Erzya is one of the most numerous Finno-Ugric peoples of the Russian Federation, which lives in the Volga region. In the course of the All-Russian population censuses, the Erzya are often recorded under the exonym “Mordva”, uniting them in one national group with the Mokshans. This unification complicates the calculation of the Erzya. The total number is about 500 thousand people. The Erzya language is a Finno-Ugric language of the Finno-Volga group, one of the three official languages ​​of the Republic of Mordovia, along with Moksha and Russian. They profess Christianity (Orthodoxy and Lutheranism), as well as the traditional national religion, Ineshkipaziya.

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