Gagauz people in Moldova. Who are the Gagauz people and where do they live? - Where did the name itself come from - Gagauzia

The origin of the Gagauz

The Gagauz are a relatively small Turkic-speaking people, numbering about 220 thousand people. The religion of the Gagauz people is Orthodoxy. Most of the Gagauz people now compactly live in the region bearing the historical name of Budjak, which is currently divided by the border of Ukraine and Moldova.

The Gagauzians migrated to Budjak from their historical homeland, Dobrudja, in the Balkans, in the second half of the 17th - early 19th centuries, fleeing the Ottoman yoke, when part of the settlers reached the Zaporozhye region of present-day Ukraine. Here they founded their villages, where the Gagauz live to this day, largely assimilated by the local population.

In the second half of the 19th century, fleeing the forced Bulgarianization carried out by the government of Bulgaria liberated from the Turks, the Gagauz who remained in Dobrudja were forced to move to Greece, where they settled in Eastern Thrace and northern Evros. Here Gagauz settlements still exist.

During the Stolypin agrarian reform, part of the Gagauz from Budzhak moved to Kazakhstan, where their descendants still live.

In the 1920s, many Gagauzians from Budjak, then part of Romania, moved to Canada, Brazil and Argentina in search of work.

During the period of collectivization, a large group of Gagauzians moved and settled in Uzbekistan.

Currently, the Gagauz people also live in Russia, Turkmenistan, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey.

The Gagauz people consider themselves to be an independent people with their own language, culture and ethnic territory of Budjak.

Many scientists have tried to answer the question who the Gagauz are and give a reasonable explanation of their origin. But, nevertheless, in the early ethnic history of the Gagauz people to this day there are many blank spots, and the question of the origin of this people is controversial. The most famous of the modern researchers of Gagauz ethnography, Mikhail Guboglo, himself a Gagauz by origin, pointed out the existence of twenty-one versions of the origin of the Gagauzians. These versions are very different from each other.

In Turkey, for example, there is a popular version that the Gagauz are the descendants of the Asia Minor Turks who migrated to Dobruja in the 13th century under the leadership of Sultan Keykavus. Here Keykavus founded the first state of the Gagauz Uziyalet.Russian, Moldavian and Gagauz scientists believe that the Gagauz people are an independent people that was formed on the basis of the North Turkic tribes of the Pechenegs, Uzes and Polovtsians who moved to the Balkans from Central Asia in the 10th century, after the defeat of the Kazar kingdom by the Russian prince Svyatoslav, and who adopted Christianity here.According to the theory of the historian D. Todoroglo, Gagauz by origin, the Gagauz descend from the Turkic tribe of Oghuz, who, during the adoption of Islam by the Turks, remained faithful to the old pagan faith and left Central Asia, settling north of the Caspian and Black Seas between the Volga and Danube, founding later in Dobrudja the first state of the Gagauz Uziyalet, and then took over from the Byzantines Christianity.However, the latest scientific research in the field of ethnic genomics refutes all the numerous versions of historians about the origin of the Gagauz from the Turkic tribes, whether they are Seljuks, Pechenegs, Polovtsians or Oguzes, who moved to the Balkans from Asia.In a comparative study of the genes of the Turkic-speaking peoples of the former USSR, which covered not only the Volga-Ural region, but also the North Caucasus, Central Asia and Siberia, more than 8,000 people from 60 populations were examined. At the same time, the complete absence of "Asian" lines of mitochondrial DNA in the Gagauzians was revealed. Those. Gagauz people are Europeans by origin. Therefore, taking into account the above, the version of the origin of the Gagauzians from the Thracian tribe of the Cattauzes, put forward by some Greek researchers, seems to be more correct.

The first mention of the cattauz who lived in Dobrudja dates back to the 3rd-4th centuries A.D. Herodotus and Ptolemy wrote about cattauses. They are also mentioned in Roman chronicles such as Ovid and Pliny.

