Talk:Mordovia

Developing the Mordovia (Respublika Mordovija) page
If noboby has anything against it, this title is good for also include the modern history starting from January 10th, 1930 up to date 2008.

Peharps one should have a closer look to this:
 * Whereas the Central Region is inhabited almost by Russians, the population of the Volga plateau contains large mordvin and Tatar elements, the former representing the descendants of the Finnish tribes who settled in the north of this area in prehistorical times. They have always been regarded as industrious people and carefully farmers, and their territory - (which now has a population of about one million) - in the forest and open steppe-like areas in the northern part of the plateau and the lowlands along its borders - was not conquered by Russia until middle of 1600´s. It is now Mordovsk Autonomous Republic. Mordvins are found in separate communities from Volga plateau, as far south as the Penza district, to the Urals, and in the parts of the Oka valley. In the late nineteenth century their total population was estimated to to between 400.000 - 500.000, but now (1965) more than a million.
 * The town of Penza was founded to in the seventeenth century to subdue the stubborn Mordvin tribes. It occupies a strategic position at the confluence of the Penza river wiyh the Sura, not far from the source of river Moksha. Both rivers flow through Mordvin populated territory and another - a tributary of the Sura, which also rises at no great distance from Penza - flows through Saransk / Saran Osh, the newly built "capital" of the Mordvin land.
 * This is a country of hills, fertile valleys, forests of oak, lime, and other decidulous trees, open glades, and expanses of grassland. There are areas of poor podsolized soils and quite fertile degraded black earth. Precipitation is more abundant than in the soouthern part of the plateau (400 to 550 mm per year). The winter is somewhat colder than in Central Region. Some rye is cultivated in the Saransk valley, but dairy farming and the cultivation of potatoes and hemp are the chief occupations throughout the Mordovsk Autonomous Republic. Two of the oldest industrial enterprises in Saransk / Saran Osh (139.000) adminstrative centre of the republic, are engaged in manufacture of hemp and condensing milk. In regent years other light industries have been established - engineering, electrical equipment, and tobacco manufacture. Elsewhere there are sawmills and creameries, depending on the local resources of farm and forest.

This statistical information was found from Estonian sources.
 * Mordva Autonomous Republic village population (1970). Average 362 inhabitants. Mordva village 495 inhabitants, Russian village 280 inhabitants, Tatar village 506 inhabitants. In surrounding areas: The average size of rural population in villages. Samara oblast; 374 inhabitants, Mordva village 446 inhabitants. Saratov oblast; 590 inhabitants, Mordva village 605 inhabitants. Penza oblast; 435 inhabitants, Mordva village 703 inhabitants. Uljanovsk (Simbirsk) oblast 540 inhabitants, Mordva village 903 inhabitants. Terjuhaani village in Gorki (Nizhnij Novgorod) oblast 397 inhabitants. Mordva village in Orenburg oblast 304 inhabitants. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.124.58 (talk) 15:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Education in Mordvin (Mardas) languages Ersa (Erzä) and Moksha
Peharps someone can add into the main article the current situation of the education of their own languages (to which level?) is provided by local school system and when the teaching is witched totally into the Russian language. An effective tool of Russification the whole population when the schools place native languages in the second position of importance. The Russians have followed this principle against "Die Alten" in every place where they have been in ruling position over the Finno Ugrians from the ages since the general school system being introduced in Russia. The only thing where hat must be rised to the Bolsheviks / Communists is the general education system which was introduced in the early 1920´s. According their own statistics published in 1923 43 per cent of the male population and 67 per cent of the female population could not properly read or write. A large jump upward in the next 50 years, a result of nearly 100 per cent knowledge of Russian language as well as everything which is of importance of Russian point of view, not that what is really importance of local point of view, say in history and learning of foreign languages other than Russian. Even today (2008), only 16 per cent, 23.2 million of the Russian total population of 145 million inside the Federation of Russia can communicate with English language. Compare this with Finnish figure 92 per cent out of total 5,2 million. Less than two per cent chose Russian language as their first foreign language at the age of eight. Similar trend is now also going on in Estonia where more than 90 per cent of the ethnic Estonian school children are taking English as their first foreign language, not Russian language any more. The Estonia Russians are less interested to do the same, but this is a result of the poor educational level of their parents, who disliked - and still does - to speak any other language than Russian. "Toisheimoisten" (Other tribals) have to speak our language. This is the main reason of their isolation of rest of the Europe. One reason is also (in my opinion) the Kyrillic alphabet which do not suit at all to any Finno Ugrian language. The best is Latin, now a dead language, which can be written just as the living language is pronounced. And Latinized words are easy to transliterate also to English and other western Indo - European languages. When doing it directly from Kyrillic letters to English this produce in certain cases name monsters. Please take a look of this system of Imperial Russia in 1897 - 1917. They used to use French language for this purpose. The Reason for this was simple, all "Russian" upper classes spoke French as their second domestic. Russian language was the language of en masséé as they said it. What I have heard in recent days, there are also a growing number of well educated ethnic Russians who have realised this and there are even talk to abandon the use of Kyrillic alphabet and change it to Latin alphabet to use similar letters with the rest of the Europe. The Tatars have already showed their readiness to do that quite fast, a progress which, unfortunately, was stopped by Moskova, beeing too dangerous example. But now the Kazahs are doing it according the carefully planned scheme. This has caused a fierce resistance among the ethnic Russian population there, who see the whole plan as big western attempt to Zapadnize them and separate them from Rodina. In Ukraina the use of Latin alphabet was never died (West of Dinjeper) despite the hard efforts by Moskova, the same in Russian Karelia (Respublika Karelia). There the Russification has been even accelerated to assimilate all the linguistically different Karelians to be Russians. It seems to me that this has been adopted as general method to finish their Russiafication program of their remaining Finno Ugrians - for certain reason - as soon as possible. If this is happening then "Finish Finno Ugri (Vinokuri) Russija" in next 30 years when the village culture - their backbone - is being (in historical and cultural meaning) in current form destroyed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.113.112.46 (talk) 04:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Temnikovski Lager Nr. 241 MVD
It seems that even mention of these prisons camps located in Mordovia are still too sensitive matters to be published in English Wikipedia watched over by the Russian editors with name marks Judith and others. If not Russians, then Germans or British or Americans who have a tendency to delete all reliable information if they do not found the information published in Russian or German or English languages. The describtion of these lagers is taken from Finnish source. Book named "Berijan Tarhat" and published in Helsinki 1956 by Otava, written by Unto Parvilahti (Boman) who himself was transfered from Ljubjanka prison there in December 1945 and spend the following 19 months in that mentioned MVD Lager Nr. 241. He witnessed peronally the death of 82 year old Knjäz (Prince) Obolenski on March 16, 1946. Not many Russian books have been published of the life inside the Lagers, but have been published in Finnish language in Finland by those who themselves spend nearly ten years of their lives in these "Gardens of Berija". Thus, please return the text in main article because their existence in Mordovia is well known by the older generation of local peoples, both Erzas and Mokshas as well by the local Russian population. Or again, detele this short adddition in Discussion to be sure that the well known truth will remains untold in English Wikipedia idented for English speaking people around the globe, not only for the Russians who can manage with English language. I suppose there is no copywright reserved for those few and certain persons, forbidding that from others who understand also other languages than Russian, German, or English languages. One must be born to Finno Ugrian and the first language must come from mother´s milk to get themselves in to the variations of rich Finno Ugrian languages to understand fully the languages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.122.217 (talk) 09:08, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

