From the history of the Shor people. The UN is concerned about reports of the genocide of the Shors in the Russian Federation! Shors of Khakassia

Faces of Russia. “Living together while remaining different”

The multimedia project “Faces of Russia” has existed since 2006, telling about Russian civilization, the most important feature of which is the ability to live together while remaining different - this motto is especially relevant for countries throughout the post-Soviet space. From 2006 to 2012, as part of the project, we created 60 documentaries about representatives of different Russian ethnic groups. Also, 2 cycles of radio programs “Music and Songs of the Peoples of Russia” were created - more than 40 programs. Illustrated almanacs were published to support the first series of films. Now we are halfway to creating a unique multimedia encyclopedia of the peoples of our country, a snapshot that will allow the residents of Russia to recognize themselves and leave a legacy for posterity with a picture of what they were like.

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"Faces of Russia". Shors. “My Shoria”, 2010

General information

SH'ORTSY, Shor (self-name), people in the Russian Federation (15.7 thousand people). They live mainly in the Kemerovo region (12.6 thousand people), as well as in Khakassia (1.2 thousand people) and the Altai Republic, etc. The total number is 16.6 thousand people. According to the 2002 Census, the number of Shors living in Russia is 13 thousand 975 people, according to the 2010 census. - 12 thousand 888 people.

The main habitat is the basin of the middle reaches of the Tom River and its tributaries Kondoma and Mras-Su. Ethnographic groups are distinguished: northern, or forest-steppe (“Abinskaya”), and southern, or mountain taiga (“Shorskaya”). They speak the Shor language of the Turkic group of the Altai family. Dialects: Mrassky, widespread along the Mras-Su River and in the upper reaches of the Tom River, and Kondoma - on the Kondoma River and in the lower reaches of the Tom River, adjacent to the northern dialects of the Altai language. The Russian language is also widespread (53.6% are fluent, 40.9% consider it their native language).

They were formed on the basis of a substrate common to the Ugrians, Samoyeds, and Kets. In the 6th-9th centuries, the Shors were part of the Turkic, Uyghur and Yenisei Khaganates and were Turkified, partially mixing with the ancient Altai, Uyghur, Yenisei-Kyrgyz and Mongolian tribes. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the nomadic cattle breeders Teleuts who came from the North (Irtysh, Barabinskaya and Kulundinskaya steppes) merged with the Shors.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Russians called the Shors “Kuznetsk Tatars,” “Kondom and Mras Tatars,” and Abinsk people. They called themselves by the names of clans (Karga, Kyi, Kobyi, etc.), volosts and councils (Tayash-Chony - Tayash volost) or rivers (Mras-kizhi - Mras people, Kondum-Chony - Kondoma people), outside the territory residence - aba-kizhi (aba - clan, kizhi - people), chysh-kizhi (people of the taiga). Altaians and Khakassians called them by the name of the Shor clan. This name spread widely and was introduced as an official name in the 20th century.

In 1925, the Gorno-Shorsky national district was formed with its center in the village of Myski, then in the village of Kuzedeevo, abolished in 1939. The population in 1926 was 14 thousand people.

Series of audio lectures “Peoples of Russia” - Shortsy

Until the 19th century, one of the main activities of the Shors was iron smelting and forging, especially developed in the north. They paid tribute in iron products to the Turkic Khagans, exchanged them with nomads for cattle and felt, and from the 18th century they sold iron products to Russian merchants. The Russians called them "Kuznetsk people", their land - "Kuznetsk land". By the end of the 18th century, with the weakening of ties with nomads and increased contacts with Russians, the products of Shor blacksmithing could not withstand competition with imported Russian products, and blacksmithing gradually began to disappear; hunting became the main occupation.

Initially, driven hunting for large ungulates (deer, elk, deer, roe deer) prevailed, later - fur fishing (squirrel, sable, fox, weasel, otter, ermine, lynx) - until the 19th century with a bow, then with guns obtained from Russian merchants. From 75 to 90% of Shors' households were engaged in hunting (1900). They hunted animals within the ancestral hunting territory in teams of 4-7 people (initially from relatives, then from neighbors). They lived in seasonal dwellings made of branches and bark (odag, agys). They used skis (shana) lined with kamus. The load was pulled on a hand sled (shanak) or drag (surtka). The spoils were divided equally among all members of the artel.

The main source of food was fishing. In the lower reaches of the rivers it was the main occupation; in other places, from 40 to 70% of households were engaged in it (1899). They moved along the river using poles on dugout boats (kebes) and birch bark boats.

An additional activity was gathering. In the spring, women collected tubers, roots, bulbs and stems of saran, kandyk, wild onion, wild garlic, peony, and hogweed. Roots and tubers were dug up with a root-digger, which consisted of a curved handle 60 cm long with a transverse crossbar-pedal for the foot and an iron blade-spatula at the end. They collected a lot of nuts and berries, in the 19th century - for sale. Families and artels went for pine nuts, living in the taiga for several weeks. Temporary shelters were built in the forest, tools and devices for collecting nuts were made from wood and birch bark - beaters (tokpak), graters (paspak), sieves (elek), winnowers (argash), baskets. Beekeeping has long been known, and beekeeping was borrowed from the Russians.

Before the arrival of the Russians, slash-and-burn hoe farming was common on the southern gentle slopes. To do this, the family settled in a temporary home on arable land for several weeks. The earth was loosened with a hoe (abyl) and harrowed with a branch. They sowed barley, wheat, and hemp. They returned to the arable land in the fall to harvest the crops. The grain was threshed with a stick, stored in birch bark vats on stilts, and ground in hand-held stone mills. With the development of contacts with the Russians in the north, arable farming and Russian agricultural tools spread to the steppe and mountainous regions: a plow, sometimes a plow, a harrow, a sickle, and a water mill. Large areas were sown, mainly with wheat. From the Russians, the Shors learned stall breeding of horses, as well as harnesses, carts, and sleighs.

Women weaved hemp and nettles on primitive looms, tanned leather, and made utensils from wood and birch bark; the men were busy with crafts, processing wood, horn, and leather. Artistic carving and bone burning (on snuff boxes, knife handles, powder flasks, etc.), and embroidery were developed. The production of molded ceramics was known along the Tom and in the lower reaches of Mras-Su.

After the October Revolution, the Shors lost most forms of traditional farming. Modern Shors are organized into farms and fishing cooperatives, some are employed in logging and gold mining.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Shors had strong tribal relations. The boundaries of administrative units (volosts) coincided with the boundaries of settlement of patrilineal clans (so;ok); they were governed by elected clan elders (pashtyk). Members of the clan called themselves karyndash ("only uterine"). Hunting and agricultural lands were assigned to the clans; in the 19th century they came into the use of large families (tol). Yasak and taxes were distributed within the clan. Large families included 2-3 generations. By the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, territorial-neighborhood relations and property differentiation began to develop among the northern Shors. Rich traders and moneylenders, fur buyers (tanysh), clan administration emerged, and the exploitation of hired labor appeared. The large family began to break up into small ones.

Small settlements of the Shors - uluses in the north and ails in the south - were often moved to a new location - on the occasion of a change in arable land, the death of one of their relatives, etc. They consisted of several low, quadrangular log houses (yurts) with a birch bark roof. They were heated by an adobe hearth (kebege) of the chuval type. In the 19th century, huts of the Russian type became widespread, especially in the north; among the poor, log half-dugouts were used.

Temporary housing (on arable land - for agricultural work, in the taiga - during hunting and harvesting nuts) was odag - a conical structure made of logs and poles, covered with birch bark, - in the summer and agys - a frame dwelling in the shape of a truncated pyramid of logs, boards, poles , covered with branches or birch bark, with a hearth in the center - in winter. The poor lived in such buildings constantly, insulating them with birch bark and earth. Timber pile barns (tastak, anmar) were common. Modern Shors live in log houses; barns and hunting dwellings are preserved; yurts are used as summer kitchens.

Men's and women's clothing consisted of a shirt (kunek), trousers (chembar, trousers) and a robe (shabur) with embroidery at the collar, on the cuffs or hem. In winter, several robes were worn. They were worn wrapped from left to right and belted with a sash (a Turkic feature). Women's shirt - long with a slit on the chest. The southern Shors made clothes from hemp and kendyr, the northern ones - more often from purchased fabrics, the wealthy wore purchased clothes, and in winter - sheepskin coats covered with fabric. Shoes were leather boots (oduk, charyk) with long tops (for the poor - from kendyr). Instead of foot wraps, the legs were wrapped in soft sedge grass. Women wore scarves, men wore hats: caps made of fabric, leather or birch bark, round canvas hats in the shape of a cap with a round crown, gathered in ruffles on the top, sometimes embroidered, in winter - fur.

Initially, the main food products of the Shors were meat of animals and birds, fish, and wild plants. The meat was fried over a fire, boiled, and the fish was boiled. Onions, wild garlic, kandyk were eaten raw, sarana, kandyk were boiled in water or milk, sarana was also baked in ash, and wild garlic was eaten salted. The roots of the wild peony were dried and boiled several times to destroy their toxicity, ground in a hand mill and prepared into a paste or cakes. With the development of agriculture, flour and barley cereals spread. Flour (talkan) was eaten with tea, milk, honey, butter, sour cream, porridge (salamat) was cooked from it, cereals (shyrak) were added to soup, pieces of unleavened wheat dough (tutpash) were boiled in water, sometimes with fish or meat, or in milk. Unleavened flatbread (tertpek) was boiled in water and eaten with soup or fish soup. Bread (Kalash) was widespread in the north, mainly among the wealthy. The Steppe Shors consumed dairy products: sour milk, unleavened cheese (pyshtak), cottage cheese, butter. The wealthy bought horse meat. Braga (abyrtka) and vodka (aragy) were made from barley flour. Drank tea.

The Shors had a rich folklore: fairy tales, hunting stories and legends, traditions (purungu chook, erbek), songs, sayings, proverbs (ulger sos, kep sos), riddles (tapkak). From the Teleuts, the northern Shors borrowed heroic poems (kai, nybak), performed to the accompaniment of a two-stringed musical instrument - the komys.

Traditional cults - trade, tribal, shamanism, cults of the spirit masters of mountains (tag-eezi) and rivers (su-eezi). Horses were sacrificed to the master spirits. Certain rituals were associated with bear hunting. The shamanism of the Shors had a tribal character: shamans inherited their gift and patron spirits within the clan. The attributes of the shaman were a tambourine and a mallet. Traditional beliefs and mythology, funeral rites, rituals are partially preserved among modern Shors. Since 1985, traditional holidays have been renewed - the holiday of the ancestor Olgudek, the spring-summer holiday of Payram, etc., accompanied by the performance of epics and songs, sports competitions, etc.

The first Orthodox missionaries appeared among the Shors in 1858. In the 1880s, a written language based on the Russian alphabet was created, and church literature was published. In the 1920s, educational literature appeared. A national intelligentsia is being created.

In the 1980s, interest in traditional culture was revived: in 1989, a program for the revival of Mountain Shoria was adopted, the Shor national park and folklore ensembles were created, and the Shor language was studied in Tashtagol, Myski, and Spassk.

T.M. Patrusheva, Z.P. Sokolova

Essays

Shors- the indigenous people of the Russian Federation living in the south of Western Siberia: in the Kemerovo region, as well as in adjacent regions of Khakassia, Altai and Krasnoyarsk territories. The number in Russia according to the 2002 census is 13,975, including in the Kemerovo region - 11,554 people. They speak the Shor language of the Turkic group of the Altai family, the Russian language is also widespread: 53.6% speak it fluently, 40.9% of the population consider it native. Writing based on the Russian alphabet was first created by Christian missionaries in the 1880s for printing church literature, and since 1927. it applies to all publications. Religion - Orthodoxy, traditional beliefs: animism, shamanism.

Kuznetsk land - Kuzbass and its aborigines

The Cossacks who came to the south of Western Siberia at the beginning of the 17th century, sent by the Russian Tsar, were so amazed by the development of blacksmithing among the local population that they called this region Kuznetsk Land, and its indigenous inhabitants - Kuznetsk Tatars. These descendants of the Samoyed and Ugric tribes themselves, who mixed with the Turkic-speaking peoples who migrated in the 6th - 10th centuries to the basin of the middle reaches of the Tom River and its tributaries Kondoma and Mras-Su, called themselves differently: by the names of the clans (Karga, Kyi, Koby and etc.), volosts and councils (Tayash-chons - Tayash people), rivers (Mras-kizhi - Mras people, Kondum-chons - Kondoma people), and outside the territory of residence - Chysh-kizhi (people of the taiga). Their closest neighbors - the Altaians and Khakassians - called them by the name of the Shor clan. For the first time, the ethnonym “Shors”, officially recognized only in the 20th century, was introduced into scientific circulation by the famous orientalist academician Vasily Vasilyevich Radlov (“Ancient Aborigines of Russia”, St. Petersburg-M., 1884). Among the Shors, the northern ethnographic group stands out - the forest-steppe (“Abinskaya”) and the southern, or mountain-taiga (“Shorskaya”) group. The language also has two dialects: Mrassky, widespread along the Mras-Su River and in the upper reaches of the Tom, and Kondoma - in Kondoma and in the lower reaches of the Tom River, but each of them breaks down into a number of local dialects. The literary Shor language was formed on the basis of the Mras dialect.

Between Ulgen and Erlik

According to the traditional worldview of the Shors, the world is divided into three spheres: the heavenly, where the highest deity Ulgen is located, the middle - the earth on which people live, and the abode of evil spirits - the underworld, where Erlik rules. In earthly life, the ancient Shors were engaged in smelting and forging metals, hunting, fishing, cattle breeding, primitive manual farming, and gathering. Iron products made by Shor blacksmiths were famous throughout Siberia. With them they paid tribute (Alban, Alman) to the Dzungars and Yenisei Kirghiz, but with the arrival of the Cossacks, a ban was imposed on all these “strategic” crafts so that the still unconquered Siberian peoples could not order military armor and equipment from local gunsmiths. Gradually, professional skills were lost, and even giving tribute to the Moscow Tsar “Kuznetsk Tatars” became furs.

