Tatars brief description. History of the origin of the Tatars

Rafael Khakimov

History of the Tatars: a look from the XXI century

(Article from I volumes of the History of the Tatars from ancient times... About the history of the Tatars and the concept of a seven-volume work entitled "History of the Tatars from ancient times")

Tatars are one of those few peoples about which legends and outright lies are known to a much greater extent than the truth.

The history of the Tatars in the official presentation both before and after the 1917 revolution was extremely ideologized and biased. Even the most prominent Russian historians presented the "Tatar question" in a biased manner, or at best avoided it. Mikhail Khudyakov in his famous work "Essays on the History of the Kazan Khanate" wrote: “Russian historians were interested in the history of the Kazan Khanate only as material for studying the advancement of the Russian tribe to the east. It should be noted that they mainly paid attention to the last moment of the struggle - the conquest of the region, especially the victorious siege of Kazan, but they almost ignored those gradual stages that the process of absorption of one state by another took place ”[At the junction of continents and civilizations, p.536 ]. The outstanding Russian historian S.M. Solovyov, in the preface to his multivolume History of Russia from Ancient Times, noted: “The historian has no right from the middle of the 13th century to interrupt the natural thread of events - namely, the gradual transition of clan princely relations into state relations - and insert the Tatar period, to bring to the fore the Tatars, Tatar relations, as a result of which the main phenomena, the main reasons for these phenomena must be closed ”[Soloviev, p. 54]. Thus, a period of three centuries, the history of the Tatar states (Golden Horde, Kazan and other khanates), which influenced world processes, and not only the fate of Russians, fell out of the chain of events of the formation of Russian statehood.

Another outstanding Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky divided the history of Russia into periods in accordance with the logic of colonization. “The history of Russia,” he wrote, “is the history of a country that is being colonized. The area of \u200b\u200bcolonization in it expanded along with its state territory. " “... The colonization of the country was the main fact of our history, with which all its other facts were in close or distant connection” [Klyuchevsky, p.50]. The main subjects of V.O. Klyuchevsky's research were, as he himself wrote, the state and nationality, while the state was Russian, and the people were Russian. There was no room for the Tatars and their statehood.

The Soviet period in relation to Tatar history did not differ in any fundamentally new approaches. Moreover, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) by its resolution "On the state and measures to improve the mass-political and ideological work in the Tatar party organization" of 1944 simply prohibited the study of the history of the Golden Horde (Ulus Jochi), the Kazan Khanate, thus excluding the Tatar period from history of Russian statehood.

As a result of such approaches about the Tatars, the image of a terrible and wild tribe that oppressed not only the Russians, but almost half the world was formed. There could be no question of any positive Tatar history, Tatar civilization. Initially, it was believed that the Tatars and civilization are incompatible things.

Today, each nation begins to write its own history. Research centers have become more ideologically independent, difficult to control and more difficult to put pressure on.

The 21st century will inevitably introduce significant corrections not only in the history of the peoples of Russia, but also in the history of the Russians themselves, as well as in the history of Russian statehood.

The positions of contemporary Russian historians are undergoing certain changes. For example, the three-volume history of Russia, published under the auspices of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and recommended as a textbook for university students, provides a lot of information about non-Russian peoples who lived on the territory of present-day Russia. It contains the characteristics of the Türkic, Khazar Khaganates, Volga Bulgaria, the era of the Tatar-Mongol invasion and the period of the Kazan Khanate are described more calmly, but this is nevertheless a Russian history that can in no way replace or absorb the Tatar one.

Until recently, Tatar historians in their research were limited by a number of rather strict objective and subjective conditions. Before the revolution, being citizens of the Russian Empire, they worked in accordance with the tasks of ethnic revival. After the revolution, the period of freedom was too short to have time to write a full story. The ideological struggle strongly influenced their position, but, perhaps, the repression of 1937 had a greater impact. Control by the Central Committee of the CPSU over the work of historians undermined the very possibility of developing a scientific approach to history, subordinating everything to the tasks of the class struggle and the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The democratization of Soviet and Russian society made it possible to revise many pages of history anew, and most importantly, to rearrange all research work from ideological to scientific tracks. It became possible to use the experience of foreign scientists, access to new sources and museum reserves was opened.

