卷 9, 编号 5 (2024)

The article opens a special issue of the Historical Ethnology journal dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the outstanding scholar Nikolay Iosifovich Vorobyev, geographer, historian and Turkologist, Honored Scientist of the Tatar ASSR, Honorary Member of the USSR Geographical Society, founder of ethnographic Tatar studies and one of the leading researchers of the ethno- and cultural genesis of the Chuvash people. Professor Vorobyev is the author and editor of such fundamental works as the Fundamentals of Physical Geography of the Tatar Republic (Kazan, 1936); The Kazan Tatars: Ethnographic Study of the Material Culture of the Pre-October Period (Kazan, 1953); The Chuvashes. Ethnographic Study (Cheboksary, 1956); Tatars of the Middle Volga and Ural Regions (Moscow: Nauka, 1967), as well as other academic publications. The paper outlines important milestones in the biography, the main areas of the scientist’s research activities, starting with his student passion for the ethnic culture of the peoples of Siberia to academic maturity – fundamental research on the ethnography of the Turkic peoples of the Volga and Ural regions. The article presents vectors of his teaching work at Kazan State University, at the Kazan Eastern Pedagogical Institute (KSPI), as well as administrative and expeditionary practice within the walls of the Central Museum of the Tatar ASSR and the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Kazan branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

The paper examines the teaching activities of the famous ethnographer, geographer, researcher of the ethnography of the Tatars and other peoples of the Volga region, Nikolay Iosifovich Vorobyev, at Kazan University and the Eastern Pedagogical Institute in the 1920s – early 1930s. His role in organising special departments of these universities, where ethnography and related disciplines (anthropology, anthropogeography, ethnology, etc.) were taught, is shown. The views on ethnographic education of the Kazan teaching community, students and authorities at various levels are described. The paper shows that in the first years of the Soviet rule, ethnography was taught in large quantities at several Kazan institutes of higher education – Kazan University, North-Eastern Archaeological and Ethnographic Institute, and Eastern Pedagogical Institute. The main initiators of including ethnographic disciplines in the curriculum of institutes were employees of Kazan University, including N.I. Vorobyev. However, officials of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat for Education considered ethnography as a discipline that studies ‘backward peoples’ and ‘relicts’, and did not see it as a means of ideological education of students. Therefore, the number of hours assigned to this subject was reduced quite quickly. N.I. Vorobyev and his colleagues proposed a number of educational departments projects (geographical and museum-ethnographic sections of the Eastern Pedagogical Institute) in order to preserve ethnographic education in Kazan. As a result of their efforts, students of the Physics and Mathematics Department of Kazan University and the Eastern Department of the Eastern Pedagogical Institute studied ethnography and related subjects until its ‘defeat’ on the cusp of the 1920s and 1930s.

The most important role in the formation of academic Tatar studies in domestic ethnology belongs to the outstanding scholar of the early-mid 20th century, Professor N.I. Vorobyev. With his works, he laid the foundations for a systematic approach to the study of the culture and life of the people, especially the reference group of the ethnic group – the Kazan Tatars. The use of data from related historical and geographical disciplines allowed him to pose and solve a number of important questions in the ethnic and ethnocultural history of the people. In his landmark monograph The Kazan Tatars (1953), special attention is given to their close root connection with the local Bulgarian civilisation – the ethnocultural prehistory of the people. The systematic approach consisted of the creation of N.I. Vorobyev’s first ethnocultural differentiation of the Volga-Ural Tatars, which was based on the cultural, everyday and linguistic differences within the ethnic group studied at that time. It was also manifested in the application of typological approaches to the classification of ethnographic material, which allowed him to present stable varieties of material culture (types) in dynamics, to outline analogues for them in other neighbouring and distant ethnic groups of Eurasia, and thereby to resolve a number of issues related to the cultural genesis of the people. The systematic approach was applied and improved in the research and scientific and organizational activities of his students and followers, including the authors of the volume “Historical and ethnographic atlas of the Tatar people”. Fundamental works of N.I. Vorobyev on the ethnography of the Volga-Ural Tatars laid the foundation for the formation of the Turkic-Tatar vector of academic ethnology in the Volga-Ural region of Russia. They are an invaluable resource for current and future generations of researchers.