Power of the people in Shor style

The Shors lived in communities (seoks), which were governed quite democratically: the headman (pashtyk) was elected at a clan meeting, which was considered the highest authority. Court proceedings also took place here, during which six people, most often experienced elders, were assigned to help the pashtyk. The judges submitted their decision to public discussion; they asked their fellow tribesmen: “charar ba?” (do they agree?), if the majority said “charar” (agree), then the verdict came into force, if not, the case was considered again. Everything adopted at the clan meeting was subject to mandatory execution.

Orthodoxy and shamanism

The Shors also collectively decided to convert to Christianity: from 1858 until the beginning of the 20th century, they were baptized by priests of the Altai Spiritual Mission and were considered Orthodox, and bore Russian, that is, Christian, names. But along with the official religion, they firmly retained traditional beliefs in the masters of nature: the spirits of fire, wind, water, mountains, forests, springs, and hearth. Communication with them, as well as with the supreme deities - Ulgen and Erlik, took place through an intermediary - a shaman, whose services were resorted to in case of illness and difficult childbirth, during funerals, before hunting and harvesting.

“What the ears hear, the eyes will see”

This old Shor proverb, which equates the audible and the visible, accurately explains the attitude of the people of the taiga to everything that surrounded them. Thus, silence was equated with non-existence, sound, on the contrary, was a property of life, and they listened sensitively to the sound of nature. It is no coincidence that the epic picture of the creation of the world, reproduced in a shamanic ritual, was distinguished by an increased background noise: “The flowing water rustled, the mighty taiga roared, the leaves of the great tree hung down. With a noise, the flowing water thawed its golden cover.” As if emerging from silence, darkness and timelessness, the world announced itself with bird chirping, rumble, rustling and crackling: so sound and life filled the Universe.

Seasons

This “creation of the world” was repeated annually in the spring awakening of nature. The Shors determined its onset by the first greenery and thunder, hearing which, the women ran around the yurt from east to west, knocking on its roof with a ladle. The owner of the mountain often acts as a harbinger of spring in their folklore: “In the spring, before the leaves bloom on the tree, before the grass has yet grown on the ground, then the owner of the mountain screams. Also in the fall, when the grass, having dried up, bends, when the leaves of the trees, having dried up, fall off, the ears of the mountain begin to hear better, then it screams again.” This sound, comparable in significance to a thunderclap, “opens” and “closes” the year. The sound of thunder in the spring, like the first cry of a child, announced the emergence of new life. Among the southern Shors - and this tradition is shared by many Turkic-Mongolian peoples - the appearance of a newborn was always accompanied by exclamations and gun shots.

Sounds of horror

The Shors treated the sounds of another world in a completely different way, with wariness: they endowed all kinds of spirits with the ability to imitate purely human behavior. Hunters told about the owner of the taiga: “At night he (Esi) walks around the hunting booth, sometimes knocks, sometimes talks, but you can’t go out to hear his knock. At night, songs will suddenly be heard in the taiga, as if someone is playing, it’s the owners of the taiga who are having fun. Or it scares you near the booth, someone roars, shouts your name three times. You have to remain silent - otherwise he will take your soul, then upon returning home the shaman will have to perform rituals and ask for the soul back.” In the world of spirits, on their territory or in their presence, it was considered dangerous to show one’s human essence: to give a voice, to respond to a name, since the “alienated” parts of the personality could become the prey of a being from another world, thereby seeking, as it were, to make up for its inferiority.

And souls

But this world made itself known not only by imitating human speech: the range of its sound was much wider. For example, the crackling coals in the hearth communicated the mood of the spirit of fire, and the ringing of tagan rings foreshadowed the appearance of a guest. Kormos (evil spirits) could meow, screech like an owl, or make a guttural voice. Hearing something like this was considered a bad omen: according to the beliefs of the Shors, a shadow soul warned him about this with sounds a year before a person’s death. Similar ideas have survived to this day, reflected in the lines of Mikhail Prishvin, a writer and philosopher who professed the unity of man and the Cosmos. In 1928 he wrote in his diary: “I dreamed last night that a person’s life turns into a sound that remains instead of life and not for our planet alone...”

“Give us this day our daily barley...”

This is roughly what the Orthodox prayer “Our Father” sounds like in the Shor language. After all, priests, speaking about “daily bread”, use the phrase “ash tobacco” instead of the more appropriate at first glance “Kalash”. This is because “ash”, barley, is the only grain that the Shors have grown in the mountains since ancient times (“tobacco” is translated as “food”). The word “Kalash” comes from the Russian “kalach”, and local residents use it to describe modern bakery products, but they, of course, are not perceived as the food most necessary for existence. That is why it is said at the service: “...chadyta kerek ash tabakty puyun piske perzen...”, literally: “...give us the necessary barley for life...”. And nothing else.

Northerners and Southerners

Orthodox Shors (Chishtynashtar) live in the north, and in the mountains in the south almost all are shamanists. The division of trades is also traditional: “northerners” have long been engaged in cattle breeding and farming, “southerners” - hunting and fishing. For food, they hunted deer, deer, musk deer, elk, bear, hare, and also upland game - wood grouse, black grouse and hazel grouse. They got fur from hunting sable, fox, weasel, otter, beaver, ermine, lynx or squirrel, although squirrel carcasses baked over a fire were also considered an exquisite delicacy. On the Mrass-Su River, up to 40% of farms were covered by fishing, and on Kondoma - over 70%. The fishing objects were grayling, taimen, pike, burbot, ide, and other small fish; two types of seine were also used: woven from threads into a cell (shuun) and canvas (suske). There was so much fish that they caught it with a fishing rod, beat it with a spear, and women and children simply caught it with their hands from under stones or with nets. In the south, barley was grown, in the north, in addition to it, wheat and oats. In the mountains they looked for edible tubers of plants, pine nuts were harvested in large quantities, for which the whole family moved to the forest. Because of this, in Soviet times, Shors were not very fond of being hired: the season for collecting pine cones came, and they immediately took their pay and left the enterprises for the taiga to collect nuts.

Salamat, tertpek, talkan, dumplings with horse meat...

In the past, the main food of the Shors was the meat of wild animals, fish, and wild plants. Wild onions (oksum), wild garlic (kalba), kandyk (dog) were eaten raw, sarana (sargai) was boiled in water and milk or baked in ash, and the wild garlic was salted. The stems of umbrella plants (boltyrgan) were also used. The roots of wild peony were dried and boiled for a long time to destroy their toxicity, ground in a hand mill and used for porridges or cakes. With the development of agriculture, flour (talkan) and cereals (shyrak) made from roasted barley began to predominate in the diet, especially among the northern Shors. Porridge (salamat) was prepared from them, pieces of dough (tutpash) were boiled in water or milk, sometimes with fish or meat, flat cakes (tertpek) were eaten with fish soup. Braga (abyrtka) and vodka (aragy) were made from barley flour. Among the southern Shors, dairy products played a large role in their diet: cheese, cottage cheese, butter. Meat was rarely consumed, but the rich ate beef and purchased horse meat. The cuisine of modern Shors was greatly influenced by the proximity of different peoples. For example, the famous “Shor” dumplings with horse meat were borrowed from Russian Old Believers, and the recipe for quick preparation of lamb kidneys was borrowed from the Uyghurs.

And kidneys in Uyghur

In Stalik Khankishiev’s book “Kazan, barbecue and other male pleasures” it is described as follows: “Tursun cut four kidneys in half lengthwise, removed the film, removed the ducts and cut each half in half again. The resulting pieces were “shredded” into squares, i.e. took a large knife, placed the kidney with the outer side up and made several cutting movements, not cutting the kidney to the end by 2-3mm, and then turned it 90 degrees and repeated the procedure. It turned out that the kidney was cut into three-millimeter square-columns, held only by the “bottom” of each half. He poured a little (30-40 grams) of vegetable oil into a wok - a round deep frying pan with a convex bottom, put it on a huge fire with flames escaping from the neck of the stove, lowered the kidneys into the instantly hot oil and began to fry, letting the oil flare up. After a minute or two, he lightly salted them, added a little soy sauce, ground red pepper, quite a lot of cumin and added two coarsely chopped onions. At the same time, he continued to shake the wok, periodically allowing the oil to catch fire. The dish was ready in just four minutes: the buds bent inward, the squares spread out like a cute hedgehog, cumin was packed between them, and the butter, soy sauce and juice released from the buds made a rather spicy sauce... Everything was eaten instantly.”

Content

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..3

1.1. History of the Shor people……………………………………………………4

1.2. Religion of the Shors……………………………………………………………...10

1.3. Folklore………………………………………………………………………………16

1.4. Cult rituals……………………………………………………….22

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….28

References……………………………………………………………29

Introduction

The Shors are a Turkic-speaking people living in the southeastern corner of Western Siberia, mainly in the south of the Kemerovo region: in the Tashtagol, Novokuznetsk, Mezhdurechensky, Myskovsky, Osinnikovsky districts, as well as in some areas of Khakassia and the Altai Republic. The total number is about 14 thousand people. They are divided into two ethnographic groups: southern or mountain taiga. At the beginning of the 20th century, the area of ​​residence of the southern Shors received the name “Mountain Shoria”. The second group is the northern or forest-steppe Shors (the so-called “Abin people”). According to the anthropological classification, the Shors are usually attributed to the Ural type of the large Mongoloid race: at the same time, according to a number of morphological and craniological characteristics, the Shors go beyond both the Ural and South Siberian anthropological types. In terms of language, the Shors are closest to the Chulyms and Altaians, and in culture - to the Altaians and Khakassians.

1.1. History of the Shor people
The Shors are the indigenous inhabitants of the Kuznetsk Alatau Mountain Shoria, which was part of the Kemerovo region. This is a small people, one of the 30 peoples inhabiting Siberia, skilled in hunting and blacksmithing. The centuries-old rule of the Dzungars taught them to hide in the taiga.

Academician V.V. Radlov, for the first time identifying the Shors as a separate people, called them descendants of the “Yenisei-Ostyak” tribes. He considered the Yenisei toponymy in the upper reaches of the Tom River, the peculiarities of anthropological characteristics and the ability of the Shors, like the Ket-speaking Arins, to mine and process iron ore with their sedentary lifestyle, in contrast to the neighboring Turks, as confirmation of his hypothesis.

Another opinion was widespread among V.V. Radlov’s contemporaries. Thus, the missionary V. Verbitsky believed that the “Black Tatars” (which he included the Shors) were either “Finnish tribes, but merged with the Mongolian people,” or “Chud Finnish tribes, to which Turkic elements were later mixed.” For ethnographer V.G. Bogoraz, the Shors were generally a relict remnant of an ancient culture of foot hunters - descendants of Turkified Paleo-Asians.

An unusual hypothesis about the origin of the Shors was expressed by the founder of the Novokuznetsk Museum of Local Lore D. Ya. Yaroslavtsev. According to the legend he recorded in the lower reaches of Mrassu, the Shors are the descendants of the hero Shun, the eldest son of the first wife of King Mol-kan of Tobol. Under pressure from the Russians, they allegedly moved to Mrassa and Kondoma through the upper reaches of the Tom, Orton and Shora, from which they got their name. As a result of the division of the Shors into separate clans, their settlement throughout the Kuznetsk taiga and contacts with various “nationalities,” the settlers developed their linguistic and anthropological characteristics.

Ethnographer S.V. Ivanov compared the drawings on Shor tambourines and birch bark utensils with similar images among the Khakass and Teleuts. The ornament on utensils, clothing, fabrics, belts and mittens of the Shors, according to the author, is similar to the ornament of the southern Khanty, Mansi, Narym Selkups and especially the Kumandins, and is distinguished by them as a general type. The sculpture of the Shors (wooden horses, boats with oars, cult dolls of the patrons of hunting) has much in common with similar images among the Kumandins, Chelkans, and Tubalars.

The greatest recognition was given to the works of A.P. Dulzon, A.M. Abdrakhmanov and A.A. Bonyukhov, who identified four substrate layers of toponyms in Mountainous Shoria: South Samoyed, Ket, Turkic-Mongolian and Russian. The Shors, in their opinion, are a “pre-Russian people” who came “from somewhere else” to their current habitat, where they began to live together with the Ket and South Samoyed tribes who had been here “since ancient times.”

The largest researcher of the peoples of Southern Siberia L.P. Potapov, in addition to the Samoyedic, Ugric and Yenisei components, identified the ancient Turkic.

That is, according to researchers, the formation of the Shors nationality took place in a territory with a diverse population, where various ethnic waves replaced each other over the course of many centuries. When and how this happened, linguist E.F. Chispiyakov tried to find out.

But these are general conclusions. A detailed analysis of the origin of the territorial and clan groups that formed the basis of the Shor ethnic group is needed.

The first Russian historical documents of the 17th century, as well as special studies by A. Abdykalykov and V.G. Kartsov, showed that various territorial and clan groups of Kuznetsk Tatars who lived along the right bank of the upper reaches of the Kondoma, as well as above the rapids on Mrassa and the Tatars in the upper reaches of Abakan under the generalized By the name of the Biryusinians they were included in the Altyrsky ulus of the Yenisei Kyrgyz.

With the formation of the Kuznetsk district in the 17th century and the strengthening of the economic and political dependence of the indigenous population on the Russian state and the simultaneous weakening and even cessation of ethnocultural and other ties with the Kyrgyz and Teleuts, the unification processes between the historical ancestors of the Shors began to intensify. Since the volosts of the Kuznetsk district were purely yasak units with uncertain territorial boundaries, and the number of yasak volosts itself fluctuated due to frequent migrations of the population in the 17th-18th centuries, a permanent ethnic territory simply could not exist. Only after 1837, when the Upper Abakan clan groups finally moved to the Minusinsk district, and especially after the formation of the Gorno-Shorsky national region with its stable administrative borders, was an ethnic territory determined within which the ethno-consolidation processes could be completed.

