The Chuvash share many musical
traditions with the Mari, and their languages have mutually
influenced each other. But Chuvash is an East Turkic language, as
distinct from the Finnic languages as Russian is from English. Like
the Mari, the Chuvash also converted largely to Christianity, but
in villages they too practice animism, around a "yoodah", an altar
or sacred place.
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Chuvash speakers live throughout the region, but can also be found as far away as the Baltic and Sakhalin. In the many ethnically defined administrative units within the Russian Federation, the titular culture rarely forms a majority, but Chuvashia is an exception, and nearly 70% of the people in this autonomous republic define themselves as Chuvash, on the basis of language, music, social and religious rituals and village customs.
Census
The Chuvash National Congress, which is a member
of UNPO, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. The congress
promotes the preservation of Chuvash language and identity through
publications, the school system, theater and the media. The current
census being carried out in the Russian Federation is a crucial
issue.The Russian passport names citizenship as being Russian but also lists ‘nationality', and some predict that fewer people outside of the republic will continue to register their nationality as Chuvash. Poet and dramatist Anatoli Kibetch, when asked why it was important to keep the language alive, says that the culture also embodies certain values that have an edifying function.
Descendants of the Bolgars
The Chuvash pride themselves in speaking one of the oldest Turkic languages and they nurture close ties with other speakers of Turkic languages in the region, namely Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. They also see themselves as the direct descendants of the Bolgars, who settled along the middle Volga in the 8th century.
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