HISTORY AND SOCIETY
The section History and Society offers its readers articles by leading scholars and young researchers in several fields: history (including chronology and historiography), archeology (including epigraphy and numismatics), ethnography (ethnology), anthropology of Tatars and their ancestors within a broad chronological framework ‒ from antiquity and the early Middle Ages to the present time.
We expect the early stages of a long history of Tatars to be reflected in the new research into the topical issues of ethnogenesis and ethnic history of the Turkic-speaking ancestors of Tatars, the emergence and development of the Turkic -Tatar medieval civilization, including the history of the Xiongnu (Huns), the Turkic Khanate, Great Bulgaria, the Khazar Khanate, Volga-Kama Bulgaria, the Jochi Ulus (the Golden Horde) and post-Horde states (the Kazan, Astrakhan, Crimean, Siberian Khanates and the Nogai Horde), the relationship of the population of these states with the neighboring peoples and states of Eurasia.
We believe that the unbiased coverage of the Tatar people’s status as part of the multinational Russian state (in the second half of the 16th ‒the early 20th centuries) and the description of Tatars' contribution to the development of the Russian statehood, its economy and culture will be one of the most important themes of this section. The study of Tatarstan scholars striving to develop and adopt their own conceptions of the Turkic people’s history aims at revision of the old stereotypes in covering the complex and contradictory relationship between the Russian and Tatar people. It is important to note that valid criticisms of the stereotypes are favored by our Russian colleagues. The available archive written sources need a heightened degree of scrutiny to fill in numerous information gaps in the history of the Tatars of the 17th-18th centuries.
Particular attention will be given to the studies of the Tatars’ history during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods that call for more extensive research. The papers here will discuss the questions of ethno-social and ethno-political processes in the Republic of Tatarstan in the 1980-1990 's and the beginning of the 21st century, the development of the national movement ideology, the struggle for the restoration of statehood, transformations in the economic and spiritual life of the Tatars and other urgent topics.
Being the second largest nation in the Russian Federation, the Tatars densely populate the Volga and Ural regions and are dispersed in almost all the regions of Russia, as well as in other countries. The issues that the Tatar diaspora have faced with for various socio-economic and political reasons in different historical periods are a relatively new subject matter of Tatarstan historical studies and they require a comprehensive analysis as highly relevant and practically important.
Since the beginning of the 10th century Volga Bulgaria, later the Golden Horde, and Post-Horde states were in the lap of the medieval Muslim civilization as its northern and north-eastern provinces; this was the time when Islam came to determine the main vectors of the Tatar community development. Even the militant atheism of the Soviet era could not completely sever the ties of the people with their spiritual origins. Thus, the theme “Islam in the history of the Tatars” in its various aspects is regarded as a key topic. It is our hope that domestic and foreign experts will pay due attention to such topics as the role of Islam in the public and political life of the Tatar people at all stages of its development, the Islamic factor in shaping the domestic and foreign policy of Russia, Islam and spiritual heritage of the Tatars, and other related themes. Works that discuss these urgent themes will take a worthy place on the pages of this journal.
