We are not only Slavs
It's no secret that the Russian people are not completely Slavic. The blood of both the Finno-Ugric and Baltic tribes flows in us. Sometimes they try to offend Russians with this: for example, in the rhetoric of Ukrainian nationalists there is a widespread thesis that Russians, they say, are not Slavs, but "narrow-eyed Moshkans." This is partly true, but for any sane person, such things cannot be offensive. The wealth of our country is in its multinationality, and the wealth of the Russian people is in its diverse genetics.
At the very beginning of the existence of the Russian state, under the rule of the Novgorod and Vladimir-Suzdal principalities, many non-Slavic tribes lived. Some of them became peoples and exist today, for example, the Vods, Vespa, Karelians, Estonians. Others, however, completely assimilated and dissolved in the Russian people. One of the largest extinct Finno-Ugric tribes was the Merya.
Who are Merya
This small, peace-loving people by the middle of the 1st millennium AD. settled in vast forest areas, which are now located in Moscow, Ivanovo, Yaroslavl, Vladimir, Vologda Kostroma regions. The Mery tribal center is the Sarskoye settlement, which archaeologists discovered on Lake Nero, in the Yaroslavl region. Representatives of this people lived by agriculture and cattle breeding. The Meri religion was founded on reverence for nature. Like many other Finnish peoples, the Merja worshiped sacred groves and special stones. Many primordially Russian cities - Suzdal, Vladimir on the Klyazma, Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, Uglich, Plyos, and, possibly, even Moscow - grew out of Meryan villages. In terms of the development of culture, the Merya were almost in no way inferior to the neighboring Slavic tribes of the Krivichi and Vyatichi, except for one thing: they did not know how to fight. Therefore, when in the second half of the 1st millennium, Slavs, more experienced and aggressive, began to appear on the Mery lands, the Mery had to submit. On the Mery lands, the Slavs settled themselves, and the lands of other Finno-Ugric peoples, for example, the Mari, were made vassal. That is why the Merya gradually merged with the Russians, and its closest eastern relatives, the Mordovians, the Mari, developed as separate ethnic groups.
We have no evidence that the Slavs exterminated the Meru, and, apparently, there was no such thing. Russia was originally built as a community of different tribes, and there could be no question of any prejudiced attitude of some peoples to others. In the 9th century, the Meri paid tribute to Novgorod and took part in Oleg's campaigns against Constantinople. When Russia became Orthodox, many people resisted Christianization until the XIV century. Perhaps at this stage the Mary got from the Russians - the Christianization of isolated settlements was sometimes carried out aggressively. After the XIV century, none of the chroniclers mentioned Merya as a separate, really existing ethnos.
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Merya's trace in the history of the Russian people
Merya founded many cities that we are used to considering as primordially Russian. Suzdal, Vladimir on the Klyazma, Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, Uglich, Plyos, and, possibly, even Moscow, grew out of Merya settlements. The city of Galich near Kostroma in ancient times was called Galich-Mersky - before becoming an outpost of the Vladimir principality in the northeast, this city was a settlement of Merya. Many other place names of this region are Meryan. For example, everything that ends in -ga and -va: Moscow, Vetluga, originated from Meryan words on the water theme. Taldom, near Moscow, is an “oak house” in Meryan, and the name of the Dubna river is not associated with oaks, it comes from the Meryan word for swamps. There are a lot of such Meryan toponyms in the central, primordially Russian part of Russia. Place names with the root ner- are directly related to Merya: Lake Nero in Kostroma,rivers Nerskaya and Nerekhta in the Moscow region. By the way, another popular toponym, especially often found in the Moscow region, is meschera, this is the name of a people closely related to her, who shared her fate and also joined the Russian people.
The Russian language includes a lot of Finno-Ugric words: "tundra", "sprat", "herring", etc. Sometimes it is difficult to say exactly from which Finno-Ugric language this or that word is borrowed, but it is quite possible that many of them are Meryan. As for genetics, it is difficult to judge here. It is impossible to carry out genetic studies of Meri and compare their genes with the Russians. However, from an anthropological point of view, many Russians, especially the northeastern populations, have features of the Uralic race, to which the Meria and other Finno-Ugric peoples belonged. Slanting eyes, wide cheekbones, which are found in many of us, we owe our Finno-Ugric ancestors. Merya and other peoples of this family merged with the Russians and enriched our gene pool. Russian descendants of the Merya tribe live throughout Russia. But their historical homeland is the Zalessky region,northeastern principalities of Russia.
Alexander Artamonov