Only by the mid-30s of the 20th century, a geographical term was assigned to this ethnic territory of the Kuznetsk Tatar-Shorians - Gornaya Shoria - the mountain taiga region of the upper reaches of the Tom River between the mouths of the Abasheva and Kazyr rivers and along the Mrass - from the mouth to its headwaters along the Kondoma - above the modern city. Osinniki.

The Shor language is widespread in the Kemerovo region: mainly in the northern foothills of Altai, in the Kuznetsk Alatau, along the Tom River and its tributaries, on the border with the Khakass and Gorno-Altai Autonomous Regions. The language belongs to the Khakass subgroup of the northeastern group of Turkic languages. It has two dialects: Mrassky or “yawning”, which formed the basis of the literary language (functioning in the 20-30s) and Kondoma “i” - a dialect that, in turn, breaks up into a number of dialects. Phonological features: vowels are contrasted in length and brevity (ool - “son”, oe - “he”, “that”); stop (short) and fricative consonants appear at the beginning and end of a word as voiceless, in the intervocalic position as semi-voiced and voiced (kon - “bag”, koby - “his bag”).

The ancestors of the Shors were engaged in metallurgy, blacksmithing, hunting, fishing, subsidiary cattle breeding, primitive manual farming and gathering. Iron products made by Shor blacksmiths were famous throughout Siberia. When the Russian Cossacks arrived, they called the Shors Kuznetsk Tatars. It was thanks to the Shor blacksmiths that the land they inhabited was called the Kuznetsk Land, and then Kuzbass. In the 17th century, Southern Siberia was conquered by Russian Cossacks. Bringing the Shors into Russian “citizenship,” the Russian governors first issued the Shor pashtyks (elders) with charters and decrees recognizing and securing the rights of the Shors to certain lands. But when Southern Siberia was completely conquered, these lands were declared the property of the tsar, and the charters of ownership were taken away. The Shors paid tribute (yasak) to the Russian Tsar with furs. Hunting territories were divided between clans. After the arrival of the Russians, the Shors were forbidden to engage in metallurgy and blacksmithing, so that their opponents, the Dzungars and Kyrgyz, could not order military armor and equipment from the Shors.

The ancestors of the Shors lived in childbirth. The patrilineal family of the Shors was governed on a democratic basis. At the head of the clan community was the pashtyk, who was elected at the clan meeting. The clan meeting was considered the highest body of the clan. It decided all the most important general matters: the election of pashtyk, the distribution of yasak, the adoption of Christianity. At general meetings, legal proceedings also took place, for example, thieves were tried. During the trial, the people chose 6 people, often smart old men, who judged together with the pashtyk. The people were asked about their decision “charak ba” (do they agree?). If the majority said “charak” (agree), then an agreement was reached; if not, then the matter was dealt with again. The decision made at the meeting was subject to mandatory implementation.

The settlements of the Shors (uluses in the north and ails in the south) were small. They consisted of several low log houses (yurts) with birch bark roofs. They were heated by adobe fireplaces of the Chuvale type. They served as temporary housing: in the summer - odag, a conical structure made of logs and branches leaning against a tree, covered with birch bark; in winter - fire, a frame dwelling in the shape of a truncated pyramid of logs, boards, poles, covered with branches or birch bark, with a fireplace in the center. Currently, the Shors live in log houses, hunting dwellings are preserved, and yurts are used as summer kitchens.

Men's and women's clothing consisted of a shirt, pants and a robe with embroidery at the collar or hem. In winter, several robes were worn. Shoes were leather boots with long tops. Women wore scarves, men wore hats.

In the second half of the 19th century, major changes occurred in social life. After the abolition of serfdom in Russia, the bourgeoisie in Siberia developed rapidly. From among the wealthy Shors, Shor merchants - moneylenders - arise. The people began to live under triple oppression: they were robbed by the tsarist government, Russian merchants and Shor merchants-usurers.

The Altai Spiritual Mission played an important role in the development of the Shor people. It began in Gornaya Shoria in 1858. Missionary Vasily Verbitsky did a lot for the culture of the Shor people. The first elementary school in Shoria was opened by a mission in the village of Kuzedeevo and the first teacher was Vasily Verbitsky. The first Shor primer was published in Kazan. The author of the first primer “for the Shors of the eastern half of the Kuznetsk district” was I.M. Shtygashev, a friend and ally of Vasily Verbitsky.

They began to train literate Shors towards the end of the 19th century. The mission began to send mission workers to Kazan for training from the funds of Altaians and Shors. In 1882, the Shorian writer Shtygashev, who graduated from the Shor seminary, returned to Altai from Kazan, and already in 1888 a center for training teachers and translators was created in Biysk, and 15 and 16 year old children were sent there. Schools were organized in Northern Mountain Shoria and education covered 100% of children and the population of Southern Mountain Shoria was not covered at all.

According to statistics, in 1900 the literate Shors made up only 1%.

Since the mid-1920s, the universal spread of literacy with the creation of the Shor literary language based on the Mras dialect (functioned in the 20-30s) played an important role in the formation of a unified Shor identity.

During the years of Soviet power in 1926, the Gorno-Shorsky national region was created on the territory where the Shors lived. Over the years of its existence, much has been done in the field of education of the Shors, the development of culture, a national intelligentsia has appeared, books and textbooks have begun to be published in the Shor language. Writers appeared who were engaged in translations of Russian literature into the Shor language and vice versa from the Shor language into Russian. They began to create original Shor literature - prose and poetry (Totyshev, Torbokov, Chispiyakov, Arbachakov). From 1927 to 1939, textbooks for a seven-year school were written and published, some translations of Russian classical literature were made (A.S. Pushkin “Dubrovsky”), a student Russian-Shor dictionary was created, original literature appeared in the native language, a regional newspaper was published “ Kyzyl Shor."

In 1927, the first Shor primer was published, and educational literature was published in the Shor language. Training began in the Shor language. National personnel were created. In the late 20s and 30s, quite a lot of Shor students graduated from Soviet universities in Leningrad, Moscow, Tomsk and Irkutsk, and even from the Academy. Already in 1935, 64 Shor teachers taught in Shor schools. In 1938, a collection of Shor poetry “New Shoriya” was published, which included poems by the talented poet and prose writer F. S. Chispiyakov.

The development of the literary language was interrupted after the abolition of the autonomous Mountain Shoria in 1939. In 1938, the majority of Shors who graduated from universities were repressed. In 1939, the Gorno-Shorsky national region was liquidated. Soon the publication of books and newspapers in their native language, as well as the teaching of the Shor language in schools, ceased. Schools were closed and literature in the Shor language was destroyed. During the repressions and then the war, the best representatives of the Shors were destroyed.

At the end of the 80-90s, a movement began for the revival of the Shor people, their language and culture. Public organizations in the cities and the Association of the Shor People were created. Thanks to their work, positions of deputy heads of administration on the national issue were introduced in city administrations, and a regional committee on the national issue was created. In 1991-1995 A department of the Shor language was opened, books began to be translated into the Shor language, Payram holidays began to be held, and the Shor language began to be taught in schools.

In Russia, Russia, the bourgeoisie is rapidly developing in Siberia.

1.2. Religion of the Shors
When they adopted the Christian religion, the Shors became dual-religionists.

Christianity. By the beginning of the 20th century, the majority of the indigenous inhabitants of the upper reaches of the Tom officially professed Orthodox Christianity. Literacy also began to spread among them. This was greatly facilitated by the activities of the missionary Vasily Verbitsky, who spent about a quarter of a century in the Kuznetsk taiga.

And he began by arriving on December 13, 1858 in the village of Kuzedeevo in the lower reaches of Kondoma, where within two years he built a wooden church and a small school for “foreign children” with funds from the Altai Spiritual Mission.

The Altai mission gradually covered the entire Kuznetsk taiga with its influence. By 1885, the total number of baptized people was already 14,062. Following the efforts of Kuzedeyev's students, V. Verbitsky's students opened Orthodox churches in the village of Kondomskoye (1894), the uluses of Ust-Anzas (1880), Ochaevsky (1890), and Motur (1905).

The methods of spreading Christianity were very different - from direct coercion to the introduction of various benefits for “newly baptized” - free distribution of bread, summer exemption from all taxes, election of pashtyks only from among them. Baptism was carried out both in the church itself and outside it - on the banks of local rivers during annual missionary trips through the taiga. In the uluses he visited, V. Verbitsky encouraged the construction of baths, disseminated advanced farming methods, new methods of healing, and protected the “newly baptized children” from the tyranny of tsarist officials and local traders.

V. Verbitsky tried to use the most popular practical cult side of religion - rituals intertwined with everyday life, social needs, attracting with their psychological and aesthetic side. Christian dogmas faded into the background in this case, and their essence remained unclear. The main god of the Shors was Nikolai Ugodnik, and not Christ, because... The holy relics of Nicholas the Wonderworker were kept in the Kuzedeevskaya Church. Christianity merged with the traditional ideas of the Shors, layered on them, creating a picture of religious syncretism. Thus, the mythology of the Shors included characters and plots from biblical tales: Adam, Noah’s Ark. The population acquired Christian attributes: body crosses, icons, grave crosses. Icons were placed not only in the front corner, but also at the entrance to the ulus.

However, it was never possible to completely eradicate pagan religious rituals and beliefs. Until collectivization, shamans continued to play an important role in public life, especially of the “Verkhovsky Shors”. Along with shamanism, the former tribal pre-shamanic cults of fire, mountains, and bear continued to exist. Prayer in these cases was carried out without the participation of a shaman with verbal actions arbitrary for each case.

Shamanism and traditional beliefs. According to the traditional worldview of the Shors, the world was divided into three spheres: the heavenly land, where the highest deity Ulgen is located, the middle land, where people live, and the land of evil spirits, the underworld, where Erlik rules. With the participation of the shaman, traditional prayers to the supreme deity Ulgen took place.

According to traditional ideas about deities and spirits, there are 9 heavens in the domain of the supreme deity - Ulgen. On the first, lowest sky “koshkan” there is lightning “sarydzhi” - a whip for the gray-white horse Ulgen, thunder - blows of this whip. In the middle of the first sky his owner “sanchi” lives, he has his own house, wife, children. The second sky is called “kok kur” - a blue belt; the blue part of the rainbow “tengri-chelize” is placed here. The third is “kyzyl-kur” - a red belt, the fourth is “kyr-kur” - a gray belt, the fifth is “kektamosh-kur” - a blue belt, and the sixth is “kyzyl tengri” - a red sky. Red women live there. The moon and stars are in the seventh sky, the sun is in the eighth, and Ulgen, the good supreme deity, lives in the ninth.

Ulgen, together with his brother Erlik, who in Shor mythology personifies the evil principle, created the world and man. According to legend, Ulgen created the sun, moon, stars, level earth and rivers on it. Erlik, an evil deity, placed mountains on the earth. Then Ulgen created birds and animals, then man, but no matter how hard he tried to create his soul, he could not create it. He called Erlik and asked for help, to which he agreed, but on the condition that the soul he “made” would belong to him, and let Ulgen own the body. Therefore, the Shors believed that Ulgen and Erlik were equal and their power over a person was the same. Happiness, health and wealth of a person are the will of two, not one being. Even obvious evil: illness, misfortune - are determined by both principles.

According to legends, Erlik, by the will of Ulgen, was expelled from the surface of the earth to the underworld, where he rules. Erlik’s subordinates are his “aina” assistants. These are evil spirits that take a person’s soul, causing him illness or death. In the lower world there is also the afterlife, where the souls of dead people “ker-meses” live, serving Erlik, like “aina”.

Man lives on the middle earth in the vicinity of numerous spirits - the owners of places: taiga, mountains, rivers, lakes. The greatest reverence among the Kuznetsk Tatars was “tag ezi” - the spirits of the mountains and “sug ezi” - the spirits of water. These spirits were represented in the form of male hunters. The water spirit was often seen in the form of a horned black man. “Tag Ezi” is considered not only the owner of the mountain, but also the owner of the taiga with all its inhabitants. Animals and game were perceived as his subjects.

Along with the veneration of spirits - the owners of game animals, there was a belief in spirits that facilitate hunting. Before the big hunt, special prayers were held for them every year. On the Mrassu River there were two types of their images - one-headed and two-headed. In the first case, a man is depicted with a large oval-shaped head, with short protrusions instead of arms. Pieces of fur were attached to the head. A feature of the face was the presence of a long, straight and wide nose and round copper eyes. The second image consisted of two ovals of equal size, connected by a short and thin bridge.

On Kondoma they revered the hunting spirit “shalyg”. He was depicted as a husband and wife, and one leg of the male image was made shorter than the other, which is why the “shalyg” was considered lame. The image of the spirits was kept in a canvas bag or birch bark box in the barn. Before the hunt, they were brought into the house and left there until the end of the hunt, treating them to “araka” and “talkan”.

On Kondom, the spirit “sarys” was considered another patron of hunting. His images in the form of kolonka skin or a small canvas rag were placed on trees along the taiga path, behind the ulus, and were also “fed” before hunting.

The Kalarians in the fall, before hunting, revered the spirit of “ter-kizhi” - “the man of the front corner.” His birch bark image looked like a human face with a nose made of wood and eyes made of lead plaques, with a beard and mustache made of a squirrel's tail. When feeding, the “spirit” was brought from the barn into the house and placed in the front corner. A birch bark two-bucket container with “abyrtka” and a plate of porridge were placed in front of him. Feeding was accompanied by ritual and abundant feasting.

The religious content of hunting was so abundant that the hunt itself was considered something sacred. Along the way, the hunters stopped at the foot of the mountains and “fed” the spirit “tag ezi”, sprinkling “abyrtka” all around and saying: “In the old days, our fathers walked, now we, the younger generation, have remained, we, the young guys, are turning, do not get tired of our requests..."