The main occupation of the Cattauz was cattle breeding and agriculture. Thanks to this, they were able to survive the frequent raids of nomadic tribes and the migrations of peoples passing through their territory. The fall of the first Roman, then the Byzantine Empire did not affect their presence in this territory either. The Cattauzes withstood and adapted to the new political and economic conditions.

The establishment of Christianity as an official religion led to the Christianization of all peoples in the Balkans, including the Cattauzes. Considering that the Cattauzes sought to live closer to the cities in order to sell their products faster and more profitably, they were Hellenized, and the Hellenized population more easily adopted Christianity due to the spread of the new religion through the Greek language.At the end of the Crusades, three principalities were formed on the territory of present-day Bulgaria. In the Tarnovo and Vidin kingdoms, the population was mainly Bulgarian. The majority of the population of the Dobrudzhan principality was made up of kattauzes. Besides them, the Byzantine Greeks, Vlachs, Cumans and Seljuk Turks lived on this territory.The principality reached its special prosperity during the reign of Dobrotitsa, which separates itself from the other two Bulgarian principalities and approaches Byzantium. The Dobrotitsa fleet dominated the Black Sea and was fiercely competitive in trade to the Genoese.
In 1394, the Kattauz principality was conquered by the Ottomans due to the refusal of Dobrotitsa's son Ivanko to participate in the military campaign of the Ottomans against Christian Hungary and Moldova. Part of the Christian population of the principality was exterminated by the Ottomans, part dispersed, and part was resettled to Eastern Thrace, where the cattauzes worked in the fields of the Sultan and in the charitable institutions of his Ukrainian wife Roksolana.After the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans and the proclamation of the Patriarch of Constantinople as the religious and political leader of all Christians, the cattausas became part of the Christian millet. Over time, the word "kattauz" was transformed into "gagauz". And since the Gagauzians lived among the Ottoman Turks, in order to survive and be able to exchange goods, they gradually forgot their language and began to speak Turkish.
It is characteristic that the Gagauz language is similar to the language of the Balkan Ottomans, and not to the language of the Ottomans of Asia Minor.In conclusion, we can say with confidence that the Gagauz are a Thracian tribe of northern Bulgaria, which has only one specific feature in relation to other Thracians. They are Turkic-speaking, but they are convinced Christians.

In this review - about Gagauzia, about the Gagauz people and ... music. You can listen to the music of the Gagauz people in our audio file, which contains a recording from our archive of two programs of the Russian broadcasting Radio Bulgaria (Bulgaria is the historical homeland of the Gagauz people, from where they moved to Moldova), with unusually sounding Gagauz songs like: “Todor sells his wife to slavery to help out money to feed their children. ”These songs, however, accurately reflected the life of the Gagauz people in the past.

But the story about Gagauz songs, which is partially available in the text of the material, is only a small part of our review of the primary sources.

audio file # 1

Gagauzia is one of the three constituent parts of Moldova, But if Transnistria, with a predominantly Russian-speaking population, fell away from the government of Chisinau, then Gagauzia was able to persuade at the last moment to stay, giving the region a greater degree of autonomy.

Now Gagauzia is the official autonomy of Moldova (its full name is the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauz Yeri). Modern Gagauzia is distinguished by the presence of an open political struggle and a certain level of democracy. Gagauzia is headed by the head of the region, called "Bashkan Gagauz Yeri". Bashkan is elected by the population and approved by the President of Moldova.

The legislative branch is represented by the People's Assembly of Khalk Toplusu, headed by a chairman called the Khalk Toplusu Bashi. This position with a resounding name is currently held by a woman.

The origin of the Gagauz

Gagauz Yeri, with its capital in the city of Comrat, includes settlements on the territory of compact residence of the Gagauz in the south of Moldova, where, as a rule, more than 50% of the population are Gagauz. Currently about 78% of the population of Gagauz Yeri are Gagauz, and most of the villages in the territory are 90% Gagauz... Also Bulgarians, Moldavians, Russians live in the region. The territory of Gagauzia is not a continuous territory, including several separate enclaves.

