Evolution of the myth about the “Capture of Kazan” in official communications and local historical memory

the article is devoted to the analysis of the emergence and evolution of the myth of the “Capture of Kazan” in October 1552 in symbolic politics and local historical memory. Based on the reconstruction of the historical context and military-political dynamics, a conclusion is made about the insignificant nature of the events of October 1552, which became another episode in the intra-elite struggle of the Kazan Khanate and the confrontation between Moscow and Kazan at the same time. To analyze the practices of commemoration of the “Capture of Kazan” in official communications and local historical memory, government (including diplomatic) official sources, personal materials, local history and fiction literature, and media materials from different eras are used. The analysis of these materials demonstrates how the historical narrative of the “Capture of Kazan” as a key episode of local and national history, being constructed to solve the situational problems of various subjects of communications (government, Church, part of the elites of the Moscow kingdom), becomes a stable, generally accepted and not subject to critical analysis version events. As a result of the evolution of the myth of the “Kazan Capture” for national history, this local episode is interpreted as an act of civilizational significance, as satisfaction of Rus' in relation to one of the last successors of the Golden Horde, as the beginning of a fundamentally new, “Eurasian” period of national history. For local historical memory, the “Capture of Kazan” is interpreted as an important, but (the opposite of heroic) tragic act in the political history of the Tatar people, marking the end of the original and the beginning of the colonial periods. In this form, this narrative begins to be reproduced in local media, literary texts, and regional history textbooks. It turns out that breaking out of the rut of a historical narrative once constructed is an almost impossible task.

Казанское взятие, Иван Грозный, Андрей Курбский, историческая политика, историческая память, региональная идентичность, история Татарстана