Vol 9, No 1 (2024)

The article opens a special issue of the journal “Historical Ethnology”, dedicated to the Tatar woman. Its authors, who acted as compilers and scientific editors of the issue, substantiate the research focus, chronology and source base of the published materials. The emphasis on Tatar women as an object of a special study is explained by their active social and professional stand during the period of the Russian Empire and the USSR. The coverage of these two historical periods made it possible to identify the ethnospecific logic of integrating Tatar women into large-scale political and social phenomena. The bulk of the articles included in the issue are accompanied by the publication of materials from state archives, ego-documents, literary works, articles from Tatar newspapers and magazines of the pre-revolutionary period, inaccessible to most researchers. Their introduction into scientific circulation, according to the authors of the introductory article, strengthens the possibilities of a diachronic approach to the analysis of the ethnosocial field from a historical perspective.

Giving a brief overview of the articles in the issue, the authors of the introduction come to the conclusion that in the era of bourgeois reforms, along with the traditional care for family and children for women, her role in the society is strengthening; her desire for education and educational activities is intensifying. With the advent of the Soviet system, which proclaimed gender equality of the sexes, the burden on women increases both in their personal life and in the public sphere. At the same time, Tatar women retain their most important purpose – educating and bringing up the younger generation.

The turn of the 19^th – 20^th centuries in the Tatar society is characterized by a time of comprehending the past and defining tasks for the future development of Tatar identity. At this time, a discussion about self-designation of the people is unfolding on the pages of periodicals; Tatar intellectuals share their vision of the concepts of “nation” and “national”. Along with the male part of the Tatar society, Tatar women join in the discussion of important issues.

The author of the article sets the following goal: to analyse the position of Tatar women regarding national issues and their activities in defending their own views. The novelty of the study is that it is the forst attempt to consider the issue of the national identity of the Tatars and the prospects for the Tatar nation’s development through the prism of a woman’s perspective. It is of much importance since women are directly related to the upbringing of the younger generation, which determines the nature of the development of the national community.

The study revealed that Tatar women of the early 20^th century actively entered into debate about the name of the Tatar people and acted as a defender of the Tatar ethnonym. They participated in the formation of a strategy for the development of the Tatars’ national identity. Priority tasks facing the Tatars, in their opinion, include the preservation of the physical health of the people. After that spiritual development can be discussed. Tatar women call religion and the Tatar language the basis of the nation. The development strategy of the nation, according to the vision of Tatar women, should be based on education and enlightenment. Tatar women of the early 20^th century took upon themselves the responsibility to realise activities for educating the younger generation, wrote books on the topic, and were actively involved in organising women's education.

The author cites sources from the Tatar periodical press of the early 20^th century, which reflect Tatar women’s point of view of on the problem of the identity of the Tatar people.

The article presents an attempt to conduct a systematical study of the typology of female images in the works of Naki Isanbet, the Tatar scholar-encyclopedist, folklorist, critic, and classic of Tatar literature (1899–1992). Published and unpublished sources were used as the research material. Fiction, journalistic, and scientific texts of N. Isanbet have been analysed using the method of semantic analysis, historical and cultural, comparative methods. The author proves that the ideal of a woman of the Enlightenment epoch, i.e. the “mother of the nation”, dominates in the legacy of the scholar who was the classic of the Tatar literature as well. The images of a devoted spouse, a wise mother, a “mother of the nation” can be encountered in his works. The writer defends the ideas of equality of women and men, women’s active participation in public life, etc. in his works of fiction written in various genres throughout the twentieth century. The poetics of female images depends on the requirements of the genre. When developing the images, the writer relies on the traditions of the Tatar folklore and oriental poetry. In his creative legacy, the encyclopedic scholar immortalised dozens of names of the female contemporaries who made a significant contribution to the history of the Tatar people – teachers, actresses, writers, translators, public figures, etc.

