The Peremech Lounge

1935 Japan Tatars

2012-01-31T07:05:00.001-08:00

Japanese Bumper Cars

2012-01-31T06:50:00.000-08:00

We don't know if this is our father or not but it's a...
Tatar Infant on a Japanese Bumper Car!

Tatar Japan 1926

2012-01-31T06:32:00.000-08:00

Our Family Home - Museum

2012-01-31T06:07:00.000-08:00

We were told that our family home in Kobe, Japan has become a museum due to it being the first (or one of the first) western style homes in the city.

Tatar School Japan 1933

2012-01-31T06:04:00.001-08:00

click on image >> right click View Image >> + to expand.

Tatars in Japan 1935

2012-01-31T06:00:00.000-08:00

Tatar Japan 1935

2012-01-31T05:51:00.000-08:00

Some of the old family photographs of Hayrullah Absi are the best. Here he is in school in Japan. How did they treat him being the sole non-Japanese in the class? Did the discipline of Japanese life influence his decision to become a career tank commander in the Turkish military? He is second row from the top, in the center.

Saniye Apa

2012-01-30T11:13:00.000-08:00

We love this song and jumped with joy when we noticed that someone had put this together.

from youtube user luterikis

Volga Republics - Tatarstan

2012-01-22T09:54:00.000-08:00

There are several ethnic republics in the Volga region, the most militant of which is Tatarstan The Tatars, with 3.75 percent of the population, are the largest minority ethnic group in Russia. They make up just under half of Tatarstan's population, although only a quarter of all Russia's Tatars live in the republic. Located about 500 miles (805km) from Moscow, Tatarstan is a vital territorial link holding Russia together. Major roads, railroads, and oil pipelines all cross its territory.

Ivan the Terrible conquered the Tatars and their capitol of Kazan in 1552, and, over the next 440 years, they became the most Russified of the former Soviet Union's Muslim Turkic-speaking peoples. In fact, there was considerable intermarriage between Tatars and Russians. Yet in the early 1990's, a powerful national revival emerged in Tatarstan. Early in 1992,it refused, along with the republic of Chechnya, to sign Yeltsin's Federal Treaty that was designed to maintain Russian unity while permitting some local autonomy. In 1993, after adopting its own constitution Tatarstan declared itself a "sovereign state". At the same time, it stopped short of declaring its independence. In 1994 Moscow and Kazan worked out a compromise that appears to be working. Tatarstan won broad authority, including some power over taxes and its natural resources. After the 1994 agreement, it increasingly was drawn into the orbit of the overall Russian economy. Most of the republic's people seemed to agree that Tatarstan's stability and prosperity are inseparable from remaining a part of the broader Russian economy.

At the same time some developments in Tatarstan continued to worry the Kemlin. In 2000, Tatarstan adopted a law calling for the Tatar language to be written in the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet used to write Russian and other Slavic languages. The law called for the process to take place over a decade, a beginning with written work in the public schools. This clearly was a step to assert cultural independence and Russian authorities worried it might feed secessionist sentiment that had bubbled up in the early 1990's. President Putin's response came in December 2002, when he signed a federal law making Cyrillic the compulsory alphabet for languages across Russia. The law contained a clause that provided for exceptions under limited circumstances, but it also left no doubt that Moscow intended to keep Tatarstan snugly within the Russian Federation.

from Russia by Michael Kort 2004

Russian Expansion and Colonialism

2012-01-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

from Russia by Michael Kort 2004

Nellie Kim - Montreal 1976

2012-01-20T05:09:00.000-08:00

Nellie Kim - 1976 Montreal and her Mom is Tatar and named Alfiya.
She scored three gold medals in Gymnastics.

Nellie Vladimirovna Kim (Russian: Нелли Владимировна Ким; born 29 July 1957) is a retired Soviet gymnast who won three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, and two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics. She was the first woman in Olympic history to earn a perfect 10 score on the vault and the first to earn it on the floor exercise

her official website here

Edren Dingez - Adriatic Sea

2012-01-15T07:34:00.001-08:00

Ilham Shakirov

Ilshat Veliev

Mubai

Renat Ibragimov

Azat Sound System

Soyumbike

2012-01-15T07:16:00.000-08:00

Sümbike, Kazan şehrinin ilk ve son Hanbikesi "Syumbike'nin Dansı" Anastasiya Buzuneyeva 2010
Бузунеева Анастасия. "танец Сююмбике". холст/масло 60см x 80см
2010 г

Ed & Ivet - A World War II POW Romance

2012-01-14T07:14:00.000-08:00

Synopsis:

During World War II there were hundreds of camps that housed American prisoners of war throughout Japan. Every surviving prisoner and their families had amazing stories to tell. Ed and Ivet Bacon were no different-and yet their story is unique. Ed was an American civilian
employed by a large construction firm that was building a naval base in Guam in 1941 just prior to being taken prisoner after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Ivet was the daughter of Mishar Tatars who'd fled the Russian civil war at the turn of the century and had immigrated east, finally settling in a European neighborhood of Kobe, Japan. Love Takes A Prisoner is the true story of how fate brought these two individuals together and how their families and their past played a role in a far reaching love affair which began in the early stages of the war up through Kobe's most horrifying air raids of 1945 and culminated in a triple wedding. This is a powerful story of how two people from different worlds fell in love and despite the hunger, deprivation, and desperation of war would not forsake the nearly impossible dream of being together no matter what the consequences

We ran across this on Abebooks.com.

Damira Sayitova - Ezledem Tabalmadim

2012-01-09T06:58:00.000-08:00

Дамира Саетова - "Эзлэдем- табалмадым"

Damira Sayitova - "I searched Could not find"

Bolgar - Bulgar

2011-12-27T08:16:00.000-08:00

It might be the smallest town in Tatarstan, but Bolgar shares its name on equal terms with the country of Bulgaria. Besides, the word "Volga" is most likely a Slavic corruption of the same name. Bolgar is the descendant of Great Bulgar, the capital of one of the most powerful and civilized states of early medieval Eastern Europe. Ruins of that city, on the outskirts of the modern town, have been turned into an open-air museum, which has become a major place of pilgrimage for Tatars in search of their roots.

The Bulgars were a Turkic tribe based south of the Don when they came under pressure from the Khazars and had to migrate. One branch headed west and occupied the eastern Balkans, but it was soon assimilated by local Slavs, leaving no trace but the name.

The eastern branch settled on the Volga and mixed with local Finno-Ugric tribes. Sunni Islam became the official religion in 921, following a visit of a Baghdadi embassy --

_____________________

Volga Encounter

The first traveler to write a Volga diary was Ahmed Ibn-Fadlan, a secretary of the Baghdadi embassy who arrived in 922 in Great Bulgar to convert the local khan and his people to Islam. His travelogue is one of the very few preserved written documents describing the ancient people who populated the area and traveled up and down the Volga. One of his most striking stories describes an encounter with Scandinavian travelers, whom Ibn-Fadlan describes as "people with most perfect bodies", but also as , "the dirtiest of Allah's creatures".

The curious Arab arranged to be invited to a funeral of a Viking chief. The ceremony included the ritual killing of a slave girl who volunteered to accompany her master into the other world. Thrilled and disgusted at the same time, Ibn-Fadlan observes the ritual, which culminated with the girl taking poison. Both bodies were then loaded onto a ship and the ship was burned, the ashes carried away by the Volga.

Ibn-Fadlan believed these Vikings were members of the semi-legendary Rus tribe, which at about the same time was invited by Novgorod Slavs to rule their land. The Novgorodians are said to have uttered a famous complaint, which Russians still enjoy repeating: "Our land is rich, but there is no order."

_____________________

Great Bulgar took the first blow of the Tatar Mongol lightning attack on Europe in 1236. But it revived and flourished under the Golden Horde, until it was again devastated by Timur and eventually finished off by Muscovite general Fyodor the Specky in the 15th century.

Peter the Great passed the ruins on a visit to the region in 1722 and ordered the historical site be preserved. However in 1841, a local blacksmith looking for treasure unwittingly tore down the remaining 13th-century minaret. The new town was founded by Russians in 1781 under the name of Spassk. It ws briefly called Kuybyshev and then renamed Bolgar in 1991.

The Great Bulgar Museum is located 1km east of the town on the high bank of the Volga. The site, comprising several ruins scattered around a vast expanse of grassland on top of a high cliff above the Volga, looks a bit odd as it is dominted by the minareet, which was restored in 2005, and the the Russian 18th-cent Assumption Church, which stands right next to it and houses an interesting archaeological museum. Nearby are the ruins of Great Bulgar's main mosque with a stub of a pillar, which the Tatars believe brings fortune if you walk around it, which they do in droves. A mausoleum full of gravestones has inscriptions in the Arabic and Turkic Runic alphabets. From the gates of the museum, stairs lead to the tourist pier, where cruise ships and tourist hydrofoils from Kazan's river station dock.

from LP 2009

"The Khazar Empire had included the great urban commercial emporium of the Volga Bolgars on the upper Volga. After the defeat of the Khazars by the Russians, the Volga Bolgars became an independent state and survived as an autonomous entity until the coming of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. The Volga Bolgars were Muslims (according to the fictitious tale of the "testing of religions" in the Russian Primary Chronicle, one of their missionaries tried in the late tenth century to convert St. Vladimir). Their relations with the Russians consisted primarily of trade, though the chronicles have little to say about this. The American historian Thomas Noonan has proposed that the northeastern Russian principality of Vladimir-Suzdalia established a trading co-dominion with the Volga Bolgars to monopolize the western termini of the caravan routes that brought silk and spices from Asia to Eastern Europe. No marriages between princely families of Kievan Rus' and the Volga Bolgars are recorded, probably because of the religious barrier. Although there is little evidence of overt hostilities, in the late twelfth century the Russian Grand Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii ostensibly launched a "crusade" against Grand Bolgar, the capital of the Volga Bolgars. This attack was probably atypical. Religious antagonism was evidently held in check, at least most of the time, by mutually beneficial trade. Because of the silence of the sources, Russian familiarity with the Volga Bolgar state and its language, customs, and political organization remains a matter of speculation."

from the "Russia and the Golden Horde"

by Charles J. Halperin 1985
this one.

Kamaz

2011-12-27T07:01:00.001-08:00

Kamaz home

Kamaz trucks are high quality industrial vehicles manufactured in Tatarstan. They also do not have a web presence in the Tatar language, only Russian and English.

KAMAZ (Камский автомобильный завод - КАМАЗ / Kamskiy avtomobilny zavod - translated: Kama Automobile Plant) is a Russian truck manufacturer located in Naberezhnye Chelny, Tatarstan, Russian Federation. KAMAZ opened its doors in 1976. Today, heavy duty models are exported to many areas of the world including Eastern Europe, Latin America, China, the Middle East, and North Africa. The trucks have won the Dakar Rally a record ten times. KAMAZ is the largest truck producer in Russia and the CIS. The factory produces 93600 trucks a year (260 trucks a day). Reinforced KAMAZ trucks are used by the Russian army.

(wiki)

Rubin - Kazan

2011-12-27T06:56:00.000-08:00

Rubin Football (soccer) Team Homepage

Above link to the homepage of the Rubin Football team in Kazan, Tatarstan.
The problem is that there is no page in Tatar, only Russian and English.

Tatar Mosque interior

2011-12-27T06:51:00.000-08:00

We don't know much about this image. It was given to us as "Svet, Russia - Tatar Mosque"

Ike Misher, Ber Tatar Ber Vakit, Ber Rayonda

2011-12-25T10:03:00.000-08:00

Ике мишер, бер татар. Бер вакыт бер районда (Илсур Мортаза) 2008 г., Историческая драма

Kazan, Tatarstan

2011-12-22T06:29:00.001-08:00

To the Roofs of Kazan

2011-12-21T07:07:00.000-08:00

Good Roof Shots and Aerial Photography of Kazan

"Kazan" Tatar Dance Ensemble

2011-12-19T06:39:00.001-08:00

This is pretty.

Andrea Serefiddin and her Peremech

2011-12-18T20:37:00.000-08:00

Andrea is hard at work, tirelessly hand shaping Peremech, non-stop day and night to feed her hungry husband and family. A Woman's Work is never done! ... and so much appreciated.

Ash Bulsin.

Putin's Russia - Lilia Shevtosova

2011-12-17T13:45:00.000-08:00

Putin's Russia - Lilia Shevtosova

Each and every book we encounter relating to Russia and Russian History, we zoom to the index to hunt for content relating to Kazan, Tatars, Tatarstan, Turkic peoples of Central Asia, and other topics relating to Volga Tatars.

Often the result is terrible. Tatar: see Mongols
Tatars are not Mongols.

In this book there was content relating to (and critical of) Shamiev.

"The Kremlin, however did not want a total purge of the regions; it was prepared to continue the practice, instituted by Yeltsin, of making deals in them. According to Russian law, both the president and the regional governors were allowed only two terms. With Putin's approval and under pressure from the presidential staff, the Duma passed an amendment that gave 26 governors and republic presidents the right to a third term. The number included such regional heavyweights as Mintimer Shamiyev, the president of the republic of Tatarstan. Putin must have concluded that , having given the regional bosses a scare, he could control them. Running his (that is the Kremlin's ) candidate in a region meant getting into a fight in which the wrong people might win. And besides, fighting meant tension, which Putin did not like. Thus, for the sake of peace of mind, the Kremlin agreed to de facto limitless rule for regional family clans. Later, the Constitutional Court endorsed the ruling that gave regional bosses the right to be reelected for a third and even fourth time, which guaranteed the preservation of semifeudal regimes in Russian provinces.

Tatarstan is an outstanding example of how local regimes have ruled and how they cooperate with Moscow. During the 1990's, the experienced Soviet apparatchik Shamiyev managed to neutralize nationalist groups in Tatarstan, to become president there, and to establish relatively stable rule in the republic. His rule was based on the dictatorship of his family, which controlled the republic's basic resources - oil and gas, among others. Opposition was cruelly suppressed. Corruption and paternalism flourished. But Khan Shamiyev gave the center what it needed, primarily outward calm and support during elections.

At the beginning, Putin demanded that the regional feudal lords, especially Shamiyev and Murtaza Rakhimov (the president of another Russian republic, Bashkortostan, who had built the same type of rule as Shaimiyev), curtail their appetites and bring their constitutions into line with the federal one. The regional lords grumbled and resisted at first, and even directed gentle threats at the center, but in the end they caved in."

Kazan - Left Bank of Bulak

2011-12-10T08:43:00.002-08:00

Kazan - View with Harbour

2011-12-10T08:43:00.001-08:00

Kazan - Kaban Lake

2011-12-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

Qolsharif Mosque - Great Attractions

2011-12-06T13:36:00.000-08:00

Balachak.ru

2011-12-05T06:35:00.000-08:00

Flowers in Tatar - At Balachak.Ru

Balachak.ru homepage. Site in Tatar/Cyrillic
Content relates to children and parenting

Toman - Bashkir Song

2011-12-04T20:56:00.000-08:00

Karagai - Bashkir Song

2011-12-04T20:53:00.000-08:00

This is lovely - in many ways.