Communication with spirits and deities took place through an intermediary - a shaman - a special chosen one of the deities. The services of a shaman were resorted to very often: in case of illness, during funerals, before a hunt, during harvesting. With the participation of the shaman, traditional ancestral prayers to the supreme deity Ulgen took place.

Ideas about the Mountain as the axis of the world were transferred to this or that specific mountain, which stood out among others with its height and other special properties. Spirits lived on such a mountain - the patrons of the shaman, so his fate for the rest of his life was connected with such a mountain.

“Language training” was given a large place in the process of becoming a shaman among the Turkic-Mongolian peoples of Siberia. Mastery of the meter and rhythm of shamanic verse, acquaintance with characters from other worlds, development of the art of improvisation - all this subsequently determined the level of skill of the shaman. The most striking part of the ritual is the shaman’s calling on his spirits - helpers. A special place here was given to their speech characteristics. The stronger the shaman was, the wider and richer his sound palette was. When portraying his interlocutors, he resorted to secret “dark” language, obvious abracadabra, ventriloquism effects and imitation. Through his lips, the inhabitants of another world spoke the language of nature. Their voices were birdsong and the cries of animals.

“All the spirits of the shaman,” as I. D. Khlopina wrote, “speak a language that only they themselves understood. During the ritual, he talks to them in their language, often uttering inarticulate sounds similar to the mooing, barking, quack of a duck, or the voices of wild animals.” The degree of mastery of this language and the ability to transform into a “natural being” largely determined the creative range of the shaman. Addressing the supreme patrons, he likened his voice to the voice of a singing bird. The image of the bird was also visible in the ritual vestments of the shaman. Researchers have repeatedly noted ornithomorphic features and the design of costumes and hats among the shamans of Southern Siberia. The cords sewn along the lower edge of the sleeve of the Altai shaman’s caftan were called “air wing rope,” and among the Western Tuvans the shaman costume “generally symbolized a bird, a bird’s skin.” An obligatory part of the Khakass shaman's attire was the wings and head of an eagle or cuckoo. Birds - the raven and the eagle owl - according to the Khakass, served as the embodiment of the wandering souls of shamans, not accepted anywhere - neither on earth nor in heaven. The goose, raven, golden eagle, and cuckoo helped the shamans during the ritual. Bird singing, as one of the languages ​​of another world, became the “transformed” language of the shaman. Only such a language could serve as a means of communication in situations where direct communication was not possible. Finally, imitation of birdsong helped the shaman to acquire the form in which he could reach the sky.

Shamanism covered all aspects of the life of the Shors: they did not start or finish hunting without rituals, they celebrated spring with rituals, and they celebrated major family events with rituals. And yet, the dominant meaning of shamanism among the Shors is therapeutic, and its sessions were built according to a special scheme and had extremely original features. Kams (shamans), carriers of the highest healing power, enjoyed enormous authority among the Shors. In most cases, shamans were feared. It was up to them to “allow illness” and interfere with successful fishing. A few shamans passed on their craft by inheritance.

Many of them suffered from hysterical fits, since the act of ritual for many hours required enormous nervous tension.

Some shamans insisted that they did not learn to perform rituals at all, but the order of rituals, differing in details, was built according to the basic scheme. In all cases, the shaman was dependent on good and mainly evil spirits.

The first part of the “therapeutic ritual” consisted of invoking one by one the “spirits” - the patrons of the shaman. Conversation with the main spirit, and in some cases the fight directly with pests (“Aina”) constituted a continuation and completed part of the action. Before performing rituals over the patient, the shaman examined him, determined the possible outcome of the disease, feeling the pulse and assessing the approximate temperature. Only if the disease “depended on evil spirits” did the shaman announce that he intended to fight them. He mournfully invoked spirits and reached the point of inarticulate speech, screams, twitching, and seizures. The incoherent speech turned into a riot. The slow beats of the tambourine became more frequent and began to rumble. It was believed that the shaman had made contact with the spirits, and the spirits would help in solving these problems.

1.3. Folklore
A people who did not have their own written language, who lived isolated from other peoples, had only one means of expressing their aspirations - the word. The Shors are unusually rich in oral folk art and folklore, which has its own centuries-old history and traditions. On long winter evenings there was no greater joy in the Shor uluses than listening to the singing of the kaichi (storyteller), his guttural voice, simple melody and fabulous exploits of his heroes captivated the imagination of not only children, but also adults.

Basically, Shor folklore reflects hunting - the main economic activity of the Shors and the production and social relations that grew on this basis, singing the beauty of the nature of Mountain Shoria.

My taiga with a branchy head,

The riding wind rocks you,

Taiga, you are a home for free animals

And my hunting homeland

(S. S. Torbokov)

At the beginning of the 17th century, among the northern part of the Shors living on the Tom River, the lower reaches of Mrassu and Kondoma, the main occupation was blacksmithing. One of the Shor legends tells: it was a long time ago, when the taiga and the mountain echo did not hear the shots of a gun, did not know the bow, or iron traps. An arrow and a bow, a wooden terge - that’s all that the hunters went out with to hunt animals and birds.

In the taiga on the banks of Mrassu lived three brothers - Shor-Anchi hunters. The spoils of the 2 brothers were rich, but the third brother had no luck. The food was kandyk roots and rhubarb stems. “Apparently, the owner of the taiga was angry with me,” the hunter decided and treated the wooden god Shalyg, the evil spirit of the taiga, with the leftover food. Once, when he was persuading the evil Shalyg in songs, at midnight the wind swept through the taiga. Near the Shor-anchi fire, a stranger suddenly appeared with green hair and stone boots. He listened to the songs of the poor Shor-anchi and said: “You can’t get birds and animals, that’s why you’re sad. Come with me - you will be rich." The hunter followed him. They climbed to the top of a mountain, and stone doors opened in front of them. “Apparently this is the owner of the mountains,” the hunter thought and was completely scared. The owner of the mountains treated the hunter to hot water, took a large bag, poured stones into it and said: “This gift of mine will give you strength and glory.” But the hunter looked at the animal skins and furs and thought: “If only he would give me just a little of these furs. Why do I need stones? Do stones give you wealth? The owner of the mountains gave him a second bag and ordered him to fill it with skins: “Will you carry both bags?” - asked the owner of the mountains. “Am I not a man, so as not to carry away. I’ll take it away,” Shor-anchi says. - “Make sure you don’t throw the bag of stones, the stones will give you great strength.” But on the way, Shor-Anchi threw the donated stones. The owner of the mountains, having found a bag of stones in the taiga, hid it deep underground. On the way, he dropped one stone. He was found by a poor man, Shor-anchi. “I have never lifted such a heavy stone,” he thought and brought it to his hut. People saw this stone and said that it should be tested by fire. The hunter put the stone into the hot fire. Iron flowed from the hot stone. The hunter showed the iron to all the people of the taiga. People went to look for the mountain where the stone that gave birth to iron came from. They found this mountain and named it Temir-Tau - Iron Mountain. From that time on, the people who inhabited this land, where Temir-Tau is located, began to call themselves Temir-uz-smiths.

Since ancient times, the Shors have been involved in metallurgy, as many legends indicate. Once in the Mundybash basin, while hunting, people saw an old man on the eastern slope of the mountain. He sat on a granite platform and rocked the fur evenly. Bright orange flames burst out from a hole dug and covered with a clay cap. From time to time the old man threw some dark powder into the hole of the pit. “Tell me, grandpa, what’s your name?” - “My father and mother gave me the name Kalar.” - “What kind of food are you cooking on a hot fire?” - “This is not food. I found a stone that gives iron. I want to make myself a new spear.” - “Can a stone give iron?” When Kalarus cast the iron, their doubts were dispelled. Kalar told his relatives the secret of a hitherto unknown craft, and pointed out the mountains where there were iron stones. And when the old man died, the hunters called their clan Kalar. What did the kalars do from iron? Shors from neighboring clans came here to learn from the experience of daring craftsmen.

Folklore among unliterate people takes us back to antiquity, to times that are gone forever. The living word of folklore brings to us from the darkness of centuries the events, experiences and characters of people. From folklore we learn that there, in the terribly deaf and dark core of Asia, it was the same as everywhere else: fratricidal wars and betrayals, hatred and revenge, love and crying for the dead.

In the Shor epic the plot is usually this: a hero is born, grows up and is given a name. If he climbs to the top of the mountain where the evil spirit lives and is not afraid of him, he is given a good name. The hero receives a horse and armor, fights with the enemies oppressing his people, wins and goes to look for a bride. Moreover, the theme of the hero is one motive, the theme of the horse is another, the theme of the bride is the third, etc.

Shor melodies are emotional, naive, broad, and the image in the epic is usually dedicated to a single theme. The melody is not divided into small little songs, very foresty in structure, but far from being so simple in rhythmic terms, and sometimes in intonation.

Shor songs are of extraordinary beauty; the music of the Shors is very clearly divided into genres. There are ditties, they are all variations of the same motif. There are humorous songs, there are lullabies, there are lyrical songs and sometimes laments - wedding and funeral ones. The Shor cry was included entirely in the 2nd movement of the symphony “My Love, Shoria”.

Shor folklore is rich in folk song lyrics, consisting of several genres: “saryn” or “yryn” - songs, “tender” - dance songs, cheerful songs, “oytysy” - songs, improvised songs-dialogues between mother and girl; songs of ballad type, historical, wedding.

Shor lingering songs are filled with love for their native land, the nature of Mountain Shoria, close relatives, the feeling of melancholy and sadness of a Shor who finds himself outside his homeland, his native hearth. They reflect the hard life of a Shorian hunter, crushed by an unbearable tribute, striving for freedom from social oppression. The main theme of short songs is love and friendship, longing and separation, unhappy love. Dance songs ridicule laziness and the tendency to gluttony.

Folk songs sing not about mythical heroes, but about specific residents of Mountain Shoria.

The Shors reverence the heroic epic. The largest works of the Shor heroic epic, in which the theme of the struggle of heroes against paying tribute to the conquering khans was developed: “Ken Kes”, “Ken Argo”, “Nechemit Ken Mergen”, “Ai-Tolay”, etc.

The inhuman cruelty of the khan is emphasized. The epic “Ken Mergen” says: “A belt four rings wide was torn out of their backs. The cruel khan-invader and tribute collector is contrasted with the people's hero-liberator. After the victory over Khan Kere Myukyu, the hero Ken Mergen announces: “In our generation, tribute has never been taken. Just as you lived as khans before, so now you have gone to your lands and reigned.”

In the poems “Ken Mergen”, “Ai-Manys”, together with the depiction of the struggle of heroes against paying tribute to evil khans, special attention is paid to the behavior of officials, tribute recipients, khan’s ambassadors, servants, etc. - all of them are shown as cruel and arrogant robbers of the people, personally interested in collecting tribute from submissive tribes and peoples.

In the poem “Ai-Tolay”, the tribute workers, led by the hero Ai-Tolay and his brother-in-arms, rebel against the tribute collectors with arms in hand. The actions of the hero’s sister, the inspirer and leader, are highly appreciated. Forty heroes pull the string of one common giant bow and shoot one all-crushing arrow. In a united action against a social and foreign enemy lies an invincible force - this is the general idea of ​​​​the poem. This is a high achievement of popular ideology.

In addition to the heroic epic, the means of fairy-tale satire are also used - this is the poem “Altyn Taichi”. The narrators of the poem caustically laugh at the khan, his two sons-in-law and the khan’s daughter Altyn Kastrika, at their ignorance, arrogance, boastfulness, hypocrisy, and cowardice. The idea is expressed that the khan’s power, protected by the sword, closes a person’s path to the future, turns into evil for the very apparatus of violence, and corrupts it from the inside.

In the works “Altyn Sam”, “Kazyr-Too”, “Altyn-Kylysh” and others, a person is revealed from the side of internal experiences. This is the feeling of loyalty of brides to their grooms, the emergence of love, the attempt of young people to oppose the traditional rules of marriage, to break the resistance of the guardians of outdated folk customs. The hero of the poem “Altyn Kylysh”, the son of the wise Katkan Chuli, tries to defend his love and fails. In the poem “Altyn Sam,” the hero Altyn Sam makes a compromise decision to marry his betrothed and at the same time brings home the one he met and fell in love with on the way to his betrothed. In the first group of epic works of the heroic epic, the categories of heroic epic, sublime and ugly are shown, in the second group - the categories of satirical, in the third group - a transition to the tragic is outlined.

Glorifying their exploits, the people raised the youth in the spirit of hatred towards the oppressors, raised self-awareness, and sowed the spirit of freedom.

In oral poetry, much space is devoted to the life and customs of the Shors, which depend on natural conditions and the level of development of productive forces.

All this convincingly indicates that since ancient times, the Shors have reflected life in works of oral poetry.

Shor folklore is rich and varied. After all, it was the only focus of the spiritual culture of an unliterate people: taknaki (lyrical songs, ditties), saryns (ballad songs), nybaki (fairy tales), riddles were the property of every family, but a large ethnic work - kai (poem), legends - could performed only by singers, kaichi (storytellers) accompanied by the folk musical instrument kamus (or kamys). There are many descriptions of authentic aspects of everyday life: the interior of the home, traditional relationships between relatives, rituals such as matchmaking, weddings, receiving guests, burial of the dead, twinning.

1.4. Cult rituals
From century to century, the Shors passed on cult rituals, but with the advent of civilization, violence was used to prohibit rituals and beliefs. Of course, many of the rituals have disappeared from the face of the earth.

Since the mid-1980s, there has been a process of revival of the spiritual culture of the Shors, which is sometimes expressed in the resumption of traditional religious rituals, in the celebration of special national holidays - the holiday of the mythological ancestor Olgudek, spring Payram, etc., accompanied by the performance of the epic.

