Participation of the Mordovians, Mari and Chuvash in military activities of the Moscow state in the 16th century

The article investigates the question of the Middle Volga region's peoples (Mordovians, Mari and Chuvash) participation in military campaigns of the Moscow Kingdom in the 16th century. The relevance of the issue is determined by its poor development in historiography. The lower chronological framework is determined by the time of appearance of the representatives of these peoples in the military service of the Grand Duke. The representatives of the Mordva appeared in the Moscow troops not later than 1519; the Mari and Chuvash people joined them during the conquest of the Kazan khanate. The author states that the total number of peoples of the Middle Volga region who participated in the campaigns amounted to about 1.5 thousand people. This is threefold less than a number of serving Tatars. Mordovians, Mari and Chuvash took part in campaigns noticeably less than the Tatars. However, it is possible to confidently talk about their participation in almost all the wars of the Moscow state of that period: the Moscow-Lithuanian war of 1512-1522, the war of Starodub, the capture of Kazan, a number of campaigns of the Livoni-an war (in 1557, 1558, 1562, 1563, 1571, 1577, 1579, 1580, and 1583), the fighting of the Nogai and Crimean raids in 1585 and 1598. The Mordovian, Mari and Chuvash contingents were included in the regiments, but were kept apart from Russians and other categories of servicemen, with the exception of certain groups of the Mordovians and Maris, who served together with Tatar princes, mirzas and their Cossacks (Tatars). Among commanders, there were mirzas and princes (most probably Tatars), and heads («golova»), who were Russian people, to whom the mirzas and princes obeyed. This demonstrates that the position of the Mordovians, Mari and Chuvash in Russian troops was similar to the position of serving Tatars.