Frontiers of Soviet Resettlements: Cultural Borders and Cross-Cultural Interaction between Russians and Chuvashes in the South Part of Kama Region in the 1920-1930s

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of ethno-social resettlement campaigns of the USSR of the second half of the 1920s. The implementation of these practices in the Volga Region led to major migrations and the formation of ethnic enclaves on the territory of Urals and Siberia. Basing on various sources and field materials, the article describes the situation in the Southern Prikamye after several thousand of the Chuvash people migrated to the places inhabited by Russian Old Believers. The sources allow to reconstruct complex processes of ethno-cultural interaction that formed new specific complexes of spiritual and material culture of the Chuvash people of Prikamye. The authors noted that the resettlement in the 1920s took place in the conditions of the destruction of the traditional life characteristics in the whole country, a change in ideological attitudes, a significant transformation of ethnocultural complexes. Under the conditions of migration, these factors contributed to a more intensive course of assimilation processes. At the same time, a significant number of Chuvash migrants encamped in one area at a distance from large settlements, as well as preservation of the rural character of the outposts contributed to the functioning of institutions for keeping the traditional way of legacy transmission.

Keywords

• the chuvash people
• russians
• resettlement
• prikamye
• migration
• population census
• traditional culture