coordinates got confused
I corrected the coordinates. Now they are centred on Saransk. --Dyuku (talk) 16:17, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Republic of Adygea which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 11:00, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Gulags?
Shouldn't this page contain some mention of the Gulags or the current prison zones in this area. Have penal colonies had a significant affect on the area? "Mordovia and Dolinka are fairly representative examples of what life is like after the camp experience when people still live near the camp sites. .... According to a 1997 article in Nevasisimaya Gazeta, every family in that region [Mordovia] was in one way or another still connected with the camp zone" Quoted from a book title The Gulag Survivor by Nanci Adler (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_gQpy7dyjGQC&pg=PA232&lpg=PA232&dq=mordovia+gulags&source=bl&ots=85t_LHzme9&sig=3L3p6CtIrJKJE2lJEmaKfjfWkVs&hl=en&ei=EVKwTOKHDdHf4AaZ8Lm8Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false)

I have made no changes to the article as I do not know enough about this subject. But information that I have read suggests that the subject of gulags/prisons is significant to this area. Do the population statistics include the current prisoners? Would this be a considerable percentage? Do the prisons have a significant affect on the local economy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.174.109.242 (talk) 11:40, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Mordovia has recently received significant coverage after the publication of a letter by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. She depicts the gulag's living conditions from the perspective of a prisoner. (http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/23/pussy-riot-hunger-strike-nadezhda-tolokonnikova) - klandry13, 14:12, 29 September 2013 (CET)

Culture
It would look better if inside the culture section there were subsections such as Museums, Theaters, Literature, Cuisine, and so on Shushunov (talk) 17:59, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Sentence about cuisine is very short and too generic. Maybe examples could be provided? Shushunov (talk) 18:02, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * There isn't enough information in the Culture section to warrant using subsections. Additional content would need to be added first. Short sections are usually discouraged.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 26, 2016 ; 14:49 (UTC)

Recreation in Mordovia
It is a very long paragraph and is hard to read. Also, the language is colloquial. Other phrases need to be substituted for "The thing is," "Plus," "So," etc. Third person pronoun is needed instead of the second person pronoun such as "You will get acquainted..," "If you’re lucky...". It seems to me that a big part of this section was copied from somewhere and was not paraphrased in other words appropriate for this audience. Shushunov (talk) 18:10, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * All good points. Any reason you don't want to make the changes yourself?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 26, 2016 ; 14:49 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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