And here is what the Gagauz official website gagauzia.md writes about the origin of the Gagauz people

“The Gagauz are a Turkic people of Christian faith, the main part of which lives in the northern part of the central Budjak, which since 1940 entered the southern borders of the Republic of Moldova. ("Budjak" (from the Turkish "corner", "nook") is a historical region that includes the southern part of present-day Moldova and part of the Odessa region of Ukraine. Note site). According to the 2004 census, there were 155.6 thousand Gagauz people in the Republic of Moldova. About 40 thousand Budzhak Gagauz live in the adjacent areas of the Odessa region of Ukraine. There are separate villages of the Gagauz in the Zaporozhye region of Ukraine, in Russia, Kazakhstan and in European countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Turkey). "

Another Gagauz official site - the site of the mayor's office of the Chok-Maidan settlement writes the following about the origin of the people:

“According to written sources, the first Gagauz state emerged in the 13th century. on the territory of the now Romanian Dobrudja. It existed for more than two centuries and fell under the blows of the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. A significant part of the Gagauz people fled from oppression for their Orthodox faith from Dobrudja across the Danube and settled in Budjak, which in 1812 passed from the Ottoman Empire to the Russian.

The ethnogenesis of the Gagauzians has not been clarified in detail by researchers, despite the fact that the discussion has been going on over the past decades. There are three main hypotheses:

Gagauz - Christianized descendants of nomadic Turkic ethnic groups of the northern Black Sea region: Oguzes, Torks, Pechenegs and Polovtsians;

Gagauz - Turkic Bulgarians who left the Balkans under the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks;

Gagauz - Turks who moved from Asia Minor, gradually lost touch with their homeland and eventually baptized under the influence of the new environment.

Controversy around the issue of the origin of the Gagauz from the middle of the twentieth century. began to take on a political character. So, b Olgar historians and ethnographers categorically insist on the Bulgarian origin of the Gagauzians, the official science of Turkey and some other Turkic countries support Turkish, and (in the USSR they cited) ... evidence of the north-Black Sea origin of the Gagauzians. Among these evidences is an extensive layer of livestock culture contained in the language and traditions of the people (the inhabitants of the Balkans and Asia Minor are mainly farmers); slightly noticeable Mongoloid admixture in anthropological characters; an abundance of borrowings from the Iranian languages, obtained, possibly, during the past nomadic wanderings of the ancestors of the Gagauz in Central Asia.

Since 1812, the fates of the Gagauz people and Russia have been closely linked. Budjak was part of the Bessarabian province until 1918, with the exception of a short period of 1856-1878, when the southern part of this region belonged to Romania. In 1905, an organization was created that carried out agitation work to unite the Gagauz peasants in the struggle for their rights. The national movement developed into a peasant uprising in January 1906. At the peak of popular uprisings, the Comrat Republic was proclaimed, which existed for 5 days and was suppressed by the tsarist government. The process of national revival of the Gagauzians was interrupted by the occupation of Bessarabia by the Romanian troops in 1918. In 1940, Bessarabia became part of the USSR, and the Gagauz lands were divided between the Moldavian SSR (the main part) and the Ukrainian SSR. In 1941-1944. Budjak survived the Romanian occupation again. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Gagauz people faced negative attitude of Romanians and Moldavians not only to the possibility of national autonomy, but also to the facts of the presence of national culture. "

As you can see from this description, in Gagauzia, they remember the oppression from both Russia and Romania and Moldova.