Dilemmas of Diversity After the Cold War:

2011-12-04T12:42:00.000-08:00

This book has content relating to Tatars and Tatatarstan
By Michele R. Rivkin-Fish, Michele Rivkin-Fish, Elena Trubina, Elena Trubina

The Kazan Kremlin Through the Ages

2011-12-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

Равиль Бухараев, Нигел Давиес
48 pages

Kaban Lake - 1917

2011-12-02T16:40:00.003-08:00

Kazan 1909

2011-12-02T16:40:00.001-08:00

Kazan Arts School - Pre 1917

2011-12-02T16:39:00.000-08:00

Tatars Without Borders

2011-11-30T15:24:00.000-08:00

Tatars without Borders

mostly in Russian
extensive list of Global Tatar Organizations and much more

Kazan Pre-1917

2011-11-30T08:11:00.001-08:00

Kazan Garden 1910

2011-11-30T08:08:00.001-08:00

Kazan Bulak

2011-11-30T08:06:00.001-08:00

Kazan 1903

2011-11-30T08:03:00.001-08:00

Vandermaelen locates Kazan 1827

2011-11-30T08:00:00.001-08:00

Belgian geographer Philippe Vandermaelen (1795-1869). Vandermaelen based his cartography on the maps of the 1824 edition of the Atlas Géographique de l’Empire de Russie compiled in St. Petersburg under the direction of "Functionary of the 6th Rank" Vasilii Petrovich Piadischeff (AKA Piadyshev, 1769-1836).

Irkutsk Tatar Mosque - 1904

2011-11-30T07:49:00.001-08:00

Down the Volga - Marq de Villiers 1991

2011-11-29T20:44:00.000-08:00

There are many stereotypes and misconceptions about Kazan Tatars in the excerpt below, but there is a benefit to awareness of the non-Tatar perception. What have they been taught and mis-taught? How much has Kazan and Tatarstan changed since Gorbachev and 1991?

Kilometer 1,750

Kazan

"I woke up in the morning on the Rus and we were in Kazan. The previous night, as the boat plowed steadily eastward past Marinnskii Posad, past Volzhsk and Zelenodolsk, I lay in my bunk reading about Ivan the Terrible and his capture of Kazan in the sixteenth century, a story of heroism, cunning and great barbarity. Ivan had caused the best carpenters of Uglich, a thousand kilometers away, to construct a fort, which they floated down the Volga and erected across from the Tartar headquarters, where the Kazanka and Volga Rivers joined. Ivan brought with him as a lucky talisman the cross of Dmitri Donskoy, the thirteenth-century Moscow prince who had become the archetypal Russian hero by actually defeating the Golden Horde in battle, and at the end of September he began his assault.

His imported fortress was thrown up overnight, held together by wooden pegs; the army, which had come separately by land from Moscow with Ivan himself at its head, was immense, more than a hundred thousand men under arms; it stormed the Tartar stronghold, took the citadel, massacred all the males (he didn't have time for his favorite sport, impaling, so he contented himself with evisceration followed by a messy beheading). He enslaved the women, first turning them over to his soldiers, then passing them to the slave factors from the East. Most of the small children were butchered - too much trouble to do anything else with them. The mosques were pulled down, the fortress razed and the Tartar remnants scattered. Well, it wasn't as if the Horde didn't have it coming. The Horde had indulged in its own atrocities; by the time the great Tartar leader Tamerlane died in 1405, towns from Hormuz in India to Chistopol on the Volga lay in ruins for defying him, ruins marked by towers made from the skulls of his victims.

To celebrate his famous victory, Ivan built the Cathedral of St. Basil in Moscow's Red Square, now the backdrop for tourist snaps, its candy-cane domes and towers twinkling in the thin Moscow sunlight. The legend has it that Ivan put out the eyes of his master builder so he'd never be able to duplicate the cathedral's magnificence. No one knows if it's true, but it would have been perfectly in character. Whenever Ivan was drunk thereafter, which was often, he'd sing a song about the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan.

I pushed aside the curtains in my cabin and stared outside at an altogether more prosaic sight. Two of the American tourists padded by in their slippers on their morning jog; on the embankment below, the old women were slowly sweeping several acres of tarmac with birch brooms. We were moored in front of the Kazan river terminal building, an edifice in white stone and glass, with Tartar motifs picked out in the stone and the name Kazan in Rued on the top in Russian and Tartar. There was no other sign of activity. The inevitable row of small kiosks, for beer, candies and newspapers, had been set up behind the terminal building, surrounding its parking lot. Only the newsstand was open, and I went down to buy my usual guides to a new town: the local newspapers and a street map. I sat on a bench to read Kazanskaya Pravda while I waited for breakfast to be served on board. There was a strong editorial opinion on page one in support of Lithuania's demands for independence; and there was a photograph of a demonstration that had taken place the previous day in favor of "Tartar self-sufficiency". So, I thought, the long fight still isn't over. Olearius reported that Kazan "lies most picturesquely 7 versts inland from the Volga, on several hills. The surrounding plain is inundated in the spring by the Volga and the river Kazan." He visited the city to see what he could buy, but found nothing at the market except some fruits, especially melons as large as pumpkins, and old, putrid fish "that gave off a stench so foul we were unable to go by it without holding our nose." The city is now perched on the banks of the river itself, the spring flooding controlled by the dams of the Volga Cascade. I visited the same market Olearius did, and though I found no melons, pumpkin-sized or smaller, I found the same putrid fish and held my nose just as Olearius did. The locals were amused. The "putridness" was deliberate; this fish was a local delicacy, akin the infamous Bombay Duck of India.

In the countryside, in these post-Ivan centuries, there are now only ghosts of Tartar greatness, ruined places and secret shrines where Tartars gather in summer, hidden by the trees from prying Russian eyes, a pathetic remnant of a proud people making pilgrimages to the burial places of their heroes. Such places existed in Olearius's time, and they still do. One was the ruin of an old Tartar town, now in the middle of a copse on a kolkhoz, and Kazan Tartars visit it at midsummer. A group of students took me there one morning for lunch; to them, unlike the country folk the mood of the place is no longer nostalgic or sad; it's just a place for picnics. I saw nothing much, only grass tufts where cold stone had been and a glade where traders had bargained, trading kumquat preserves for intricate carvings from Kosmodemyansk.

Tartar history has become mere legend, and the "wild saints of Batu" the mythical heroes the Horde carried into battle, are dressed up in picturesque detail to populate the stories of children; there are sporadic though feeble efforts to recapture the heroic moods of old; most of the Tartars have grievances against the Russians, but more of them share grievances against the Russians, but more of the Tartars have grievances against the Russians, but more of them share grievances with the Russians against Center, against the system, the apparat, against those who'd keep them down, against the bureaucrats who are blamed form the impoverishment of a proud people and the denuding of a fertile land. I sat with a man on the Volga embankment later, and he told me stories of the old days, how they'd pulled sturgeon from the Volga, three, four, five meters long - "one fish would be enough for a boatload of people for a whole journey," he said. "There are no fish like that any more. There's nothing like that any more."
"Well," I said, "I don't think this has much to do with Center. This has to do with the modern world. It's the same in our country." He didn't want to hear this. Center was the villain. Gorbachev and his people. Communists. I didn't know what the Russian was for "bum rap" so I let it go.

I'd spent a few hours earlier in the day at Kazan University. I knew it was the oldest in the Soviet Union (founded in 1804), that it had a strong English faculty and a powerful Green movement. But mostly I wanted to get a fix on Kazan and Tartar history.

Kazan historians, both Russian and Tartar, are scornful of the skulls-and-pillage popular image of the Mongol invaders. The stories of Tartar atrocities are mostly unreliable folk memories, fed by centuries of xenophobia and paranoia. Yet they themselves seem to recount the more lurid tales with some delight, so perhaps the revisionism needs revision too. In any case, when the first outriders of the Mongol empire under Batu appeared abruptly in European Russian in 1223, they swept all before them. The Russian principalities of the time were in a state of political anarchy. Kiev was in chaos. Petty dynastic quarrels between princes and dukes were frequent. The towns of the region were constantly at war, and they relied on a poorly equipped and ill-trained peasant militia that was no match for the skillful bowmen of Asia; it's not surprising that after Kiev and Vladimir and Suzdal fell without a struggle to the invaders, the Golden Horde was regarded by its opponents with superstitious awe; the hail of arrows that opened Russia to Mongol conquest must have seemed like a miraculous and deadly rain, and the wielders of the bows appeared as devils incarnate. Batu ranged along the Volga, upstream to the old Bulgar country of the Kama and trading town of Bolgari. His camp near the mouth of the Volga later came to be Sarai the Great, the capital of all the Horde.

The revisionist view of Russian-Mongol relations is somewhat different. It's accepted that Batu sacked Kiev in 1240 and left only two hundred houses standing of a city that had at the time made Paris seem like a primitive village. But , in the Kazan view, Muscovite apologists and monastic sources grotesquely over-estimated the destructiveness of the first raids, and at the same time over-sold the bravery of the resistance. The invaders were mostly interested in trade, not conquest, in facilitating and reviving trade routes that had been lost, and it was control of these routes they were after. A more cold-blooded look at the history traces the network of alliances the invader made, not only among the Muslim merchants working the upper Volga but among the Russian princelings themselves. Most of the occupied cities prospered under the Horde; and the new centers, such as Moscow and Tver, flourishes. In the Kazan view, the Tartars never tried to impose alien rule or foreign princes on the Russian people.

Some Tartar revisionists go further. They delight in describing in great detail the centuries of petty treacheries that were the daily lot of Russian towns. Twice in one afternoon I was asked if I understood how the Muscovite princes had allied themselves with the Tartars to impose their hegemony on Russia. Had I heard this? Did I know the details? No? Then they repeated the story I'd already heard in Tver of how Alexandr, the ruler of that city, was murdered by Ivan Moneybags of Moscow, who had enlisted the Horde as allies. This, I was told with an air of great satisfaction, was an absolutely typical story. It was how many Russian cities got where they were. It was how Moscow got where it is today...

The Khanate of Kazan, the rump that Ivan the Terrible conquered, was formed as a result of the disintegration of the Golden Horde. In 1437 Ula Mehmet was ousted from the Sarai Horde and started his own Khanate, building at Kazan the greatest fortress between Moscow and the Urals, with thirty thousand men in its garrison. Ivan the Terrible sacked it in 1552. And since then the Tartars, once feared as "Gog and Magog, devils incarnate, agents of Satan, as cruel as the wind," have been quiescent.

That morning I'd taken a three-hour tour of the city by bus. Our guide, Boris, was hired by Intourist as a freelancer. He wasn't really a tour guide but a cartoonist, photographer, English instructor and musician, and planned to set himself up in business teaching English and conducting tourists around town. He gave me a book called Places Associated With Lenin on the Volga which he himself called "a good example of Red propaganda." And indeed that's what it was, a panegyric to the Great Leader, couched in those familiar prefabricated phrases that make thinking unnecessary. Boris was a Tartar, though he only wore his black-and-white Tartar cap after he got to know us, and looked otherwise completely Russian.

We started at the Kremlin, which a copy of kremlins elsewhere; it could easily have been in Kostroma, or Yaroslavl, and had nothing in it of the Mongol. Its' most interesting building is the Zuyembeka Tower, which is a red-brick confection 70 meters high. There's a legend attached to it, of course; it's said that the Princess Zuyembeka, in despair at the sacking of her native city, sprang from its height to her death on the stones below. Like many such legends, it contains a grain of truth: the princess had gone to Moscow to the court of the Tsars (Ivan the Terrible having invented the title) to plead for her patrimony; she'd been seduced by the decadent court life there, and never returned.

Boris was a fount of useful and trivial information. There's a factory outside town that makes jet planes. The oil pipeline to Berlin crosses the Volga here; it's called the Friendship Pipeline (although maybe the Fraternal Socialist Countries, as they used to be called, don't see it that way any more, since part of Gorbachev's economic reforms were to make them pay for Soviet oil in hard currency, which meant a billion-ruble windfall for the Soviet economy and hardship for the Europeans). The region near Kazan is semi-desert, with primitive, scattered villages and few cities. There are not many real Tartars left. Boris told me that the Russians lied when they maintained that the Tartars of the Crimea had offered to collaborate with Hitler and kill all the Russians. "They were supposed to have sent a letter to Hitler. This is another of Stalin's fabrications." The Tartar language, which is Turkic in origin, has been transliterated into a peculiar mix of Cyrillic and Mongolian. Steak Tartare is not a dish you find on any Kazan menu. Kazan is now on the banks of the Kuibyshev Sea, which backs up almost to the walls of the kremlin. There are picturesque hills on the right bank. The Kazan means "border of state" in Tartar. Pugachev the Rebel tried to capture it and failed. And so on and so on and so on... Boris, words finally failing him, resorted to poetry to show his affection for his city.

Kazan saddened me. It has its university and its symphony orchestra, its theaters and its houses of culture, and the people I met are so desperately proud of them. The citizens of Kazan are trying their best to preserve what they have, with pitifully few resources. There's an ordinance forbidding high rises on the main street that runs from the kremlin to the university, and the civic authorities have designated a "cottage belt" around the central core in which the old wooden houses will be protected, as a souvenir of the ancient days. There's scaffolding on many of the monuments, but there's no work being done: there's not enough money. This place is so poor! Walking past these little log and wood houses, with their peeling paint, their doors and sills sagging, their roofs bowed, I found it hard to imagine that there was enough money in the world to fix it up, to put it back together.

There were flowers in small pots in the windows, and little collections of objets. One of these weary houses must have contained the brothel where Tolstoy lost his virginity, to his own great shame and disgust. Many revolutionaries and writers lived in lodgings nearby. Maybe they still did. I felt excluded and, for the first time, lonely. who knows what secret life these houses contained?

I walked down from the kremlin walls to the main shopping street, called Baumann after one of the early Bolsheviks. As usual, the stores were four-firths empty and the shortages were severe. Meat, at 3.60 rubles a kilo, was scarce. There was some fruit juice and a few sausages, but not much else. There was no fish anywhere, not even the stinking delicacy found in the market. Kazan calls itself the center of the Soviet fur industry, and there were plenty of fur hats for sale, at prices ranging from 20 rubles for rabbit to 500 rubles for something I didn't recognize, a pale gray fur, silky smooth. Muskrat was selling for 200 rubles , about $20. There was a long line of women in front of a clothing store. Bras, I was told. Just as in Tutaev, women were lining up a hundred deep to buy bras, anxiously pushing forward, fearful that the precious supply would be gone before they reached the head of the queue.

That afternoon I went with the tour group from the Rus to a concert at the Kazan conservatory, the orchestra performing variations on Russian and Tartar national songs. The soloists, some of whom were very good, were from the conservatory and the Kazan opera; they appeared in tails and formal wear; the orchestra was in "national" costume, which appeared mostly to be Russian. Maybe it was my mood, but I wondered, not for the first time, why all the Russian folk songs were so sad. And why do the few happy ones make the Russians weep?

The next day I left the tourists to Boris and slipped back to the university in the center of town. I'd heard it described as somber and neoclassical, "like a Midwestern American college, " but I didn't find it somber. The library building was a baroque confection with intricate wrought-iron balconies; only the main lecture hall is at all sober; It's where Lenin studied, and the school governors preserve it as it was when he was there, "as a monument to the Great Brain of Simbirsk" (a phrase from one of the Kazan students.). The students pay little attention to this monument.