Particularly revered among the Shors is Chyl Pazhi - a Shor folk holiday, translated as “Head of the Year”, Shor New Year, the rays of the “New Sun” fall on this head on the days of the spring equinox. In ancient times, this holiday opened a new life cycle, and is especially significant for the Shors. The ancestors of the Shors celebrated Chyl Pazhi for more than one day. Throughout the week before the appointed day, ritual actions were performed, there were days of honoring elders, children, days of cleansing the threshold, house, and courtyards. During this period it was forbidden to drink wine, because... With wine, evil spirits could enter a person. Quarrels were prohibited, both in the family and in society. On the appointed day, a sacrificial animal (foal, ram) was brought to the shaman, which was specially fattened and prepared for the holiday throughout the year. People purified themselves not only physically, but also spiritually, asking the Gods of Earth, Fire, Water, Mountains, harvest, good luck in hunting, and health. After performing traditional rituals, people had fun, played various games, competed in strength and ingenuity. At the holiday, young people met and wedding agreements were concluded between parents and relatives. The best performers of songs, ditties, and melodies competed in their skills and ability to speak and sing beautifully. In the evenings, in order to appease the spirits, the kaichi performed ancient heroic poems, recited and sang all night to the accompaniment of the kai-kamus (a two-stringed musical instrument), glorifying the exploits of the ancient heroes.

After all, our ancestors believed that in cold winters the death of nature reigns on the earth because the Deities of the earth leave it at this time. They return to earth only on the day of the equinox, and in their absence evil forces amuse themselves on earth, bringing misfortune to people, penetrating their homes, and, worst of all, giving rise to evil thoughts in them. At the long-awaited dawn of the spring equinox, people greet the returning Gods along with the rays of the sun. At the table of respect they are treated to the steam from the steaming meat. Also thanks to the Goddess of Fire, who tirelessly protected them, giving them warmth and food, keeping Uzut Aryg from the cold and Erlik from the anger. Also on this day, people turn to the supreme gods for blessings, but they turn only when they have first been cleansed of the filth of evil both in their homes and in their souls. Purification of the soul took place in the following way: people tie memorable troubles, illnesses, sins in a knot on a black choloma and throw it into the cleansing fire. Then they ask the Gods for love, good luck, harvest, health and prosperity, tying a white choloma - the color of sacred purity, blue - a cloudless sky, peace, harmony, red - the Sun and Fire on a sacred birch, which is considered a tree that can speak with the gods . Also, for purification, they fumigate the hearth, dwelling, village with Bogorodsk grass, walking around them in the direction of the sun.

Living in the taiga, the Shors observed a number of rules that regulated life and speech behavior: after all, they were temporarily located in the territory assigned to the clan, but at the same time the property of a powerful spirit, the owner of all game animals, the owner of the mountains and forests. In this world it was impossible to use proper names to designate wild creatures, natural objects, hunting tools, etc. A special language was required, and the usual designations seemed to be forgotten for a while. According to Khakass custom, hunters, talking to each other, called the animals “secret” names: bear - tyr ton “sheepskin coat”, wolf - uzun kuzruk “long tail”.

By moving away from home, at least for a while, a person acquired the status of a different being. Overcoming the gravitational pull of the cultural world, hunters temporarily turned into strangers for the people left behind. In order not to harm the fishermen, relatives were careful not to pronounce their names. It was impossible to play, have fun, or swear for fear that the artel would be left without spoils.

Hunters, rejected from the world of culture, also manifest themselves in the ritual of returning from hunting. The very moment of the Shors’ return from fishing had a number of peculiarities. The hunter did not immediately bring the prey into the house and did not go there himself until “it was dry.” During this time it was forbidden to talk to the woman. A woman was not allowed to meet her husband. The crossing of the border of worlds by a person who had been in a transcendental, alien world was regulated in approximately the same way. Returning from the hunt, as if with the opposite sign, repeated the initial situation of moving to another world.

The Shors have a custom of burying the umbilical cord (ymai), wrapped in birch bark, near the hearth in their homes. At the same time, they called yimai not only the umbilical cord, but also the deity - the patroness of newborn children, their guardian. Honoring Umai, the Shors made a symbolic bow with arrows or a spindle, which played the role of amulets for a baby, a bow for a boy, and a spindle for a girl. These amulets were attached near the cradle with the child.

In the world of spirits, on their territory or in their presence, it was considered dangerous to show one’s human essence: to give a voice, to respond to a name - the “alienated” parts of a person could become the prey of a being from another world, thereby seeking to, as it were, make up for their inferiority.

The funeral rite of the Shors preserves traditional ideas about death and the other world. They did not have a sharp distinction between the living and the dead. The deceased, the Shors believed, continued to live, but only in the land of the dead.

After those around were convinced of the physical death of a person, the pillow was immediately removed from under his head so that the soul (tyn) could depart, and the body was covered with pieces of homespun canvas. A fire was lit in the oven, and food for the soul of the deceased (shune) was placed at the head of the oven. The gathered relatives sat for three days near the deceased. After three days, the deceased was washed, dressed in clean clothes and transferred to a coffin. The latter was hollowed out from a cedar trunk split in two with a special tool (adylga). The bottom of the hollowed-out coffin-deck was covered with grass (azagat). Those leaving for the afterlife were “supplied” with things: a cup, a spoon, a bag with a “talkan”; a man with a pipe with a pouch of tobacco. The coffin was carried to the cemetery using a pole and rope, and in winter it was carried on hunting sleds, which were thrown at the grave. Before the spread of Christianity, the coffin was not made at all - the deceased was sewn into a “kendyr” or wrapped in birch bark and hung from a tree in a thicket. The cemeteries that appeared along with Christianity were located on the mountain closest to the ulus. The graves were dug shallow, usually under a fir tree; inside the burial chamber, the Verkhovsky Shors made a frame or built a pole platform. The Nizovsky Shors placed such a log house, complete with a flat roof, under the burial mound. Nearby, on the eastern side, they stuck a cross. Very rarely the grave was surrounded by a fence. At the end of the funeral ceremony, a birch bark box containing food for the soul of the deceased was left at the grave. The shaman scattered some of the food in different directions, luring the soul to the world of the dead. After the ritual, everyone returned home, trying to confuse their tracks by throwing fir branches over their shoulders and leaving an ax on the path with the blade towards the cemetery. Upon returning, a fire was lit in the deceased's house. The shaman fumigated everyone present with the smoke of a torch and, chanting, persuading (syune) not to return. Two birch bark vessels and a hoe were placed at the door, and a net was hung so that a wandering soul would not sneak into the house.

People who died as a result of an accident and suicides were buried in the ground at the place of death or on the outskirts of the cemetery, the cross was replaced with an aspen stake.

At the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. More ancient types of burials, such as air and ground burials, were retained, but only for children and the unbaptized. In the first case, the deceased, wrapped in birch bark, was hung from a tree and left on a special platform mounted on 4 pillars. During above-ground burial, the coffin was left below and covered with dead wood, or a frame was made, where the deceased was placed with his arms extended along his body, covered with birch bark on top.

Shamans were buried like ordinary dead people. The tambourine and mallet were hung on a tree near the grave, the iron pendants from the tambourine were removed and left with relatives to be later passed on to the new shaman.

On the seventh day, fortieth day and a year after death, a wake was celebrated for the soul, which was now transformed into the category of “uzyut”. During these days, numerous relatives came from neighboring uluses and brought with them tues with “araka” and other products. Then part of the drink was poured by the guests into one large cup, and the meat was placed in a special cup. The shaman, accompanied by relatives, took these treats to the grave, near which a fire was lit. “Kam” performed the ritual, sprinkling “araka” and throwing pieces of meat either into the fire or onto the grave, not forgetting about himself.

On the fortieth day, in the house of the deceased, the shaman again organized the “uzyutu” ritual. People went to the western outskirts of the ulus. Everyone carried cups of food and arak. Having arrived at the place, the treats were put into one dish, the edge of which was broken off. They made a fire, throwing pieces of meat into it with their left hand, sprinkling with araka. At the same time, the shaman frantically performed rituals with an “ozup” (root digger) if it was a woman or with an ax if it was a man. When the fire died out, everyone left.

The last commemoration was held on the anniversary of death, when the “uzyut” was escorted forever into the world of the dead. They sent the soul down the river on a special raft made of hogweed stems, building a small fire on it. This was always done at night and always with the participation of a shaman. The soul floated alone along the black road to the afterlife.

Conclusion

It is clear from the abstract that the history of the Shor people, their culture, beliefs, and rituals are of great interest for study. Shor culture is fraught with many mysterious and unknown things. The Shor people are original and unique in their ideas about the world. In this regard, one thought can be highlighted that most characteristically and clearly reflects the mentality of the Shor people - their whole life is built on respect and worship of nature, veneration of ancestors, spirits, and customs. Compliance with these same vital principles forms an unshakable and strong nation.

Bibliography
1. Babushkin, G. F. Shor language [Text] / Babushkin G. F., Donidze G. I. // Languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR. Turkic languages. T. 2. – M., Politizdat, 1966. – P. 467-481.

2. Vasiliev, V.I. Shortsy [Text] // Peoples of the world: historical and ethnographic reference book. – M., 1988. – P. 522.

3. Gamegenov, Z. P. History of Mountain Shoria [Text]. Book One: 1925-1939 – Kemerovo, 2003. – 363 p.

4. Maiden of the Mountain Peaks: Shor Heroic Legend [Text] / trans. with blinkers And processed. G. F. Sysametina. – Kemerovo, 1975. – 119 p.

5. Kimeev, V. M. Shortsy. Who are they? Ethnographic essays [Text]. – Kemerovo book. publishing house, 1989. – 189 p.

6. Chispiyakov, E.F. History of the formation of the ethnic culture of the Shors [Text] // Kuznetsk antiquity. Vol. 1. – Novokuznetsk, 1993. – P. 88-101.

8. Shchukina, O. Where does Shoria begin? [Text] // Red Shoria. – 1991. – March 13. – P. 4.

, Novokuznetsk, Mezhdurechensky, Myskovsky, Osinnikovsky and other areas), as well as in some adjacent areas of the Republic of Khakassia and the Altai Republic, Krasnoyarsk and Altai territories. The total number is about 14 thousand people. They are divided into two ethnographic groups: southern, or mountain taiga (at the beginning of the 20th century, the area of ​​residence of the southern Shors was called Mountain Shoria), and northern, or forest-steppe (the so-called Abinsk people). In terms of language, the Shors are closest to the Altaians and Khakassians, and in terms of culture - to the Altaians and Chulyms.

Self-name

Until 1926, the common self-name of all clan groups of Shors (Abinets, Shors, Kalarians, Karginians and others) was tadar-kizhi(Tatar man). The name of the Turkic-speaking population of Southern Kuzbass “Shors” was enshrined by the authorities in all official documents, taking into account the statements of Academician V. Radlov about the ethnocultural unity of the so-called Mras and Kondoma Tatars. Modern self-names are like tadar-kizhi, so Shor-Kizhi.

Language

Most Shors speak Russian, over 60% consider Russian their native language; Until recently, it was customary to distinguish two dialects in the Shor language - Mras (Khakass (Kyrgyz-Uyghur) group of Eastern Turkic languages) and Kondom (Northern Altai group of Western Turkic languages), each of which in turn was divided into a number of dialects. The NFI KemSU has a scientific school for the study of the Shor language.

Religion and folklore

In the past, the Shors were formally considered Orthodox, but in fact they maintained shamanism and animism (ancestor cults, trade cults and other beliefs). According to the traditional worldview of the Shors, the entire universe is divided into three spheres - the “land of Ulgen” ( Algen Cher), our land and the “land of evil spirits,” or the underworld. In Ulgen's domain there are 9 heavens; in the seventh sky there are the moon and stars, in the eighth sky there is the sun, and in the ninth sky Ulgen himself, the good supreme deity, lives. Our world and man were created, according to the ancient Shors, by Ulgen together with his brother Erlik (the personification of the evil principle).

Shor folklore consists of heroic poems (alyptyғ nybaktar - tales of heroes), performed by “kai” (throat singing) or recitative, fairy tales, stories and legends, riddles, proverbs and sayings, hunting, wedding, love, laudatory, historical and other songs. Shor heroic poems and songs belong to musical and poetic creativity. They were performed to the accompaniment of a two-stringed plucked instrument “komus”, which was made from a willow or cedar trunk. The genres of Shor folklore in content and ideas reflect mainly the hunting way of life; Of all the genres, the most developed was the heroic epic.

Holidays

• Chyl Pazi - New Year, celebrated on March 20-21 on the day of the vernal equinox.
• Myltyk-Payram is a holiday for all Shors; on this day it is customary to eat dumplings with small symbolic objects hidden in them (a match, a coin, a piece of paper, etc.), celebrated on January 18. Each item represents an event that should happen this year.
• Shor-Pairam is a holiday dedicated to cattle breeding and agriculture, celebrated in the same way as among other Turkic-speaking peoples, excluding some small innovations (example: a beauty contest, a competition for the longest braid).

Story

The Shor ethnic group was formed in the 6th-9th centuries, during the mixing of local Ket-speaking and alien Turkic-speaking tribes (according to some researchers, the process of formation of the Shor ethnic group began only in the 17th century, that is, with the formation of the Kuznetsk district and the strengthening of economic, linguistic and ethnocultural contacts).

The first written evidence about the (steppe) Shors (“Kuznetsk Tatars”) dates back to the beginning of the 17th century, to the period of Russian development of the upper reaches of the Tom River. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Shors had significant remnants of tribal relations. Before the October Revolution of 1917, their main occupations were fishing and fur trading; for some groups, primitive manual farming, stall breeding, trade and carriage. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the craft of the Shors was of a domestic nature and was concentrated mainly in the hands of women; the most developed were weaving, pottery and net weaving. The processing of leather and wood was widespread (in the manufacture of saddles, skis, dugout boats, furniture, birch bark dishes and other household items).