According to the Law of Moldova on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia (Gagauz Yeri) of 1994, which regulates the creation of Gagauzia, the Gagauzians negotiated for themselves the possibility of secession from Moldova. We quote: "In the event of a change in the status of the Republic of Moldova as an independent state, the people of Gagauzia have the right to external self-determination." This is clearly insurance against the possibility of Moldova joining Romania, given the common roots of Moldovans and Romanians. (which is now universally recognized. In general, only tsarist, and then pro-Soviet philologists, who needed to justify the rejection of Moldova in favor of the Russian Empire and the USSR, initially insisted on the separate character of the Moldovan language).

Gagauz language

Despite the fact that before the introduction of the Cyrillic alphabet, the Gagauz language had no writing at all (occasionally, either Greek or Latin and sometimes Cyrillic letters were used to write words), the Soviet history with the imposition of the Cyrillic alphabet for Gagauz was in many ways similar to the history with the introduction of the Cyrillic alphabet for Moldovan, which was part of the Romanian language.

Tsarist Russia and the USSR always tried to fix the Cyrillic alphabet for both languages, however, as a result, in 1989 the Moldovan language returned to the Latin alphabet, and the Gagauz language switched to it in 1996.

What is interesting for the creation of a new Latin alphabet, as well as grammar, the Gagauz University in Comrat attracted all the same Russian Turkologists who were promoting the Cyrillic alphabet for the Gagauz language, for example, the Turkologist L. Pokrovskaya, who recalled in 2007 "From the newspaper Vesti Gagauzii (No. 77-78, Oct. 2007), quoted on the website of the United Gagauzia movement):

“It should be noted that the Gagauz language was the last of the 130 languages of the peoples of the USSR to receive its own written language... This happened only in 1957, while all other languages \ u200b \ u200bof the small peoples of the USSR received their written language back in the 20s - 30s. XX century

Thanks to the state policy of the so-called "language building", alphabets and spelling rules for unwritten languages were developed in those years by the most prominent Russian linguists - specialists in these languages (Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Caucasian, northern and others).

Only after the end of the war (1941-1945), when the Moldavian Soviet Republic was formed, the leading Russian Turkologist, Professor Dmitriev in 1947 created the Gagauz Studies Commission at the Department of Literature and Language of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He found in Moscow two Gagauz people who knew their native spoken language, these were brothers Nikolai Petrovich and Vasily Petrovich Arabadzhi. He also included in the commission a Moscow professor - Bulgarian scholar S.B. Bernstein, who studied the Bulgarian dialects of Bessarabia, and the Chisinau historian I.I. Meshcheryuk, a Bulgarian from the village. Vulcanesti of the MSSR, who worked in the Moldavian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Chisinau ...

Except for Professor Dmitriev, none of the Turkologists in the 1930s-1940s. did not study the Gagauz language (based on the folklore records of the ethnographer V.A.Moshkov, published by academician V. Radlov at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1904). The primary task of the Gagauz Commission was to create a written language for the Gagauz language. Prof. N.K. Dmitriev developed a draft of the alphabet of the Gagauz language, which was approved by the commission and sent to the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR. The project of the Gagauz alphabet, like the alphabets of all other Turkic languages of the USSR, was based on Russian graphics.

In the project of the Gagauz alphabet prof. Dmitriev included four additional letters denoting specific sounds of the Gagauz language, which are not in Russian. These were the letters that were included in the alphabets of many Turkic languages at that time. However, prof. Dmitriev never received any response from the Moldovan authorities to the proposal of the Gagauz Commission on the introduction of the Gagauz language writing system in the Moldavian SSR (he died in December 1954).

But it should be borne in mind that in 1947, when prof. Dmitriev sent to Chisinau a draft of the alphabet of the Gagauz language, he, of course, did not know that in Bessarabia in 1946-1947. there was a terrible hunger. Detachments of the Stalinist NKVD took away the last grain from the peasants at the expense of "state supplies" ...

