Galina Lushnikova Siberian Ethnic Groups – Culture and Language

Galina Lushnikova Siberian Ethnic Groups – Culture and Language Series A: General & Theoretical Papers ISSN 1435-6473 Essen: LAUD 2004 Paper No. 594 Universität Duisburg-Essen Galina Lushnikova Kemerovo State University (Russia) Siberian Ethnic Groups – Culture and Language Copyright by the author Reproduced by LAUD 2004 Linguistic Agency Series A University of Duisburg-Essen General and Theoretical Fachbereich 3 Paper No. 594 Universitätsstr. 12 D- 45117 Essen Order LAUD-papers online: http://www.linse.uni-due.de/linse/laud/index.html Or contact: [email protected] Galina Lushnikova Siberian Ethnic Groups – Culture and Language On the territory of Siberian Region - Kuzbass (Russia, Western Siberia) there are registered about 116 national minorities, e.g. shors, teleuts, shandins, kalmaks. When language and culture are concerned, the aboriginal population faces two main issues: the first one follows from inefficient language policy and the second one is connected with the dying out of minority languages and hence the exclusion from access to knowledge and skills. The fact is that there are people living in the remote villages in Gornaya Shoria (more than a hundred kilometers away from the city of Novokuznetsk) where the majority of the population do not speak Russian at all. So children under seven speak only their native language. Then, as a rule, they leave their native places for the nearest settlements or towns to study in a boarding school. And as all the subjects are taught in Russian they immediately begin to learn it. Though some of them are quicker to learn due to the prevailing Russian environment still they suffer from language incompetence because some concepts have been already formed on the basis of their native language. The teenagers feel uncomfortable having to study together with younger children, while their coevals are already in the senior forms. Nowadays the general level of education among the population is constantly decreasing. Most job vacancies do not demand a high level of professional background and consequently do not provide tangible educational development of the population. Many of them have only primary or incomplete secondary education and very few of them – secondary or vocational. Another negative factor is a low qualification of teachers. In some schools teachers do not have even secondary vocational education. This inevitably has its impact on the quality of the knowledge acquired by the pupils. As a result, some of them return home. In this context local and regional administrations take concrete steps: ethnic minorities are encouraged to take additional classes in the Russian language and literature and school leavers are admitted to colleges and Universities on preferential terms. The second issue concerns the fact that minority languages are practically expiring. Fewer and fewer people speak their native languages, Russian dominating all spheres of life – education, politics and business. The representatives of national minorities challenge it in different ways: adult populations try to preserve their ethnic language and culture cherishing traditions, customs and rituals, while the younger generation see no practical use in it focusing their efforts on acquiring Russian and modern European languages. Ethnologists and linguists of Kuzbass Universities are concerned about it. No nation can exist without its own language, customs and traditions. And the matter of preserving each national minority in Russia is of paramount importance as each national minority is 1 part and parcel of the whole nation. Scholars and local authorities united their efforts in the following projects: in 2002 the Regional Administration formed the Department of National policy to coordinate the activities of different groups, organizations and individuals; Kuzbass Pedagogical Academy opened the Department of Shors’ History and Culture; several schools offer optional classes on ethnic languages, history and literature; Kemerovo Publishing House started publishing bilingual books of poetry and prose; special scientific programmes are being developed on the History and Philology Departments in Kuzbass Colleges and Universities whose main goal is to interpret and analyze the folklore of ethnic minorities. Still there is much to be done to empower Siberian ethnic minorities through Russian and at the same time to preserve their national peculiarities. Until the end of the 20th century the Shors did not have a written language, and that was one of the reasons why the people’s oral activities were well developed, passing from one generation to another. Among these were songs, legends, fairy tales, stories about warriors and their heroic deeds, proverbs and sayings. This is all known to the reader thanks to the researches of scientists V.V.Radlov, V.I. Verbitski, N.P. Direncova, A.I. Chudoyakov. According to the modern linguistic classification the Shors language belongs to the Khakass