Tatarstan’s post-Soviet education system

Since fall of the Soviet Union the Republic of Tatarstan, an autonomous region within the Russian Federation comprising of Turkic-speaking Muslim population of Tatars and Slavic-speaking Orthodox Russians, is implementing its own nation-building project. Education and language politics are among the principal fields in these efforts to construct new post-Soviet identity. This PhD project seeks to examine politics and practices of education and its relation to identity building (ethnic, civic, religious identities) in the post-Soviet Tatarstan. The principal sites of inquiry of this interrelationship are schools. Tatarstan’s post-Soviet education system comprises of different types of schools (regular, “national”, religious) each being an interesting field for investigating of how state and non-state actors implement certain identity projects. My research questions in this respect are: What is the relationship between education, language and identity? How certain values, ideologies and identities are inculcated through school politics? How projected discourses and identities are appropriated / resisted by schoolchildren and their parents?

http://www.asienundeuropa.uzh.ch/research/projects/currentprojects/Tatarstan.html