Leo Tolstoy was a student here in the 1840's, long before Lenin's father pulled himself up by his own bootstraps from the slums of Astrakhan; Tolstoy studied in Kazan for five years before he decided the professors were ignoramuses and he returned to his estates. Lenin never actually graduated from Kazan; he was expelled from taking part in a student demo (and for refusing to recant). Gorky had come here from Nizhni Novgorod, but the university refused to admit him, so he lived in cheap rooming houses with the Volga roustabouts and whores as his teachers; his lodgings were filled with revolutionary students who were in ferment over the need to throw all aside in a great frenzy ... Gorky loved them all.

"We have a reputation to uphold," on the of students told me as we sat on the edge of a monument in a park across from the main university building. His English was excellent, flawless, his accent British "from the films," as he put it. " A reputation for radicalism for revolution; though our professors of course believe we have only to study the revolutions of the past, not to make one of our own..."

He and his friends had gone to the demo the previous day for Tartar self-sufficiency, but he hadn't been impressed. "It's all romanticism." he said "No rigor on their part. Only anger."

I asked him what he and his fellows believed. "We're not revolutionaries in the way Ulyanov was," he said, deliberately avoiding the name Lenin. "We're part of a much larger movement that cannot be called a revolution. Revolutions are made by conspirators, bomb throwers, cadres; revolutions lead to Stalin. We want none of this. We're part of amass movement away from violence, force, insistence ... We're not stoppable. We'll never have to fight. We're the future___"

"Yes,yes," I said, interrupting the flow, "but what changes are you looking for?"

"Devolution," he said. "You know the term? It's English, I think. Not separatism. A Commonwealth of Soviet Nations. We want the British idea with the West European reality. Little Belgiums, everywhere , with their own languages and their own customs, and no one to bully them, in cooperation with other..."

"Begium has severe racial and language problems," I said.

He waved me aside impatiently. "They're overcoming them," he said. "But all right, take Holland as our model. Why cannot the Tartars be like Holland?"

That was a tough one to answer, images of Tamerlane and jolly Queen Juliana jostling in my mind... So I said nothing. Why not West Europe indeed? Sovereignty-association, to use a cliche closer to my own home, from Quebec, is not an ignoble idea, taking for granted as it does that tolerance would be exercised on both sides. "Do you think the ethnic Romanians of Moldavia will accept a peaceful accommodation?" I asked. "Or angry minorities elsewhere in your country?"

"That's what we believe. When we've won they will."

Three or four more students joined us. They were all part of the English faculty, and I gave up attempting to speak Russian -- they were much more fluent in English than I'd ever be in their language.

I asked them what relationships between the Tartars and Russians were like. "how many of you are Tartars?"

There was only one. He looked Russian to me. I asked him about that.

"Centuries of mixing have taken place," he said. "That should tell you something about how we get on."

They wanted me to come that night to a meeting at one of their professors' flats to draw up an agenda for "Green action"; they were trying to set up links with Western ecology activists , so far without much success. "We have no money and no access to technology. But we'd like to take part in the international movement." I declined. I knew I'd have to return to the ship, which would depart later that night, and I wanted to explore the city a little more.

I walked back to the kremlin, and with some difficulty clambered on to one of the ramparts overlooking the Volga below. I peered across the river, trying to imagine the armies of Ivan the Terrible massed on the other side. It was hopeless. This was no longer the Volga but the Kuibyshev Sea; Kazan had been kilometes from the water in those days. Still, Ivan fascinated me, as he did all the Russians - the first Tsar to rule all the Russians, ...the madman, the first of ...so many mad fools...

It was Boris, something of an Ivan fan, who told me that "Terrible" was in fact not a very good translation of Ivan Grozni, his name in Russian: grozni can just as easily mean awesome, or awe-inspiring, formidable. "But I suppose he was terrible enough , so no one will change it now." Ivan was born in 1530, and ruled until he died in 1584. He came to power in a century that was cruel to Russia, beset as it was with wars and invasions on all sides. "It was from this," Boris said, "from these hammer blows, from these hatreds and invasions and cruelties, that Russia was formed. Is it any wonder Russia came to believe in a national dictatorship?"

Enormous resources were poured into these wars. The hundred thousand men Ivan took to Kazan were not his largest army. There were up to three hundred thousand men under arms in some of his western campaigns. Every year the provinces were expected to provide sixty-five thousand new recruits, numbers that are not so very different from those of modern armies. They were paid for by landowners, who in turn taxed their peasants and serfs. Bankruptcies mounted until at times the whole country seemed on the point of economic collapse.

Ivan's first marriage was long and apparently happy. His wife was Anastasia Zakharina-Kobila, from whose family the Romanovs would later come. She died, and Ivan never quite recovered. He married five more times before the end, each union short-lived and filled with turmoil and brutality.

In his last years madness began to overtake him. He was no longer satisfied just to be Tsar of all Russians, governing a huge empire through his bureaucrats. He wanted to sweep away all opposition, and in the presence of the gentry, the boyars and the nobles, he sensed an opposing power. Out of this paranoia came his decision to set up what was in effect a parallel government, separating the country into a portion for the state and a portion as his own personal fief. This division came to be called the oprichnina, "the apart," a word that derives from the concept of a widow's portion of an estate.

This lunatic scheme was imposed with great ruthlessness on the country. His oprichnik enforcers rode black horse and wore black clothing; they carried a dog's head at the saddle and a broom as their emblem, and their business was terror and murder; it's no accident that Stalin's infamous police under Beria were sometimes called the oprichniki. Ivan even set up a tame Tartar on the throne of the "rest" of Russia; everyone who disagreed with him, however mildly, was taken to the dungeons, tortured and thrown to the dogs. At one point he suspected that the city of Novgorod had done a deal behind his back with the Poles (a suspicion completely unfounded). He took his oprichnik army there and threw whole families into the river, stationing officers in rowboats to push them under until they drowned. Later he sent a letter to the survivors: "Men of Novgorod who are left alive, pray God for our religious sovereign power, for victory over all visible and invisible foes."

Soon afterward he killed his cousin, then he beat his wife insensible and killed his son and heir with a blow from his staff... After this he slept no more and spent his nights howling thorough the palace, until he died in despair in 1584, to the great relief of the country and especially of the people who surrounded him.

Their relief was short-lived. The Time of Troubles followed, for Ivan had killed his legitimate heir and left only the feeble Fedor in Moscow to succeeed him, and little Dmitri in Uglich...

The invasions of the Tartars were forgotten in all this chaos, and they subsided back into the long ethnic slumber from which they have not yet arisen.

People in Kazan, Tartars and non-Tartars, had insisted that Kazan was a seat of Inter-ethnic harmony. Despite these assurances, Kazan was the other place I was warned about in Gorky. The previous day's demonstration in the town square by militant Tartars pushing for an independent Tartar republic had drawn an approving mention in Kazanskaya Pravda, together with ta front-page photograph, but it had attracted only a few hundred people, many of them jeering Russians. A number of the students had confirmed that there was gang warfare in Kazan, warfare more violent than Gorky's Only some of it, they said was traceable to Russian-Tartar tension. Much of it seemed to be Tartar gangs fighting each other, and was generated by nihilistic attitudes among the young who have no faith in the system. For the several days I spent in Kazan I was watchful and wary, but I have no firsthand evidence of clashes.

Only once did I become really nervous, when I spotted an unruly group of young men, yelling and shoving one another and heading my way. I ducked into the nearest doorway; it turned out to be the baking operation of a bread shop and was filled with burly women in white smocks and headdresses kneading massive lumps of dough. There was a wonderful smell. To their indignant inquiries at my intrusion I used the word khoolighani (hooligans), which is archaic but the only word I could dredge up to cover the case. That they responded at once, one of them slamming the heavy door and ramming home a massive bolt, made me thing there was something to these stories. The women were solicitous. They made sure the coast was clear before they let me out, and insisted I take a loaf of bread hot from the oven. Solicitous, but also amused by my folly.

Kuibyshev

Kuiibyshev sits on a great horn of land that juts into the Kuibyshev Sea at its narrowest point, where the sea is only about 10 kilometres across . This is the Kuibyshev that until 1935 used to be called Spassk-Tatarskii, not the much larger Kuibyshev further down the river, which was renamed Samara after aI left; the old Bolshevik V.V. Kuibyshev had been Party boss in Samara at the time of the Revolution, and there are busts of his sever and overstuffed form all over this district. It seemed somewhat excessive to name two towns after him, but I wasn't going to argue the point. I wasn't much interested in Spassk-Tatarskii itself (even the Rechflot guidebook had little to say about it, except tha it was " a city in the Tartar ASSR, founded in 1781:).

But on the outskirts of the town, on the north flank of the horn facing towards Kazan, was the site of the ancient city of Bolgari, which had been the capital of the Bolgar state from the tenth century until the coming of Ivan the Terrible. At its height, it had been a city of internationally minded merchants, who'd taken on themselves the responsibility of keeping open the trading routes of European Russia.

I found an old man who agreed to take me to Bolgari in his little outboard. I stowed my bags with his family and we packed a picnic lunch, setting off around noon. I was the fourth tourist he'd shown around, he told me. "Rush hour in Bolgari," I said , but traffic jams hadn't made their way into the consciousness of the citizens of Kuibyshev, and the phrase didn't mean anything to him. The other three were all writers, he said. One was French, the other two English.

There was nothing very much to be seen at Bolgari except a few ramshackle buildings and the detritus of a major achaeological dig. Clearly its workers were on leave, for there was no one around. "Usually there are many experts here,"the old man said, disappointed. "They find all kinds of rubbish that they take to their museums." We sat on the shore and stared northward over the sea that had once been a river, and I tried to picture the dumpy Turkish trading vessels at anchor, and the sleek ships of the Vikings, which had made their way to Bolgari as early as the tenth century. (peremech lounge editor note: WOW THE RACISM) A merchant from the Levant, Ibn Fad'len, took home a desciption of the Viking primitives "as tall as date palms, red in hue"; the Vikings frightened everybody with their wild ways, filled with violence, sacrifices and urgent sexuality, and the city was relieved when they headed back north to whatever savage place they'd come from.

We were joined on the bank by a couple of fishermen from a kolkhoz on the other side of the volga, each with a homemade rod of wilow and a jar orf worms. They sprawled on the grass near us, each accepting a cigarette as his due, and stared out of the corner of their eyes, looking away whenever I glanced at them. They both wore padded jackets of some rough blue material, denim trousers and heavy farm boots. Their faces were round and florid, sly and calculating.

So much has been written about the Russian peasant! This slow moving, cautious, suspicious personage has dominated the thinking of the Russian intelligentsia for centuries, and his freedom has been the main burden of revolutionary politics since the Decemberists in the Napoleonic period. In an odd way the peasant, the "rural population, " still dominates Russian thinking. The journalists on the Novosti Express had been fascinated by peasants, if somewhat repelled; peasant traits had been a frequent topic of conversation.

I looked at the two kolkhozniks again. they were supposed to be working on the farm but were "ill" this day. Their faces were closed, neither hostile nor friendly. They said little, keeping their own counsel. Serfdom, I reflected, is only four generations removed. One of the prime purposes of the Bolshevik Revolution was the liberation of the rural workers. They were to be the backbone of the State. And here they were, taking their ease. I wondered how the peasantry's legendary evasiveness squared with the face that the New Politics appealed directly to their self-interest through the insidious medium of television... The peasants have taken what they want before; they're a powerful weapon for any politician who dares to unleash them.

On an impulse, I asked, "Didn't Stenka Razin operate around here somewhere?"

Razin was a renegade Cossack and peasant rabblerouser, and his revolt represented an early battle in the long war between bosses and peasants, the war that was supposed to end with the Bolshevik Revolution.

"Yes," the old man said, "he sailed past this place to burn Kazan."

He lit another cigarette. The two kolkhozniks lay back on the grass and snoozed, their rods weighted down with rocks, their hooks, unbaited, left in the water just in case.

From the 1650s Russia's peasants were always on the verge of ruin, and a bad harvest would bankrupt them. Since they had no legal recourse, flight was their only escape. Some would hide in the woods, others would gather in large bands, still others made their way to the Cossacks. Peasant risings became a kind of background noise, a violent static. In 1664 the Tsar ordered the first national hunt for runaways; these hunts were to be held on and off for another hundred years.

The legendary peasant patience was hardly anywhere in evidence in this period; frequently they murdered their owners, set fire to their houses, "expropriated" their fields. In 1648 there was a tax revolt in Moscow and Tsar Alexis escaped only by surrendering tax officials to the mob. Other tax revolts were reported in provincial cities. War and chaos at Center increased the burden. More and more peasants fled. Large estates became overgrown by forest, as increasing loans at increasing interest rates, impossibly heavy fines and hopelessly un-payable debts were added to the crushing burden of taxation.

With Stepan Timofeyevich ("Stenka") Razin, the notion of class war boiled up from the deep peasant resentments and shook the state. Razin terrorized the Caspian Sea, capturing Russian and Persian ships, murdering their crews and burning ports. Just outside Astrakhan, he seized a flotilla owned by the Tsar. In 1670 he descended on Tsaritsyn with seven thousand followers. Next he sacked Astrakhan. After drunken orgies and many atrocites against nobles and military - reported in Moscow with horrified relish - he murdered the governor and proclaimed Cossack self-rule. He took and burned Samara and Saratov. He looted Kazan and burned it down. He incited the peasantry to revolt against the nobility and the bureaucracy (but not against the Tsar). His revolt spread to the Don and Donets and to the major towns of heartland Russian. He was widely regarded by the common folk as a hero. To some degree he still is....

He was defeated in battle near Simbirsk in 1671 , captured and taken to Moscow. There Tsar Alexis had him tortured, quartered alive and hung outside as a warning. Without him, the revolt collapsed.

Razin's death didn't stop the revolts. In 1705 several new uprisings confronted Peter the Great. The Bashkirs rose on the middle Volga.

...in 1773 Emilian Pugachev incited the greatest uprising in Russian history until the Revolution of 1917. It began in the Ural Mountains and spread rapidly through the impoverished Volga regions of the southeast , around Tsaritsyn and Saratov. By the following summer Pugachev had placed the whole country into an uproar and was marching on Moscow itself. Catherine hastily concluded her warmaking against Turkey and turned her troops on this new and more potent threat.

An illiterate Don Cossack, Pugachev had fought for Russia in the final battles of the Seven Years Way (1756-63) in Poland. He returned home as an invalid. For three years after his recovery he wandered among the people of the Old Believers, absorbing their mystical and stubborn oppositionism. The Cossacks around the Yaik River on the lower Volga revolted against attempts to tie them to the land; Pugachev, following their lead, stirred up the Cossacks in Uralsk. He was arrested, imprisoned at Kazan and deported to Siberia. Through the complicity of his guards he escaped, and in 1773 he reappeared on the Volga. There as "Tsar Peter III," he "decreed" the abolition of serfdom and soon gathered an immense following of Cossacks, peasants, mina and factory workers, Old Believer clergy and dissident Bashkirs, still seething from their failed revolt against Peter the Great. Pugachev was defeated by a force sent by Catherine, but he regrouped and burned Kazan, captured Saratov and besieged Tsaritsyn. Finally, General Suvorov captured him and sent him to Moscow for execution.

