Mordovia.

History

People lived here as early as the Neolithic, and the Mordvins appear in written sources from the 6th century. Prince Purgaz briefly united part of their lands before the region fell under the Golden Horde. After Ivan IV took Kazan in 1552, these lands became part of the Russian state. Saransk was founded in 1641 as a fortress on the south-eastern frontier and became a town in 1780. The Mordovian ASSR was created on 20 December 1934, and the republic has carried its current name since 1994.

Culture & traditions

Erzya and Moksha are related but not mutually intelligible; their literary standards were created in 1922 and 1923, and both are official alongside Russian. The sculptor Stepan Erzya, who worked for years in Argentina, devised a way of carving the ultra-hard algarrobo and quebracho woods; the museum named after him opened in Saransk in 1958 and holds 204 of his works. The capital also has an opera and ballet theatre, a puppet theatre and the Museum of Mordovian Culture.

Nature

Mordovia has 114 rivers and some five hundred lakes. The Smidovich Mordovia Nature Reserve, founded in 1936, is 97% forest: pine and mixed woods on the right bank of the Moksha, with oak groves and black alder in the floodplain. It records 788 plant species and 215 bird species, and is home to the Russian desman, beaver, moose and black stork. Smolny National Park, set up in 1995, protects forests and wetlands along the Alatyr River.

Sport

Mordovia is renowned for its race-walking school, the home of Olga Kaniskina, Anisya Kirdyapkina, Elena Lashmanova, Sergey Kirdyapkin and Valeriy Borchin. In 2018 Saransk was a FIFA World Cup host city, with four group-stage matches played at the Mordovia Arena.

Food & drink

Food processing is one of the republic's main industries, including large dairy plants. The rivers of Smolny National Park hold pike, perch and carp.

Practical information

Saransk Airport was modernised for the 2018 World Cup. Daily trains run to Moscow from Saransk-I station. The republic is on Moscow time. The climate is temperate continental, around −11 °C in January and +19 °C in July, with sub-zero temperatures for about five months. Late spring to early autumn is the best time to go.

What to see

• Erzya Museum of Visual Arts — 204 works by the sculptor, plus paintings by Fedot Sychkov.
• Cathedral of St Theodore Ushakov in Saransk — completed in 2006.
• Sanaksar Monastery — founded in 1659, it holds the relics of Admiral Ushakov.
• Mordovia Nature Reserve — pine forests on the Moksha and the rare desman.
• Smolny National Park — forests and floodplains of the Alatyr.
• Mordovia Arena — a 2018 World Cup stadium.

Cities on the map

• Saransk 309,349