In June 1957, in Moscow, I unexpectedly received at the Institute of Linguistics a letter from Chisinau from the editor-in-chief of the Moldovan newspaper Moldova Sochialiste, Peter Darienko, and five issues of the Gagauz leaflet - an appendix to this newspaper. In his letter, Petr Darienko asked me to inform him of my comments and suggestions on the Gagauz language of this newspaper and to write a note for it myself. Note: there was no official writing in the Gagauz language yet, and the newspaper in the Gagauz language was already published in Chisinau. The first issue was dated April 28, 1957. This fact was very strange. The Gagauz newspaper was printed in letters of only the Russian alphabet and, of course, without any spelling rules, since neither the Gagauz alphabet nor spelling rules existed in the world yet. Therefore, the language of the Gagauz newspaper was simply spontaneous; the inconsistency in the spelling of the same words was terrifying ...

My main proposals were that three letters should be included in the future Gagauz alphabet to designate the front row Gagauz vowels: ä, ö, ÿ, since the Russian letters I, ё, u cannot convey these vowels of the Gagauz language correctly. Long vowels of the Gagauz language were designated in the newspaper by double letters aa, oo, yy, yy, which, in my opinion, was correct, but was not consistently observed. It was necessary to include a specific letter in the consonants to designate a voiced affricative consonant (j), which in the newspaper was denoted by two letters j, for example, khaivanjylyk "animal husbandry", edzhi "seventh". Instead of the Russian letters yo, yu, I suggested two-letter combinations yo, yu, ya and introduce another combination yy.

But the Moldovan authorities did not turn to scientists in Moscow, to the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences for help in creating the Gagauz writing system, in developing the alphabet and written norms, but, without thinking twice, they themselves prepared and issued a formal Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the MSSR "On the introduction of writing for of the Gagauz language ”on July 30, 1957. This decree was published in all republican newspapers.

The text of the decree read:

“Meeting the wishes of the citizens of the Gagauz nationality, as well as the requests of the Soviet, party and public organizations, in order to develop national culture, improve the mass political and scientific and educational work among the Gagauz population, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR decides: based on the graphics of the Russian language (the alphabet of the Gagauz language is attached).

Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR I. Koditsa. Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR T, Pascal, Chisinau, July 30, 1957 ".

However, only the Russian alphabet was attached to the Decree, without any additional letters and signs. Like, whatever you want, just write in Russian letters. There was no such flawed "writing" in any national republic of the USSR».

But after a short time, the Moldovan authorities were forced to approve by pressure from the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR a new, improved draft of the spelling of the Gagauz language. Pokrovskaya writes:

“The spelling norms were based on the leading Comrat-Ceadir dialect with some elements of the Vulcanesti dialect. I identified these two dialects when examining different Gagauz dialects during my fieldwork in 1948, 1950, 1951 and 1956. The main principle of spelling was phonetic and morphological. In December 1957, I again had to go to Chisinau, where, at a republican meeting with the participation of the Ministry of Education of the MSSR and officials of the Council of Ministers, the Gagauz al-Favit I had developed and the spelling rules were to be approved. With great difficulty, the Moldovan authorities agreed to include the letters a, b, y in the Gagauz alphabet. But they decidedly refused the letter z. The arguments were as follows: in the Moldovan language there is also a consonant j, but there is no special letter for its designation, they write the letter j. Moldavians get along with the letter z, and the Gagauz, they say, will also get along. True, after 10 years, Moldavia did not nevertheless introduce an additional letter z into the Moldovan alphabet. The Gagauz people also used this letter.

On the illustration: Map of the modern autonomy of Gagauzia.

In the 50s - early 60s. the grammar of the Gagauz language, especially in the Gagauz language itself, could not be taught even in the elementary grades of the school, since it simply did not exist in the world yet. Naturally, there was no Gagauz grammatical terminology, even the most elementary one. Mainly therefore teaching in the Gagauz language in primary and lower secondary school at the beginning 60s years reached a dead end and was canceled by the Moldovan authorities in 1961. The official Gagauz script, of course, could not be eliminated altogether, but its functioning was limited only to the publication in Chisinau of small collections of poems and stories by Gagauz authors who appeared ...

