Russia is |
Peoples of Russia
Shors
The Shors are a Turkic people living in the southeastern part of the Western Siberia. Their self-designation is Tadar-Kizhi, currently almost all of them call themselves Shor. Other ethnonyms used for Shors were Kuznetsk Tatars, Kondoma and Mrassu Tatars, Abins. In 2000, by a decree of the Government of the Russian Federation they were given the status of native small-numbered people.
Language
The Shor language belongs to the Turkic branch of the Altai language family. It is divided into two dialects, Mrassu and Kondoma, each of those in its turn consisting of a number of territorial subdialects. The modern language standard was based on the Mrassu subdialect. The writing system was created in the 19th century on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet.
Dispersion
Their main territory of settlement is located in the south of the Kemerovo region - Kuzbass – the basin of the upper reaches of the river Tom and its tributaries Kondoma and Mras-Su – the Tashtagol, Novokuznetsk and Mezhdurechensk regions, the cities of Myski, Mezhdurechensk, Tashtagol, Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo. They also live in Khakassia (Askiz region, the city of Abakan, Tashtyp region).
Ethnic groups
The Shor people include the following ethnic groups: the northern or forest-steppe group (Abin) and the southern or mountain-taiga group (Shor).
Society
In the early 20th century, kinship relations were strong among the Shors. The boundaries of the administrative units (volost) coincided with the boundaries of settlement of patrilineal kinship groups that were managed by elected elders of the kin. The members of the kinship group called themselves karyndash (“by one venter”). Hunting and agricultural lands were assigned to kinship groups. By the end of the 19th-the beginning of the 20th century, territorial and neighborly relationships and differentiation by property were developing among the northern Shors.
Traditional occupations
The predominant occupations of the mountain-taiga (southern) Shors were hunting, fishing, gathering cedar nuts, slash-and-burn hoe farming. With the arrival of the Russian settlers, plough farming became widespread in the north in the steppe and mountain regions; the composition of the cultivated crops also changed – from the second half of the 19th century, significant territories were used for wheat. From 75 to 95 % of Shor households in the early 19th century lived by commercial hunting. Since the late 19th century, stall cattle breeding of the Russian peasant type became widespread among the forest and steppe (northern) Shors.
Dwellings
The Shor settlements (ulus in the north and ails in the south) included from 30 to 200 homesteads. Their houses were low four-corner log buildings (yurts) with birch bark roofs. In the 19th century, the Shors built Russian-type izbas and semi-dugout log dwellings. For temporary dwellings on the ploughland or in the taiga in summer they used odag, a conical construction from logs, poles or young trees and branches leaning against a tree, covered with birch bark; in winter, agys, a wood-framed building in the shape of a truncated pyramid from logs, planks, poles, covered with branches or birch bark, with a hearth in the middle. Currently the majority of the Shors live in city apartments, about 10 % – in loghouses and two-storey country houses.
Food
At first, the main food sources of the Shors were meat and poultry, fish and wild plants. With the development of agriculture, barley flour and grits became popular. The northern Shors used dairy products.