Among the northern Shors, blacksmithing has long been of great importance, as well as the mining and smelting of iron ore (hence the Russian name for the northern Shors “Kuznetsk Tatars”).

By the beginning of the 20th century, traditional Shor clothing was sewn only in the most remote South Shor uluses. Housing for the Shors of that time were polygonal log houses with a conical roof, half-dugouts, summer huts, and among the northern groups - also Russian huts.

In the middle of the 19th century, part of the Shors moved to Khakassia; Subsequently, most of these settlers switched to the Khakass language, so today their descendants are usually not classified as Shors.

Since the mid-1920s, an important role in the formation of a unified Shor identity was played by the universal spread of literacy in connection with the creation of the Shor literary language based on the Mras dialect (functioning in the 1920s-1930s). However, in the 1940s, a process of weakening ethnic specificity and assimilation of the Shor ethnic group began, which continues to this day. In the 1st half of the 20th century, the situation in Northern Shoria changed significantly, where intensive development of coal deposits began and a whole system of large cities, so-called workers' settlements and settlements of exiles and prisoners with a mixed ethnic composition, arose.

After the decision of the Kemerovo Regional Executive Committee of June 20, 1960 “On the liquidation of the collective farms of Mountain Shoria as unprofitable,” a mass migration of Shors to the cities and large towns of the Kemerovo region began, as a result of which about 74% of all Shors now live there.

Tribal division

Shors in our time

Today there is a gradual disappearance of traditional Shor culture. This is happening due to the increasing growth of urban culture. At the same time, since 1985, the traditional holidays of the Shors have been resumed - the holiday of the ancestor Olgudek, the spring-summer holiday of Payram, etc., accompanied by the performance of epics and songs, as well as sports competitions.

Currently, the majority of Shors are engaged in mining work; old values ​​such as hunting, fishing and agriculture have gradually faded into the background. Only in Sheregesh is the old way of life preserved - hunting, which is the main industry for the population.

The most important problem for modern Shors is the lack of jobs and rural education structure in the rural areas of the Tashtagol region. Many Shors are employed in cities (Tashtagol, Sheregesh, Novokuznetsk), some of them work in tourism services at the Sheregesh ski resort. Shors living in rural areas are officially considered unemployed, despite the fact that most of these “unemployed” are employed in agriculture and traditional Shor crafts.

Number of Shors in Russia:

ImageSize = width:420 height:300 PlotArea = left:40 right:40 top:20 bottom:20 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical AlignBars = justify Colors =

Id:gray1 value:gray(0.9)

DateFormat = yyyy Period = from:0 till:18000 ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:2000 start:0 gridcolor:gray1 PlotData =

Bar:1926 color:gray1 width:1 from:0 till:12601 width:15 text:12601 textcolor:red fontsize:8px bar:1939 color:gray1 width:1 from:0 till:16044 width:15 text:16044 textcolor: red fontsize:8px bar:1959 color:gray1 width:1 from:0 till:14938 width:15 text:14938 textcolor:red fontsize:8px bar:1970 color:gray1 width:1 from:0 till:15950 width:15 text :15950 textcolor:red fontsize:8px bar:1979 color:gray1 width:1 from:0 till:15182 width:15 text:15182 textcolor:red fontsize:8px bar:1989 color:gray1 width:1 from:0 till:15745 width:15 text:15745 textcolor:red fontsize:8px bar:2002 color:gray1 width:1 from:0 till:13975 width:15 text:13975 textcolor:red fontsize:8px bar:2010 color:gray1 width:1 from: 0 till:12888 width:15 text:12888 textcolor:red fontsize:8px

Number of Shors in populated areas (2002)

Other subjects of Russia:

Rostov-on-Don city 1

Novorossiysk city 3

Cultural and educational organizations

• NGOO "Shoriya"
• Center of Shor Culture “Aba-Tura”

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Notes

Literature

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• Chispiyakov E.F., Abdrakhmanov M.A. Territorial differences in phonetics and vocabulary of the Shor language // Materials for the upcoming VIII scientific conference of the Novokuznetsk Pedagogical Institute. Novokuznetsk, 1967. pp. 28-30.
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• Shor heroic tales (introductory article, preparation of the poetic text, translation, comments by A. I. Chudoyakov; final editing by L. N. Arbachakova, musicological article and preparation of the musical text by R. B. Nazarenko). M., Novosibirsk, 1998.

Links

• tadarlar.ru/ non-profit information project about the Shor people

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An excerpt characterizing the Shors

At this time, he received a letter from his wife, who begged him for a date, wrote about her sadness for him and about her desire to devote her whole life to him.
At the end of the letter, she informed him that one of these days she would come to St. Petersburg from abroad.
Following the letter, one of the Masonic brothers, less respected by him, burst into Pierre's solitude and, bringing the conversation to Pierre's marital relations, in the form of fraternal advice, expressed to him the idea that his severity towards his wife was unfair, and that Pierre was deviating from the first rules of a Freemason , not forgiving the repentant.
At the same time, his mother-in-law, the wife of Prince Vasily, sent for him, begging him to visit her for at least a few minutes to negotiate a very important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy against him, that they wanted to unite him with his wife, and this was not even unpleasant to him in the state in which he was. He didn’t care: Pierre didn’t consider anything in life to be a matter of great importance, and under the influence of the melancholy that now took possession of him, he did not value either his freedom or his persistence in punishing his wife.
“No one is right, no one is to blame, therefore she is not to blame,” he thought. - If Pierre did not immediately express consent to unite with his wife, it was only because in the state of melancholy in which he was, he was not able to do anything. If his wife had come to him, he would not have sent her away now. Compared to what occupied Pierre, wasn’t it all the same whether he lived or not lived with his wife?
Without answering anything to either his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre got ready for the road late one evening and left for Moscow to see Joseph Alekseevich. This is what Pierre wrote in his diary.
“Moscow, November 17th.
I just arrived from my benefactor, and I hasten to write down everything that I experienced. Joseph Alekseevich lives poorly and has been suffering from a painful bladder disease for three years. No one ever heard a groan or a word of murmur from him. From morning until late at night, with the exception of the hours during which he eats the simplest food, he works on science. He received me graciously and seated me on the bed on which he was lying; I made him a sign of the knights of the East and Jerusalem, he answered me in the same way, and with a gentle smile asked me about what I had learned and acquired in the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I told him everything as best I could, conveying the reasons that I proposed in our St. Petersburg box and informed him about the bad reception given to me and about the break that had occurred between me and the brothers. Joseph Alekseevich, having paused and thought for a while, expressed his view of all this to me, which instantly illuminated for me everything that had happened and the entire future path ahead of me. He surprised me by asking if I remembered what the threefold purpose of the order was: 1) to preserve and learn the sacrament; 2) in purifying and correcting oneself in order to perceive it and 3) in correcting the human race through the desire for such purification. What is the most important and first goal of these three? Of course, your own correction and cleansing. This is the only goal we can always strive for, regardless of all circumstances. But at the same time, this goal requires the most work from us, and therefore, misled by pride, we, missing this goal, either take on the sacrament, which we are unworthy to receive due to our uncleanness, or we take on the correction of the human race, when we ourselves are an example of abomination and depravity. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine precisely because it is carried away by social activities and is filled with pride. On this basis, Joseph Alekseevich condemned my speech and all my activities. I agreed with him in the depths of my soul. On the occasion of our conversation about my family affairs, he told me: “The main duty of a true Mason, as I told you, is to improve himself.” But often we think that by removing all the difficulties of our life from ourselves, we will more quickly achieve this goal; on the contrary, my lord, he told me, only in the midst of secular unrest can we achieve three main goals: 1) self-knowledge, for a person can know himself only through comparison, 2) improvement, which is achieved only through struggle, and 3) to achieve the main virtue - love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its futility and can contribute to our innate love of death or rebirth to a new life. These words are all the more remarkable because Joseph Alekseevich, despite his severe physical suffering, is never burdened by life, but loves death, for which he, despite all the purity and height of his inner man, does not yet feel sufficiently prepared. Then the benefactor explained to me the full meaning of the great square of the universe and pointed out that the triple and seventh numbers are the basis of everything. He advised me not to distance myself from communication with the St. Petersburg brothers and, occupying only 2nd degree positions in the lodge, try, distracting the brothers from the hobbies of pride, to turn them to the true path of self-knowledge and improvement. In addition, for himself, he personally advised me, first of all, to take care of myself, and for this purpose he gave me a notebook, the same one in which I write and will henceforth write down all my actions.”
“Petersburg, November 23rd.
“I live with my wife again. My mother-in-law came to me in tears and said that Helen was here and that she was begging me to listen to her, that she was innocent, that she was unhappy with my abandonment, and much more. I knew that if I only allowed myself to see her, I would no longer be able to refuse her her desire. In my doubts, I did not know whose help and advice to resort to. If the benefactor was here, he would tell me. I retired to my room, re-read Joseph Alekseevich’s letters, remembered my conversations with him, and from everything I concluded that I should not refuse anyone who asks and should give a helping hand to everyone, especially to a person so connected with me, and I should bear my cross. But if I forgave her for the sake of virtue, then let my union with her have one spiritual goal. So I decided and wrote to Joseph Alekseevich. I told my wife that I ask her to forget everything old, I ask her to forgive me for what I might have been guilty of before her, but that I have nothing to forgive her. I was happy to tell her this. Let her not know how hard it was for me to see her again. I settled down in the upper chambers of a large house and feel a happy feeling of renewal.”

As always, even then, high society, uniting together at court and at large balls, was divided into several circles, each with its own shade. Among them, the most extensive was the French circle, the Napoleonic Alliance - Count Rumyantsev and Caulaincourt. In this circle, Helen took one of the most prominent places as soon as she and her husband settled in St. Petersburg. She had gentlemen of the French embassy and a large number of people, known for their intelligence and courtesy, belonging to this direction.
Helen was in Erfurt during the famous meeting of the emperors, and from there she brought these connections with all the Napoleonic sights of Europe. In Erfurt it was a brilliant success. Napoleon himself, noticing her in the theater, said about her: “C"est un superbe animal.” [This is a beautiful animal.] Her success as a beautiful and elegant woman did not surprise Pierre, because over the years she became even more beautiful than before But what surprised him was that during these two years his wife managed to acquire a reputation for herself.
“d"une femme charmante, aussi spirituelle, que belle.” [a charming woman, as smart as she is beautiful.] The famous prince de Ligne [Prince de Ligne] wrote letters to her on eight pages. Bilibin saved his mots [words], in order to say them for the first time in front of Countess Bezukhova. To be received in Countess Bezukhova’s salon was considered a diploma of intelligence; young people read Helen’s books before the evening, so that they would have something to talk about in her salon, and the embassy secretaries, and even envoys, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so Helen had strength in some way. Pierre, who knew that she was very stupid, sometimes attended her evenings and dinners, where politics, poetry and philosophy were discussed, with a strange feeling of bewilderment and fear. At these evenings he experienced a similar feeling. the kind that a magician must experience, expecting every time that his deception will be revealed, but whether it is because stupidity was needed to run such a salon, or because the deceived themselves found pleasure in this deception, the deception was not discovered, and their reputation was lost. “une femme charmante et spirituelle was so unshakably established in Elena Vasilievna Bezukhova that she could say the most vulgarities and nonsense, and yet everyone admired her every word and looked for a deep meaning in it, which she herself did not even suspect.
Pierre was exactly the husband that this brilliant, society woman needed. He was that absent-minded eccentric, the husband of a grand seigneur [great gentleman], not bothering anyone and not only not spoiling the general impression of the high tone of the living room, but, with his opposite to the grace and tact of his wife, serving as an advantageous background for her. During these two years, Pierre, as a result of his constant concentrated occupation with immaterial interests and sincere contempt for everything else, acquired for himself in the company of his wife, who was not interested in him, that tone of indifference, carelessness and benevolence towards everyone, which is not acquired artificially and which therefore inspires involuntary respect . He entered his wife’s living room as if he were entering a theatre, he knew everyone, was equally happy with everyone and was equally indifferent to everyone. Sometimes he entered into a conversation that interested him, and then, without consideration of whether les messieurs de l'ambassade [employees at the embassy] were there or not, mumbled his opinions, which were sometimes completely out of tune with the tone of the moment. But the opinion about the eccentric husband de la femme la plus distinguee de Petersbourg [the most remarkable woman in St. Petersburg] was already so established that no one took au serux [seriously] his antics.
Among the many young people who visited Helen’s house every day, Boris Drubetskoy, who was already very successful in the service, was, after Helen’s return from Erfurt, the closest person in the Bezukhovs’ house. Helen called him mon page [my page] and treated him like a child. Her smile towards him was the same as towards everyone else, but sometimes Pierre was unpleasant to see this smile. Boris treated Pierre with special, dignified and sad respect. This shade of respect also worried Pierre. Pierre suffered so painfully three years ago from an insult inflicted on him by his wife that now he saved himself from the possibility of such an insult, firstly by the fact that he was not his wife’s husband, and secondly by the fact that he did not allow himself to suspect.
“No, now having become a bas bleu [bluestocking], she has abandoned her former hobbies forever,” he said to himself. “There was no example of bas bleu having passions of the heart,” he repeated to himself, from nowhere, a rule he had extracted from nowhere, which he undoubtedly believed. But, strangely, the presence of Boris in his wife’s living room (and he was almost constantly) had a physical effect on Pierre: it bound all his limbs, destroyed unconsciousness and freedom of his movements.
“Such a strange antipathy,” thought Pierre, “but before I even really liked him.”
In the eyes of the world, Pierre was a great gentleman, a somewhat blind and funny husband of a famous wife, a smart eccentric who did nothing, but did not harm anyone, a nice and kind fellow. During all this time, a complex and difficult work of internal development took place in Pierre’s soul, which revealed a lot to him and led him to many spiritual doubts and joys.