In 1964, my first book, The Grammar of the Gagauz Language. Phonetics and morphology "(" Science ", 298 pages), linguistic material for which I collected during the expeditions in 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960 and 1961). After the publication of the book, the Gagauz language for the first time entered the scientific everyday life of Turkologists all over the world. After all Pthere was no scientific grammar, none of the linguists anywhere even mentioned the Gagauz language...

In 1986, at the beginning of "perestroika" in the USSR, the Gagauz people in Moldova somehow managed to re-establish teaching in the Gagauz language in secondary schools. But over the past 20 years, new school teachers have not been prepared and new textbooks have not been written, at least for elementary school.

In February 1991, the Gagauzians achieved the opening of the first ever Gagauz state university in the town of Comrat. Local Gagauz authorities, including deputy M.V. Marunevich, they immediately invited me to teach the grammar of the Gagauz language at this university, since there were no local teachers and textbooks for universities at all.

I brought to Comrat my draft of a new Gagauz alphabet based on Latin graphics, which I developed by the end of 1991. After all, Russia has already become a foreign state for Moldova, and the Gagauz alphabet based on Russian graphics has thus historically outlived its usefulness. (A very streamlined explanation, of course. Perhaps, initially it was necessary to develop the Gagauz script without involving the Cyrillic alphabet... Approx. site). Upon arrival in Comrat, I conveyed to the Gagauz political leaders, who at that time fought for the creation of the Gagauz Republic, my draft of the new alphabet. However, the Gagauz authorities did not dare to change the Russian script to Latin for a very long time. In my project of the Gagauz alphabet, there were at first 29 letters and then 30 letters. It was similar to the alphabet of the Turkish language, the only of the Turkic languages that had the Latin alphabet (since 1928). for example dera "river", dört "four", sürü "flock"). Then I found it necessary to include in the new alphabet the letter ê, which I took from the French alphabet. This letter denotes the so-called hard vowel E.

The new Gagauz alphabet also included the Romanian letter ţ (c) for writing borrowed words, such as, for example, kiraţa "sister-in-law" (younger sister of the husband) ţentra "center" and others. G.A. insisted on the introduction of this letter. Gaidarzhi, who at that time worked as a deputy. Director of the Institute for the Study of National Minorities of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova. It should be noted that the Türkic languages do not have an affricative stop c at all. This consonant in borrowed words is denoted, for example, in the Turkish alphabet by two letters: ts for example. (Slavutskiy).

Finally, after many troubles, unrest and resistance in Chisinau, the Gagauz Latin alphabet, consisting of 31 letters, was approved by the People's Assembly of Gagauzia on January 26, 1996, and the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova approved it on April 24, 1996 ”.

Pokrovskaya also noted in her 2007 speech:

"Now the main thing is to create competent teaching of the written Gagauz language, as well as not to succumb too much to the powerful influence of the Turkish language in Gagauzia."

Really, Gagauz and Turkish are very close. Therefore, it is easy for Gagauz to adapt in Turkey..

Modern Turkey and its state development agency provide great assistance to Gagauzia. So, for example, thanks to the help of this Turkish agency, the Public Company “Teleradio Gagauzia” (“Găgăuziya Radio Televizionu kulesi”), a couple of years ago, was finally able to distribute the broadcasting of its TV channel not only to the territory of the capital's Comrat Region, but also to the entire territory of Gagauzia, establishing in particular, in addition, Comrat and Vulcanesti have their own TV towers with transmitters. (Earlier in Comrat there was only a TV tower of the Moldovan state society “Radiocomunicaţii”).

“Teleradio Gagauzia”, which, by the way, pursues a rather independent policy from the Bashkan, is the only TV and radio company in Gagauzia, and it seems that in the world, broadcasting in Gagauz, the TV and radio company now also broadcasts the programs of the Turkish TRT.

