Location: The majority of the Chuvash people live in an area known today as the Chuvash Republic, but still about 900,000 Chuvashians live in the surrounding area known as Russia. The capitol of the Chuvash Republic is Cheboksary, which was built around the 16th century as a military camp. The Republic, measuring 18,300 sq. km, is located on the Volga River in the Mid-Volga region just east of Moscow.
Language: The Chuvash people speak a Turkic language, different from most of the Turkic languages, which is of Bulgaric ancestry. People say that it is one of the last strains of the Bulgaric language.
History: The Chuvash people have had no written history until about the 1500, and by that time they where already a very strong and aged culture. The first mention of the Chuvash name on documents is in a Russian chronicle in 1521. Although a written past is absent up to 1500, we can still piece together a history from artifacts and other references. The ancient ancestors of the Chuvash are probably mostly of Bulgar decent. The Chuvash are a mixture of the local tribes in the Russia area and the Bulgars. A couple of these local tribes include the Finnish and Mongolian people. The Bulgars migrated from Asia to the Mid-Volga region around the 4th century, they are the ones who influenced the Turkic language. When the Bulgars intermixed with the local groups the main Turkic language picked up different dialects, thus, creating the present day language of the Chuvash people.
Prior to the Mongolian conquest in 1236, the Chuvash and their native friends, the Bulgars, established the Volga Bulgar empire. Proceeding the conquest, The Mongol's brought people of Islamic order to the Chuvashia region. The Chuvash quickly came under the rule of Khazan Khanate by the 1400's. The Tatar's also fled to the southern Chuvashia region forcing the Chuvash people north; this conflict remained between these two groups for many centuries. The Russian victory in 1552 lead to the Russian reign over the Chuvash people. Soon, the Islamic ways were forgotten and the Christian religion was forced upon the Chuvashians. The Chuvash are Christian Orthodox still today, but is known to be in a decline. The Tatar's did not fold as easily as the Chuvashians, and convert to Russian Orthodox. The Chuvash people were protected from the Tatars by the Russians, and by the 1600 the Chuvash people moved back into the southern Chuvashia region.
The next few centuries are pretty straight forward, especially after the founding of the Chuvash written language in the 1800's. The Chuvash Autonomous Region was established in 1920 until 1925 when it was changed to Chuvash ASSR. The name stayed the same until the 1990's when the name was changed again to The Republic of Chuvashia. The Republic of Chuvashia is still running good today in the Russian Federation; the Republic has the lowest ratio of Russians to ethnic groups of all the Republics. The ratio solely proves how much the Chuvash people dislike the oversee of Russia; between the 1930's and 1990's the Chuvash people wanted to change their name to Bulgaria to show their Bulgarian influence and heritage.
Daily Life: Today their daily work life is settled around industrial type jobs. The main things they produce are machines for factory or everyday human use. They make huge looms for textile factories and diesel engines for cars and trucks. The Chuvash people have a culture with a long history that is still making history today.
References:
Russian-American Chamber of Commerce® 1995-1999. http://www.rmi.net/racc/regions/chuvash_republic.html
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. http://www.bartleby.com/65/ch/ChuvashR.html
UNPO http://unpo.org/member/chuvash/chuvash.html
Written By: Mitch Oachs