|
Soviet Union [USSR] Tatars
Three major Tatar groups reside in the Soviet Union: Volga
Tatars (the overwhelming majority of all Tatars in the Soviet
Union), Crimean Tatars, and Siberian Tatars. Most are descended
from the Turkic-speaking Bulgars who came into the Volga-Ural
region in the seventh century and the Kipchak tribes who invaded
the area as part of the Mongol Empire. From the thirteenth to the
fifteenth century, they were part of the Golden Horde. In the
fifteenth century, the Golden Horde broke up into the Kazan',
Astrakhan', Crimean, and Siberian hordes. The Volga Tatars, the
descendants of the Kazan' and Astrakhan' hordes, were conquered by
Russia in the sixteenth century. The Siberian Tatars were
incorporated into the Russian Empire later that century, and the
Crimean Tatars were incorporated at the end of the eighteenth
century.
After their conquest by Russia, the Volga Tatars were subjected
to harsh political, economic, and religious policies. Only the
Tatar nobles who had intermarried with Russians and, in many
instances, gained positions of power and influence in the Russian
state, escaped persecution. Thousands of Tatars were deported north
to work in Russian shipyards. Russians confiscated Tatar property,
destroyed their mosques and religious shrines, and pressured them
to convert to Christianity. After a series of Tatar revolts in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the tsarist government began
to change its policies. In 1788 Islam was given official status in
Russia, and in 1792 Tatars were granted the right to trade with the
Turkic populations of Turkestan, Iran, and China.
Repressive measures by the Russian government against Crimean
Tatars and Slavic immigration into Crimea forced many Tatars to
emigrate. Others were forcibly deported. During a century of
Russian rule, the Tatar population in Crimea declined from about
500,000 at the end of the eighteenth century to fewer than 200,000
by the end of the nineteenth century.
Siberian Tatars--mainly hunters, trappers, and horse breeders
scattered over a large territory--presented no threat to the
Russian state and for a time continued to live unmolested. In the
nineteenth century, many Siberian Tatars moved to the cities,
seeking employment in the newly built sawmills and tanneries.
Despite renewed harassment in the second half of the nineteenth
century, Tatars formed the intellectual and political elite of the
Muslim population in Russia. Tatars were active in the Revolution
of 1905 in Russia. They participated in the First Duma of 1906 and
the Second Dumas of 1907, and they were the leading proponents of
the pan-Turkic movement that emphasized racial, religious and
linguistic unity of all Turkic-speaking peoples.
After the February Revolution in 1917, the Volga Tatars tried
to established an independent federation of Volga-Ural states. This
dream proved impossible in the face of both Bolshevik and White
Russian opposition. Instead, with the help of the Red Army, the
Tatar Autonomous Republic was created in May 1920 as part of the
Russian Republic.
The Crimean Tatars' attempts to create an independent state in
1917 were also thwarted by the Bolsheviks, and in October 1921 the
Soviet leaders created the Crimean Autonomous Republic. Later,
however, the Crimean Tatars were exiled from Crimea during World
War II and scattered throughout Soviet Central Asia.
In the 1989 census, the Tatars, with over 6.6 million people,
were the sixth largest nationality in the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, they did not have their own union republic. Over 1.7
million Tatars lived in the Tatar Autonomous Republic, one of
sixteen autonomous republics in the Russian Republic, where they
had a plurality of almost 48 percent of the population. About 1
million others lived in the Bashkir Autonomous Republic, also
located in the Russian Republic, where they ranked second in
population after the Russians and just ahead of the Bashkirs, a
closely related Turkic nationality. Another 2.6 million Tatars
lived scattered throughout the rest of the Russian Republic. Of
these, about 500,000 were Siberian Tatars living in western
Siberian towns and villages. Over 1 million Tatars--a majority of
whom were probably exiled Crimean Tatars--were also found in Soviet
Central Asia--mostly in the Uzbek and Kazakh republics.
Each of the three Tatar groups speaks a distinct language,
although all belong to the West Turkic-Kipchak group of languages.
The language of the Crimean Tatars also contains a large number of
Arabic and Persian loanwords. The Siberian Tatars have no written
language of their own and use the literary language of the Volga
Tatars.
In 1989 over 83 percent of all Tatars and 96.6 percent of those
residing in the Tatar Autonomous Republic regarded Tatar as their
native language. A high percentage of Tatars were also fluent in
Russian. The educational level of Tatars in the Soviet Union
varied. Tatars living in their own autonomous republic or elsewhere
in the Russian Republic were not as well educated as the highly
urbanized Crimean Tatars who lived in the Soviet Central Asian
republics.
Tatar representation in the CPSU both in the Soviet Union and
in the Tatar Autonomous Republic has been consistently low. In the
1980s, they were particularly underrepresented in the Central
Committee of the CPSU.
Data as of May 1989
|
