Historical ethnology

By the end of the 19th century, the Russian conservative circles made efforts for the autocracy to acquire a truly popular nature. The purity of faith, naivety, and simplicity of the Russian peasant were proclaimed the basis of the existing socio-political system. The strengthening of these characteristics of the national consciousness was to be facilitated by public organizations created by conservatively minded figures, including the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS), founded in 1882. One of the IOPS main lines of work was to facilitate visits by large groups of common people to the Holy Land. According to the leaders of the Palestine Society, the best spiritual qualities of the Russian people were revealed during the pilgrimage – religiosity, humility, and a tendency to self-sacrifice. The very participation in the organization of the pilgrimage, as conservatives believed, allowed the members of educated society to get closer to the people, to touch the moral values that were preserved in their environment. The activities of the IOPS contributed to the consolidation of the religious ties between Russia and the Holy Land, and became an important page in the social and spiritual life of the late 19th – early 20th centuries.

This article focuses on the history of the Tatars of the Saratov territory (i.e. the Saratov and Penza regions). An extensive study of archival materials, an analysis of interview data and historical records of Tatar villages and urban Muslim communities allowed the author to investigate the processes of preservation, consolidation and transformation of ethno-confessional traditions of Mishar Tatars, which took place under the influence of the Soviet social, cultural and economic system. The article defines the important role of spiritual and moral values, the functioning of confessional institutions and national educational institutions in the preservation of the Tatars’ the national and religious identity. It also examines the contribution of Jadidist school graduates to the development of the national Soviet educational system and culture. The researcher draws attention to the opposition between adherents of traditional Muslim and secular worldviews. The article evaluates, on a step by step basis, the processes of levelling out the impact that the people’s national and religious traditions, household practices and pervasive influence of the Soviet system had on shaping of a new image of the Tatars. In addition, the article examines how the famine, dekulakization, closure and demolition of mosques and collectivization campaign affected the qualitative foundation of the traditional Tatar society. The author concludes that during 1920–1930s the Tatar society underwent through the process of replacement of their civilizational values and their spiritual matrix. The paper also studies the folk traditions and folklore, which persisted for decades alongside the acculturalization process of the Tatars during the Soviet 1920–1980s.

Kazan province was distinguished by its ethnic and religious diversity, historical traditions, and well-developed university culture. Newspapers, including those of a commercial nature, occupied an important place in public life. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were women among the editors and publishers of Kazan newspapers. A historiographical review showed that the materials of the local periodical press became the subject of study by Kazan researchers, including in the reconstruction of some aspects of women’s daily life. However, there is no special work devoted to the study of the appearance of women on the pages of periodicals of the Kazan province. Meanwhile, addressing this topic allows us to see the processes of transformation of women’s social roles as a result of the modernization of society at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to study the image of a woman in the periodical press of the Kazan province. For this purpose, the materials of the newspapers Kazansky Birzhevoy Listok, Kazansky Telegraph, Volzhsky Vestnik, Kamsko-Volzhskaya Rech and other publications were analyzed. Both author's materials and anonymous correspondence, chronicles of incidents, advertisements and advertisements are considered. Different types of women’s practices were identified and several thematic groups were identified on the provincial press database. In each of them, a certain image of a woman was developed (a lady, a worker, a Muslim, a fighter for her rights, etc.). The authors conclude that the image of a woman presented in the newspapers was contradictory: on the one hand, it was tied to her social origin, on the other, the bourgeois development of society leveled ethno-confessional and class boundaries. The differences that existed were marked by external signs. The article is intended for historians and anyone interested in the history of the Russian Empire, the history of everyday life, and women’s emancipation.

The article analyzes the problem of organizing women’s education in Turkestan in the first years of the establishment of the Soviet power. The paper shows that the Soviet government, like the government of the Russian Empire, used Tatar women to promote its own policies. Tatar women were involved in organizing a new (Soviet) system of women’s education and attracting local girls to the school education system. Initially, the Bolsheviks paid particular attention to opening special-purpose schools for elimination of illiteracy (likbez) to solve the issue of women’s education. Most of the teaching staff was comprised of Tatar women. Later, the Soviet government began to create women’s departments in different regions of Turkestan. Actively involved members of the women’s department in Bukhara included Tatar communist M. Sharafatdinova and Bashkir communist M. Gafarova, who worked as an instructor in the women’s department in Tashkent. Both women spoke the languages of the peoples of Turkestan. Starting from 1920, instructor courses were opened in Soviet schools to help organize school affairs. The students were mainly comprised of Tatar women. There is information in sources that due to the work of instructor-activists in the region, the number of local women taking courses has noticeably increased.