Together with the general democratization, a new political situation arose in Tatarstan, which declared sovereignty, and on behalf of the entire multi-ethnic people of the republic. In parallel, quite turbulent processes were going on in the Tatar world. In 1992, the First World Congress of Tatars convened, at which the problem of objective research of the history of the Tatars was identified as a key political task. All this required a rethinking of the place of the republic and the Tatars in the renewed Russia. There was a need to take a fresh look at the methodological and theoretical foundations of the historical discipline associated with the study of the history of the Tatars.

"History of the Tatars" is a relatively independent discipline, since the existing Russian history cannot replace or exhaust it.

The methodological problems of the study of the history of the Tatars were posed by scientists who worked on generalizing works. Shigabutdin Mardzhani in his work "Mustafad al-akhbar fi akhvali Kazan va Bolgar" ("Information attracted for the history of Kazan and Bulgar") wrote: "Historians of the Muslim world, wishing to fulfill the duty of providing complete information about different eras and explaining the meaning of human society, have collected many information about capitals, caliphs, kings, scientists, Sufis, different social strata, ways and directions of thought of ancient sages, past nature and everyday life, science and crafts, wars and uprisings. " And further he noted that “historical science absorbs the destinies of all nations and tribes, checks scientific trends and discussions” [Mardzhani, p. 42]. At the same time, he did not single out the methodology for researching Tatar history proper, although in the context of his works it is seen quite clearly. He examined the ethnic roots of the Tatars, their statehood, the rule of the khans, the economy, culture, religion, as well as the position of the Tatar people in the Russian Empire.

In Soviet times, ideological clichés required the use of Marxist methodology. Gaziz Gubaidullin wrote the following: “If we consider the path traversed by the Tatars, then we can see that it consists of the replacement of some economic formations by others, from the interaction of classes born of economic conditions” [Gubaidullin, p.20]. It was a tribute to the demands of the times. The very presentation of history for him was much broader than the designated position.

All subsequent historians of the Soviet period were under tough ideological pressure and methodology was reduced to the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism. Nevertheless, in many works of Gaziz Gubaidullin, Mikhail Khudyakov and others, a different, non-official approach to history broke through. The monograph of Magomet Safargaleev "The disintegration of the Golden Horde", the works of German Fedorov-Davydov, despite the inevitable censorship restrictions, by the very fact of their appearance had a strong influence on subsequent research. The works of Mirkasim Usmanov, Alfred Khalikov, Yahya Abdullin, Azgar Mukhamadiev, Damir Iskhakov and many others introduced an element of alternativeness into the existing interpretation of history, forcing them to delve deeper into ethnic history.

Of the foreign historians who have studied the Tatars, the best known are Zaki Validi Togan and Akdes Nigmat Kurat. Zaki Validi specially dealt with the methodological problems of history, but he was more interested in the methods, goals and objectives of historical science in general, in contrast to other sciences, as well as approaches to writing general Turkic history. At the same time, in his books you can see specific methods of researching Tatar history. First of all, it should be noted that he described the Türko-Tatar history without distinguishing the Tatar itself from it. Moreover, this concerned not only the ancient common Turkic period, but also subsequent eras. He equally considers the personality of Genghis Khan, his children, Tamerlane, various khanates - Crimean, Kazan, Nogai and Astrakhan, naming all this the Turkic world. There are certainly reasons for this approach. The ethnonym "Tatars" was often understood very broadly and included practically not only the Turks, but even the Mongols. At the same time, the history of many Turkic peoples in the Middle Ages, primarily within the Ulus Jochi, was uniform. Therefore, the term "Türko-Tatar history" applied to the Türkic population of Dzhuchiev Ulus allows the historian to avoid many difficulties in describing events.

