The second half of the nineteenth century brought significant economic changes, as Chuvash peasants left their villages for railway employment, lumbering and factory work in the Urals, mining in the Donbas, and migrant agricultural labor. Urbanization began in this period and accelerated in the twentieth century, although in 1989 less than half (49.8 percent) of the Chuvash in the Russian Federation lived in cities.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917, Chuvash leaders demonstrated interest in joining the Idel-Ural (Volga-Ural) state proposed by Tatar politicians as a counterbalance to Russian hegemony in the region, and later (March 1918) agreed to join the Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Republic. After this project fell victim to the conflicts of the civil war, the Soviet government formed a Chuvash Autonomous Region (1920), later upgraded to an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1925). Chuvash leaders declared their republic an SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic, or union republic) in 1990 and renamed it the Chuvash Republic in 1992. Important organizations active since the late Soviet years include the Chuvash Party of National Rebirth, the Chuvash National Congress, and the Chuvash Social- Cultural Center. The Chuvash Republic is a signatory to the March 31, 1992, treaty that created the Russian Federation. See also: NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aygi, Gennady, ed. (1991). An Anthology of Chuvash Poetry, tr. Peter France. London: Forest Books; [S.l.]: UNESCO.
R?na-Tas, Andr?s, ed. (1982). Chuvash Studies. Budapest: Akad?miai Kiad?; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Shnirelman, Viktor A. (1996). Who Gets the Past? Competition for Ancestors Among Non-Russian Intellectuals in Russia. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Cimmerians are a nomadic, Iranian-speaking peoples who occupied the North Pontic steppe zone from the Don to the Danube, with their center in the Crimea. Their culture and civilization flourished between about 1000 and 800 B.C.E. Pastoralists had inhabited the North Pontic region since approximately 4000 B.C.E., or some three thousand years prior to the advent of the Cimmerians, but the latter were the first to be mentioned by name in the written sources, and so they were sometimes (inaccurately) seen by historians as the earliest nomadic peoples of southern Russia.
It is not clear whether the term “Cimmerian” represented an ethnic group or simply designated any Iranian- speaking equestrian nomads inhabiting the North Pontic area. There is also no consensus on the origins of these peoples. However, it is most likely that the Cimmerians evolved out of the sedentary Srubnaia (“Timber-Grave”) archaeological culture of the second millennium B.C.E. after they took up a pastoral way of life in the steppe. There are reasons to believe that the Cimmerians can be connected to the Belozersk culture, which some scholars believe is derived from the late Srub-naia culture. By about 800 B.C.E., the Cimmerians were supplanted by the Scythians, a closely akin Iranian-speaking nomadic group that arrived in the area and absorbed some of the former into their tribal confederation while expelling the rest. Some Cimmerian tribes who were ejected from the North Pontic steppe zone moved southeast through Transcaucasia into Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia, which they raided for about twenty years. See also: CRIMEA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Christian, David. (1998). A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, vol. 1: Inner Asia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
CIRCASSIANS See CHERKESS.
Circus was first introduced in Russia in 1793 by Charles Hughes of the Royal Circus of London. Established on a permanent basis in 1853, Russian circus was dominated by foreigners in the early years, such as the Salomanskys of Berlin in Moscow and the Cinizellis of Italy in St. Petersburg. Circuses traveled around with tents, but stationary circuses were also built in largely populated areas in Russia. Stationary circuses are more profitable and can also be active during inclement weather. During Soviet times there were about seventy stationary circuses and about forty remain in Russia in the early twenty-first century.
Circus in Russia has deep roots in the rich Russian cultural traditions, but circus performances in Russia are also known for their social comedies. Circus clowns in prerevolutionary Russia created satirical skits about landowners and merchants. The famous Durov brothers, Anatoly and Vladimir, a clown pair whose underlying purpose with their social comedies was to fight the oppressive tsarist regime, mastered this form. The Durov brothers were also animal tamers who developed the well-known Durov method of humane animal care and training.
The satirical nature of the circus and its appeal as a form of mass entertainment translated well into the Soviet world of popular culture. Intellectuals attacked the circus in the wake of the 1917 Revolution and labeled it an institution of superstition, animal cruelty, and vulgarity. Others noted that the circus offered an alternative mode of presenting historical and political themes through satirical clowning. The circus was nationalized in 1919 and the Commissariat of Enlightenment created a new department for it within its theater section. During the civil war the circus was turned to revolutionary uses, and later during World War II circus performers expressed patriotic feelings by staging victorious battles and honoring Russia’s wartime allies.
The circus survived the Bolshevik cultural revolution well as circus acts already had a tradition of conveying political messages. In addition to political preaching, Soviet circus successfully mixed comedy and clowning with moralizing. During the
CIVIC UNION
Nikita Khrushchev years, popular routines addressed child upbringing, warned against foreign fashion, excessive drinking, stilyagi, and other social menaces. Circus continued to amuse Soviet citizens into the Leonid Brezhnev era, focusing on popular acts such as acrobatics, high wire, dancing bears, Cossack riders, and clowning. Clowns remained the greatest stars of the Russian circus.
Although tiring to the Soviet audience, Russian circus was conservative and continued to present internationally acclaimed ethnic variety shows well into the 1980s. With perestroika the circus abandoned the standard Soviet elements of the circus, such as folk culture, appraisal of World War II heroism, and politics. In the early twenty-first century, pop music and skits devoid of political or moral preaching draw huge crowds as the professionalism of Russian circus artists is widely acclaimed. With changing times, Russian circus has reinvented itself and continues to be a valued form of entertainment in Russia. See also: CULTURAL REVOLUTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hammarstrom, David Lewis. (1983). Circus Rings around Russia. Hamden, CT: Archon. Stites, Richard. (1992) Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900. New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Civic Union was a political movement active in 1992 and 1993, intended to represent the interests of state-owned enterprises and their managers and employees. It was a bloc of several parties and extraparliamentary organizations. One of its leaders was Vice President Alexander Rutskoy; another was Arkady Volsky, president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. Its activities were a reaction against the economic policies of the Yegor Gaidar government (1991-1992).
Russian governments in the Boris Yeltsin era, in accordance with mainstream Western economics, aimed at financial stabilization, specifically of the price level. The Civic Union was more interested in real stabilization: namely, stabilization of output levels. It primarily aimed to halt, and then reverse, the sharp fall in production and living standards that took place between 1989 and 1992.
Unlike the Gaidar government, the Civic Union, worried about the possible negative consequences of privatization, did not consider it a high priority, and believed that any privatization of large enterprises should adhere to the Soviet tradition of safeguarding the rights of employees.
With respect to liberalization, the Civic Union saw advantages in the partial reintroduction of some elements