subgroup, the Uigur-Uiguz group of the East-Hun branch of the Turkic languages. But only 9000 Shors consider the Shor language to be their mother tongue and only 900 of them speak it fluently. The Mrass dialect was taken as the basis of the Shor literary language that was also enriched by the Kondom dialect. There are 38 letters in the Shor alphabet based on the Russian alphabet and in addition to the letters of the Russian alphabet there are 5 special letters which render the sounds not existing in Russian, namely F, K, H, Ö, У. Nowadays the Shors use the Russian language and they speak the Shors language exclusively in their community. The Shors is a Turkic – speaking nation, the numerically small one, which lives in southern Siberia mostly in three basins of the rivers the Kondoma, the Mrassu and the Tom. The Shor nation was formed during the long – lasting process of mixing of the Ugor, the Samody, the Helt on the one hand and Turkic tribes on the other. The Shors have been known to the Russians since the end of the XVth century when Siberia became part of Russia. It happened in the reign of Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Grozni). The times of Ivan Vasilievich Grozni were really terrible. Historians state that the terror of the “Oprichni” period caused no less harm to the Russian people than the invasion of the Crimean Khan. As a logical end to the governing of the tsar-tyrant the Russians suffered severe starvation that led to robberies and denunciation. Then there came the vague times - the Bolotnikov revolt, the invasion of Lzedmitries, the interreign period, the Moscow Fire etc. 2 At this time sixteen-year-old Michael Fedorovich became the tsar and the honored Grand Duke of Russia. But this period was no better – the country was overrun with forged money, the roads were roamed by beggars, hungry crowds, descendants. Some joined the robbers, others decided to become free Don Kazaks. The bravest went east beyond the Stone (the Ural Mountains). That was how Ostafei Kharlamov, the son of a nobleman, happened to be in Siberia and later became the first commander- in-chief of the Kuznetsk fortress on the Tom. Kuznetsk, named after the native population Kuznetski totars that later were called the Shors, for more than 200 years had remained the most southward fortress of Siberia. The fortress, having lost within time its military significance, was excluded from the permanent register of fortresses in 1819. Though the founding of the city at the Upper Tom started the development of this region, it was not considered to be a great historical event. It was not marked by any “bloodstained battle” or any other bloodshed, as history likes to give credit to and store in memory. Generally speaking the Siberian chronicle dating back to the first days of Russia state according to Academician Miller (1775-1783) confirms that, when people are treated with caring and love they usually do what is expected from them. On the contrary, they struggle furiously and became rebellious, when they are abused without reason or when the local military commanders demand from them more than they could give. They preferred to pay “yasak”, a fir tribute, to anybody who could protect them from the steppe robbers. The local Shor – and Teleut tribes always had trouble with all sorts of intruders. By the time the Russians came the Shor nationality had not yet been formed. The place was inhabited by strange forest tribes who did not only fish and hunt but also could smelt ore and make various tools and utensils of iron: kettles, axes, traps, arrow heads. It was this trade of the forest people that surprised the first Russian explorers because Russia had no iron at that time. Anything made from metal was considered by the Russians as something of special value. So the Shor iron-smelters preferred to pay iron “yasak” to the state. The Shor people had patriarchal families. The clan family descendants had the name of their predecessor. The name was given after the nearby river - the Tom, the Kondoma, the Mrassu. The riverside forest belonged to them. The members of a clan were counted in bows belonging to male members of the clan e.g. the Karga clan had forty bows, the Kobi fifty bows etc. Actually they began to be called the “Shors” only in the 19th century after the largest clan shors that lived in the Upper Kondoma. In the earlier chronicles they were referred to as the Kondoma and the Mrassu Tatars. In the beginning of the 20-th century this territory was named by the name of the nationality, which now occupies the south of the Kemerovo region – Mountainous Shoria (Gornaya Shoria). 3 Besides hunting, fishing, and iron smelting, the Shor tribes of those times sowed wild hemp from which they produced coarse linen. From Russian chronicles dated 1622 it is known, that the inhabitants of the north region of Shoria (the Abints, named after the river Aba), cultivated the hills of the forest and sowed wheat and barley.

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