A History of Tatarstan: The Russian Yoke and the Vanishing Tatars surveys the history of the Tatar people living along the Volga river. It argues that the Volga Tatars were Russias first colonized people and after their subjugation in 1552, the Tatars have been continually mistreated by their Russian rulers, even when the nature of the Russian regime changed over time. For a long period the Tatars managed to evade overly deep Russian intrusion into their lives, after the middle of the 1850s Russian and Soviet authorities obliterated their traditional way of life. Despite efforts at restoring a measure of Tatar independence in the 1990s, russification has led to a marked fall in those identifying as Tatar in the Russian Federation pointing at the possibility of a disappearance altogether of the Volga Tatars.
Kees Boterbloem teaches European and world history at the University of South Florida.
Maps
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Introduction
Chapter 1: Indelible Stigma: The Name of the Volga Tatars
Part 1: Historiography, Terms, Concepts
Chapter 2: What Is Missing and Why is It Missing: The Historiography about Tatarstan
Chapter 3: Historiographical Milestones and Evolution
Chapter 4: Why This Matters
Chapter 5: Tatars and Non-Tatars
Part 2: The Early Centuries: Islam, The Jochids, and Independent Kazan
Chapter 6: Before the Mongols
Chapter 7: The Chingissids and the Black Death (1230s-1430s)
Chapter 8: Khanlygy: The Kazan Khanate
Chapter 9: Kazan’s Politics, Society, Culture, and Religion
Part 3: Muscovy’s Volga Tatars
Chapter 10: Early Russian Rule over the Realm of Kazan
Chapter 11: Protest, Evasion, Accommodation, and Adaptation
Chapter 12: Sliyane (Fusion)
Part 4: The Dawn of Modern Imperialism (1725-1855)
Chapter 13: Russia Rediscovers its Tatars
Chapter 14: The Crises of the 1770s: The Tatars in Pugachev’s Rebellion
Chapter 15: Catherine and the Survival of Tatar Tradition
Part 5: The Rise of Nationalism and The Fall of Tsarist Russia
Chapter 16: Birth of the Tatar Nation: The Late Imperial Era (1855-1917)
Chapter 17: Revolution and Civil War
Part 6: Soviet Tatarstan
Chapter 18: The Creation of Soviet Tatarstan
Chapter 19: Sultan-Galiev’s Impossible Program
Chapter 20: Famine
Chapter 21: Collectivisation in Tatarstan
Chapter 22: Tatarisation or Russification
Chapter 23: The Great Terror in Tatarstan
Chapter 24: Nationalism, Islam and Espionage in the Great Terror
Chapter 25: The Second World War and Beyond
Part 7: Post Soviet Tatarstan
Chapter 26: The Impossibility of Independence
Chapter 27: Siuiumbike’s Tower and Qol Shärif’s Mosque: Azatlyk!
Epilogue: Contemporary Problems and Prospects
Appendix: Khans of Kazan (1438-1552)
Glossary
Bibliography
About the Author
Kees Boterbloem’s sympathetic study provides the first comprehensive history of the Volga Tatars from their origins through to the present day, detailing how the Tatars have survived as a people in the face of the twin threats of Russification and modernization. A History of Tatarstan constitutes an important contribution to our understanding of the second largest national group in the modern Russian Federation.
— Paul Robinson, University of Ottawa
