FEATURE - Undiscovered Russia: Football City In Fox Land

MOSCOW/SARANSK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 27th April, 2021) OSCOW/SARANSK, Russia, April 26 (Sputnik), Denis Chernyshenko - A Sputnik correspondent has visited the city of Saransk, which hosted the 2018 FIFA World Cup and serves as the capital of the Republic of MOSCOW/SARANSK (Pakistan Point news / Sputnik - 27th April, 2021) ordovia whose symbol is a fox.

Despite having hosted such a major sports event, Saransk remains a little-known spot on the Russian map as one can hardly say anything about it except its 2018 football page. Honestly speaking, the main purpose of my visit was also the football match between FC Tambov and Lokomotiv Moscow that ended with the latter's victory 2:5.

The Mordvins is a term used to describe two close but still different ethnicities: Erzya and Moksha, who have different languages and traditions.

To see these differences one should visit the Republican Local History Museum where the samples of traditional clothes of Erzya and Moksha are exhibited. The museum is located in a new colorful building on the coast of the Saranka River and is worth visiting for everyone willing to dip into the Mordvin culture.

Near the museum, there is a good restaurant where one can taste traditional Mordvin dishes: traditional pancakes called pachats, fish soup tsebyar, selyanka soup with lights and vegetables, shongaryam millet porridge and tsemant meat pockets. Maybe the most interesting dish is called medvezhya lapa (literally, bear's paw), which is a cutlet with crackers resembling bear claws. A traditional alcoholic drink poza, which is homebrew made of sugar beet, is a good addition to the Mordvin cuisine.

For a better understanding of the Mordvin culture, one should also visit the Museum of Mordvin Folk Culture or even the Mordovia National Drama Theatre, which sometimes demonstrates performances in the Erzya and Moksha languages.

Saransk could not be described as a city with a rich history: it was founded as a border fortress in 1641 to protect Russia from attacks of nomadic tribes.

The most remarkable events in the history of Saransk are its seizure by peasant rebels of Stepan Razin in 1670 and of Emelyan Pugachev in 1774. The latter staged mass executions in the city.

Saransk soon turned into a small merchant town and remained so until the advent of the Soviet era, when the Bolsheviks founded the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and made Saransk its capital.

The lack of historic monuments and buildings allowed the post-Soviet regional authorities to rebuild the city center in the modern style: from my point of view, it was a great idea as the city looks very beautiful and impressive, especially the Republican Local History Museum, Mordovian State University, the Opera and Ballet Theater of Saransk, the Cathedral of St. Theodore Ushakov and the Millennium Square.

And of course, the Arena Mordovia football stadium built for the 2018 FIFA World Cup is a pearl of the city, worth seeing even for those who do not like football.

When speaking about the sights of Saransk, one should mention the Mordovian Erzia Museum of Visual Arts, named after the famous sculptor of the 20th century Stepan Erzia (Nefyodov).

The museum has a big collection of the works of Erzia, who paid special attention to female sexuality in sculpture.

The gallery also exhibits a large number of paintings of Fedot Sychkov, whom I would personally describe as Mordovia's Bruegel for depicting the rural lifestyle of the Mordvins.

During my trip to Saransk, I was also lucky to visit the Swan Lake ballet by great Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky at the Opera and Ballet Theater. I have already seen this ballet in Moscow's Bolshoi Theater and the Latvian National Opera in Riga, and from my point of view, Saransk's performance was really good, not worse than in Riga.

A visit to the Erzia Museum and the Opera and Ballet Theater will make a trip to Saransk really memorable!