Idel-Ural

Kitabın bütün yayın hakları Ötüken Neşriyat A.Ş.'ye aittir. Yayınevinden yazılı izin alınmadan, kaynağın açıkça belirtildiği akademik çalışmalar ve tanıtım faaliyetleri haricinde, kısmen veya tamamen alıntı yapılamaz; hiçbir matbu ve dijital ortamda kopya edilemez, çoğaltılamaz ve yayımlanamaz.

The “Russian Orient” has as emerged as a popular area of study for specialists and political analysts with a predominant interest in Russia and Eurasia-related affairs. My primary aim in this work will be specifically to look deeper into this concept of the “Orient” inside Russia’s vast geography. Simultaneously, I will place emphasis on the Russian “otherization” process within this huge spatial realm, drawing upon a remarkable case study on Bashkiria, or to use its current official name, the Republic of Bashkortostan, in the Russian Federation. I will pose one general question to garner information on the current situation in Bashkortostan, being “How can we understand the political elite management process in this Federative Republic as a successful part of a general Russian-led Orientalist project?” In trying to find an answer to this question throughout the work, like in the imperial era, and as observed in the Soviet centralized totalitarianism, the post-Soviet state understan...

In this report we will address the issues of resettlement Kryashens in Tobolsk province, their adaptation to the new conditions, present some features of ethnic culture. When writing a message, we used archival material stored in the State Archives of Tobolsk, and field data collected in the field seasons in 2012-2014.

The "Russian Orient" has as emerged as a popular area of study for specialists and political analysts with a predominant interest in Russia and Eurasia-related affairs. My primary aim in this work will be specifically to look deeper into this concept of the "Orient" inside Russia's vast geography. Simultaneously, I will place emphasis on the Russian "otherization" process within this huge spatial realm, drawing upon a remarkable case study on Bashkiria, or to use its current official name, the Republic of Bashkortostan, in the Russian Federation. I will pose one general question to garner information on the current situation in Bashkortostan, being "How can we understand the political elite management process in this Federative Republic as a successful part of a general Russian-led Orientalist project?" In trying to find an answer to this question throughout the work, like in the imperial era, and as observed in the Soviet centralized totalitarianism, the post-Soviet state understanding in Russia will be treated as a kind of a "success story" in terms of its incorporation of large and varied segments of its population into its "orbit".

The author focuses attention on the formal and informal contacts between representatives of the Turkic and Islamic national and religious elites residing in Petrograd, Moscow, and Kazan, and their co-religionists in Germany and Finland. These contacts involved financial and organizational assistance, as well as exchanges of ideas. Research employing foreign and domestic sources – above all intelligence data from the GPU (OGPU) Eastern Department archive – makes it possible to reconstruct the architecture of links and channels of mutual influence. To analyze the potential and actual effectiveness of these exchanges, a table is provided that depicts the informal networking between Soviet Muslims, migrant communities, and local believers. The conclusions provide a comparative analysis of the principal approaches of Imperial and Soviet authorities in assessing these interrelationships. The author finds that these assessments are marked by continuity from one period to another, and that this resulted in strengthening negative perceptions of those national and religious elites abroad, and in a failure on the part of the Eastern Department (as opposed to the Western secret services) to exercise direct and systematic influence on the migrants. The article’s conclusion is about the inconsistency of the idea foreign movement in defense of the Idel-Ural State which will become a basic reason for repression against the national-religious Volga-Ural leaders in the 1930s.

The purpose of this chapter is to trace social and political processes of Volga, or Kazan, Tatars – the largest ethnic minority in the Russian Federation and one of the largest stateless ethnonational groups of Europe and the world. In doing so, some of the major developments concerning Tatar history, traditions, and their interaction with the Russian state will be surveyed. In addition to some of the key scholarship on Tatars published in English, several Russian- and Tatar-language sources will be employed. Following the introductory remarks, the origins of the people and their name will be examined alongside their early history. Competition with the Russian lands and the consequences of the loss of statehood will then be discussed. These include strategies of resilience, especially efforts at reforming culture, tradition, and the way of thinking. Post-communist struggle for greater self-governance, achievement of the power-sharing treaty with Moscow, and the post-Yeltsin policies will also be investigated. Brief assessment of the prospect of Tatar survival will be offered in the concluding section.