History of Chuvashia

The history of Chuvashia spans from the region's earliest attested habitation by Finno-Ugric peoples to its incorporation into the Russian Empire and its successor states.

The ancestors of the Chuvash were Turkic Bulgars and Suars (Sabirs) residing in the Northern Caucasus in the 5th to 8th centuries (after having been driven from the Pannonian Basin following the death of their greatest leader, Attila).

In the 7th and 8th centuries, a part of the Bulgars left for the Balkans, where, together with local Slavs, they established the state of modern Bulgaria.

Later Mongol and Tatar rulers did not intervene in local internal affairs as long as the annual tribute was paid to Sarai.

When the power of the Golden Horde began to diminish, the local Mişär Tatar Murzas from Pyana and Temnikov tried to rule the Chuvash area.

During Ivan the Terrible's war of conquest against the Khanate of Kazan, in August 1552, the Chuvash Orsai and Mari Akpar Tokari princes swore their loyalty to the Grand Duchy of Muscovy at Alatyr on the Sura River.

The Chuvash provided 15,000 soldiers and the Mari 10,000 to Ivan's army for the final attack against Kazan, giving the Muscovites a force of 100,000 against the Khanate's 30,000 Nogai Tatars defending the fortified city.

Disappointed by Russian rule, a portion of the Chuvash population rebelled and joined with the Mari during the Kazan War of 1552–1594.

The Chuvash and Mari joined the Stenka Razin and Pugachev rebellions in 1667–1671 and 1773–1775 respectively, when the Volga area from Astrakhan to Nizhni Novgorod was in open revolt.

A number of Russian noble families received large estates in the Chuvash lands as reward for their services to the Tsar.

After Alexander II abolished serfdom, many land-hungry Chuvash peasants moved to other areas in Russia to seek their own land.

The Chuvash promised to respect the Islamic Tatars' religion and grant them local and cultural autonomy inside the League of Idel Ural States.

To gain support from the local population, Lenin ordered the creation of a Chuvash state within the Russian SFSR.

According to an order dated May 28, 1940 by the Central Committee of Communist Party, 20,000 Kolkhoz peasant families of Belarusian, Chuvash, Mordvin and Tatar origin were transferred to the "New districts of the Leningrad Oblast and the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic", recently conquered in the Soviet-Finnish war.

In the south of the republic, Russians and other minorities, such as Ukrainians, moved in to work in the newly created Chuvash Forest Industry Combinate.