Mishar - Tatar notes - babelfished

2011-11-29T16:44:00.000-08:00

Fragment from the book [M].[Z]. Of [khafizova] “Nizhniy-Novgorod Tatars”

Tatars -[mishari] in the multinational province

Sources

Contemporary Tatars are one of the important [tyurkoyazychnykh] peoples, after which was fastened this name, which arrived into Europe from the east in 13 centuries together with the Tatar Mongols. In contrast to [etnonima] “the Tatars”, connected with the newcomers, the history of Tatar people is entirely different. It has deep local roots, about which long ago it was known. Thus, [N].[G]. Chernishevsky, who well knew history, culture, life, the customs of Tatars, that managed Tatar language and letter, that studied their history on the basis of the Tatar sources, emphasized that “from the present [rymskikh], Kazan' and Orenburg Tatars hardly there is one person, who originated from soldiers [Batyya]; what present Tatars - descendants of those tribes, which lived in these places and subjugated [Batyem], as were subjugated Russians”.

The efforts of many researchers proved that between the Mongolians of 12-13 centuries and the contemporary Tatars there is in common either in the language or in anthropology nor in the material and spiritual culture. The ethnic roots of Tatars depart to the local Turkish tribes, which lived in East Europe in the territory between [Uraloi] and by the Carpathians still at the end of the past and the beginning of new era, they continue to live now. The fact is that, as researchers assert, “here there was no change of peoples, it changed only by [etnonim], since in the different periods of history as the ruled tribes among many Turkish tribes she came out the one, the another tribe. Hence and the change of general for the Turks [etnonima]”.

For example, the role of the leading tribes and carriers of general [etnonima] in the specific stage of history passes in this territory to [bulgaram] and Mishars - two important Turkish tribes, which spoke on the dialects of one and the same [kipchakskogo] language, which were the ethnic basis of Volga Tatars. (By [etnonim] “of [bulgary]” in the translation from the Turkish language it indicates “river people”, and “Mishars” ([mazhgary], [mochary], [mozhary], Magyar) - “forest people”) both ethnoses passed the prolonged way of formation, development, after becoming in the course of time the independent national character of Kazan' Tatars and Tatars -[misharey].

The region of the forming of Kazan' Tatars it was left bank, eastern regions of Volga Region. The basis of their ethnogeny, together with [bulgarami], were other Turkish tribes, including of [kipchaki] and [otyurchennye] adjacent Ugro-Finnish tribes. But Tatars -[mishari], in contrast to the Kazan' Tatars, were formed in the earth of Volga right bank, the southwestern territories of Volga Region, in the regions between the Volga and the Oka and in The [meshcherskoy] lowland - so that named by Russians, as assume researchers, on the name of its basic inhabitants.

The tracks of [misharey], that lived pell-mell with other tribes in the enormous territory of East Europe, were observed even to our era, and with the average flow of the Oka from 2 centuries of our time. The distant ancestors of [misharey] were “[akatsiry]”, and later - [mozhary], especially the people “of [kipchak]- Tatars”, which played significant role in molding of Tatars -[misharey] as the component part of the Tatar people.

In this process participated also the [otyurechennye] Finno-Ugric tribes and [obulgarizovannye] [burtasy]. Specifically, [burtasy] and [mozhary] are called by some researchers as the straight predecessors Of the [sergachskoy] (or ancient [alatyrskoy]) group of [misharey] - ancestors of contemporary Nizhniy-Novgorod Tatars.

The process of the rapprochement of Tatars -[misharey] with the Kazan' Tatars engaged the number of centuries. The bases of consolidation were laid even in the times of Volga [Bulgarii], whose earth reached the average flow of the Oka River. This tendency somewhat is accelerated in the epoch of gold horde, whose authority applied to the regions of the settling of [bulgar] and by [misharey]. Was great in this the role of Islam and [kypchakskogo] language, which became official language and language of entire [zolotoordynskogo] ethnos, dialects of which they were, as is known, [bulgarskiy] and [misharskiy] languages.

However, in the times of Kazan' khanate (1438-1552 yr) the rapprochement of [bulgar] and Mishar noticeably is weakened in view of their separate existence, when bulk of [misharey] proved to be in the camp of the enemies of [kazantsev]. Specifically, the final formulation of Kazan' Tatars into the feudal national character during this period completes. Ethnic generality and appearance of [misharey] is formed in the dependence on the Moscow state from the middle of 15 centuries in the larger part in The [kasimovskom] khanate (1452-1684 yr.), and [sergachskikh] of [misharey] - in the composition of the multinational Nizhniy-Novgorod earth.

From the second-half 16 centuries begins further rapprochement of Tatars -[misharey] with the Kazan' Tatars in connection with the beginning of the mass migrations of [misharey] to the eastern earth, that were being continued to the first half 18 centuries. In those years they widely settled on the right bank of Volga river, in The [zakamskie] regions and [Priurale], which led to strengthening of the integration processs between [misharyami] and Kazan' Tatars, and, in the final analysis, it was formed the united people of Volga-Ural Tatars. Shaping of Tatar bourgeois nation, which was being continued to the end of the 19- beginning of the 20th centuries, began from the end of 18 centuries.

Considerable [misharey] entered also into the composition of Russians, a Bashkir, [nogaytsev] and Chuvashs. At present [mishari] live in the territory of many regions and republics of Volga Region and [Priuralya], compose also the majority of the Tatar population, which lives in the large cities of Russia and other states of the CIS. Is in spite of the territorially scattered stay, they realize themselves by the indissoluble part of the united Tatar people, united by the proximity of ethnic roots and by the generality of history, religion, culture and way of life with the Kazan' Tatars. [Mishari] Kazan' Tatars tell on the dialects of one and the same Tatar people language. “If as the basis of the phonetic system of Tatar literary language lay average (Kazan') dialect, notes academician [M].[Z].[Zakiev], that as the basis of morphological system - [misharskiy]”.

Is such the brief history of [etnonima] and ethnos of Volga Tatars.
Moscow 1998

babelfished from:

this is a bit of a mess, but there are useful facts in there.

Who Killed Rasputin?

2011-11-29T08:05:00.000-08:00

There are several titles in the "Who Killed..." series. The Rasputin tale never gets old.

Who Killed Rasputin? (part 1/5) by xSilverPhinx

Bashkir Dancing

2011-11-29T08:03:00.000-08:00

Zurich, Switzerland 2011

Literary Russia - Kazan

2011-11-26T15:09:00.000-08:00

There have been many Russians living in the Tatar Capitol of Kazan. Here are a few notes about Russian authors that have lived in Kazan (and Tatarstan)

Tatarstan Republic

Chistopol

Boris Pasternak Memorial Room Chistopol, a river port on the River Kama, is some 600 miles east of Moscow. At Ul. Lenina (formerly Volodarskogo ul.), 81, kv.2, is the room where Boris Pasternak spent two years as an evacuee during the Second World War, now open to the public as a "memorial room". The building, a turn-of-the-century private residence which once belonged to a family by the name of Vavilov, stands on a street where the same lime and poplar trees, of which Pasternak wrote in his poetry, grow. By the nearby River Kama there is a wide alley of old trees where Pasternak used to walk.
Other writers were evacuated to Chistopol together with Pasternak, many of whom lived in considerably more luxurious circumstances than his. The playwright Alexander Gladkov left a valuable record of his Meetings with Pasternak during these years. "Chistopol," he writes, "a small, run-of-the-mill provincial town, took on a strange appearance with the arrival of evacuees from Moscow and Leningrad. An odd touch was added by the writers, of whom there must have been several dozen. In their stylish overcoats and soft felt hats they wandered through the streets - which were covered with good Russian mud - as though they were still in the corridors of their building on Vorovsky Street."

A steep wooden staircase leads to the small second-floor room where Pasternak lived with his wife and child. Before the war, it was used as a nursery, and a border of black and red swallows decorates the walls. The furniture from Pasternak's time remains - most importantly the desk where he would sit translating Shakespeare. Some copies of original pages of his translation of Romeo and Juliet decorate the work surface.

Boris Pasternak

Pasternak's life here was not "a sweet bread-roll", in the words of Gladkov. The winters were particularly harsh, but nevertheless Pasternak is said to have braved the cold: "Entering the canteen where the temperature was the same as out on the street and where no one took their coats off, Pasternak always took off his coat and hung his hat up on a nail. He would bring his work with him: and Anglo-Russian dictionary, an miniature volume of Shakespeare, and the next page of the translation."
One witness of the time recalls Pasternak being jeered at in the street by children, because of his unusual and humorous surname - Pasternak in Russian means "Parsnip".
While in Chistopol Pasternak heard of the suicide of one of his friends, the poet Marina Tsvetaeva, in nearby Elabuga.

Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina was also born in Chistopol in 1931.

Elabuga

The town of Elabuga, near Chistopol, is where Marina Tsvetaeva lived for ten days in the summer of 1941, before committing suicide at the age of forty-nine.

Marina Tsvetaeva

In early summer of 1941, when the Soviet Union became involved in the Second World War, Tsvetaeva joined a group of writers being evacuated to the Tatar Republic, after it became clear that she would not be able to stay with Pasternak in Peredelkino, outside Moscow. Having left the capitol on 8 August, 1941 with her son Mur, she arrived almost two weeks later, on the 21st but they were unable to reside with better-placed Chistopol, as her husband and daughter, who had been arrested two years before, were "enemies of the people". Tsvetaeva was reduced to renting a house in the neighboring town of Elabuga. The house, on a quiet street (Ul. Zhdanova, 20), was clean and peaceful. Apart from the kitchen there were two rooms, separated by partitions: one taken by Tsvetaeva and Mar (which was about 30 feet square in size, and looked out on to the fields and woods at the back), and another lived in by their landlords.
Tsvetaeva found it impossible to make ends meet in Elabuga, and travelled back to Chistopol on 30 August to look for work. Despite the help and support of Lydia Chukovskaya and her friends, she went home and hanged herself the day after she came back, while her landlords and her son were out. She was buried in an unmarked grave on a spot on which now stands a small white cross place by her sister Anastasia.

Kazan

In 1841, the thirteen-year-old Lee Tolstoy moved with his brothers and sister to Kazan, where they took up residence at Peperechno-Kazanskaya ul.9, following the deaths of their father and grandmother (their mother had died much earlier). The Tolstoy children had been adopted by their aunt and uncle, and Yushkovs, with whom they were to live for the next few years.

Tolstoy

Tolstoy's grandfather had once been Governor of Kazan, and the house of Count Yushkov and his wife, Pelageya (sister to Tolstoy's father), was the center of aristocratic life in the city at that time. The Tolstoy children were swept up into the round of parties, balls and trips to the theatre during their time here, and were generally well looked after by their aunt and uncle.
When Tolstoy and his three brothers became students at Kazan University in the 1840's, they began to live independently for the first time, renting a house at Bolshaya Krasnaya Ul, 68. Tolstoy joined the university in 1844, first as a student in Oriental languages, and then in law. He was not an outstanding student and never actually graduated. In retrospect, the most significant event during Tolstoy's short time as an undergraduate was perhaps his contraction of venereal disease (having been introduced to brothels by his elder brothers) - significant in that it was while he was recuperating in the clinic that he began to write his famous diary, which he would keep on and off until his death and which would become an important laboratory for his writing.
Tolstoy probably dropped out of university because in April 1847 he came into his inheritance. In his case this this meant the acquisition of Yasnaya Polyana, the estate where he had been born and had spent his early childhood. At this time Tolstoy regularly changed his mind about what he wanted to do with his life, and the prospect of becoming lord of the manor was clearly more inviting than finishing his degree.
Tolstoy is not the only famous Russian writer to have studied at Kazan University. In 1903, the poet Velamir Khlebnikov became an undergraduate there, and like his forebear, not only switched subjects - from mathematics (which included the study of non-Euclidean geometry founded there in the previous century by Lobachevsky) to natural science - but who never graduated. Unlike Tolstoy, however, Khlebnikov was sent to prison for a month for taking part in anti-tsarist demonstrations.
Klebnikov had moved with his family to Kazan in 1898, and before attending university had begun to refine the drawing skills he had developed at an early age. He was tutored by a student from Kazan Art School, then a well-established graphic artist. Khlebnikov was a keen naturalist, and liked to sketch birds and animals. In 1905 he undertook a five-month ornithological expedition to the northern Urals with his brother, during which they gathered specimens for their fathers' collection.
Baratynsky Museum This small two room museum, founded in 1975, contains personal effects and literary memorabilia pertaining to the time Baratynsky spent both here and at his father-in-law's estate at Kaimara, about fifteen miles from Kazan. Exhibits include furniture from the poet's study here, as well as books from his library, and etchings by Vasily Zhukovsky.
Baratynsky first came to Kazan in 1831, for business reasons, and settled for a few months with his family on Gruzinskaya ul., in his father-in-law's town house. He found cultural life here primitive and did not enjoy himself very much. In 1833 he was compelled to come back again to take care of the Kaimara estate, and his melancholy state of mind was dispelled only by a chance meeting with Pushkin, who was traveling around Russia collecting materials on Pugachev. Address: Ul. Korolenko, 26
-Gorky Museum Gorky lived in Kazan from 1884 to 1888 and hoped to go to university here. He held a succession of jobs while he was living in Kazan and between 1886 and 1887 he worked as an apprentice at the Derenkov bakery. It is here, on its former site on the corner of Malaya and Bolshoi Lyadsky streets, that a museum about his experiences was founded in 1940. The bakery has been recreated in the cellar of the building where Gorky used to sleep on sacks. Although he never matriculated, Gorky nevertheless referred to the four years he spent in Kazan as his "universities".
The nine rooms of the museum have been arranged chronologically to tell the story of Gorky's life and works, and contain a collection of his personal belongings, including books and clothes, as well as letters and photographs. In 1968, on the centenary of Gorky's birth, two additional floors were added to include exhibitions on the first floor about the writer's relationship with Chaliapin (who was born here and became a close friend), and the productions of his plays in Kazan. Address: Ul. Gorkogo, 10

notes on Chaliapin :

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (Russian: Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин, Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin; February 13 1873 – April 12, 1938) was a Russian opera singer, born in Kazan, Tatarstan. The possessor of a large and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.

During the first phase of his career, Chaliapin endured direct competition from three other great basses: the powerful Lev Sibiriakov (1869–1942), the more lyrical Vladimir Kastorsky (1871–1948), and Dmitri Buchtoyarov (1866–1918), whose voice lay between the extremes exemplified by Sibiriakov and Kastorsky. The fact that Chaliapin is far and away the best remembered of this magnificent quartet of rival basses testifies to the magnetic power of his personality, the acuteness of his musical interpretations and the vividness of his performances.

"Russia's Islamic Threat" - Hahn

2011-11-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

At the SF Public Library, we were piqued by this cover and discovered that Tatars are a THREAT!

HELP!

It's curious that the authors chose to title this book "Russia's Islamic Threat" rather than something along the lines of "The Struggle of Russia's Muslim Minorities"

Curious?