This article provides archival information about Tatar girls who studied at Russian universities at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. It informs about the educational institutions they attended, admission to schools and the learning environment conditions. During that period, women received education mainly in St. Petersburg. Raziya Kutluyarova was the first among Tatar ladies to study at higher medical courses. It is also known that Amina Batyrshina studied at that school, who later became famous as a doctor and public figure in the city of Baku. In addition, young Tatar women studied specialties related to various sectors of the national economy – polytechnics, trade, literary history, and natural sciences. Higher courses open to women were financed by private donations and from students’ income. Therefore, not everyone could study there. It is known that in 1906–1918 twelve Tatar ladies studied at the Faculty of History and Philology of Kazan Higher Courses. The article also touches on the issue of social activities of Tatar girls who received higher education. Among the girls who completed the courses, there are those who continued to receive higher education and engage in science. One of them, Maryam Gubaidullina, studied at the Kazan North-Eastern Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, gave lectures on the topic “Ethnography of the Kazan Tatars.”

As an appendix to the article, a list of Tatar ladies who studied at women's higher courses before the October Revolution is presented.

The name of Sarah Kasymovna Shakulova, the daughter of an honorary citizen of Kasimov, is widely known. Having received brilliant mathematical education, Shakulova’s outstanding career, successful work in the field of education, and active life position have been adequately reflected in historical works. However, her personal century-old documents have not been researched in women’s history. These are the formular and biographical questionnaire discovered by us in the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, which are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time in this article. They are weighty sources about important biographical markers of Tatar ‘Sophia Kovalevskaya’ and her relatives. The answers “from the first person” recorded the difficulties that stood in the way of the “other faith” in professional work in the field of education. The content of the submitted documents sheds light on the material component of the teacher's work at the end of the politically turbulent 1910s and at the beginning of the formation of secular education in the young Soviet state. Written by the hand of an outstanding woman, these documents are important historical artifacts of the national culture of the Tatars. In addition, the presented documents complement the source base on the problem of studying the processes of women’s emancipation in the early twentieth century and their high need to acquire societal status.

The article examines the contribution of Tatar women teachers to the education of the Turkmen people and to the training of national teaching staff for the Soviet Socialistic Republic of Turkmenistan in the first years of Soviet regime. The article explores the example of Gulnar Dzhanbekovna Karly, the oldest teacher of the Turkmen State University named after Magtymguly. The author analyses the life path, scholarly and pedagogical work of the prominent Tatar woman, who during her half-century of fruitful work took an active part in the training of highly qualified young historian scholars of Turkmenistan and in the development of school textbooks. The article reveals how representatives of the Karly pedagogical dynasty, at least five generations of educators, including mullahs, teachers and lectors, selflessly served their people, the people of Turkmenistan and the profession of a historian scholar.

The article analyses the emergence of theater as one of the types of European art in Turkestan in late 19th – early 20th centuries. The author reveals the significant role of the Tatar theater troupes “Sayar” and “Nur”, Tatar actresses S. Gizzatullina-Volzhskaya, F.I. Kudasheva, and F. Ilskaya in this process. The influence of Tatar women playwrights on Uzbek creative youth is shown. This was manifested in two facts: the publication of the first play by an Uzbek writer, which became the forerunner for a women’s literary school in Turkestan, and the appearance of actresses among Uzbek women who starred in the first Soviet films. The emergence of an amateur troupe from among the local population, growth in the number of clubs and theater groups, which consisted mainly of women, indicated an increase in the social activity of Turkestan women. Considerable attention is paid to the analysis of interactions between Tatar and local national progressives in the formation of theatrical art in Turkestan.

The author of the review introduces the voluminous research work written by Adilkhan Adiloglu, a young Turkish scholar, and dedicated to the problem of women's rights and freedoms in the Tatar literature and periodicals of the Jadid era (mid-19^th – early 20^th centuries). The work’s value lies in the fact that, using rich factual material, the researcher presented the history of the emergence of the national-cultural revival among the Tatars and its outstanding participants. He managed to show the scale of participation of an educated Tatar Muslim woman in this process.