Chuvashia, or the Chuvash Republic (Chuvash. Chӑvash Republic), is a
subject of the Russian Federation, a republic within it. The capital is
the city of Cheboksary.
It borders with the Nizhny Novgorod
region in the west, with the Mari El Republic in the north, with
Tatarstan in the east, with Mordovia in the southwest, and with the
Ulyanovsk region in the south. It is part of the Volga Federal District
and is part of the Volga-Vyatka economic region.
Formed on the
basis of the Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and
the Council of People's Commissars of June 24, 1920 as the Chuvash
Autonomous Region on June 24, 1920. On April 21, 1925, it was
transformed into the Chuvash Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic. Since
July 15, 1929, as part of the Nizhny Novgorod Territory, since December
5, 1936 - the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Since
February 13, 1992 - Chuvash Republic.
Mariinsky Posad
Novocheboksarsk
By plane
To Cheboksary Airport (IATA:CSY) from
Moscow, Surgut and
Yekaterinburg.
By train
From Moscow from the Kazansky
station on the company train No. 054G “Chuvashia”.
By car
From
Moscow along the M7 Volga highway.
Buses, trolleybuses (in Cheboksary and Novocheboksarsk), taxis, water buses (on the Volga in summer)
The name Chuvashia is derived from the ethnonym Chuvash. The appearance of the word “Chuvash” was recorded on the territory of the Kazan Khanate. The modern ethnonym Chuvash was originally an exo-ethnonym of the ancestors of the Chuvash, used by the Kazan Tatars and Russians. The exoethnonym is associated with the socionyme of the 16th-17th centuries, which indicated the class affiliation of people who paid yasak and were engaged in agriculture. The possibility of the origin of the ethnonym Chuvash from the way of life of the people, that is, from the primary social content of the word, was first expressed by the publicist G. I. Komissarov
On June 24, 1920, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the
Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR adopted a resolution, signed
by V.I. Lenin and M.I. Kalinin, on the formation of the Chuvash
Autonomous Region as part of the RSFSR. And at the end of 1924, the
governing bodies of the Chuvash Autonomous Region presented a project
for transformation into the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist
Republic. On April 21, 1925, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
decided to transform the Chuvash Autonomous Region into the Chuvash
Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic. Then, by a resolution of the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee of June 20, the following
volosts of the Alatyr district of the Simbirsk province were annexed to
the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic: Alatyrskaya with the
city of Alatyr, Poretskaya and Kuvakinskaya, with a population of
121,464 people.
In the 1920s, the idea of changing the name of
the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic into the Bulgarian
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and renaming the Chuvash into
Bulgarians, following the renaming of the Cheremis into Mari, was
discussed. The proposal of local historians did not receive the support
of the leadership and population of the republic.
“... Chuvash
bourgeois nationalists who sought to use the Bulgar theory of the origin
of the Chuvash people for their own hostile political purposes. In a
number of works published by them in the 1920s, they propagated the
assertion that the Chuvash are the only, direct and pure descendants of
the Volga-Kama Bulgars, and allowed for a bourgeois-nationalist
idealization of the era of the Volga Bulgaria state.
In the works
of D. P. Petrov (Yuman), M. P. Petrov, A. P. Prokopyev-Milli and other
local historians, the Bulgarian period was depicted as a “golden age” in
the history of the Chuvash people, social-class contradictions and the
presence of oppression of exploiters in this state. During these same
years, bourgeois nationalists launched a campaign to rename the Chuvash
people into Bulgars, and they proposed calling the Chuvash Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republic “Bulgar.”
— Denisov P.V. Ethnocultural
parallels of the Danube Bulgarians and Chuvashs
On October 24,
1990, the Supreme Council of the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist
Republic adopted a declaration of the sovereignty of the republic and
approved its new name - the Chuvash SSR. On May 24, 1991, the Congress
of People's Deputies of the RSFSR approved this name by amending Art. 71
of the 1978 Constitution of the RSFSR. On February 13, 1992, with the
adoption of the Law “On Changing the Name of the Chuvash SSR,” the
Chuvash SSR began to be called the Chuvash Republic.
Until 2002,
the transliteration into Russian writing of the Chuvash name of the
republic “Chӑvash Republic” was included in the full official name of
the subject of the federation in Russian in the Constitution of Russia
(Article 65). In accordance with the Decree of the President of the
Russian Federation dated June 9, 2001, the name of the subject of the
Russian Federation was changed to “Chuvash Republic - Chuvashia”.
In October 2012, a number of public figures of Chuvashia in
Cheboksary, during a round table, circulated an appeal to the Head of
the Chuvash Republic M.V. Ignatiev and deputies of the State Duma of the
Russian Federation with a proposal to restore the historical name of the
Chuvash Republic “Republic of Chuvashia - Volga Bulgaria”. On January
16, 2013, the State Council of the Chuvash Republic received a
collective appeal with a request to initiate a change in the name of the
Chuvash Republic to the historical name “Republic of Chuvashia - Volga
Bulgaria”.