It is a testament to the determination and solidity of the Tatar people in the face of such opposition; racism, institutionalized discrimination and fear mongering. How frustrating/challenging to maintain a constructive and optimistic attitude about the future of our rich culture.

excerpt:

"By dint of sheer numbers and economic power, Tatarstan and Russia's Muslim Tatars represent the greatest potential danger to the future of the Russian federal state. Tatars are Russia's second largest nationality, and those outside their homeland of Tatarstan constitute an influential internal diaspora. Given Tatars' high rates of urbanization, Russification, secularization, and allegiance to the more moderate Hanafi school of Islam, the legacy of the nineteenth-geographical distance from the North Caucasus and its comparatively sound socio-economic performance, Tatars and Tatarstan will be an important test of the capacity of the Islamist movement ... to "travel" across ethnicity and territory.
The chief defining factor of Tatar nationalism in the post-Soviet era has been Tatarstan's quest first to win and then to preserve the republic's autonomy within the Russian Federation. Islam has so far been a secondary factory. As Russia's leading republic with a Muslim titular nationality, Tatarstan's "return to Russia's legal space" was pivotal not only for the fate of federalism in Russia but for inter-ethnic and inter-confessional relations in Tatarstan and perhaps for internal Tatar diaspora communities. With the end of autonomy after Putin's federative counter-reforms, there is a real possibility that the quest for internal self-determination will be abandoned by many Tatars in exchange for the more radical agendas of extreme nationalism and Islamism. Although Tatarstan lacks an external border, frustrated nationalism and a strong will to self-determination might lead to secession or destabilization of state and society. The Tatars of the Volga and elsewhere refer to a past of Tatar statehood, which drives much of Tatar nationalism.
The other major factor in Tatar nationalism is Islam, which is a central (though not necessarily the primary ) component in Tatars' sense of identity, setting them apart from the Russian Christian Orthodox "other." Tatars' allegiance to the more moderate Hanafi school of Islam and legacy and revival of the jadidist movement may predispose them to a more moderate nationalist communalism. However, the close identity of Tatar nationalism with Islamic culture and religion and the radicalizing Islamic umma both inside Russia and abroad hold the potential for a more Islamic brand of nationalism and even Islamism to develop. The Russian domestic context in which Tatars currently find themselves may strengthen the impetus toward radicalism. Putin's anti-federalist counter-revolution, the atmosphere created by the ongoing Chechen quagmire, and the infiltration of foreign and perhaps Chechen Islamists could transform Tatars' secular nationalism over the mid to long term. Should Tatar nationalism become subordinate to Islamist goals, and Islamist-led revolutionary was could well destroy the Russian state as we know it."

author: Gordon M. Hahn

Peremech from English Russia

2011-11-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

here

Bashkir Rider Ulaev

2011-11-21T20:18:00.000-08:00

This sculpture is of Bashkir national hero Salavat Ulaev. He was born in 1754. He took part in Pugachev's country revolt in days of Ekaterina II (1773-1775). The revolt was begun by the Ural cossacks and had been supported by Bashkirs . Cossacks and Bashkirs battled with imperial armies. Therefore the horse skips above a gun in this sculpture. Sculpture is from the 1970's.

There is stamp on the bottom in Russian: Salavat Ulaev - national hero and poet of Bashkir people.

Sculptor is Panov.
Here he is on a Soviet postage stamp from 1952

Bashkir Man

2011-11-21T20:16:00.001-08:00

1821 Print (Copper Engraving):
Scenes in Armenia: A Bashkir Man and a Circassian Woman

very unflattering, we'd say

Notes on the Bashkir Language

2011-11-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

Bashkir

A member of the Volga-Kama group of the Kipchak or NW Turkic languages, its closest relative being the Tatar language of Kazan. Bashkir is spoken mainly in the Bashkir Republic (capital, Ufa)(Russian Federation), on the western bank of the Ural river where it changes direction to the west. Some 32% of the Bashkirs live in adjacent districts outside the Republic. Of the 1.5 million speakers in 1989, some 72% gave Bashkir as their mother-tongue or first language. No dialectical survey of Bashkir has yet been undertaken but, especially in its eastern dialects, it has undergone strong phonetic influences from Kazakh.
Only since 1920 has Bashkir been a written language. Earlier poets and novelists used the Tatar language or, before that, Chaghatay, an Islamic literary language used by the Turkic peoples of European Russia from the 15th to the 19th c. It has been suggested that national differences between Bashkirs and Tatars were created artificially for political reasons in order to undermine a Volga Muslim unity, since the Bashkir language, except for minor phonetic differences, is virtually indistinguishable from Tatar. For the emerging Bashkir literary language, the Latin alphabet was used from 1929 until 1939, when it was replaced by an adaptation of the Cyrillic alphabet. Among Bashkir writers are M. Osmani, Sa'id Myras and T. Yabani. In their novels, dramas and poems, Bashkir writers deal with heroic and nostalgic themes from the Bashkir past.

Battal-Taymas, A. 1963. Die Literatur der Baschkiren. In Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol 5, Turkologie, Leiden-Cologne, 439-41.

Benzing, J. 1959. Das Baschkirische. In Deny, J. et al. (eds), Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta, Wiesbaden, 421-34.

Wolfgang Greller

TATARİSTAN - in Turkish

2011-11-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

Есть вдали одна деревня from dakazan on Vimeo.

Largest Quran in the World in Kazan

2011-11-20T20:58:00.000-08:00

from Russia Today November 18 2011

There are no limits to love of God, or the prophet's word. And a special new edition of the Muslim sacred text certainly speaks volumes. The world's biggest Koran, decorated with precious stones and gold, now belongs to Russia. This hefty holy book requires not only strong devotion, but also strong arms to read, as it weighs a mammoth 800 kilograms and boasts 632 pages sized two by one and a half meters. The gold- and silver-encrusted cover studded with malachite and semi-precious stones holds a giant turquoise 14 centimeters in diameter. The price of this opulent opus is unknown, but it took over a year to make. The carefully crafted Koran was ordered from Italy for the Foundation on Restoring Cultural and Historical Heritage in Russia's republic of Tatarstan. And it's certainly got a spirited reception. "This edition of the Koran has become a precious gift to all Russian Muslims," says the Islamic spiritual leader of Tatarstan, Ildus Faizov. The unique edition now resides in a mosque within the Kremlin of the city of Kazan. Next summer, the weighty holy tome will be moved to Bolgary -- a Tatarstan region which embraced Islam as its official religion in 922. The next largest edition of the Koran resides in South Sumatra, Indonesia. This wooden version was long hailed as the world's biggest. But it isn't in fact a book -- this holy scripture consists of 315 wooden planks for carved pages -- each 177 centimeters tall, 140 centimeters wide and 2.5 centimeters thick. Another huge Koran was also discovered in Indonesia, in an Islamic boarding school in West Java. This one is a whopping 200 centimeters tall and 140 centimeters wide. In 2009, Abu Dhabi book fair sold an Indonesian Koran manuscript, sized 120cm by 80cm

The Romanovs and the Russian Revolution - Yale Courses

2011-11-20T07:15:00.000-08:00

The Russian Mafia!

2011-11-20T06:27:00.001-08:00

Tatarstan - Bashkortostan

2011-11-14T21:14:00.000-08:00

Russian - Tatar Dictionary

2011-11-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

Русско-Татарский Словарь
Russian - Tatar Dictionary
F.A. Ganiev 1997
.djvu

"Description: Present Russian- Tatar dictionary contains about 47 000 words of contemporary the Russian language. The also obsolete words, which are encountered in the works of contemporary Russian writers, a significant quantity of conversational, common words, are included in dictionary. Considerable attention is given social and political and scientific and technical terminology. Dictionary is intended for the wide circle of the readers and is also of great interest for the scientist- turkologists. It can serve as practical benefit for those, who study Russian and Tatar languages, and also for the students, the instructors, the translators, workers in the press, radio and television. "

here

Tatar Clothing Book

2011-11-14T11:08:00.000-08:00

here

Tatarian Dances

2011-11-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

click here to check out the folio

here's a sample page: click below to expand

Salavat for Kurban Bayram

2011-11-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

The Seven Pearls

2011-11-09T06:23:00.000-08:00

Tatarstan National Song and Dance Ensemble - Seven Pearls

Tatar - Russian Dictionary 1966

2011-11-04T06:21:00.000-07:00

This is a re post of that HUGE Tatar/Russian Dictionary from 1966. (140MB!)
This dictionary is a Xerox of the original held at University of California, Berkeley.
The professor would not permit the dictionary to leave the building, so I stood next to his desk and copied it in its entirety. The Xerox machine ran out of paper and broke down a few times, professor running out of patience. This file is a .pdf of a scan of a Xerox so it's far from pristine. Another problem I encountered in 1987, when this was scanned was that there did not exist a Tatar/English dictionary. I would use this dictionary first and then to a Russian/English dictionary. You could imagine the difficulty in this two step process. Here it is: Sozlek

Songs from the Land of my Childhood - Bashkortostan

2011-11-02T13:58:00.000-07:00

The Dance of the Seven Girls - Ete Kiz Biyu
Girl Galiabanou
Goose's Wing - Kaz Kanaty
Butterfly - Kubelek
Chirping Crane - Sonray Torna
Girl Khatira
I Was Not Leaving You - Tashlamam Digen Idem
On the River - Hiy Builap
Blue Gown - Zenger Kulmek
The River Irendek
On Our Street - Beznen Ouramda
Nightingale - Ai Bil Bilim

Tatar Alphabets

2011-11-02T10:50:00.001-07:00

janl	yan2	zamn	kirl

Aa	Aa	Aa	Аа
Әә	Әә	Ää	Әә
Bb	Bb	Bb	Бб
Çç	Cc	Cc	Җҗ
Cc	Çç	Çç	Чч
Dd	Dd	Dd	Дд
Ee	Ee	Ee	Ее
Ff	Ff	Ff	Фф
Gg	Gg	Gg	Гг
Ƣƣ	Ğğ	Ğğ	Гг
Hh	Hh	Hh	Һһ
Ii	İi	İi	Ии
Ƅƅ	Iı	Iı	Ыы
		Íí
	Jj	Jj	Жж
Kk	Kk	Kk	Кк
Ll	Ll	Ll	Лл
Mm	Mm	Mm	Мм
Nn	Nn	Nn	Нн
Ŋŋ	Ŋŋ	Ññ	Ңң
Oo	Oo	Oo	Оо
Өө	Өө	Öö	Өө
Pp	Pp	Pp	Пп
Qq	Qq	Qq	Кк
Rr	Rr	Rr	Рр
Ss	Ss	Ss	Сс
Şş	Şş	Şş	Шш
Tt	Tt	Tt	Тт
Uu	Uu	Uu	Уу
Ƴƴ	Üü	Üü	Үү
Vv	Vv	Vv	Вв
Ww	Ww	Ww	Вв
Xx	Xx	Xx	Хх
Jj	Yy	Yy	Йй
Zz	Zz	Zz	Зз

Tatarça-rusça on-line süzlek

2011-11-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

This is that new-ish online Tatar - Russian, Russian - Tatar dictionary.
It also has a pronunciation feature which is nice. This combined with managing five different alphabets and we're ready to learn some vocabulary!

here: Sozlek

We've added it to the list of Dictionary tools on your right.

Lost Cosmonaut 2006

2011-11-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

Lost Cosmonaut by Daniel Kalder.
We ran across this book the other day and remembered that it appeared frequently when conducting Amazon.com searches under "Tatar". We picked it up and decided it was worth a read.

So... A man from Scotland visits Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El, and Udmurtia, and specifically these locations as he expects to find "nothing" there. He is in search of locations that tourists would never desire to visit.

This strangely appealing book swings back and forth between being incredibly insulting to quite informative.

His sole commentary of the Tatar State Theatre is that the building has "loads of bird shit" on it. He also decides that a Russian he meets in Kazan is a "trouser-pilot" and "cock-muncher".

Here is an excerpt:

"An interesting point regarding those peoples of the former Soviet Union whose names begin with "K": sometimes there is more than one way to spell those names. Kalmyk, for example, is sometimes written Kalmuck, just as Kyrgyz can also be written Kirghiz and I have seen Kazakh spelled Kazak. There is also a group of baptized Tatars called the Krashen or Kreshen.
This signifies that no one in the English-speaking world gives a fuck."

another excerpt:

"I like to read about the Kazan of old, of dreaming minarets and Asiatic bazaars, I do. But I'm glad it was destroyed.
If it existed today it would be a dilapidated heap, or a sterile heritage center, an empty shell that existed for tourists only, insipid and dull, like Prague. But the obliterated Kazan can never be visited, except in our imaginations, and thus it can never disappoint. It has a mythic power. Through annihilation it has been transubstantiated. And the pitiful squalor of the real Kazan only adds to the beauty and power of the unreal one."

Concerning the preservation of the threatened cultures he visits, the author expresses insight in the following excerpt:

"In Tatarstan, In Mari El, I had encountered a ferocious straining, an attempt at self-assertion in the face of global indifference"

This book was originally published as "Travels to the Republics that Tourism Forgot"

Russians and Tatars 1238

2011-10-31T18:00:00.000-07:00

We find images and terms like this to be a bit confusing. The term "Tatar" in this sense applies to Mongols. The modern Tatars of Tatarstan are not Mongolian. The Tatar people, The Bulgar empire were absorbed into the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan's grandson, Batu Khan. Tatar people are Turkic Muslims primarily of the Volga River Basin.

Preservation of Linguistic Diversity - Tatarstan

2011-10-31T17:18:00.000-07:00

Zilya Valeeva
Moscow 2008

Republic of Tatarstan

The all-Russia population census of 2002 specifies the population of Tatarstan as 3.8 million (a 3.4% increase—by 137,500—since the 1987 census). Of these, Tatars account for 52.9% and Russians 39.5%. Tatar and Russian are official languages. The share of Tatars has grown by 4.4% since 1989 due to immigration and higher birth rates, while that of Russians has shrunken to 3.8%.

Tatarstan adopted a number of republican laws on ethnic cultural development in the 1990s and the present decade—On Languages of the Republic of Tatarstan, of July 8, 1992, and its amended and supplementedversion On the Official Languages of the Republic of Tatarstan and Other Languages in the Republic of Tatarstan, of July 28, 2004; On the Protection and Use of Historical Cultural Values, of October 2, 1996; On Culture, of July 3, 1998; On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Communities, of July 14, 1999;On the reinstitution of the Roman-based Tatar Alphabet, of September 15, 1999; On Ethnic Cultural Autonomies in the Republic of Tatarstan, of April 11, 2003;On the Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Tatarstan, of April 2005, and others. Each of these laws stresses themulti-ethnic and multi-cultural arrangement of the republic, and many religions coexisting there. However, certain instruments of the 1990s emphasized, to an extent, the support of the titular nation’s language and culture in the transition period.

The regional language policy found reflection in the developmental programs and concepts of education, languages and culture adopted in the 1990s-2000s. In particular, the State Program of the Republic of Tatarstan for the Preservation, Study and Development of the Languages of Tatarstan was adopted in 1994, and a draft concept of the republican language policy elaborated in 1999. These documents determined the goals and implementation mechanisms of the republican language policy, whose essence lay in the acquisition of the official status by the Tatar language to get it on a par with Russian, and providing practical conditions to extend the field of its social functioning.

The second ten-year State Program of the Republic of Tatarstan for the Preservation, Study and Development of the Official Languages of the Republic of Tatarstan and Other Languages in the Republic of Tatarstan entered into force in 2004. The implementation of the latest information technologies in humanities and formation of databases on the Tatar language and culture is one of the program targets. Apart from the development of the Tatar and Russian languages, the program envisages promoting the preservation and development of the languages of other ethnic entities populating Tatarstan, and the improvement of general speech culture and inter linguistic tolerance.

Tatarstan has formed an integrated system of satisfying the cultural and educational demands of its ethnic groups. Out of a total 2,261 comprehensive schools, 1,147 have tuition in Tatar—of these 92 grammar schools, lyceums and schools with extended curricula of certain disciplines. 380 schools have classes with bilingual—Tatar and Russian tuition. The republic has 119 Chuvash, 44Udmurt, 20Mari, 4Mordovian schools and 1 Bashkir. There is a school with Jewish ethnic cultural curricula, where modern Hebrew and Jewish history, culture and traditions are taught, and a kindergarten where modern Hebrew is spoken.

