The Mansi (Mansi: Ма̄ньщи / Мāньси / Мāньси мāхум, Māńsi / Māńsi māhum, ) are an Ob-Ugric indigenous people living in Khanty–Mansia, an autonomous okrug within Tyumen Oblast in Russia. In Khanty–Mansia, the Khanty and Mansi languages have co-official status with Russian. The Mansi language is one of the postulated Ugric languages of the Uralic family. The Mansi people were formerly known as the Voguls.

Together with the Khanty people, the Mansi are politically represented by the Association to Save Yugra, an organisation founded during Perestroika in the late 1980s. This organisation was among the first regional indigenous associations in Russia.

Demographics

thumb|200px|Settlement of Mansi in the [[Ural Federal District by urban and rural settlements in%, 2010 census]]

{| class="wikitable"

|+Mansi population according to 2021 census

!

!Total

!Men

!Women

|----

|Total

|12,228

|5,685

|6,543

|----

|Tyumen Oblast

|11,583

|5,356

|6,227

|----

| *Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug

|11,065

|5,136

|5,929

|----

|Sverdlovsk Oblast

|334

|170

|164

|----

|Komi Republic

|5

|3

|2

|}

According to the 2021 census, there were 12,228 Mansi in Russia.

History

thumb|upright|"Winter outfit of the Voguls" depicting Mansi people c. 1873

thumb|upright|Voguls (Mansi) c. 1873

The ancestors of the Mansi populated the areas west of the Urals. Mansi findings have been unearthed in the vicinity of Perm.

As per the Primary Chronicle, Uleb Ragnvaldsson, the posadnik of Novgorod, led a war party to conquer Yugra, the historical homeland of the Khanty (Ostyaks) and Mansi (Voguls). Ragnvaldsson was defeated near Syktyvkar, as the Mansi still inhabited large areas west of the Urals. This is one of the first records of Novgorod and later the unified Russian state claiming dominance over a land where they had no or negligible presence.

Some Russian historians claim that Yugra were subjugated during the 12th century, but historical records show that Russian power was only established in the middle of the 18th century. Most likely, the Khanty were not initially aware they had been claimed as subjects of Novgorod or Russia, and their "new" masters were not aware of who their subordinates were.

During the Middle Ages, it is possible that the Mansi considered the eastern territories of the Novgorod Republic and the Grand Principality of Moscow as their own. Russian folklore identifies the people of Yugra as being bloodthirsty, as natives of Yugra may have made raids into areas controlled by Novgorod or Moscow. The 15th to 17th centuries were the height of the Mansi conducting war parties on Russian lands. The Mansi principalities' leaders had sworn allegiance to the Russian tsar; however they did interpret this differently from the Russians. Mansi lords used these sworn allegiances to convince local Mansi populations that they were direct subjects of the Russian supreme leader, and hence had full right to punish Russian nobility for their wrongdoings. Raids and war parties against Russian nobility created confusion in the regions near the Ural Mountains. As a result, they were also popular with Russian peasants, as they gave them freedom to improve their lives by stealing with a "permit" from the tsar whatever they wished from the nobility. Kondia raised an army of several hundred men and drove the missionaries out from their lands. Kondia was also unique in that it did not pay the yasak tax until 1620, when Russia started demanding it from them.

Kinema and Sueta, rulers of the Bardak principality, whose area is located in the present-day town of Surgut, attacked the village of Surgut in 1691. They stole the funds of the local administration and panic broke out in Surgut. The funds stolen had come from taxing the Nenets, as local Mansi were either excluded from paying taxes or chose to ignore taxes. The Russians responded to this offence by liquidating the principality and enforcing taxes on all the residents.

The last conflict between the Mansi and the Russian state was the Kazym rebellion in 1931–1934, where natives of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug rebelled. The rebellion was crushed by the Red Army. This was the last known conflict between Russia and any of the Siberian tribes.

Relationship with historical Magyar conquerors

The Mansi are one of the closest linguistic relatives of modern Hungarians. Genetic data by Maroti et al. revealed high genetic affinity between Magyar conquerors and modern day Volga Tatars and Bashkirs, with both being modeled as ~50% Mansi-like, ~35% Sarmatian-like, and ~15% Hun/Xiongnu-like. The admixture event is suggested to have taken place in the Southern Ural region in 643–431 BC.

Culture

thumb|Mansi chestpiece, made out of stained glass beads, from the [[University of Szeged's Department of Finno-Ugric Linguistics]]

thumb|100px|Mansi necklace

The Mansi share many similarities with the Khanty people, and together they are called the Ob-Ugric peoples. Their languages are closely related but clearly distinct from each other.

During the winter, the Mansi lived in stationary huts made out of earth and branches at permanent villages. During the spring, the Mansi moved towards hunting and fishing grounds, where they constructed temporary rectangular-shaped shelters out of birch bark and poles.

Genetics

thumb|Estimated ancestry components among selected Eurasian populations. The yellow component represents Neo-Siberian ancestry (represented by Nganasans).

Y-DNA

The majority of Mansi men carry haplogroup N, which is commonly found among Uralic-speaking peoples. 60% of them carry its subclade N1b-P43 and 16% belong to subclade N1c.

According to a 2019 study, in addition to having a high level of East Eurasian-like ancestry, the Mansi have also West Eurasian admixture. Their admixture can be modelled to be about 60% Bronze Age Baikal Lake-like and 40% Srubnaya-like, or about 54% Nganasan-like and about 38% Srubnaya-like, with additional ANE-related admixture.

In a 2018 study, Mansi samples showed variation in the amounts of West and East Eurasian admixtures. Some of them clustered with the Khanty, while outlier samples had additional West Eurasian admixture, making them closer to Uralic-speakers from the Volga-Ural region.

Notable Mansi

  • Matrena Pankrat'yevna Vakhrusheva (1918–2000), linguist, philologist, writer; co-wrote the first Mansi-Russian dictionary
  • Yuvan Nikolayevich Shestalov (1937–2011), writer
  • Ruslan Mikhailovich Provodnikov (b. 1984), boxer (Mansi mother)
  • Sergey Aleksandrovich Ustiugov (b. 1992), cross-country skier (Mansi father)
  • Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin (b. 1951), current mayor of Moscow

References

Further reading

  • "Мифы, сказки, предания манси (вогулов): в записях 1889, 1952, 1958-1960, 1968, 1978, 1992, 2002 годов" [Myths, fairy tales, legends from the Mansi/Vogul, collected in ...]. Ин-т филологии СО РАН и др.; подгот. текстов, пер., вступ. ст., коммент., указ., слов., сост. компакт-диска Е. И. Ромбандеевой. Москва; Новосибирск: Наука, 2005.
  • The Mansis
  • Dr Gabor Szekely's 1st visit to the Mansis
  • Dr Gabor Szekely's 2nd visit to the Mansis
  • The History of the Mansi
  • Mansi&Khanty tumran (vargan)
  • Mansi music on the sangkvyltap