After conquering Kazan and Astrakhan, the Russian authorities paid special attention to the Mordovians; This more peaceful tribe, which showed no little inclination to accept Christianity, naturally aroused the desire to spread the Christian religion among it. It is clear, therefore, that both administrators and missionaries worked diligently in this direction. Under Patriarch Nikon, who himself was the son of a Mordvin peasant, the people who converted the Mordvins to Christianity achieved unprecedented energy. Of course, all this contributed to a certain extent to the Russification of the Mordovian tribe, but even more effective was the action taken in the KhUP stolfmi, when, under various pretexts, they began to settle Russians among Mordovian villages, and Mordovians among Russians. In such a joint life, the natural advantage turned out to be on the side of the strong tribe; The Mordovians little by little got along with the Russians and, little by little forgetting their native language, flooded it with Russian words. This method of Russification led to the fact that even that part of the Mordovians who remained loyal to paganism began to include in their religion the names of Orthodox saints and in their prayers and religious rituals - a lot of Russian words. Now the majority of the Mordovian population speaks essentially not Mordovian with some Russian words, but, on the contrary, a corrupted Russian language with some Mordovian words. Mordvins are entirely Orthodox, but ancient pagan customs have been preserved among them to a significant extent; So, for example, the Mordovians still celebrate Kelu-Modya, that they will conquer the Russian Semik; Mordovian carols are the same as those of the Russians. G. Melnikov finds in this regard that in general the ancient Mordovians probably had great similarities with the ancient pagan religions of the Russian Slavs; It may even be that both those and other pagans had identical paganism, but the Russians, who adopted Christianity 9 centuries ago, stole these creations.
completely forgotten, although some memories of them were preserved in various rituals, the Mordovians, who converted to Christianity relatively recently, were somewhat able to remember their old faith.
A little before reaching Samara, on the low-lying plane of the meadow side, rises a very original mound, called “Tsarev Kurgan”; the village located on its northern side is called “Tsarevshchina”. The shape of the mound, visible from afar, is very original: it is a series segment and, moreover, so regular that this very correctness hints at the artificiality of the origin of the mound. Regarding the Tsarev Kurgan, there is a saying of this kind: here Toann the Terrible counted his countless army; He ordered each warrior to bring a handful of earth to the place where they would spend the night, and so his army poured the Tsarev Kurgan. Let's say this is not of Russian origin; it was borrowed from Mordovian songs about Tsar Thomas the Terrible, and several of these existed and exist to this day. It is remarkable that the Mordovians retain a particularly vivid memory of Toanna the Terrible. Every Mordovian stump about him, when translated into the correct Russian language, begins with these words (see S. Monastyrek, p. 205):
“The great Tsar, our father, the First Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, was a terrible story!”
Through the dense forest with army-power He passed through the Mordovian land,
He took the kingdom of Kazan, in passing - Astrakhan,
He brought Gerfil out of Novgorod,
Didn’t bring treason out of stone Moscow.”
Below the Tsarev Kurgan, the Volga valley narrows somewhat and both banks become steep, forming, as it were, a gorge; this place is called the Samara Gate. The gate itself is formed by: on one bank the SjErnaya Mountain, protruding 100 fathoms above the level of the Volga. heights, and on the other, the end of the Sokoliny Mountains ridge, heading along the left side of the Soka River.
— Head of UT.
From Samara to Daritsyn,
amara—as P. Alabina puts it—“a flower that blossomed before our eyes.” V. Nemirovich-Danchenko characterizes Samara this way: “this is the city of the future, this is a healthy blood and milk young man, before whom everything turns pink and flutters in the rays of the rising sun for him.” At the time when this was said, “the rising sun in all likelihood meant the laying out of a huge railway path, a significant part of which now already exists and, in addition, in the form of two suns.”