CHUVASH RELIGION. The nearly two million Chuvash-speaking peoples inhabit the Chuvash Republic, Tatarstan, and Bashkortostan, all autonomous republics within the Russian Federation. The Chuvash have had a long history of contact with Islam and Christianity that has in varying degrees affected the traditional indigenous religion.

In the first few centuries BCE the Turkic language family separated into two groups: the first now includes the Turkish spoken in Turkey and the Turkic languages spoken in the Russian Federation, Poland, Iran, Afghanistan, and China. The second group, which included Khazar and Bulgar until they became extinct in the Middle Ages, is now made up solely of Chuvash. Thus the Chuvash language and people play a key role in reconstructing most of what is known today of ancient Turkic religion.

In the eighth century the Chuvash moved from the south to the middle Volga region, where they formed the...