The study of Tatar and Russian is compulsory in all general educational institutions in compliance with Clause 9 of the Law On the Official Languages of the Republic of Tatarstan and Other Languages in the Republic of Tatarstan. At present, all schoolchildren are studying Russian, and 99.8%Tatar. 53%of Tatar Children study in their native language.

52 weekend schools teach languages of 27 nationalities (Ukrainian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Polish,German, Yiddish,Georgian,Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Bashkir, Lezgin, Assyrian, several languages of the Volga country, Arabic, French, English, Italian, Hindi, Pashtu and others).

Tatar is spoken in 67%of kindergartens. Their number has grown from 692 in 1988 to 876 in 2008. Another 532 kindergartens have Russian- and Tatar-speaking groups. 69%of Tatar children are brought up in their native tongue. There are also 51 Chuvash, 14 Udmurt and 10Mari kindergartens.

15%wage rises come as an incentive for bilingual, Tatar-Russian employees. The annual contest Teacher of the Year has categories Best Tatar-Language Teacher Year and Best Russian-Language Teacher.

The population approves the official status of two languages. 88% of Tatar parents and 44%Russian approve the tuition of Tatar in Russian language schools. 82% of respondents acknowledge the necessity of a working command of Russian and Tatar for government functionaries, and 79% for consumer services.

The number of Russians knowing the Tatar language grew from 1.1%in 1989 to 4.3%in 2002. 43%of Russians understood spoken Tatar, to varying extents, and 16% spoke it in 2002. 76% of Tatar respondents were fluent in their native language, and another 16%spoke it fairly well. However, a considerable part of Tatars seldom use the language outside home.

Secondary vocational training and higher education also extend tuition in Tatar, though not so dynamically as secondary education. 10 vocational schools have tuition in Tatar, as compared to 7 in 1989. Each college or university applicant can choose Tatar or Russian for entrance examinations. 12 higher educational establishments had established classes with tuition in Tatar by 2002. The Tatarstani State Humanitarian Pedagogical University, established in 2005, widely uses Tatar in tuition. The total collection of Tatarstani libraries exceeds 24.8million copes, more than 4.7million of these in other languages used in the Russian Federation than Russian. The collection of literature of the Volga country peoples comprises 153,700 documents. There are 10.9 books per capita for ethnic Russians, 2.2 forTatars, 0.9Chuvash, 0.42Mari, 0.77Udmurt, 0.06Mordovian, and 0.03 Bashkir. The Culture Ministry of Tatarstan makes regular allocations for the purchase of literature of the Volga country peoples.
The National Library, the largest in the republic, has more than 3 million copies, 96,000 of these in Tatar. Work to establish the Tatar language National Electronic Library started in 2007 to include 100 Tatar classics. It is on the website of the National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan (http://www.kitaphane.ru/links/index.shtml). Close on a thousand virtual calls are registered every day, coming from the whole world— in particular, from the United States, Australia, Japan and Iraq. Places densely populated by ethnic Diasporas have 220 libraries (147Chuvash, 32Udmurt, 24Mari, 14Mordovian and 3 Bashkir). 20 centralized library systems have libraries or desks for Diasporas, and 14 libraries are zonal cultural method-setting centers for ethnic Diasporas.

Tatarstan has an Association of Ethnic Cultural Societies, which unites 33 such societies, and a House of Friendship. 35.3% of all Tatars in the Russian Federation and 31.2% of the entire Tatar people live in Tatarstan. The republic satisfies cultural and linguistic demands of Tatars outside it in compliance with Russia’s state policy of support for compatriots living abroad, and with Clause 14 of the Constitution of Tatarstan and Clаuse 2.4 of the Treaty on the Delineation of Competences between State Ruling Bodies of the Russian Federation and of the Republic of Tatarstan.

Tatarstan offers regional ethnic Tatar societies research method setting and other assistance mainly through agreements treaties on inter regional cooperation, which envisage promotion of cultural development. The republic has for today concluded such agreements with 68 Russian regions, a majority of CIS countries and some other post-Soviet countries (Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova).

The Executive Committee of the World Tatar Congress coordinates activities of ethnic cultural organizations and Tatar communities in Russia and other countries within and outside the former Soviet area. The Congress presently unites 358 Tatar ethnic cultural organizations— 68 outside the former Soviet Union, 81 in other former Soviet republics, 164 in the Russian Federation and 46 in Tatarstan.

The problems of preservation of the Tatar language and ethnic cultural development are especially acute in other parts of the Russian Federation and abroad, whether in or outside the former Soviet Union. Tatarstan made agreements with other Russian regions on which inter regional Tatar language and literature contests were established in 1992.

They gather more than 60 school pupils from16-20 Russian regions every year. The Duslyk summer camp, based on the Zarechye camp in Kazan and established in 1997, provides Tatar language practice. It accommodated 190 schoolchildren from 23 Russian regions in 2007. A similar camp, the Mizgel, appeared in Naberezhnye Chelny in 2002. The republican Education and Science Ministry holds Tatar Public Education Days in Russian regions. It has organized 24 such events since 2002 with delegations of Tatar educationists visiting previously appointed areas for methodological assistance and educational opinion exchanges. 30 such visits took place in 2005-2007.

Tatarstan launched a project, supported by the federal ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education and Science and federally funded, in 2004 to enroll ethnic Tatars from other CIS countries and post-Soviet Baltic countries in Tatarstani higher educational institutions. Leading institutions have prepared entrance tests in 10 disciplines for examinations held in other CIS countries. School curricula in those countries occasionally do not coincide with those accepted in the Russian Federation, so the Kazan State University is organizing online courses for tentative ethnic Tatar applicants. The Federal Education Agency of the Education and Science Ministry of the Russian Federation earmarked 70 appointments in 2007, 165 applicants competing. The republican Institute of the Development of Education established postgraduate courses for Tatar language teachers in 2005. They enroll professors teaching their disciplines in Tatar from other CIS countries and post-Soviet Baltic countries. The 4th Tatar language teachers’ congress, held in Kazan on March 28-30, 2006, gathered 25 Tatar weekend school teachers from Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan.More than 100 teachers from other Russian regions undergo postgraduate training in Tatarstan every year. There are permanent courses visiting other parts of Russia. They were held in seven parts of the country (the Kurgan, Sverdlovsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Permand Kirov regions and the Republic of Bashkortostan) in 2005-2007.

Problems that still persist demand solution at the state level or by particular educational institutions.Many Tatar schools retain their ethnic identity only thanks to language classes, while Tatar schools in many parts of Russia are switching en masse to Russian as tuition language. Thus, according to the Education Ministry of the Republic of Bashkortostan, it had 397 schools teaching in Tatar in 2006, compared to 604 in 2000, and 207 schools with Tatar language classes in 2006, as against 553 in 2000. A majority of the 30 Tatar schools in the Nizhny Novgorod Region have switched to tuition in Russian at the basic and middle levels. The introduction of Unified State Examinations and specialist and pre-specialist schools is also to blame for the decreasing number of Tatar schools and cutting Tatar language and literature curricula. There are problems in supplies of Tatar-language study books, fiction and teaching aids. Teachers from many parts of Russia shower Tatarstan with requests for free literature supplies as a majority of Russian regions cannot afford Tatar-language school books. 91,000 copies of study books and teaching aids to 2.5 million rubles were purchased in Tatarstan on regional budget allocations in 2005 and 66,000 copies to 2.8 million rubles the next year, while in 2007, only the republics of Bashkortostan and Chuvasia, and the Perm Region bought such literature. That is why Tatarstan has to supply Tatar language and literature study books to educational establishments with the Tatar ethnic cultural component on the curricula in other parts of Russia and CIS countries through its own Education and Science Ministry. 17,000 copies of school books to more than 650,000 rubles were passed to 22 Russian regions and to other CIS countries within the first half-year 2007, compared to 10,000 copies to 236,000 rubles in 2005, and 6,500 copies to 244,000 rubles in 2006.

Tatarstan possesses 825 printed media outlets, including 110 Tatar-language newspapers (52 of them government) and 28 magazines (11 government). There are five Chuvash-language newspapers (a republican and 4 district) and one Udmurt-language district newspaper. There are also bilingual—Russian and Tatar—periodicals.

Tatarstan has 50 television companies, 30 of them (25 of these government companies) broadcasting in Russian and Tatar. 58 out of a total 86 radio companies broadcast in Russian, 22 in Russian and Tatar, and 6 in Tatar. The satellite television and radio company Tatarstan— New Age broadcasts in Russian and Tatar, and is available in many parts of Russia and in other countries. Bashkir and Udmurt television is transmitted to Tatarstan.
Two of the 10 news agencies of Tatarstan are republican.Tatar-Inform news agency (http://www.tatar-inform.ru/) works in Russian, Tatar (Cyrillic and Roman writing) and English. Tatar-language information is provided by the official server of the Republic of Tatarstan http://www.tatar.ru, the republican government portal http://prav.tatar.ru/, and the Internet portal of all Tatarstani media outlets www.tatmedia.com. 22 constituent entities of the Russian Federation presently possess 67 Tatar-language media outlets, including 39 newspapers and supplements to local editions. Other countries, within and outside the CIS, have 12 such outlets. The Tatar-language information field is steadily shrinking. Tatar-language broadcasts finished in the Omsk, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Orenburg and Ulyanovsk television and radio companies in 2006 alone. The ethnic press encounters bad problems—difficulties with press circulation in areas densely populated by Tatars; the necessity for a federal Tatar-language newspaper and television channel; the necessity to support Tatar-language editions in and outside Russia; and circulations of the Tatar-language press lagging far behind public demands in areas densely populated by Tatars.

Tatarstan bases the development of multilingualism in cyberspace on its comprehensive program for developing information technologies for 2005-2010, also known as Electronic Tatarstan. Among other goals, the program envisages parity development of information resources in the official languages of Tatarstan. It stipulates the establishment of a system of backbones and resource centers for information, research and methodological support of education in Russian and Tatar; the elaboration of Tatar-language computer standards, drivers, types, and model; the establishment of Tatar-language information resources in the Internet, and of a system of machine translation from and into Tatar, etc. The program acknowledges that Tatarstan is lagging behind, to an extent, with ethnic information and cultural development of information technologies. There are a negligible number of Tatar-language information resources in the library network, and information technologies are introduced too slowly in museums, art galleries, theatres and other cultural establishments.

Microsoft introduced the operating system Microsoft Windows
XP with a Tatar-language interface in 2006, and Tatar-language Microsoft
Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 appeared the next
year—which means that Tatar has joined the number of leading languages
in the global information space.
Ethnic Tatars are dispersed all over the world. This is why the
rapid development of the Tatar Internet, popularly known as Tatnet, is
ever more important.

Information about Tatar history, culture, art and traditions can
be found in the websites of the institutes of the Tatar Encyclopedia
(http://www.ite.antat.ru/), history (http://www.hist.antat.ru/), language,
literature and art (http://www.antat.ru/ijli/) of the Academy of Sciences
and the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan
(http://tatar.museum.ru/), and project Turkic-Tatar World
(http://www.tataroved.ru/). Information about Tatars’ life in Tatarstan and
the whole world is provided by the website of the World Tatar Congress Executive
Committee (http://tatar-kongress.org/) and the world Tatar server
(http://www.tatarlar.ru/). The Tatar-language Wikipedia in Roman writing
is on the website http://tt.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A4wge Bit.
Project Virtuan Tatar School (http://tatar.org.ru) provides free
access to online studies of the Tatar language, literature, history and
other disciplines, with 23 electronic study books. The website
http://tatar.com.ru/ offers extensive facilities for Tatar language studies.
A Tatar-Russian online dictionary is on the website
http://www.suzlek.ru/. There are other dictionaries, as well: Tatar-
Turkish (http://www.kcn.ru/tat_tat/tat_tur/index.htm) and English-
Tatar (http://agidel.virtualave.net/frame.html). The information and
reference portal Tatar tele treats the problems of Tatar shifting to the
Roman alphabet (http://tatartele.ru/).

Several newspapers have Tatar-language websites: the
Vatanym Tatarstan (http://www.vatantat.ru/), Tatarstan yashlere
(http://tatyash.ru/), Tatarskaya Gazeta (http://tatar.yuldash.com/),
Magrifat (http://www.magrifat.ru/), and Shakhri Kazan
(http://shahrkazan.narod.ru/). The Internet offers Tatar-language
broadcasts of Radio Liberty (http://www.azatliq.org/), Radio Kuray
(http://www.kuray.ru/), Tatar Radiosi (http://www.tatarradio.ru/), and
Radio Tatarica (http://tatarica.com/radio/). Lyrics of Tatar folk songs
are available on the website http://www.leadsinger.ru/genres/jyrlar.htm,
while the website http://akidil.net/tatar/tatarsongs.htmoffers the sound
version of such songs. Tatar literature is available on the websites of the
Tatar Electronic Library (http://kitap.net.ru/) and Shigriyat.ru
(http://shigriyat.ru/).
The Stars of Tatnet contest of Internet projects, established in
2004 (http://tatnet.tatar.info/), gives many Tatar Internet projects a good
start.

from

More from Turkic Dictionary

2011-10-31T17:04:00.001-07:00

Within this dictionary the Tatar word is word number 4.
click on book cover for megaupload of Turkic Languages Dictionary.

There is another portion of this book .pdf'd at: here (Tatar portion)

Djemile - Crimean Tatar Dancing

2011-10-30T17:22:00.001-07:00

Tukay in German

2011-10-30T08:42:00.001-07:00

Islam in Russia - Bukharaev

2011-10-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

Mardzhani - More

2011-10-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

Introduction.
Shigabutdin Mardzhani - educator of the Tatar people.
Ideologist Jadidism Ismail Gasprinskii.
Dzhadidisty-Enlightenment.

Introduction.
End of XIX-beginning of the twentieth century is a period of unprecedented expansion of education and enlightenment among the Tatars magoemtan Volga and Ural. This is due, primarily, with the initiative, aspirations and desires of the nation and to a lesser extent with the social policies of the Government of . It's no secret that "among the peoples inhabiting the eastern part of , Tatars Mohammedans occupy the first place. The percentage of literacy among them is very high even in comparison with n. From whatever class or place Tartar, he certainly knows the beginning of faith, can read and write in Tartar ... The mullahs are engaged in educating children for the most pittance or even for free ... In it is difficult to specify the people, who would have been so widespread literacy, as in the Kazan Tatars. Illiterate Tartar can be found very rarely "(YD Koblov, 1908).
Who or what caused the unprecedented awareness and interest Tatars to education? On this question I will try to answer in the course work.

