Shors - Orientation

Identification. The modern Shors are descendants of numerous Turkified Ugrian-, Samoyedic-, and Ketic-speaking groups and tribes, many of them unrelated to each other. The generic term "Shor" is actually the name of a single large group living in the Kondoma River valley; it was applied by the Soviet government to a large number of groups to simplify administration. Shor groups live separately and have their own names, often terms that reflect locality. Names like "Mrassa" (or "Mras Kizhi") and "Kondoma" refer to the specific sites of particular groups. "Chysh Kizhi" translates as "people of the taiga," a name by which many Shors sometimes refer to themselves. "Abans" is the name of a single seok (clan) studied in the eighteenth century; Shor people frequently identify themselves by their clan membership. "Blacksmith Tatar" refers to the Shors' earlier industrial specialization in smelting and forging iron goods.

Location. The Shors live in the Kuznets Alatau Mountains, in the middle reaches of the Tom River and its Kondoma and Mrassa tributaries (54° to 56° N, 87° to 90° E). The Kuznets Alatau is an irregular series of horsts and faults, rather than a single mountain range and, with peaks of 1,000 to 2,100 meters, is lower in elevation than the main Altai mountain system to the south. The Minusinsk Basin lies to the east, the Kuznets Basin to the west, and the Siberian taiga to the north. The territory of the Shors is in the center of the large Kuzbass industrial region, which gets much of its coal from the Kuznets Basin. The climate is continental, and winters are extremely cold. Higher elevations are covered with snow year-round. The rivers of the region flow north, which has long made communication with centers of civilization to the south difficult.

The Shor region is at the southern end of the large northern forest. Physically, it is intermediate between the natural zone of the Siberian taiga and the natural zone of the Central Asian Steppe; its vegetation and soils have characteristics of both zones. In the northern part of the Shor range, in higher elevations, the forest is primarily Siberian pine, fir, spruce, and birch, with some cedar; in lower elevations and along river valleys are found mosses, shrubs, and grasses. In the southern Shor region, the trees are fir and aspen, and there is little moss; in higher elevations are found lindens and herbaceous meadows in burned and deforested sites. Fauna include Siberian elks ( marais ), roe deer, sables, squirrels, otters, weasels, foxes, ermines, goats, bears, badgers, wolverines, lynx, grouse, partridge, salmon-trout, grayling, pike, and burbot.

The entire area is rich in coal and iron deposits, which have been exploited since ancient times. The soils vary considerably. They are primarily loesslike clay loams, chernozems and degraded chernozems, and northern forest soils, which merge into podzols in the mountainous regions. Compared with the steppe areas, precipitation is heavy. The snow cover is deep and lasts many months.

Demography. The 1979 census put the Shor population at 16,033, up from 12,601 in 1926.

linguistic Affiliation. The Shor language belongs to the Old Uigur Subgroup of the Turkic Branch of the Altaic Family and is closely related to Chulym. It is the native language of 61 percent of the Shor people. There are two dialects, Mrassa and Kondoma; Mrassa is the basis of the literary language. The Shor literary language was first used in the 1920s, when it was written in Cyrillic script. The Latin script was used for nearly ten years, beginning in 1930, before Cyrillic was restored. Most of what the Shors publish today is written in Russian.