But not Turkish competes with Gagauz in Gagauzia, and not Moldavian, but Russian. The official languages of Gagauzia are Gagauz, Moldavian and Russian. But Russian prevails.

The Law of Moldova on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia contains an interesting article “Correspondence with public administration bodies of the Republic of Moldova, enterprises, organizations and institutions located outside Gagauzia is carried out in Moldovan and Russian”. And not a word about the Gagauz language.

It is also curious that, for example, the official website of Gagauzia, which has existed for several years, works exclusively in Russian, although it has empty versions in Gagauz, Moldavian and English as well.

In Gagauzia, there are a number of schools and groups with teaching in Gagauz, as well as the already mentioned Comrat University, where there is a study of Gagauz. In Gagauz Yeri, publications are published in Gagauz, like “Gagauz dili hem literaturası” and the newspaper “Ana Sözü”, but the main media and websites are in Russian.

Gagauz,Bulgarians and music

So, by religion, the Gagauz people do not fit into the Turkic mainstream. Turks are almost always Muslims - both Turks, and Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz, and Tatars. (Except for the Yakuts and Chuvashes). And the Gagauz are Orthodox.

It is not surprising that in Orthodox Bulgaria the Gagauzians are considered a very close people, although in recent years they no longer claim categorically that the Gagauzians are Bulgarians who were Turkified during the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Several years ago, Radio Bulgaria devoted two interesting programs to the Gagauz people, where it also broadcast old Gagauz songs. These songs testify that the Gagauz people in the old days led a rather harsh lifestyle... You can listen to the original of these programs of the Russian broadcasting "Radio Bulgaria" in our audio file in the upper left corner of this page.

You can listen to the music of the Gagauz people in our audio file(in the upper left corner of this page), which contains a recording from our archive of two given radio programs of the Russian broadcasting Radio Bulgaria (Bulgaria is the historical homeland of the Gagauz people, from where they moved to Moldova), with unusually sounding Gagauz songs like: “Todor is selling his wife into slavery in order to help out money to feed their children ”; Also in the audio file there is a story about the Gagauz people, as seen from Sofia.

And below, in the transcript of the audio site, we will cite several excerpts from these broadcasts of the Bulgarian foreign broadcasting:

“One of the old songs of the Gagauz called“ Petrana ”, which sounds exactly like Bulgarian ... In this ballad, by the way, it tells how a husband is to teach his wife a lesson, who has a baby, and harnesses her to plow. Mother's milk covers black clods of earth.

So, about the Gagauz people. Since ancient times they live in compact masses, mainly in the northeastern part of Bulgaria, and are engaged in animal husbandry and agriculture. They themselves are Christians and are said to speak the old Turkish dialect. After the next Russian-Turkish war in 1828-1829, a considerable part of the local population, together with the huge masses of Bulgarians, fled from the persecution of the Turks, who had lost the war again, to the borders of present-day Moldova and Ukraine - to Bessarabia. Here they again settle next to the Bulgarians, with whom they still live in peace and friendship, like their great-grandfathers in Bulgaria.

They have kept their folklore wealth almost intact. It is with him that Professor, Doctor Nikolay Kaufman introduces us. Some of the entries are quite old, but please keep that in mind.

And here is the song: Todor sells his wife into slavery in order to raise money to feed his children. By the way, a similar plot was encountered quite often. And looking at the names and sounds of the songs, we can say that they were taken over by the Gagauz from the Bulgarians. For example, a song with the most Bulgarian name Stoyancho. The song begins with a whip, typical of Bulgarian get-together songs: “Hey, come on, Stoyancho!”.

There are songs that were accepted by the Gagauz people in Bessarabia. There are practically no signs of Bulgarian folklore here. It recalls the Crimean mountains, the smell of roses and great flour. It is called "Uzun kavak vardan".