The article examines the history of the formation of the Tatar ethnographic collection, one of the most significant collections of the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan. The main stages of admission of Tatar ethnography subjects are listed. The first stage is connected with the work of Kazan collectors, such as A. Likhachev, L. Sickler, and N. Katanov. The samples and jewelry from the first half – the middle of the 19th century from A. Likhachev and L. Sickler’s collections are particularly valuable. The next stage is associated with the arrival of the famous ethnographer B. Adler and the activities of N. Vorobyov’s tenure as the museum’s director, which was marked by the beginning of scientific research and collection of Tatar ethnography, as well as the organization of expeditions and exhibitions. The expeditions conducted in the 1920s by N. Vorobyov, P. Dulsky, and G. Gubaydullin laid the foundation for the systematic collection of materials on the culture and everyday life of the peoples of the Volga region and the Urals, including Tatars. The 1920s were also notable for the arrival of collections from the Museum of Oriental Peoples and other museums in Kazan. The museum’s collaboration with academic institutions allowed for the targeted acquisition of the Tatar ethnographic collection in the 1950s–1990s, including participation in ethnographic expeditions and organization of its own historical and cultural expeditions. The museum’s efforts to study and promote its collections through the creation of thematic exhibitions, albums, and catalogs, as well as its cooperation with the academic community and artisans are showcased.

The article examines the processes of ethnic categorization of Tatars during the Population Census on the territory of Bashkortostan in the context of the state national policy of the regional authorities in the 20th and 21st centuries. The case is solved in the framework of the polyparadigmatic approach that allows combining constructivist, instrumentalist and primordialist methodologies. This allows us to identify the place and role of reified categories of ethnicity in the state policy at the level of the national republic. The analysis traces the stability of the established political management patterns in the interaction of two levels of political practices: the central and the regional one. Thus, the regional interests of the republican authorities – the desire to increase the number of Bashkirs at the expense of Tatars during statistical surveys of the region’s population – are explained by the Bolshevik national policy and the principles of ethno-territorial division of the Soviet State. The case demonstrates the possibility of reconstructing ethnic identity among ethnic groups close in culture and language (Bashkirs and Tatars) using the following: administrative resources, symbolic policies, and information technologies. Based on the conducted analysis, the following conclusion has been made: a) regarding the significance of the political situation, which influences the reliability of the population statistical survey; b) the importance of developing more sensitive tools (the All-Russian Population Census form) for adequately recording ethnic identity in a culturally complex society; c) regarding the need to depoliticize the All-Russian Population Census for the harmonization of interethnic relations and the success of the process of integrating the peoples of the Russian Federation into the Russian nation.

On April 24, 2025, the Round table “The Queen of All "Suembika": Image and its transformation in the historical memory of the Russian and Tatar peoples” was held at the Marjani Institute of History of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences. Due to the fact that the topic of historical memory with an emphasis on common places of memory as a space for cultural consensus and overcoming conflicts is important from a scientific and practical point of view, the editors of the Historical Ethnology journal decided to publish the transcript of the meeting. It includes the text of the report of the leading researcher of the Institute, Doctor of Historical Sciences I.L. Izmailov and the discussion that arose around it. Syuyumbike was the ruler of the Kazan and Kasimov Khanates. The time of her reign fell on the period of the conquest of Kazan by the Moscow Tsar Ivan IV and the internecine wars of the medieval Turkic-Tatar states (mid–16th century). The historical role of this woman was outstanding and tragic. There is a popular legend associated with her name that Syuyumbike threw herself off the tower of the Kazan Kremlin in the name of her beloved one. However, this gate tower was built only at the end of the 17th century. The purpose of the Round table discussion was to consider the question of why Syuyumbike became an iconic figure in the historical memory of the Tatars and how her image was formed over several centuries. The participants of the discussion came to the conclusion that Syuyumbike’s image began to form in the 17th century and received its final form during the period of nation-building among the Tatars at the beginning of the 20th century. The special place of this woman in historical memory was predetermined by multiple factors. 1) Owing to the work of writers and poets of Russia during the era of Romanism, who were the first to publicly construct the image of Syuyumbike. 2) Its association by the Tatar people and the Tatar intelligentsia with a tragic period of the national history, the limitations of the Russian Empire in terms of pedaling the theme of the Turkic-Tatar khanates rulers, who were men and whose fates were not so dramatic. 3) Gender, which imparted emotionality to the image and the basis for its perception through motherhood. 4) Finally, the nature of historical memory itself, which presupposes the obligatory presence of a pantheon of heroes who sacrifice themselves for the sake of the people. Sacrifice, martyrdom, the tension of history are the main emotional foundations of the invention of the past.