N.I. Vorobyev made a great contribution to the comparative study of the history of settlement and traditional culture of the ethnographic groups of the Chuvash, their interethnic interaction with the contacted ethnoses. He identified three ethnographic complexes based on the features, both those that had archaic signs and newly formed ones. Regarding the history of the formation of ethnographic groups, the researcher argued that the population of the north-east of the Chuvash Volga region perceived more southern Turkic influences in their everyday life, began to differ in language and way of life from the north-western population, although they retained commonality with it in the main elements of language, culture and lifestyle. His conclusion that the main ethnographic groups of the Chuvash, as he considered the upper Viryal and lower Anatri, were finally formed during the 15th century in the northern regions of Chuvashia as a result of the rapprochement of the indigenous population of these areas with newcomers from the south, cannot be considered justified. The work of ethnographic expeditions in the Chuvash regions in the late 1940s and early 1950s, she showed that the archaic complex was most characteristic of the costume of the middle-aged Chuvash Anat enchi, although N.I. Vorobyev considered them an average or mixed ethnographic group. In general, he represented that group as part of the Anatri, who changed their way of life under the influence of borrowing from the Tatars. The author’s team, under the guidance of the scholar, developed in detail the classification of the Chuvash into groups and subgroups based on folk costume. N.I. Vorobyev for the first time identified three subgroups as part of anatri. The border zone between Anatri and anat yenchi, which was not clearly defined by its predecessors, in particular G.I. Komissarov, N.I. Vorobyev, was also not resolved. The riding costume was formed as a result of interaction with the mountain Mari people, although many features that unite it primarily with the anat Enchi costume were not replaced in it. The authors emphasise that the striking external differences that were recorded in the riding Chuvash northwestern subgroups and grassroots chuvashki hirti. They did not violate the common cultural community of the Chuvash people. It should be noted that the task of a more detailed substantiation of cultural and linguistic areas at the level of subgroups within the ethnographic groups of the Chuvash, divided into four subgroups in the upper zone and three in the middle and lower ones, unresolved by the expeditions of the late 1940s – early 1950s, remains relevant.

The article analyses expedition sketches of professional artist Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pozdeeva from the collections of the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan and the “Miraskhane” Written Heritage Center of G. Ibragimov Institute of Language, Literature and Art of the Republic of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, which were made by the master during the expeditions of 1926 and 1927 under the leadership of N. I. Vorobyev. Costume complexes of Tatars of different subethnic and ethnographic groups are analysed. Particular attention is paid to the scientific component of L. M. Pozdeeva’s work, the consistency of the sketches to written sources, museum materials and expedition photographs. The author of the article identified nine watercolours and one graphite pencil sketch, which depict the clothes of men and women of different ages. The pieces were made in the Chelny, Chistopol, Sviyazhsk, and Tetyush cantons, in settlements such as Nizhneye Bishevo, Kainly, Akbulatovo, Stary Tatarsky Adam, Molkeevo, Stary Kurbash, and Bakorchi (Bakrchi). Some images are duplicated by photographs, which became the visual accompaniment to the texts of N.I. Vorobyev’s academic publications. The sketches by L.M. Pozdeeva found by the author of the article fully correspond to the photographic images, which is evidence of the precise reproduction of what she saw during the expeditions. The artist chose different angles of the characters in national clothing, thereby creating not just an ethnographic copy, but an artistic image.

The publication is a commentary and the text of the handwritten autobiography of N.I. Vorobyev. The document is introduced into scholarly discourse for the first time. The undertaken analysis of the text allowed us to identify new facts from the life and work of the researcher and to grasp their context. The document is dated March 2, 1947 and was written by the scholar during his work at Kazan State University. N.I. Vorobyev lists in detail the facts about his parents, the process of receiving an education, the beginning of his teaching and research work. He reveals the evolution of his own academic interests, from geography to ethnography, and highlights the author’s scholarly papers that are of significance from his point of view. The document mentions N.I. Vorobyev’s research work in the Far East dedicated to the study of the life of the Nanai (the Golds) and in the Mari ASSR – limnological studies of lakes. The researcher emphasises his work on methodological support of teachers. A separate chapter of the autobiography contains a description of the academic’s participation in the work of various public scholarly organisations. N.I. Vorobyev focuses on the important aspects of his life that correspond to the spirit of those times. This is the recognition of his political unconsciousness in the first years of the Soviet power, service in the Red Army as a private soldier. The autobiography of N.I. Vorobyev is a valuable, informative source. It shows not only the significance of individual milestones in his life and work for the scholar himself, but also reveals the distinctive features of the Soviet era, which formed the conditions for work for the entire academic community.

The article presents with archival materials in which the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the Tatar literature classic, publicist, public figure Galimjan Ibragimov, held in 1928, are documented. The funds of the State Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan (Kazan) and the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) have a protocol and a transcript from the celebrations dedicated to this anniversary.

The protocol is printed in Tatar, the transcript is presented in Russian. Due to a serious lung disease, the writer was residing in Yalta for treatment at the time. The preparation and holding of events was organised at the highest level, the anniversary date was celebrated even outside the Tatar Republic. Although G. Ibragimov was not able to attend the event personally, the anniversary was held on a large scale and was broadcast on the radio. A concert was organised and a play based on the writer’s drama New People was staged. At the end of the event, a telegram with anniversary greetings to the hero of the day was read and later sent to Yalta. Later, G. Ibragimov sent a reply telegram with words of gratitude to the editorial offices of the newspapers “Kyzyl Tatarstan” and “Eshche”. Among those invited and speaking were prominent literary and public figures and orientalists (I. Rakhmatullin, G. Nigmati, G. Linstser), birthday greetings from various addressees from Russian cities and abroad were read out.

The transcript is very voluminous. As can be seen from the content, prominent figures took part in the meeting, such as N. Tyuryakulov, I. Borozdin, A.N. Maksudov, B.Kh. Mansurov, A.M. Arsharuni. The speakers’ speeches trace the significant role of G. Ibragimov in the public life of the Tatar people, as a literary scholar, researcher and public figure.

The article provides quotes from archival documents in the original language and facts concerning the writer’s creative anniversary from the periodical press of the first half of the 20th century.