Mari Elders

22.02.05

In summer 1914, when the First World War broke out, it was greeted with enthusiasm by many renowned intellectuals: Sigmund Freud, Oskar Kokoschka, Paul Claudel, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others. The intellectuals from both sides made an effort to prove that their culture, literature and philosophy was superior to that of the other side. A French poet called "Let's throw the German books out of the window, long live clear thoughts!". The poet Paul Claudel later called Kant and Luther "sowers of pestilence". The German philosophers speculated about the inherent weaknesses of French thought. The priests and pastors blessed their troops praying God to give them the victory over the satanic enemy. 

At the same time, far away from the fronts in Western Europe, in Central Russia, the news of a big war had reached the elders of the Mari people (also called Cheremis). The elders of several neighbouring villages discussed the matter. Then they ordered that all weapons in those villages, most of them antique guns, swords and pistols, be gathered. Then a big grave was dug, the people put on their ritual white clothes, and ritually buried the weapons. 

A significant part of the Maris (totalling about 600 000 people) were at that time, and still are non-Christians, having preserved their old religion. They have their sacred groves where they pray to their gods and sacrifice food for them. The Mari old religion is imbued with veneration for all living and even non-living things. A Mari greets the forest when entering it, greets a stream crossing it, in midsummer people are careful not to disturb the wedding of the cornfield, they put their old shoes and clothes to rot on the fence, not throwing away things that have served them well. 

Since their subjugation by the Tzar in the XVIth century, the Maris have resisted both christianization and russification that has been especially brutal in Soviet period. Although officially they have their own autonomous republic, now called Mari-El inside the Russian Federation, their aspiration for real cultural autonomy, for the right to education in their own language have been largely ignored. In 1937, most Mari leaders and intellecutals were either executed or imprisoned. At the time of Gorbatchov's perestroika, the Maris once again seized initiative and tried to gain more rights. Initially, these attempts were successful, but later, with the autoritarianism and chauvinism gaining strength in Moscow, a new wave of repressions has hit Mariland. Some most hideous facts have been described in the appeal by many intellectuals attached hereby. 

It is scandalous that in some parts of the Russian Federation the policies of repression and assimilation of minorities that has been abandoned in Western and Central Europe many decades ago, is still going on, sometimes in shockingly brutal way.

Jaan Kaplinski,