He continued his diary, and this is what he wrote in it during this time:
“November 24 ro.
“I got up at eight o’clock, read the Holy Scripture, then went to office (Pierre, on the advice of a benefactor, entered the service of one of the committees), returned to dinner, dined alone (the countess has many guests, unpleasant to me), ate and drank in moderation and After lunch I copied plays for my brothers. In the evening I went to the countess and told a funny story about B., and only then did I remember that I shouldn’t have done this when everyone was already laughing loudly.
“I go to bed with a happy and calm spirit. Great Lord, help me to walk in Your paths, 1) to overcome some of the anger - with quietness, slowness, 2) lust - with abstinence and aversion, 3) to move away from vanity, but not to separate myself from a) public affairs, b) from family concerns , c) from friendly relations and d) economic pursuits.”
“November 27th.
“I got up late and woke up and lay on my bed for a long time, indulging in laziness. My God! help me and strengthen me, that I may walk in Your ways. I read Holy Scripture, but without the proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and talked about the vanities of the world. He talked about the new plans of the sovereign. I began to condemn, but I remembered my rules and the words of our benefactor that a true Freemason must be a diligent worker in the state when his participation is required, and a calm contemplator of what he is not called to. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G.V. and O. visited me, there was a preparatory conversation for the acceptance of a new brother. They entrust me with the duty of a rhetorician. I feel weak and unworthy. Then they started talking about explaining the seven pillars and steps of the temple. 7 sciences, 7 virtues, 7 vices, 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit. Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the acceptance took place. The new arrangement of the premises contributed greatly to the splendor of the spectacle. Boris Drubetskoy was accepted. I proposed it, I was the rhetorician. A strange feeling worried me throughout my stay with him in the dark temple. I found in myself a feeling of hatred towards him, which I strive in vain to overcome. And therefore, I would truly like to save him from evil and lead him onto the path of truth, but bad thoughts about him did not leave me. I thought that his purpose in joining the brotherhood was only the desire to get closer to people, to be in favor with those in our lodge. Apart from the grounds that he asked several times whether N. and S. were in our box (to which I could not answer him), except that, according to my observations, he is incapable of feeling respect for our holy Order and is too busy and satisfied with the outer man, so as to desire spiritual improvement, I had no reason to doubt him; but he seemed insincere to me, and all the time when I stood with him eye to eye in the dark temple, it seemed to me that he was smiling contemptuously at my words, and I really wanted to prick his naked chest with the sword that I was holding, pointed at it. . I could not be eloquent and could not sincerely communicate my doubts to the brothers and the great master. Great Architect of nature, help me find the true paths that lead out of the labyrinth of lies.”
After this, three pages were missing from the diary, and then the following was written:
“I had an instructive and long conversation alone with brother V., who advised me to stick to brother A. Much, although unworthy, was revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the Creator of the world. Elohim is the name of the ruler of all. The third name, the spoken name, has the meaning of the Whole. Conversations with Brother V. strengthen, refresh and confirm me on the path of virtue. With him there is no room for doubt. The difference between the poor teaching of the social sciences and our holy, all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human sciences subdivide everything - in order to understand, kill everything - in order to examine it. In the holy science of the Order, everything is one, everything is known in its totality and life. Trinity - the three principles of things - sulfur, mercury and salt. Sulfur of unctuous and fiery properties; in combination with salt, its fiery arouses hunger in it, through which it attracts mercury, seizes it, holds it and collectively produces separate bodies. Mercury is a liquid and volatile spiritual essence - Christ, the Holy Spirit, He."
“December 3rd.
“I woke up late, read the Holy Scripture, but was insensitive. Then he went out and walked around the hall. I wanted to think, but instead my imagination imagined an incident that happened four years ago. Mister Dolokhov, after my duel, meeting me in Moscow, told me that he hopes that I now enjoy complete peace of mind, despite the absence of my wife. I didn’t answer anything then. Now I remembered all the details of this meeting and in my soul I spoke to him the most vicious words and caustic answers. I came to my senses and gave up this thought only when I saw myself in the heat of anger; but he didn’t repent enough of it. Then Boris Drubetskoy came and began to tell various adventures; From the very moment he arrived, I became dissatisfied with his visit and told him something disgusting. He objected. I flared up and told him a lot of unpleasant and even rude things. He fell silent and I only realized it when it was already too late. My God, I don’t know how to deal with him at all. The reason for this is my pride. I put myself above him and therefore become much worse than him, for he is condescending to my rudeness, and on the contrary, I have contempt for him. My God, grant me in his presence to see more of my abomination and act in such a way that it would be useful to him too. After lunch I fell asleep and while falling asleep, I clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear: “Your day.”

general information

Self-name - shor. The official name Shors and the self-name Shors were established during the years of Soviet power. Before this, the Shors did not have a common self-name; they called themselves by the name of their clan (seok) or by place of residence. The modern ethnonym Shors is based on the name of one of the most numerous clans, Shor, living in the Kondoma River basin. All Shors and their neighbors - Teleuts, Khakasses and others - were called by the name of this seok. Russians in the 17th-18th centuries. Most often the Shors were called Kuznetsk Tatars.

They speak the Shor language, which belongs to the Khakass subgroup of the Uyghur-Oguz group of Turkic languages. Two dialects are distinguished - Mrassky (the basin of the Mras-Su River and the upper reaches of the Tom) and Kondoma, adjacent to the northern dialects of the Altai language. Writing based on the Cyrillic alphabet was first created by Orthodox missionaries in the 80s. XIX century.

In the VI-IX centuries, the Shors were part of the Turkic, Uyghur and Yenisei Khaganates and were Turkified, partially mixing with the Altai, Mongolian, Yenisei-Kyrgyz tribes.

Territory of settlement and number

The main habitat of the Shors (Gornaya Shoria) is the basin of the middle reaches of the Tom and its tributaries. Administratively, it is currently part of the Tashtagol, Mezhdurechensky and Novokuznetsk districts of the Kemerovo region. Some Shors live in the Askiz and Tashtyp regions of Khakassia. The settlement area of ​​the Shors has changed little over the past hundred years. There was only a concentration of the population in larger settlements. As of January 1, 1998, the Shors lived in 77 villages and towns in the region, as well as in the cities of Kemerovo, Novokuznetsk, Mezhdurechensk, Myski, etc. In most settlements they live together with other peoples.

The rapid industrialization of the Kemerovo region during the years of Soviet power, the creation of new cities and workers' settlements stimulated the processes of urbanization and migration of the Shor population. Currently, only 56.3% of Shors live on their ancestral ancestral lands. The greatest adherents of their ancestral territory are representatives of the Keresh, Sebi, Tartkyn and Aba clans. Over the past 20 years, many settlements have disappeared - Akkol, Bal-byn, Tutuyas, etc. There are settlements where either single Shorian families or pensioners live.

The total number of Shors in 1989 was 16,600 people. At the time of the census, 12,585 Shors lived in the Kemerovo region. In 2002, 13,975 Shors lived in Russia, including 11,554 people in the Kemerovo region. The dynamics of the number of Shors in the 20th century indicates that until 1970 there was an increase in the Shor population. The decline occurred in the 70s due to the intensification of migration and assimilation processes. The decline in the number of Shors in the Kemerovo region can be partly explained by the fact that some of them moved to Khakassia to live with relatives. The latest census again recorded an increase in the number of Shors, and a significant one. Like other small peoples, this is due to the increase in the late 80s. ethnic identity. Many Shors, who previously considered themselves to be other nationalities, remembered their ethnic roots.

Lifestyle and life support system

At the beginning of the 17th century, the main occupation of a significant part of the Shors was blacksmithing. On this basis, in Russian documents, their habitat area was called “Kuznetsk land”, and they themselves were called “Kuznetsk people”. Blacksmithing disappeared by the end of the 18th century due to the cessation of demand for iron products on the part of nomads. From that time on, the main occupation of the Shors became hunting fur-bearing and ungulate animals, farming, as well as consumer and commercial fishing. Each clan, later a large family, owned a certain territory, the memory of which is still preserved. Shor agriculture was of two types: plow farming in the northern part of Mountain Shoria and hoe farming in the south.

During the Soviet years, the traditional industries of the Shors developed within the framework of collective farm production and state fisheries. A significant part of the Shor population began to work in industry and other sectors of the economy. Most Shor families currently have private plots where they grow garden crops and barley. Many keep livestock, horses, and poultry.

During the period of market reforms, the problem of employment of the indigenous population became extremely acute. The state industrial enterprises where the Shorian hunters worked went bankrupt, artisanal gold mining was liquidated, and due to unprofitability, the timber industry enterprises practically ceased to exist. The creation of a network of farms based on tribal communities, which began in the Tashtagol region, was supported purely symbolically by the authorities. As a result, only a few such farms are currently operating - “Palam” in the Novokuznetsk region, “Azass” in Mezhdurechensky, and a community farm in the village of Ust-Anzas in the Tashtagol region. 5 Shor enterprises have been created for the collection and processing of medicinal and technical raw materials, food wild plants (nuts, ferns, mushrooms, wild garlic, etc.), business projects have been prepared, but they cannot be implemented without government or other financial support. The central problem in the development of the economy of the Shor population, according to experts and the Shor people themselves, is the development of entrepreneurial activity, the formation of small enterprises and communal farms, and the assignment of territories of traditional natural resource management to them.

Ethno-social situation

In the total population of the Kemerovo region in 1989 (3,171,134 people), the Shors made up 0.4%. The majority of Shors are residents of cities and towns (74%), only about 3.5 thousand people live in villages. In cities and workers' settlements, where the proportion of the Shor population is highest, they make up a small share: in Tashtagol - 5.4%, in Myski - 3.5%, in Mezhdurechensk - 1.5%. Being in a different ethnic environment, urban Shors seem to be subject to faster assimilation than rural residents, however, it is among the urban Shors that ethnic self-awareness manifests itself more clearly. They have a relatively high degree of knowledge of their native language and are more focused on ethnic cultural values. Based on fragmentary data, it can be argued that the natural increase of the Shors has decreased significantly in recent years, and in some years the population mortality rate exceeds the birth rate. In 1997, for example, the natural decline was 40 people. The indigenous taiga residents have never undergone medical examination at all. An in-depth medical examination of the Shors in the Mezhdurechensky and Tashtagol regions carried out in 1999 revealed a high incidence of cardiovascular disease (more than 15%). The development of programs for medical care of the indigenous population, especially in hard-to-reach areas (medical examinations, drug support for pensioners and children, construction of hospitals and first aid stations) is an urgent task.

Ethno-cultural situation

One of the pressing problems in the life of the Shor people is the problem of language. According to the 1989 census, 56.7% of Shors consider Shor their native language. Currently, writing in the Shor language is experiencing a period of revival. The Shor language is taught in primary grades in 8 schools in the region (the villages of Klyuchevoy, Kabyrza, Senzas, etc.), textbooks have been developed up to grade 5 inclusive. In total, about 600 children study their native language. In the city of Osinniki, teaching the native language takes place in a Sunday school, in the city of Tashtagol - at the station for young tourists. Teaching staff since the late 80s. are being prepared at the Novokuznetsk Pedagogical Institute at the Department of the Shor language. Currently there are about 60 students studying there. In Tashtagol, local television broadcasts programs in their native language. Public organizations of the Shors publish newsletters in their native language, but in general the situation with the functioning of the Shori language remains difficult.

Management and self-government bodies

Since 1925, the Shors had a Gorno-Shorsky national region, which played an important role in the ethnic consolidation of the Shor people, in the development of their economy and culture. The development of a powerful industry in Kuzbass, the influx of migrant, predominantly Russian population, and the decrease in the share of indigenous residents became the basis for its liquidation in 1939. Since that time, the Shors did not have their own governing bodies, although they took part in the work of regional representative and executive bodies of power. New attempts to create their own governing bodies were made in the early 90s. By the decision of the regional council of the Kemerovo region in 1992, the Chuvashinsky village council (Novokuznetsky district), on the territory of which the Shors live compactly, received the status of a national-territorial entity. Later, the same status was assigned to the Chilis-Anzas and Ust-Anzas village councils in the Tashtagol region. Since 1997, a committee of indigenous peoples has been working within the structure of the regional administration. Several public self-governing organizations have been created in the region: the Association of the Shor People, the Altyn-Shor Society, the Shoria Society, the Gornaya Shoria Society, the Council of Elders of the Shor People. In other regions, Shors are also united in their own organizations, or work within the framework of regional Associations.

Legal documents and laws

There is a regional program “Social and Economic Development of Indigenous Minorities” in the region. Relevant sections on the problems of indigenous peoples are available in the targeted programs of the employment service and small business. The region has adopted a number of legislative and regulatory acts providing for state support for indigenous peoples.

In the Charter of the Kemerovo Region (adopted in 1997), a special article is dedicated to indigenous peoples. They are guaranteed the preservation of their original habitat, the right to freely study, use and preserve their native language, the revival and development of national culture, traditional sectors of the economy, the creation of national cultural associations, etc. The charter provides for the creation of national municipalities in places where small peoples live compactly.

In April 1999, the Law of the Kemerovo Region “On the Legal Status of Indigenous Minorities” was adopted. The draft law “On territories of traditional natural resource management” is in the approval stage. At the legislative level, a decision was made on benefits for the training of specialists with higher and secondary education. Benefits are provided for the use of forest resources.

Contemporary environmental issues

In Gornaya Shoria, the lands near the cities of Mezhdurechensk, Myski, Osinniki, and the village were subjected to the greatest disturbances. Mundy-bash, Shergesh. Violations were mainly caused by mining enterprises and processing plants. Open-pit coal mining (1 million tons) is accompanied by the complete destruction of the landscape and lithosphere to depths of 300-600 m. Reclamation of disturbed lands is carried out at an extremely low pace. In total, about 200 thousand hectares of land were destroyed in the region, less than 20% of the area was reclaimed. The waters in areas densely populated by indigenous peoples are very polluted. Even the Tom in its upper reaches and its upper tributaries is polluted by wastewater discharges from gold mining cooperatives, mines, and processing factories. The indigenous population, using drinking water from surface sources, causes severe damage to their health.

