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Soviet Union [USSR] Chuvash
Descended from the Finno-Ugric tribes of the middle Volga area
and the Bulgar tribes of the Kama and Volga rivers, the Chuvash
were identifiable as a separate people by the tenth century A.D.
Conquered by the Mongols in the thirteenth century, they became
part of the Kazan' Horde. Since the mid-sixteenth century, they
have been under Russian rule. After the revolutions of 1917 and the
Civil War, the Soviet government established the Chuvash Autonomous
Oblast within the Russian Republic. In 1925 the oblast became the
Chuvash Autonomous Republic.
The Chuvash were originally Muslim but were forced to convert
to Christianity by the Russians. Many reconverted to Islam in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1980s, some were
Orthodox Christians, others Sunni Muslims.
In 1989 the Chuvash population was over 1.8 million. Slightly
over half lived in the Chuvash Autonomous Republic within the
Russian Republic, where they constituted over 67 percent of the
population. Large concentrations of Chuvash also resided in the
Tatar Autonomous Republic, the Bashkir Autonomous Republic, and
other parts of the Russian Republic.
The Chuvash speak a unique language that includes a large
number of Finno-Ugric and Slavic loanwords but that belongs to the
Bulgar group of Turkic languages. Because no written Chuvash
language had existed before the Russian conquest, it is the only
Turkic language in the Soviet Union to have always used a Cyrillic
alphabet. In 1989 about 76.5 percent of the Chuvash considered
Chuvash as their first language.
In the 1980s, the Chuvash remained overwhelmingly rural and
agricultural. In 1987 Cheboksary, the administrative center of the
Chuvash Autonomous Republic, was the only city in the autonomous
republic with over 100,000 people.
Data as of May 1989
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