The new history textbook of Tatarstan is a consequence of the republic’s concessions to Moscow in the political, economic and linguistic spheres, according to federal relations expert Harun (Vadim) Sidorov. He came to this conclusion after analysing the materials and comments related to the content of the textbook, which is to be introduced to schools starting next academic year.
After the leadership of Tatarstan surrendered its positions to Moscow in the political, economic and even linguistic spheres, it was inevitable this would happen in the sphere of forming the historical self-awareness of Tatars.
The content of the draft of the new history textbook of Tatarstan can be considered a clear demonstration of its de-sovereignization within the political system that has developed in Russia.
The Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Tatar SSR at one time spoke of the implementation of the inalienable right of the Tatar nation to self-determination. The Constitution of Tatarstan also begins with words that express the will not only of its multinational people but also of the Tatar people specifically.
In this sense, it is obvious that it is the Tatar people who are the source of legitimacy not of the Kazan province or the Volga region, but of Tatarstan, the republic named after them. This in turn means that it is the Tatar historical view that justifies the necessity of the existence of Tatarstan, as opposed to the Kazan province or the hypothetical Volga region.
Despite all possible disagreements among its authoritative bearers, the Tatar historical view is characterized by consensus on several issues fundamental to the Tatar ethnic existence. For Shigabutdin Marjani, Gayaz Iskhaki, and Rafael Khakimov, such historical constants of Tatar national self-awareness invariably remained the perception of the national traumas of the fall of Kazan in 1552, the Christianization of Idel-Ural, discrimination in the Russian Empire, and the desire to overcome them through the struggle for sovereignty. The emergence of sovereign Tatarstan and its establishment of treaty relations with Moscow in the Tatar historical context was perceived as the end of a dark era and the onset of bright times – a new reality in which Tatarstan, the Tatar republic, will become something like a close ally for Russia, whose right to its culture, history, and national feelings it respects and recognizes. For example, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and England as its historically central part acknowledge the right of the Scots to their own historical view, different from the English one.
As always in Russia, the short-term era of more or less real federalism was marked, among other things, by recognising the right of national republics to their own historical view. In the context of Tatarstan, this was expressed at the academic level in the rapid development of the Tatar historical school and modern historiography in the post-Soviet period, and at the popular level – in the celebration of Khater kone (Day of Remembrance of the Defenders of Kazan Who Died in 1552) or such heroes as Batyrsha (as well as Salavat Yulaev among the Bashkirs, Imam Shamil or Sultan-Muta among the Dagestanis, Sheikh Mansur among the Chechens, etc.).
But all this is now in the past. As has already been noted, today Moscow has set a course for the formation of a single historical self-awareness among all ethnic groups under its control and thus for their transformation into a single nation. It is not surprising that, according to those who participated in the preparation of the textbook and who studied the version presented to the public, all the “sharp corners” and, de facto, the entire Tatar national historical vision in it were “cut off by Moscow controllers.” That is, unlike previous textbooks on the history of Tatarstan — such as the collective work of Fayaz Khuzin, Iskander Gilyazov and Bulat Sultanbekov — the new one ignores the central themes of Tatar national identity: the destruction of the Kazan Khanate with a significant part of its population (calling this period “the entry of our region into the Russian state”), religious persecution of Muslims (which is presented as an exclusively economic incentive to convert to Christianity), their centuries-old resistance to this oppression, in which the historically modern Tatar people were forged.
It also ignores another traumatic topic for Tatar history in the modern era — Stalin’s repressions. In the first years of post-Soviet Russia, their recognition and condemnation were commonplace, but today it is not customary to talk about this. After all, Putin made it clear that “excessive demonization of Stalin is one of the ways, one of the paths to attack the Soviet Union and Russia.”
As a result, both the national-political genesis and the character of the post-Soviet sovereignty of Tatarstan have been emasculated. If the previous textbook described both the fact that the decisive factor in its emergence was the activity of the Tatar national movement and its political content in the form of its constitution and a bilateral agreement with Moscow, the current one is silent about both. But it paints an image of Tatarstan under Minnikhanov’s leadership as a corporation devoid of a national-political dimension, but dynamically developing. However, for some reason, this corporation ends up being an active participant in the war in Ukraine, the meaning of which is totally incomprehensible to the Tatar people. Especially against the background of depriving them of all the gains of the 1990s, about which the textbook also says nothing, as you might guess. Eight pages are devoted to this war, during which “participants of the SVO” are glorified, including the criminal Irek Magasumov, who killed a resident of Lugansk. This is the replacement of Imam Batyrsha, erased from the history of Tatarstan, as the image of a Tatar hero.
It is not surprising – heroes are always selected to match the corresponding national historical narrative. And if within the framework of the Tatar national historical narrative such heroes have always been Syuyumbike, Batyrsha, Tatar revivalists of the early 20th century and fighters for sovereignty of the late 20th century, then within the framework of the colonial Russia-centric narrative, Minnikhanov and Magasumov naturally became them for the Tatars.
Well, it cannot be otherwise in the existing coordinate system. Russian ideologists close to the authorities directly say that there are no national republics in Russia, but only Russian republics. And if so, then the history taught in them will not be national, but Russian.
Harun (Vadim) Sidorov, PhD in Law, doctoral student in ethnology at Charles University (Czech Republic)
Idel.Реалии
