Western Siberia, the Caucasus, and Scythia. Many objects came here from the Scythians and Sarmatians, sometimes even from very remote places, such as, for example, the Egyptian statuette of the god Amun, found in a settlement excavated at the spit of the Chusovaya and Kama rivers. The forms of some iron knives, bone arrowheads and a number of vessels among the Finns are very similar to similar Scythian and Sarmatian items. The connections of the Upper and Middle Volga regions with the Scythian and Sarmatian world can be traced already from the 6th-4th centuries, and by the end of the 1st millennium BC. e. are made permanent.

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Ethnogenesis of the Finnish race.