A little-noted but interesting aspect of the Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014 was Vladimir Putin's government's attempt to enlist officials from the Republic of Tatarstan to smooth the transition of Crimea back to Russian rule. It makes sense — the Crimean and Volga Tatars are ethnic, linguistic, and religious kin, and both trace their history of statehood back to the Golden Horde successor khanates of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Crimean Khanate maintained its independence far longer than Kazan was able to; while the defeat of Kazan in 1552 marked the beginning of the expansion of the modern Russian Empire under Ivan IV, the Crimean Khanate retained some form of autonomy until nearly the end of the eighteenth century. During the ensuing years, the fortunes of the two peoples and their states reversed yet again; Tatarstan emerged from Soviet rule as a powerful actor determined to make the new Russian Federation truly a federal state in practice as well as on paper (in part by invoking the heritage of the Kazan Khanate). In contrast the Crimean Tatars, never having recovered demographically or politically from their forced exile to Central Asia by Stalin during World War II, struggled to establish some form of cultural and political autonomy as part of a newly independent Ukraine.

Although no contemporary Tatar source presented a Tatar view of the famous battle of Kulikovo Field in 1380 the modern Kazan’ Tatar historian Rustam Nabiev has published a major revisionist reinterpretation of the event based upon what he considers an objective analysis of fourteenth-century Rus'-Tatar history and relations. Nabiev concludes that the battle did not happen at all as narrated in Muscovite literary works of the Kulikovo Cycle. In reality Muscovite Grand Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich did not defeat Emir Mamai on the Don River; instead Dmitrii and his princely retinue participated in the defeat of Mamai by the army of Khan Tokhtamysh in the region of the Northern Donets and Kalka rivers. Nabiev's critique of the Russian national paradigm of the battle has some merit but it overlooks previous Western scholarship which had already made many of the same points, oversimplifies current Russian scholarship about the battle, and arbitrarily manipulates the sources to create a fantastic and fictitious scenario. Even so his views deserve to be refuted on scholarly grounds, not by an ad hominem dismissal as a reflection of “Tatar chauvinism.”

This paper examines language policy and language use as identity technologies in the Republic of Tatarstan approximately 23 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although Tatarstan is an autonomous republic politically situated within the Russian Federation, it has its own language policy which was implemented in 1992 and which declares Russian and Tatar as the official state languages having equal status in all spheres of language use. Additionally, as a result of an education policy implemented in 1997, Tatar language learning was made a compulsory subject in schools for all nationalities. This research examines how these policies have legitimized the Tatar identity alongside Russian from the top-down perspective, but how these legitimacies are not reflected from the bottom-up perspective [Graney 1999. “Education Reform in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan: Sovereignty Projects in Post-Soviet Russia.” Europe-Asia Studies 51 (4): 611-632; Yemelianova 2000. “Shaimiev's ‘Khanate’ on the Volga and its Russian Subjects.” Asian Ethnicity 1 (1)]. The focus of this research was to find out how effective these language and education policies as top-down identity technologies have been in post-Soviet Tatar society. An empirical research was carried out in Kazan in 2013 and revealed that asymmetrical bilingualism still prevails in contemporary Tatar society: Russian is used for everyday purposes by all nationalities, whereas Tatar is used as an in-group marker among Tatars within informal settings.

This article presents a study of Islamic religious symbols involved in maintaining the special status of the Tatars in post-Soviet Tatarstan. It explores how regional ethnic elites in Tatarstan use Islam (the discourse of the history of Islam in the region and Islamic symbols in the representation of the region) as a tool for legitimizing their privileged positions in the region. In addition, the article examines how Islamic culture enters into the everyday life and public space of the region, thereby, in a sense enforcing social borders between different ethnic groups. This study has two aims: a theoretical analysis of religious symbols’ role in the struggle for status in the ethnic hierarchy and the practical application of the developed theoretical framework to the case of post-Soviet Tatarstan. The author concludes that after the system of ethnic federalism was abolished in Russia, Tatars have retained their special status by appealing to Islam.

Complex and ambiguous relations between state officials and civilians in Russia in general, and in Tatarstan in particular, are best reflected by daily communications between traffic police officers and motorists and pedestrians. These short interactions bring up issues of violence and minority discrimination, bribing, and dominant political values. In this paper based on my field research, I explore the practice of ethnic profiling employed by police officers and analyze its effects. I focus on identity construction and its “quality measurement.” Unlike a standardized system of weights or “brute facts,” law enforcement involves the creation of identities, including selective and sanctioned usage of, and manipulation by, ethnic traits. I conclude that ethnic profiling exists in Tatarstan, but stems not from nationalist inspirations of the controlling agents, but rather as an effect of rational economic decision-making. I also argue that despite its haphazard nature, ethnic minorities in Tatarstan are able to interact with controlling agencies more effectively than the majority, partially due to their alleged ability to employ collective action and partially because of the specific ethnic policy of the Republic.