Shigabutdin Mardzhani - educator of the Tatar people.
Mardzhani - religious leader, educator, philosopher, historian. The above definition does not cover all aspects of his multifaceted activities. Mardzhani also an ethnographer, and archaeographer and orientalist, and teacher. His encyclopedic knowledge can be compared with encyclopedic eighteenth century French Enlightenment - Diderot and Rousseau.
What was the path to recognition Mardzhani, heights, which allowed Gabdulla Tukai describe it as "a champion of free thought, knowledge and progress that has made the first step to enlightenment? Shihab al-Din (Shihabuddin) b.. Baha al-Din b.. Subhan used. Abd al-Karim al-Marjani born January 16, 1818 (new style) in. Yabynchi current Atninskogo region of Tatarstan.
Ancestors Mardzhani from his father and mother belonged to the famous surname Imams mudarrisov. The first information on the history Shihabuddin received from his grandfather Subhan used. Abd al-Karim, who owned the Arabic and Persian.
Santa Mardzhani mother's side, Abd Al-Nasser, taught him Kor'anu, Sunnah, Fiqh (Islamic law). Father Mardzhani Baha Addin was educated in Bukhara, where he was one of the distinguished people who have their Majlis (Assembly) invited the Emir of Bukhara, Haidar B. Masoom. With his father he studied the Arabic language, logic, Kalam (theological science section).
At the age of five Mardzhani lost his mother, and then reared by her stepmother in a rather harsh environment. Primary education he received in the madrassas, where his father taught in the village Tashkichu. Junior Shihabuddin not limited to the study of subjects taught there and worked independently in the home library. From the age of seventeen he began teaching in the madrassas, and being dissatisfied textbook morphology of the Persian language, is his. Both his grandfather and father, being educated people, possessing a vast knowledge of Eastern history, philosophy, religion, managed to inculcate in the young Shihabuddinu commitment to teaching knowledge. Academic qualifications are not satisfied Mardzhani, constantly seek to acquire new knowledge. In 1838 he went to Bukhara for continuing education.
In Bukhara, the pent-up system of education in the madrasa, he basically alone, is engaged in rich precious manuscripts of local libraries. Money earns a living teaching the children of wealthy people. In 1843 Mardzhani sent to Samarkand - one of the ancient cultural centers of Central Asia. There he enrolled in madrassas "Shirdar, meets famous historian qadi Abu Said Al-Samarkand (um.1848-49 years.), Who writes Mardzhani, was the root cause of the fact that he" became interested in historical scholarship and began to study history books.
In Samarkand, already possessing some knowledge, Mardzhani feels the need deeper knowledge of the views of his predecessor and compatriot, Abu Nasr al-Kursavi (1776-1812).
In 1845 Mardzhani returned madrasa in Bukhara, Mir-Arab. It was there Mardzhani begin a serious study of culture, history and philosophy of the East. The first of his works he devoted the history of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia.
In 1848, after an eleven-year absence, with a new store of knowledge Mardzhani returned to his homeland and in March 1850 appointed Imam mudarrisom 1-st Kazan mosque.
In 1867-68 years the Spiritual Assembly of the Muslims of the Volga and Ural regions Mardzhani appointed to the post of Akhund and muhtasibs Kazan (one of the most respected religious posts in the region), which was no doubt a recognition of his work with the leadership of the Muslims. With the official secular authorities have also set Mardzhani positive contacts. It performs various errands Kazan provincial government: following the publication of the text Kor'ana in Kazan printing (later released a book on the history and principles of the publication Kor'ana in ), arrange for the collection of money for the Caucasian peoples affected by the earthquake, reports of birth , marriage, death of Muslims to government agencies involved in the trials in the utterance of oaths Muslims.
Over time, the name Mardzhani become known far beyond the borders of Kazan: in 1870 the publication of his book "Nazratul-Haqq," their new for its time and environment of religious reform ideas, which brought the author wide recognition, not only at home but also in the Muslim East. He became a prominent ideologue of the religious reformation, to continue and deepen in the new historical conditions, the traditions of their predecessors, and A. A. Kursavi Utyz-Imyani. Religious reformist Mardzhani included the concept of "opening the doors of ijtihad", as well as treatment to the times of Prophet Muhammad (Kor'anu, Sunnah, said mudzhtahidov) for "purification" of Islam from the accretions of later, the reform of teaching in the madrassas.
Educational work Mardzhani - another page of his education in the broadest sense of the word.
September 13, 1876 in Kazan, Tatar opened with an eight-school teacher training. The school prepares elementary school teachers from the Tatars. Instruction was in n, excluding lesson Shariah. Mardzhani the first of the Tatar Muslim clergy agreed to a proposal by the school inspector V. Radlov teach in her faith. At the opening of school, he made a welcoming speech in which he urged the Tatars to teaching in this school. During the nine years Mardzhani taught at the Tatar school teacher, entered the teachers' council. However, due to disagreements with the inspector and some teachers had to leave teaching. During this time the conservative circles of the Muslim clerics called Mardzhani missionary, a heretic, an apostate.
In his madrassa Mardzhani many classes has its own programme.V 80 years of the nineteenth century, radically expanded its own scientific activities Mardzhani, the fore classes philosophical and historical subjects. During this period Mardzhani working on a manuscript biographical dictionary "Vafiyatul aslyaf-va-tahiyyatul ahlyaf" (More about the precursors and their descendants greetings "), which includes 6057 biographies of scientists, writers, philosophers and political figures of the Muslim East.
K Vafiyatul-aslyaf "Mardzhani wrote the introduction -" Mukaddima ", which was also published. It describes the history of the origin scientist sciences in the East, gives their classification, supported by its references to the statements of eminent Muslim culture, examines the major religious schools, trends in Islam. In fact, it is not only historic, but also ideological work on various aspects and problems of the spiritual culture of the East.
During this period, published the most significant works Mardzhani, among them: "Hakkulov ma'rifa-va husnul-Idrak" ( "Truth is knowledge and comprehension of beauty"), 1880 - a treatise on Islamic law (fiqh), in which the scientist, particular, sets out its social and political views; "Mustafadul-akhbar fi ahvali Univ va Bulgar" ( "Your source of information about the affairs of Kazan and Bolgar), 1885, Volume 1 - a historical work on the Volga Bulgaria and Khanate of Kazan," Kitabul - Al-Hikma Al-Baliga dzhaniyya fi sharhil-akaid al-Hanafiyya "(" Book of mature philosophy, helps to explain the teachings Hanafite "), 1888 - an essay in which Mardzhani presents his religious views. Mental educational potential Mardzhani multiplied his journey 80 years in and countries of the Middle East. In search of material for historical research Mardzhani visited the ancient ruins of Bulgar, Tatar, n, Chuvash, Mordvin village. August 31, 1880 from Kazan, he goes to the pilgrimage, during which visiting Istanbul, Izmir, Alexandria, Cairo, Suez and other centers of Islamic culture.
In Istanbul, he met with the author of book "Chagatai and Ottoman languages" Kudratulloy al-Kanduzi and renowned scholar Ahmad Jawdat Pasha, takes copies with inscriptions dome mosque of Sultan Salim. In Cairo, a scientist visits Mahmoud al-bek-Fallaki, takes copies with inscriptions of the walls of the mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha.
Enlightening ideas Mardzhani cover a 70 - 80 years of the nineteenth century, a variety of renewal of public life of the Tatar people, including a thought about the need for the Tatar population of secular education, the assimilation of the progressive legacy of the past (antiquity, the Arab Thought) and present (the n and Western cultures) . Academic caring and education issues of national identity of the Tatar people, concerned about his welfare, socio-economic and political situation. Considering education of the most powerful instrument of progress, scientists are trying to rescue his people from "hibernation".
Mardzhani - harbinger Jadid movement in , and that he laid its foundation - the reform of teaching in the madrassas, the assimilation of the Tatar people of the advanced achievements of world culture and science. Mardzhani wrote more than 30 works, most of which were published mainly in Arabic. Only a few works written in the Tatar language in Arabic script. Not all the works written by scientists who have discovered. For example, "Risalyatun fi masailin-Nahvi" ( "Treatise on matters of grammar"), "Al-Al-tahrirat mufrada" ( "Edit Selected").
The ideological and philosophical views Mardzhani, his work as an educator, religious leader, historian, educator, philosopher, will remain a notable event in national history.

Ideologist Jadidism Ismail Gasprinskii.
Owner Jadidism Ismail Gasprinskii was born March 8, 1851 in Crimea, in the village adzhikoy near Gaspra, in the family of Ensign Mustafa Gasprinskiy. He studied at the rural Muslim school-Mekteb, then - in Voronezh, and the cadet corps in Moscow. In 15 years, he interrupted his military education and with a high school buddy on foot from Moscow on the Volga, Don, Azov Sea reached Bakhchisarai.
In his native city, he was appointed teacher of n language in the madrasas. In 1871 Gasprinskii went to Paris, where he lived for three years, serving in the office of the ad and working with the Secretary of Turgenev. Here he began to write correspondence for n newspapers. In 1874 he went to Constantinople, where a year studying the Turkish language.
Back home, Ismail Gaspirali becomes head Bakhchisarai. After leaving that post in 1883, Gasprinskii begin publishing and educational activities. It publishes a Muslim newspaper Terdzhiman "(" Translator ") in conditions of strict censorship, as the tsarist government in its rule based on national chauvinism. "Entire three years, I have petitioned the governors and ministers, and four years traveled to St. Petersburg to obtain permission for the publication of the newspaper - wrote a young writer.
The first person to approve the plan to publish the newspaper, was a theologian Shihabbadin Mardzhani. In the two years before the release of "Terdzhimana" I. Gasprinskii in Simferopol published a brochure "n Islam. Thoughts, notes and observations of a Muslim." He wrote that education reform should be carried out, based on the "new method". He said that the "old method" (Usul-i-Kadima) was to memorize the Koran and other religious texts, which was considered a chaplain sufficient to achieve a comprehensive knowledge.
"A new method" I. Gasprinsky based on the principle of phonetic reading in training, as well as the introduction of secular subjects in the madrasas: arithmetic, the n language, geography and history. Bitter opponents of its educational programs I. Gasprinskii met in the person who served the tsarist government ukaznyh mullahs, subordinates and Orenburg Tauride (Crimea), Mufti, as well as Orthodox missionaries, for instance, N. Elias (1822-1891 gg.), An ardent foe of education of peoples of .
I. Gasprinskii died in 1914, leaving hundreds of supporters, who continued his teaching not only in Empire, but also outside it, especially in Turkey, Persia and India. As a result of reforms to the educational and cultural levels of the Muslims of have increased considerably. A number of Muslim cities: Kazan, Bakhchisaray, Orenburg, Baku, Ufa, Troitsk - were worthy rivals of other intellectual and cultural centers - Istanbul, Cairo, Beirut.

Dzhadidisty-Enlightenment.
Companions I. Gasprinsky were other talented people of the Tatar people.
Rizzauddin Fakhruddinov - in the early 90-ies of the last century was elected a member of the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly. Rizzauddin Fakhruddinov a perfect master of the Arabic language, ordered from Muslim countries, scientific journals and newspapers. On the formation of his ideology influenced compositions Shihhabbadina Mardzhani, teaching Ismail Gasprinskiy and a chance meeting in St. Petersburg with an outstanding Islamic thinker and political activist Dzhamaladdinom Afghani.
?In May 1906 he left that post and moved to Orenburg on the invitation of renowned Goldminers Rameevyh. Fakhruddinov becomes a member of the newspaper vakt ", edited by his nephew Fatykhov Karimov. Together they raise the newspaper on a high level and make under "vakt" magazine "Shura", the editor of which he was until 1915.
Great value of the writer on the life and work of prominent Muslim thinkers in . Major works in this area:
1. Multi-volume work "Asar" - consists of biographies of n Muslim leaders. There are currently published in two volumes, in which the author gives not only biographical information but also supported by notes containing theological critique.
2. "Remarkable People" - biographies of the founders of classical Muslim scholarship. Issued by the six parts of this work: "Ibn Rushd", "Magarri", "Ibn Arabi", "Outstanding Women in Islam". In addition, placed in every room of the journal published by the "Shura" - "Imam Ghazali," and "Ahmed Midhat.
3. "Remarkable Women" - a collection of biographical essays of "Shura" in the "remarkable people and great events."
Main work Rizauddina Fakhruddinov in theology - Religious and social issues. In it the author outlines the main provisions of the Muslim religion and covers hot topics of modern Muslim life.
Another great scientist is writing "Commentary on the sayings of Muhammad (peace be upon him and welcomed), and has not yet issued an essay" Saints and miracles. "
Another educator, Musa Bigiev - was born in 1875 in Rostov-on-Don in the family of the mullahs. He studied at Kazan, Bukhara, Mecca and Medina, where for several years, he attended lectures by the most famous theologians. He has been in the leading centers of Islamic education in Egypt, Turkey and other Muslim states.
In 1905, Musa Bigiev arrives in Petrograd, where moving closer to the editor of newspapers Ulfet and Tilmiz Rasheed Ibragimov. In these publications, he puts his religious reform article. With 1907 starting out his work on Islamic theology.
At the moment of the works Bigieva in the light went out the following: "The history of the Koran," onthe author wrote in Arabic; comment on the composition of the famous Arab poet Abu al-Magarri "Elluzumiyat" "Proof of God's mercy," "Arabic literature and Islamic sciences," "The theory of Islamic law," "Fundamentals Iariata; translation of the famous Persian poet Hafiz Diwaniyah and others.
Galimzyan Baroody - mudarris, founder of the madrassa "Muhammadiye, which has long served as the center novometodnogo education. Born in 1857 in the Powder suburb of Kazan. My father gave it to one of the Kazan madrassas, and after its completion sent to study in Bukhara. Galimzyan returned to his homeland in 1881 and was selected second mullah in the 4 th arrival of Kazan.
In 1901, he built a madrasa "Muhammadiye" and introduced into the educational system of the new method. While his name has gained great popularity, for him to study gathered the Muslims from all over , the Caucasus, Turkestan, Siberia and the Kyrgyz steppes.
He made friends with authoritative and influential sheik Zaynulloy Rassulevym Sharifi, and receiving his permission, he began to take on training murids. A lot of this has caused outrage, but in the illegal Youth Authority "Taraki" in his address appeared sarcastic poem "Oh, Sheikh Galimdzhan." Many mudarrisy and public figures opposed Galimzyan Baroody. However, despite this, Baroody has made every effort to ensure that prevailed in his madrassa spirit of Islam, the truth of which has been confirmed not decrepit scholasticism, and the science of our time, studied to become enlightened Muslims. For students in madrassas Baroody was a lot of textbooks on the new method

We don't have a source for the above notes

Ten Great Tatars

2011-10-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

Shigabutdin Mardzhani (1818 -1889)

A scholar and religious leader, he laid the foundations for contemporary research into the Kazan Tatars and the history of the region. His major work, Reports on the History of Kazan and the Bulgar, remains a valuable source for contemporary historians.

Kayum Nasyri (1825 1902)

After the long period of severe cultural repression, Nasyri was one of the first Tatars to enroll at Kazan University. He wrote academic textbooks on the Tatar Language, arithmetic, geometry, botany, and history, and created the first scientific grammar of the Tatar language. He also compiled the first Tatar dictionary.

Galimdzhan Barudi (1857 - 1921)

Barudi was a religious educator and reformer, who organized "Mukhammadiya," an important Kazan madrasa. In the early days of the Soviet Union he was the spiritual head of Russia's Muslims, elected mufti by the General Congress of Muslims in Moscow. He didn't live long enough to witness the destruction of the mosques, or the mass executions and exiles of the muftis.

Gabdulla Tukay (1886 - 1913)

The most popular of Tatar poets, he wrote lyrical and tragic poetry, satire, children's poems, and fairy tales. His fairy tales remain popular today and have inspired many pieces of music and paintings. He died in a hospital in Kazan at the age of twenty-seven.

Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev (1892 - 1940)

Sultan-Galiev was one of the leaders in building the nation states of the Soviet Union. He was a member of the board of Narkomnats, the state committee on questions of nationality, and also head of the Eastern Section of the Red Army Political Organization. He helped prepare the joint Tatar-Bashkir Republic, which was later replaced by two separate states. Deemed ideologically untrustworthy, he was first arrested in 1923. He survived another seventeen years before Stalin had him shot.

Baki Urmanche (1897 - 1990)

Urmanche is considered the greatest Tatar artist of the twentieth century. He was not only a sculptor, painter, draftsman, but also an expert on languages and philosophy, on Tatar folklore and history. At one time a political prisoner in the Gulag, he survived to become a revered public figure.

Salikh Saidashev ( 1900 - 1954 )

Saidashev - "The Founder of Professional Tatar Music" - composed songs, marches, musical, and tunes that ares still played in Tatarstan during official celebrations.

Musa Jalil ( 1906 - 1944 )

Jalil was one of the dominant figures of Tatar culture in the 1930's, a dangerous time for intellectuals and artists. He was a poet, a publicist, a brilliant organizer; he wrote librettos; he was also a humorist and entertainer. Taken prisoner by the Germans in the Second World War, he became a leader of the underground resistance and was later guillotined. His most famous works are the Moabit Notebooks, which he wrote while imprisoned.

Nazib Zhiganov ( 1911 - 1988 )

Zhiganov was athe greatest Tatar composer of the Soviet era. Unlike Saidashev, who wrote ditties, he produced classical operas, symphonies, and chamber music, and headed the Tatarstan Composers' Union from its inception in 1939 for many years. He was also the rector of the Kazan Conservatory, which opened in 1945.

Sofia Gubaidulina (1931 - )

The only woman on this list ... One of the most significant contemporary composers in the world, she was born in Chistopol (a Tatar town), but studied piano in the Kazan Conservatory, where she composed her first pieces. Her challenging, highly avant-garde music is now performed around the world. She lives in Germany.

from "Lost Cosmonaut" by Daniel Kalder

much more here

2011-10-26T19:49:00.001-07:00

Ensemble historique et architectural du Kremlin de Kazan

2011-10-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

unesco en Francais et Anglais

Ferns with a Tatar tune

2011-10-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

The song is from a poem by Gabdullah Tukay called "Milli Monnar".
The song that is derived is titled "Elluki" or "Ellukoy" or "Allukoy"

Singer is Zohre Saxabieva.

Filmed in the Fern Grotto at the Aids Memorial Grove in San Francisco

1562 Russia

2011-10-18T10:13:00.001-07:00

Tatar Golden Gate Park

2011-10-18T04:15:00.001-07:00

The Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park is the place where you'd be most likely to be serenaded by Tatar Folk Music. We can't stay away from this place. The benches, tunnels, fountains and civilized promenade are the perfect location to share and teach of Tatar culture.

Yelabuga - Алабуга

2011-10-16T08:08:00.000-07:00

Yelabuga in Tatarstan.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coordinates: 55°46′N 52°02′E

The Devil's Tower (Şaytan qalası), a unique architectural monument surviving from Volga Bulgaria

Kazan Street

Spasskaya Street

Gassar Markovo

Yelabuga (Russian: Ела́буга; Tatar Cyrillic: Алабуга, Latin: Alabuğa, also spelled Alabuga or Elabuga, is a town in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, located on the right bank of the Kama River and 200 kilometers (120 mi) east from Kazan. Population: 70,750 (2010 Census preliminary results);^[1] 68,663 (2002 Census);^[2] 53,537 (1989 Census).^[3]

The history of the settlement dates back to the 11th century, when a Volga Bulgarian border castle was established. The castle was later abandoned, and its remains are now known as Şaytan qalası (Shaytan's castle).

In the second half of the 16th century, a Russian village was founded on the same spot. It is known for its oil industry and as the birthplace of painter Ivan Shishkin.

Yelabuga is famous as the place where Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva committed suicide in 1941. The poet is buried at the municipal cemetery.

In the 1990s, a General Motors assembly plant operated in the town.

Near Yelabuga is the Nizhnyaya Kama National Park.

Links from Ayaz

2011-10-15T09:20:00.000-07:00

Isenme Dostlar

Tatar TV THB 6 ay ga yakin internettan kariyalmadik

Bugen den itibaren yagi adrestan daha yakshi karapbola

http://www.tnv.ru/tat/

after opening this page go to ONLINE and click and choose the screen

depending on the speed

or open directly using

http://www.tnv.ru/tat/main1/online/640/

UFA Bashkortistan TV

http://www.tv-rb.ru/online-bst

Barçagızga selemler

Ayaz

Streaming Tatar TV online has been historically problematic to say the least. Thank you Ayaz for helping us to enjoy our Language online. We wish more of the content was in Tatar, but there are many Tatars that speak only Russian now that should be acknowledged.

We have many hopes and wishes for future of Tatars, Tatar Media and Tatatarstan. The list is quite long.

татарский язык

2011-10-13T06:34:00.000-07:00

татарский язык

online "Learn Tatar for Russian Speakers"

Tatars in America - from THB - TNV

2011-10-11T06:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29-hjRUV5no&feature=related
Safalar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OcM2ODHaDM&feature=watch_response
Devletsahlar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyQ3jHGMrjg
Ilhan Sadri

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v46Dt86nEP4&feature=watch_response
Tatars in New York and San Francisco

Lil Tatar - Sin Matur - Син матур

2011-10-11T06:12:00.000-07:00

Lil Tatar - Sin Matur - "You're Pretty"

Chess Player the Turk

2011-10-11T06:03:00.001-07:00

Tatarstan Independence - BBC 2003

2011-10-11T05:51:00.000-07:00

Inside Putin's Russia: State within a state

By Bridget Kendall
BBC diplomatic correspondent

Inside Putin's Russia is a series looking at life outside Moscow. In the fourth part of the series, Bridget Kendall travels to Tatarstan - a republic inside the Russian Federation whose distance from Moscow means it is the local leaders who hold the most sway.

It was our first day in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan. And we had come, of all places, to an Acqua Park, an indoor water amusement centre.

In front of us delirious children shrieked and splashed as they feverishly tumbled down the water slides, dodging the heaving artificial waves in the biggest pool, ducking to swim through tunnels into smaller grottos.

A slightly distorted loudspeaker voice informed us this was the biggest amusement park of its type in Russia.

"The Pearl of Tatarstan," declared the voice before being drowned out, rather incongruously, by a shaky recording of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake music.

Suddenly, round the corner, we sensed the approach of the Tatar leader, President Mintimer Shaimiev. He moved forward with the quiet, regal manner of a leader who has no need to raise his voice to command attention.

And behind him came the inevitable retinue of grey-suited official courtiers. We were told the entire presidential apparatus and most important ministers of his government were here for this grand opening.

All looked slightly uncomfortable in the clammy swimming pool heat, and all were dutifully shod, as required by hygiene rules, in bright blue plastic shoe covers.

Perennial paradoxes

Tatarstan is a state within a state, a republic inside the Russian Federation. But it is also a signatory to a unique treaty which in 1994 gave the Tatars equal sovereignty alongside Russia and considerable control over their own laws and - crucially - tax income from their oil fields.

President Shaimiev knows the wisdom of keeping the broad mass of the population happy

Bridget Kendall

But then President Putin took office and changed the rules, once again putting Tatarstan's status under the spotlight.

So is Tatarstan an integral part of Russia or not? It is a key question in the sometimes tense negotiations going on at the moment between Moscow and Kazan as they endeavour to clarify what Russia's federal system should mean in practice.

This, after all, is one of the perennial paradoxes about Russia. It is true that everything ultimately depends on the federal authorities in Moscow. But on the ground, it often seems that it is the local mayor or governor - or in Tatarstan's case, president - who is the feudal overlord, holding court and dispensing favours, too far away ever to be really under Moscow's thumb, however tightly the Kremlin tries to keep a grip on what is happening.

According to President Shaimiev's political adviser, Dr Rafael Khakimov, Tatarstan's independence has already been curtailed.

"Take the police," he said. "These days they take their orders from Moscow, so do all the security services. There used to be parallel ministries, so we could also have a say. Now they want to run everything from the centre."

'We live in paradise'

But ask the women who invited us to break the Muslim fast of Ramadan with them in a Tatar village and they will say it is President Shaimiev who rules them.

Women break the fast of Ramadan

As the former local Communist party chief and an experienced political survivor, he knows the wisdom of keeping the broad mass of the population happy.

Hence the Acqua parks, and the newly asphalted roads and the gas pipes being run out to villages to give them instant hot water. Not a bad perk for Tatarstan's citizens. In many other parts of Russia, villagers still traipse through the snow to the well to get water.

"We remember times just after the war when we were eating nettles and green potatoes," said our hostess, as she finished prayers and invited us to a table laden with steaming bowls of soup, newly baked pies and piles of fruit. "Now we live in paradise."

But the economic relationship with Moscow is only one part of Tatarstan's story. The other is the revival of a language and culture which 15 years ago Tatar intellectuals were afraid was in danger of extinction.

Language laws

Across Russia as a whole, the Muslim Tatars are the largest ethnic minority - at least five million strong. But in Tatarstan, they account for just 50% of the population and mixed marriages are frequent.

I well remember visiting Kazan in early 1991 and being impressed by the sense of urgency among Tatar writers who were driving the nationalist movement. In those days their immediate goal was to harness the new power of computers to their cause and launch a concerted programme of Tatar desktop publishing.

Muslim Tatars account for just 50% of the population in Tatarstan

"If we don't do something soon to save the language and literature, it will be gone. Everyone will speak Russian," they told me.

A decade later, new Tatar grammar schools have been opened in Kazan, Tatar language has an equal status with Russian in the republic, and Muslim Tatar women have sued and won a court battle with Moscow to be allowed to wear headscarves on their passport photos.

At the parliament in Kazan, we were told of plans for a new law to require local businesses to pay 15% bonuses to workers who could speak both languages; or, in other words, to pay less to those Russians who do not speak Tatar.

Not a move that Moscow is likely to tolerate.

Already, the Russian parliament has overruled one Tatar law aimed at switching the written language from the Russian Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin script. The Tatar Government has quietly postponed the move, concerned not to jeopardise negotiations with Moscow.

Of course we have freedom of speech here. The press criticise me all the time. They just have to show responsibility

President Shaimiev

But outraged Tatar nationalists say the Russian ban infringes their constitutional rights, and warn they will go all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to fight their corner if necessary.

Meanwhile, sitting in his lavishly restored Presidential Palace in the Kazan Kremlin, President Shaimiev smiles his benign grandfatherly smile and tells us there is no conflict with Moscow.

"When Putin said he wanted more vertical control, I was one of the first to support him," he said. "Had I been president of Russia, I'd have done exactly the same."

But surely what this wily former Communist chief means is that firm control over his own people is something he also needs, in order to pursue his delicate negotiations with Moscow. So he keeps the lid on dangerous dissent - whether from Islamic radicals, or Tatars nationalists, or disgruntled Russians.

"Of course we have freedom of speech here. The press criticise me all the time." But he adds: "They just have to show responsibility."

Another paradox: of all the places in Russia we have visited so far, this seemed the least open. Little Tatarstan, positioning itself as a beacon of democracy in Russia, a test case for Moscow's tolerance. Yet, on our journey at least, where local political control seemed most in evidence.

Clown Shoes

2011-10-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

We spotted these Halloween Clown Shoes in a shop window and couldn't help but think....

OHmyGod! Those look like Tatar shoes!

Chitek are what they're called. Pronounced "Chee-tick".
(Читек и. national boots)
Here are the real thing:

Nagoya Japan Tatars

2011-10-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

In addition to mosques in Tokyo and Kobe, Tatars opened a mosque in Nagoya on 27 January 1937 as well.

According to the information in the book titled “ Japonya’da Turk Izleri” by Ali Merthan Dundar-pages 73 to 92 this is what it stated:

“In 1919 one of the cities Tatars immigrated in Japan was Nagoya. Because of its proximity to the industrial cities like Kobe and Osaka, Tatars preferred to settle there. Nagoya Tatars kept close contact with Kobe Tatars therefore some Tatar families moved from one to other. There were no reliable records kept to determine how many Tatars lived in Nagoya between 1919 and 1950.

According to Mian Abdul Aziz, the person who officially opened the mosque in Nagoya stated that there were approximately 30 Tatars living in Nagoya in 1935. Tatar researcher Larisa Usmanova stated their numbers as 50 between 1941 and 1945.

According to a report in 1933 held in Japanese archives stated the numbers as 20 children and 20 adults (Naimusho 1933:167). Additionally individuals like Halide Hanim (daughter of Nagoya Mosque Imam Huseyin Kilky )and Rustem Arslan Efendi, who are living in America, confirmed that Tatars were numbered 50 between 1934-1935.

According to a report prepared by American sources Tatars in Nagoya moved to Kobe on 25 March 1945. According to information supplied by Rustem arslan Efendi this move was forced upon Tatars by the Japanese authorities. Apparently Japanese military did not want any foreigners in Nagoya because of its strategic importance to Japanese military and air force during the war. As a result of this there are no documents available to confirm if the Nagoya Mosque was sold or disposed of by other means. However as a result of American bombardment the Mosque was burnt to the ground in March 1945..

Nagoya Idel-Ural Tatar Islamic School opened in 1933. Tatar Cultural Centre (Bunka Kyokai) also operated in the same building. When their numbers increased, Tatars found the premises to be inadequate and decided to build another centre. With funds collected Tatars bought a land located at 16 Banchi 25, 3 Chome, Chikusa-ku in April 1936. With the further funds collected from Tatars and other Muslims ( Mr. Ismettullah Haci Eferci Efendi donated 1000 yen for construction) they were able to construct the new centre in two years, which was used as mosque and school until 1945

Board of Directors were:

Mr. Timirbay Hamidullah (my grandfather) President

Mr. Husneddin Saidgali –Treasurer

Miss H Mansura-Secretary

Mr. D Sezgen-Vice President

Mr. Huseyin Kilky- Member (He was also an Imam and mahalle reisi)

Mr. G Shihater-Member

Rehmetler to Ziya Maski in South Australia for submitting this

Bakhchisaray Tatar Yard

2011-10-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

Bakhchisaray Tatar Yard by Kuznetsov

Who was this Karl Fuchs?

2011-10-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

Who was Karl Fuchs? German to English - Babelfish

Sabantuy Dancing 2010

2011-10-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

Tatar Dance from Sabantuy 2010 Nizhniy Novgorod
and just beautiful

Сабантуй 2010 Нижний Новгород

Tatar Dance - "Tankur"

2011-10-06T13:53:00.000-07:00

Tatar Dance - "Tankur"

Tatar Girls 1910

2011-09-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

Kazan : Between Europe and Asia from Saudi Aramco World

2011-09-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

A thorough summary of the contemporary Tatar Experience
from Saudi Aramco World and worth a read.

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201105/kazan.between.europe.and.asia.htm

Kazan 1838

2011-09-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

The Distortion of Genghis

2011-09-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

National Geographic cover 1996

Hollywood Genghis in Action

1971 Zsa Zsa Gabor has a fluffy white dog that she has named, "Genghis Khan".

Ghenghis Khan Pulp Fiction

Golden Horde 1951

Three Crimean Images 1840

2011-09-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

Print by - Aubert Paris

Mullah - Bahcesaray 1840