As for the question of the origin of the Gagauz people, which are in northeastern Bulgaria, in Edirne - in Turkey, in Northern Greece and primarily in Moldova, as well as in the Odessa region, where there are a total of 30 to 40 thousand, then the disputes about their ethnogenesis continue, Some believe that these are the Turkic Slavs, others - that this is the late won of the 12-13th century nomads of the Oguz-Pechenegs and Polovtsians, in Bulgarian they are also called by the Cumans and the Seljuk Turks who settled, note within the Bulgarian states that largely contributed to its strengthening, became Orthodox, but retained their language and identity. Their language was subsequently strongly influenced by Turkish. " ("Russian broadcasting" Radio Bulgaria ", programs in 1999 and 2005).

Additionally:

Touches to the Gagauzian reality

The economy of Gagauzia is rather poorly developed, having mainly an agricultural focus: winemaking, tobacco cultivation, grain growing, animal husbandry. At the same time, the southern Budzhak steppes, with their arid climate, low humidity, danger of droughts and dry winds, are not the best place for farming. However, the fact that the Gagauz are Christians makes it easier for them to engage in winemaking, in comparison with other Turkic peoples, professing mainly Islam.

Currently m Many Gagauz people leave the country to work. For example, to Turkey. Despite the fact that it was precisely the flight from the Turks that was, according to one of the versions, the reason for the appearance of the Gagauz people on the territory of modern Moldova. But the Gagauz and Turkish languages are very close. Therefore, it is easy for the Gagauz to adapt in Turkey.

Gagauzia is divided into three regions: Comrat region, Ceadir-lunga region and Vulcanesti region. At the same time, there are three cities in Gagauzia: the capital of the autonomy of Comrat, Ceadir-Lunga and Vulcanesti. Ceadir-Lunga has a large number of enterprises, while Comrat is more focused on performing representative functions (administrative bodies, a university, a national museum operate here), while maintaining a rural look.

The Gagauz National Theater named after Mikhail Chakir operates in Ceadir-Lunga. (In honor of the representative of the famous Gagauz family of Chakirov, who popularized the Gagauz language).

The Gagauz people are characterized by names of Greek origin, which have become common for all Orthodox Christians: Mikhail, Nikolay, Dmitry, Elena, Sofia, etc. Surnames often contain formants -oglo (from the Turkic oglu - "son")- Kyroglo, Ivanchoglo, Pavlioglo, Baboglo, Filioglo, etc .; -zhi - Gaidarzhi, Arabadzhi, Kovalzhi and others; -ly - Pashaly, Fazly, Manastyrly, etc.

The Gagauz people were baptized into Orthodoxy by the Greeks or Bulgarians, as evidenced by the Greek and Bulgarian roots of the words and concepts of the Gagauz language, denoting the spiritual sphere of life. At the same time, the Gagauz word haji denotes a person who made a pilgrimage to holy places in Palestine, and the word giaur is used to define non-Christians, that is, from the point of view of the Gagauz people, infidels. Both of these concepts, as you know, come from the Arabic language, in which they have similar meanings, but in relation to Islam: hajji is a person who made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and giaur is a non-Muslim.

Spiritual care of the believers of the Gagauz is carried out by the Cahul diocese of the Chisinau Metropolitanate of the Russian Orthodox Church, created in 1998.

The national cuisine of Gagauzia is also in many ways similar to the cuisine of Moldova.; In almost every house, the Gagauz people make their own wine, which is stored, and this is also quite Moldavian, in cool cellars in spacious barrels. On the table there is hominy (corn porridge) and feta cheese (cheese) - dishes typical for the whole of Moldova.

The review was prepared based on the materials of the official website of Gagauzia gagauzia.md, the website of the movement"United Gagauzia" edingagauz.com, the site of the mayor's office of the Chok-Maidan settlement ciok-maydan.ru, as well as the programs of the Russian broadcasting Radio Bulgaria (programs of 1999 and 2005.

Population assessment Density National composition Confessional composition Square Height
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