Woten

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
flag
Woten in national dress

The Woten (proper names: vadjalain , vadjakko ; Russian name: Vodj , водь ) are a very small Baltic Finnish people , related to the Estonians , whose core group lives in the far west of the Leningrad region in the Russian Federation . The remaining 73 members (2010) of the Votic ethnic group are considered to be direct descendants of the medieval population of the same name. Efforts are currently underway to preserve the almost extinct Votic language . The traditional religion of the Votes was Orthodox Christianity.

The Older History of the Votes

Archaeological and linguistic studies suggest that the ancestors of the Votes approximately between the 1st and 4th century from the baltic Finnish settlement area in Estonia over the River Narva motorway, east to the coastal areas of the historic landscape Ingermanland immigrated. The Nestor Chronicle from the 12th century mentions the expulsion and later "calling of the Varangians " by Slavic and Finnish tribes of northern Eastern Europe, which is said to have taken place in 862. The Votes are not mentioned in this historically by no means exact source. Rather, the various versions of the historical work speak of the Tschuden - a collective term for various Baltic Finnish peoples, which could have included the ancestors of the Woten. The East Slavic historical ethnonym "Vodj" (водь, Vod ', Woten) is first used in a Novgorod administrative text from the time of Yaroslav the Wise (middle of the 11th century) and in reference to the year 1069 in connection with military conflicts between Novgorod and the Polotsk prince Vseslav mentioned. The name Narova-Tschuden (after the Narva River), which probably also refers to the Woten, comes from the same period. For the year 1149, historians assume the first, but not yet final, inclusion of the Voten in the territory of the Novgorod state. The integration of the so-called Votic Fifth (Vodskaja Pjatina) as an administrative district into the Novgorod Republic seems to have come to an end in the 13th century. A nominal (Orthodox) Christianization of the Votes at this point in time can also be assumed. However, in the 16th century, the Novgorod bishops still complained about the supposed paganism of the Votes. The Catholic mission sent in 1255 to the ›pagani Watlandiae‹ (Watland pagans) was unsuccessful. Throughout the Middle Ages, as border residents, the Woten were affected by numerous (at least 37) serious armed conflicts between the Novgorod Republic, the expanding orders of knights in the Baltic ( Brothers of the Sword , Teutonic Order ) and Sweden .

Watland

In western medieval and early modern sources, Watland, named after the Woten, is mentioned in different spelling. There are also forms such as Vatland, Watlandia (medieval Latin texts), Wattland or even Vaud (not to be confused with the Swiss canton ). This area fell to the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1478, together with the entire Novgorod Republic, and in 1617 to Sweden in detachment from the Moscow Tsarist Empire . During the Swedish rule, the name Ingermanland established itself for a larger area extending beyond the actual Watland east of the Narva to Lake Ladoga and also for the south of the Karelian Isthmus . Since 1702 "Land der Voten" was part of the Russian Empire . The vocal researcher OI Kon'kova points out that in the Middle Ages it was by no means only the vocal-speaking population that gave the name to settle in this area. In order to distinguish this from the other inhabitants of the Votian fifth or the Votskaja Zemlja, the Novgorod and Moscow administrations again used the ambiguous term Tchud '( Tschuden ). Today the term "Watland" (Vatland, Vatljandia; Russian: ватланд, ватляндия) is taken up by the Votic cultural movement to denote the narrower territorial home of the Woten or also Wotic resources on the Internet.

The Woten in recent history and in the present

Population decline and the Soviet period

After 1917, the settlement areas of the Woten were on Soviet Russian territory. In contrast to many other ethnic minorities, they received no autonomy in the 1920s and, unlike their “neighbors”, the linguistically related Ischors received no support in developing their own school system and their own written language. One reason for this was apparently the progressive loss of the Wotic language .

The number of votes had also decreased significantly. In 1848 1548 were counted, in 1926 there were still 705. In 1937, in the course of Stalinist policy, the Volk der Woten was no longer included in the census.

In connection with the Second World War, the Woten experienced a difficult fate. At the end of the occupation of their settlement area by German troops, around 800 Woten were evacuated to Finland in 1943. Finland's peace treaty with the Soviet Union in 1944 made it possible for them to return, but they were forcibly resettled outside of their historical settlement area and were only able to return to their homeland during the de-Stalinization of 1956.

After the end of the Soviet Union

After the end of the Soviet Union, the "Society of Ischors and Votes" was founded in 1996, and in 2000 it was converted into a "Center for Indigenous Peoples" (of the Petersburg region). The so-called "Wotic Project", the current "Wotic Cultural Society", was established by the center, which serves cultural development, education, information and language maintenance. However, it was not until 2008 that the Woten were recognized as an "indigenous people with a small population" by the government of the Russian Federation . Now the small community of the Woten has the formal right to special support.

Krieviņi - the Wotes of Southern Latvia

Between 1440 and 1450, in the course of military conflicts with Novgorod, around 3000 Voten and Ischoren were forcibly resettled by the Teutonic Order in what is now Latvia . There they formed their own ethnic community under the name krieviņi / Krewinen (Latvian literally: "Russians"). Krewin, a dialect of the Votic language , was in use in the Bauska area until the beginning of the 19th century.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eberhardt Winkler: Krewinisch