Prospects for preserving the Shors as an ethnic group

The Shors have a stable ethnic identity and continue to maintain national specificity in the field of material culture, manifested in food, means of transportation, fishing shoes, etc. In the field of spiritual culture, a religious complex is preserved, which includes elements of Christian and pre-Christian beliefs, folklore. The destruction of the natural, social and cultural environment that has taken place in recent decades causes a negative reaction in the minds of the people, contributes to the unity of the ethnic group, and awareness of the need to fight for their rights. For the normal development of the Shor ethnic group, a comprehensive solution to problems of a socio-economic and cultural nature is necessary with government support. Much will depend on the consolidation of the people themselves and their leaders.

Forgive me, just three days ago I didn’t even know that such a small people lived in the Russian Federation and on planet Earth in general - Shors.

On the coat of arms of the Soviet Union, in which I was born and lived half of my life, only 15 union republics were indicated and the inscriptions were made on Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Georgian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Tajik, Turkmen, Belarusian, Kazakh, Azerbaijani, Moldavian, Kyrgyz, Armenian and Estonian languages. Therefore, the fact that the Shors also exist in Russia was a cultural discovery for me! And the discovery, alas, is not joyful, but sad, although not surprising...

Well, really, why be surprised?! If in relation to the state-forming people - the Russians - in the 21st century some people are satisfied with the so-called "vaccine genocide"(even the chief sanitary doctor says this G. Onishchenko told recently, why is this multifaceted someone should treat the small-numbered Shors somehow better than the Russians?

From time immemorial, this small people lived in the south-eastern part of Western Siberia, mainly in the south of the Kemerovo region (in Tashtagol, Novokuznetsk, Mezhdurechensky, Myskovsky, Osinnikovsky and other areas), as well as in some adjacent areas of the Republic of Khakassia and the Altai Republic, Krasnoyarsk and Altai territories. The total number of Shors is slightly more than 12 thousand people. The Shors are divided into two ethnographic groups: the southern, or mountain taiga (at the beginning of the 20th century, the area of ​​residence of the southern Shors was called Mountain Shoria), and the northern, or forest-steppe (the so-called Abin people). In terms of language, the Shors are closest to the Altaians and Khakassians, and in culture - to the Altaians and Chulyms. Until 1926, the common self-name of all clan groups of Shors (Abinets, Shors, Kalarians, Karginians and others) was tadar-kizhi(Tatar man). The name of the Turkic-speaking population of Southern Kuzbass “Shors” was enshrined by the authorities in all official documents, taking into account the statements of Academician V. Radlov about the ethnocultural unity of the so-called Mras and Kondoma Tatars. Modern self-names are like tadar-kizhi, so Shor-Kizhi.

This is how the Shors lived in pre-revolutionary Russia:

Shor women with children.

This and other black and white photographs presented below were taken in 1913 during the land surveying expedition of G.I. Ivanov. The expedition took place along the Mrassa River from Kuznetsk and somewhere to the Ust-Kabyrza ulus. Its goal was to map the area, familiarize itself with and study local settlements and peoples.

The old Shorka woman prepares firewood. 1913

Young Shore man in traditional national clothes:

Method of transportation on the roads of Mountain Shoria. Cradle.

Life of the Shors in Tsarist Russia:

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Russians called the Shors “Kuznetsk Tatars,” “Kondom and Mras Tatars,” and Abinsk people. They called themselves by the names of clans (Karga, Kyi, Kobyi, etc.), volosts and councils (Tayash-Chony - Tayash volost) or rivers (Mras-kizhi - Mras people, Kondum-Chony - Kondoma people), outside the territory residence - aba-kizhi (aba - clan, kizhi - people), chysh-kizhi (people of the taiga). Altaians and Khakassians called them by the name of the Shor clan. This name spread widely and was introduced as an official name in the 20th century.

In 1925, the Gorno-Shorsky national district was formed with its center in the village of Myski, then in the village of Kuzedeevo. The district was abolished in 1939. The number of Shors in 1926 was 14 thousand people. (In 2002, the number of Shors was 13,975 people, in 2010 it decreased to 12,888 people. There is an extinction of this small people in modern Russia. Comment - A.B.)

Until the 19th century, one of the main activities of the Shors was iron smelting and forging, especially developed in the north. They paid tribute to the Turkic Khagans with iron products. They exchanged them with nomads for cattle and felt. Since the 18th century, iron products have been sold to Russian merchants. The Russians called them "Kuznetsk people" and their land - "Kuznetsk land".

The Cossacks who came to the south of Western Siberia at the beginning of the 17th century, sent by the Russian Tsar, were so amazed by the development of blacksmithing among the local population that they called this region Kuznetsk Land, and its indigenous inhabitants - Kuznetsk Tatars.

Conqueror of Siberia Ermak Timofeevich (1532-1585), Cossack chieftain.

Conqueror of Siberia Ermak Timofeevich (1532-1585), Cossack chieftain.

According to the traditional worldview of the Shors, the world is divided into three spheres: the heavenly, where the highest deity Ulgen is located, the middle - the earth on which people live, and the abode of evil spirits - the underworld, where Erlik rules.

In earthly life, the ancient Shors were engaged in smelting and forging metals, hunting, fishing, cattle breeding, primitive manual farming, and gathering.

Iron products made by Shor blacksmiths were famous throughout Siberia. With them they paid tribute (Alban, Alman) to the Dzungars and Yenisei Kirghiz, however, with the arrival of the Cossacks, a ban was imposed on these “strategic” crafts (iron smelting and forging) so that the not yet conquered Siberian peoples could not order military armor and equipment from local gunsmiths.

Gradually, the professional skill of the Shors - iron craftsmen - was lost, and even the “Kuznetsk Tatars” became furs to give yasak to the Moscow Tsar. So the main occupation of the Shors became hunting.

Initially, driven hunting for large ungulates (deer, elk, deer, roe deer) prevailed, later - fur fishing (squirrel, sable, fox, weasel, otter, ermine, lynx) - until the 19th century with a bow, then with guns obtained from Russian merchants. From 75 to 90% of Shors' households were engaged in hunting (in 1900). They hunted animals within the ancestral hunting territory in teams of 4-7 people (initially from relatives, then from neighbors). They lived in seasonal dwellings made of branches and bark (odag, agys). They used skis (shana) lined with kamus. The load was pulled on a hand sled (shanak) or drag (surtka). The spoils were divided equally among all members of the artel.

The main source of food was fishing. In the lower reaches of the rivers it was the main occupation; in other places, from 40 to 70% of households were engaged in it (in 1899). They moved along the river using poles on dugout boats (kebes) and birch bark boats.

An additional activity was gathering. In the spring, women collected tubers, roots, bulbs and stems of saran, kandyk, wild onion, wild garlic, peony, and hogweed. Roots and tubers were dug up with a root-digger, which consisted of a curved handle 60 cm long with a transverse crossbar-pedal for the foot and an iron blade-spatula at the end. They collected a lot of nuts and berries, in the 19th century - for sale. Families and artels went for pine nuts, living in the taiga for several weeks. Temporary shelters were built in the forest, tools and devices for collecting nuts were made from wood and birch bark - beaters (tokpak), graters (paspak), sieves (elek), winnowers (argash), baskets. Beekeeping has long been known, and beekeeping was borrowed from the Russians.

Before the arrival of the Russians, slash-and-burn hoe farming was common on the southern gentle slopes. To do this, the family settled in a temporary home on arable land for several weeks. The earth was loosened with a hoe (abyl) and harrowed with a branch. They sowed barley, wheat, and hemp. They returned to the arable land in the fall to harvest the crops. The grain was threshed with a stick, stored in birch bark vats on stilts, and ground in hand-held stone mills. With the development of contacts with the Russians in the north, arable farming and Russian agricultural tools spread to the steppe and mountainous regions: a plow, sometimes a plow, a harrow, a sickle, and a water mill. Large areas were sown, mainly with wheat. From the Russians, the Shors learned stall breeding of horses, as well as harnesses, carts, and sleighs.

The Shors lived in communities (seoks), which were governed quite democratically: the headman (pashtyk) was elected at a clan meeting, which was considered the highest authority. Court proceedings also took place here, during which six people, most often experienced elders, were assigned to help the pashtyk. The judges submitted their decision to public discussion; they asked their fellow tribesmen: “charar ba?” (do they agree?), if the majority said “charar” (agree), then the verdict came into force, if not, the case was considered again. Everything adopted at the clan meeting was subject to mandatory execution.

Now I will tell you about a sad fact: the Shors are slowly but surely dying out! From 2002 to 2010, the excess of mortality over the birth rate amounted to almost 8% of the total number of Shors over 8 years! And the Shors are dying out at a rapid rate 1% per year not due to any natural reasons, it is obvious, in the opinion of the Shors themselves, "the deliberate creation of living conditions calculated to bring about the total or partial physical destruction of that group". And this, by the way, is one of the points in the description of a crime against humanity that has no statute of limitations, called GENOCIDE.

" Genocide (from Greek γένος - clan, tribe and lat. caedo - I kill ) - actions committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, any national, ethnic, racial, religious or other historically established cultural and ethnic group as such by:
- killings of members of this group;
- causing serious harm to their health;
- measures designed to prevent childbirth in such a group;
- removal of children from the family;
- deliberate creation of living conditions calculated to bring about the total or partial physical destruction of that group. Since 1948, genocide has been recognized by the UN as an international crime.". Source: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

When I personally hear the word GENOCIDE anywhere, I always remember the tragedy of the North American Indians, whom settlers from Europe and England exterminated for almost 500 years, physically and indirectly, in exactly this way "the deliberate creation of living conditions calculated to bring about the total or partial physical destruction of that group", until only a few thousand people remained of almost 20 million Indians.

“Indians is the general name for the indigenous population of America (with the exception of Eskimos and Aleuts). The Indians were engaged in hunting, gathering, and sedentary tribes were also engaged in agriculture. In the northern regions, the Indians hunted sea animals.

Initially, the Indians were not considered people at all, since nothing was said about them in the Bible, which guided the colonial settlers from Europe and England. To resolve the issue of the “human status” of the indigenous population of America, a special bull (decree) of the Pope was required, which was issued in 1537 and formally recognized the Indians as people.

Despite this, the conquerors of America used sophisticated methods of genocide against the Indians: they began to destroy huge herds of bison, the hunt for which was the basis of life for the steppe tribes, the Indians were “given” blankets infected with smallpox, after which epidemics that had catastrophic consequences broke out among them. All this led to the fact that entire tribes of Indians died out.

Why were North American colonialists so persistent in their efforts to literally wipe out the indigenous population from the face of the earth?

The reason is simple: completely different concepts of what “good” and “bad” are.

Since the Indians considered the entire world around them to be the creation of the Great Spirit, they called the land sacred. Everything that existed on this earth was sacred: animals, plants, forces of nature.

The words of the leader of Seattle are known: "The earth is our mother. Everything that happens to the earth happens to the sons and daughters of the earth. The earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth. We know this. All things are connected - like blood that connects a family. We are at peace with everything what surrounds us".

European colonists and American settlers could not understand such an attitude towards nature. They perceived as “savagery and paganism” the fact that Indian hunters looked at the forest, earth, water as living beings, that they considered themselves not masters of the world, but children of nature.

In turn, the Indians were shocked by the consumer attitude of the whites towards the environment; they were horrified by deforestation and the senseless destruction of bison and other animals.

It seemed to the Indians that the newly arrived Europeans hated nature itself, living forests with their birds and animals, grass-covered valleys, water, soil, the air itself..." .

A very similar situation has developed in modern capitalist Russia, only we have the Shor people in the role of Indians!

Announcer's voice: “In the summer of 2012, Alla Borisovna Takmagasheva, a person with unique abilities, such people are popularly called a healer, came to her small homeland in the village of Kazas along with television journalists to film a program about psychics. A visit to her native village after a long absence left her in shock: “Almost The river was no longer visible, and the water flowing in it was black, charcoal, and not potable."- says Takmagasheva. Is it worth telling what it means for a Shori woman to see destroyed sacred ancestral places?! After all, according to the worldview of the Shors, both mountains and water are living organisms! The television crews were confused and unsettled by the reaction of local residents to the television group. They interfered with filming and demanded that we interview them. And during the interview they talked about only one thing: It turns out that the coal enterprise, which came to an unacceptably close distance to the village, not only invaded the territory of traditional economic activity of the indigenous people, but also, by desecrating and destroying places sacred to the residents, created conditions in the village itself that were impossible for living!.." (And this is nothing more than signs of genocide! Comment - A.B.).

Satellite photograph of the area. In the center is the Shor village of Kazas, where coal miners deliberately created conditions impossible for people to live in.

Vyacheslav Krechetov spoke about this and much more in his documentary “The Price”:

The cynicism and meanness of the newcomer local authorities was appreciated and experienced by Kuzbass resident Yuri Bubentsov, who did not stand aside from the misfortune that befell the Shors and decided to become their human rights activist:

How the local authorities reacted to such an initiative of the Shors can be found in the following video, “Special operation of the Myskovsk police to deprive voters of the opportunity to meet with State Duma deputies”:

The cries of indignation of the Shors and their pleas in 2015 were able to reach the representatives United Nations(UN), founded with the participation of the USSR in 1945.

The fact that the UN is already concerned about numerous reports of genocide carried out by the local Russian authorities against the Kuzbass Shors is evidenced by this document:

This document is dated 2015, but, as they say, “things are still there”!

The coal oligarchs, after everything they have done, are now simply obliged to build several comfortable villages in an ecologically clean place in Siberia for the surviving Shors, and this is just a little more than 12 thousand people! And until this happens, Russians have every right to sound the alarm and shout to the whole world about the fact of undisguised genocide being committed in modern Russia!