ABSTRACT
Approximately thirty-five per cent of Mordva speakers, i.e. roughly 350,000 people, live in the Autonomous Mordva Republic in Russia. Here the two primary ethnic and linguistic subgroupings, the Erzya and the Moksha, are represented in about equal numbers. But Mordva speakers make up only about one-third of the population of their own republic, the greater part of the population consisting of Russians; Tatars and Chuvash also live there. Outside of the Mordva Republic proper, Mordvas live in the Penza, Niznij-Novgorod, Simbirsk, Orenburg and Saratov regions; in the Chuvash, Tatar, and Baskir Autonomous Republics; in the zone between the Volga and the Belaja Rivers; in Siberia, and in Central Asia. Diaspora Mordva speakers live scattered from Ukraine to Vladivostok and Sakhalin.