This article explores the development of language and education policies in the Republic of Tatarstan, a constituent of the Russian Federation, in the context of continued decline in minorities’ political nationalism between 2000 and the 2010s. The new “model of Tatarstan” relies on a close partnership with Moscow reaffirmed by an exclusive treaty on the division of powers. However, this formality does not eliminate Tatars’ cultural contention for recognition and autonomy. The case of Tatarstan speaks to both the potential and the constraints of autonomous territories that are incapable of satisfying the needs of co-nationals living beyond their administrative borders. Language policies and education practices have become a relatively autonomous area for claim-making in defense of Tatar culture as well as bilingualism and multicultural education in the region. This study reveals the interrelationship between the two components, Tatar ethno-culturalism and “pluri-culturalism,” and the encouragement of the region's diversity in the public domain of Tatarstan. Valuable in itself, the latter in a wider context appears to be a necessary condition for protecting minority groups in multinational Russia. Thus while promoting the interests of the “titular” nationality — ethnic Tatars — Tatarstan also serves the advancement of multicultural values in present-day Russia.

This article explores the construction of Russia's role in the post-Soviet space on the popular level of geopolitical culture. This empirical study is based on an interpretative analysis of open-ended survey responses of International Relations and Political Science students in Russian universities. The purpose of the article is twofold: first, to introduce the two main geopolitical meta-narratives constructed from students’ responses, Russia as a leading power and Russia as a fading power; and second, to show how they resonate with the broader discursive field on Russian identity and policies in the post-Soviet space. I argue that the two meta-narratives tell us about both support and challenges posed against the elite level of geopolitical culture, and Russia's foreign policy in the post-Soviet space. They also show variation on how Russia's role is represented, as well as on the goals which Russia should have vis-à-vis this space. The ideal role of Russia would be that of integration leader, but students disagree on whether this is the actual role now, or whether this can ever be attained. Moreover, not all would even agree with aspiring for this role; instead, Russia should re-orientate its foreign policy as well as domestic policy.

In the article, the author uses a sociocultural approach to analyze debates in the US press that accompanied “Russian celebrations” in 1813. During the War of 1812, the Federalist opposition to President Madison's administration organized several celebrations of Russia's victories over Napoleon, who was a de facto ally of the USA in its war against England. As a result, harsh debates arose about the relative merits of the Russian nation. Madison's supporters described Russia in extremely critical terms, while the critics of the administration mostly spoke positively of the distant country. For both sides, the Russian victories were just a pretext for formulating their own political views, but by using an image of “the Other,” they elaborated and affirmed two major characterizations of Russia: in one view, it was a barbaric and uncivilized country; in the other, a guarantor of liberty and a rapidly developing and freedom-loving nation. The main difference was summarized in a pamphlet publication of correspondence between Robert Harper and Robert Walsh. The article affirms that the level of civilization in Russia was not just used as an argument in domestic polemics, but was determined according to the demands of that polemic.

In September 2014, the people of Scotland voted on whether or not to become an independent state. The consequences of independence would have been complex –decisions about accession to the EU, currency union, defense. Seemingly less dramatic, yet no less important, are the consequences of Scotland not seceding — the effects in global law and politics of the very fact that the referendum happened, and that it failed. Many elements of the Scottish case find close parallels in claims for secession elsewhere in the world. Yet those claims more often meet less welcoming receptions. Indeed, it is not the attempt to secede, but the existing state's acquiescence that marks this case as different: The UK is the rare country that acknowledges the possibility of its own division. Great Britain's acquiescence both made Scottish secession possible and made it an outlier, whose precedential value must be closely interrogated. The key missing element is any evidence that the process was shaped by a sense of international legal obligation — indeed, the pathways of Scottish secession have been an insular affair, a function of particularly British law and politics, in which international law played little role. This article argues that the Scottish referendum provides little precedent for a changing legal norm — yet also offers a compelling model for how such a new norm ought to look. This article is about something that did not happen, and why it does not matter — but also why precisely that is so important.

Is Turkish nationality one singular identity that does not permit ethnic modifiers? Or can it be understood as pluralistic, with identities nested — “hyphenated” — with Turkishness? Then, are Turkish and Kurdish identities necessarily mutually exclusive? Such questions over the boundaries of Turkishness have long been framed in the civic versus ethnic dichotomy — an approach that does not ask whether Turkish nationhood is monolithic or pluralistic. In response, this article aims to advance the public and scholarly debates over nationhood in Turkey by turning to the question of ways in which Turkishness can be hyphenated with other identity categories in Turkey, most particularly Kurdishness. First, we reframe the debate over identity by using the combinatorial approach to ethnicity to outline how Turkishness and Kurdishness can be overlapping and nested, or a hyphenated identity. Second, we draw on public opinion data to show that such a hyphenated identity is both theoretically possible and potentially salient in Turkey today. Together, these steps deconstruct the primordialist understandings of Turkishness and Kurdishness, on the one hand, and the taken-for-granted civic claims of Turkishness, on the other.

This article focuses on the famous novel Koshpendiler (1976) by Ilyas Esenberlin. This literary work occupies a special place in Soviet Kazakh literature because it raises important problems such as the foundation of the state and nation, the sense of territoriality, and the struggle against Russian colonizers. The authors argue that this historical novel can be considered as an example of post-colonial discourse. The novel itself is an extrapolation of the 1970s’ Soviet reality when national Union republics, including Kazakhstan, were seeking greater independence. Kazakh cultural elites and the intelligentsia turned to the past history of nation-building to address the problems of the present day. Not having an opportunity to openly express their views, the Kazakh establishment preferred to express their national sentiments through the historical genre. In this work, the authors suggest their own vision of Soviet national literature from political science and historical perspectives.