Other foreign historians (Edward Keenan, Aisha Rorlikh, Yaroslav Pelensky, Yulai Shamiloglu, Nadir Devlet, Tamurbek Davletshin, etc.), although they did not aim to find general approaches to the history of the Tatars, nevertheless introduced very significant conceptual ideas into the study of various periods ... They made up for the gaps in the writings of the Tatar historians of the Soviet era.

The ethnic component is one of the most important in the study of history. Before the appearance of statehood, the history of the Tatars is largely reduced to ethnogenesis. Equally, the loss of statehood brings the study of ethnic processes to the fore. The existence of the state, although it pushes the ethnic factor into the background, nevertheless preserves its relative independence as a subject of historical research, moreover, sometimes it is the ethnic group that acts as a state-forming factor and, therefore, decisively affects the course of history.

The Tatar people do not have a single ethnic root. Among his ancestors were the Huns, Bulgars, Kipchaks, Nogais and other peoples who themselves formed in ancient times, as can be seen from the first volume of this publication, on the basis of the culture of various Scythian and other tribes and peoples.

The formation of modern Tatars was influenced by the Finno-Ugric peoples and the Slavs. Trying to look for ethnic purity in the person of the Bulgars or some ancient Tatar people is unscientific. The ancestors of modern Tatars never lived in isolation, on the contrary, they actively moved, mixing with various Turkic and non-Turkic tribes. On the other hand, state structures, developing an official language and culture, contributed to the active mixing of tribes and peoples. This is all the more true since the state at all times played the function of the most important ethnic-generating factor. But the Bulgar state, the Golden Horde, Kazan, Astrakhan and other khanates existed for many centuries - a sufficient period to form new ethnic components. Religion was no less powerful factor in the mixing of ethnic groups. If Orthodoxy in Russia made many of the peoples who were baptized Russians, then in the Middle Ages Islam in the same way turned many into Turkic Tatars.

The dispute with the so-called "Bulgarists" calling to rename the Tatars to Bulgars and reducing our entire history to the history of one ethnic group is mainly of a political nature, and therefore it should be studied within the framework of political science, not history. At the same time, the emergence of such a direction of social thought was influenced by the poorly developed methodological foundations of the history of the Tatars, the influence of ideologized approaches to the presentation of history, including the desire to exclude the "Tatar period" from history.

In recent decades, among scientists, there has been a fascination with the search for linguistic, ethnographic and other features in the Tatar people. The slightest peculiarities of the language were immediately declared a dialect, on the basis of linguistic and ethnographic nuances, separate groups were singled out, claiming today to be independent peoples. Of course, there are peculiarities in the use of the Tatar language among the Mishars, Astrakhan and Siberian Tatars. There are ethnographic features of the Tatars living in different territories. But this is precisely the use of a single Tatar literary language with regional characteristics, the nuances of a single Tatar culture. It would be rash to speak of dialects of the language on such grounds, and even more so to single out independent peoples (Siberian and other Tatars). If we follow the logic of some of our scientists, the Lithuanian Tatars who speak Polish cannot be attributed to the Tatar people at all.

The history of the people cannot be reduced to the vicissitudes of the ethnonym. It is not easy to trace the connection between the ethnonym “Tatars”, mentioned in Chinese, Arab and other sources, with modern Tatars. It is even more wrong to see a direct anthropological and cultural connection between the modern Tatars and the ancient and medieval tribes. Some experts believe that the true Tatars were Mongolian (see for example: [Kychanov, 1995: 29]), although there are other points of view. There was a time when the ethnonym "Tatars" designated the Tatar-Mongol peoples. “Because of their extraordinary greatness and honorable position,” wrote Rashid-ad-din, “other Turkic clans, with all the differences in their categories and names, became known under their name, and all were called Tatars. And those different clans believed their greatness and dignity in the fact that they attributed themselves to them and became known under their name, like now, due to the prosperity of Genghis Khan and his family, since they are Mongols - different Turkic tribes, like jalairam, Tatars, on-gutam, Kereits, Naimans, Tanguts and others, of which each had a specific name and a special nickname - all of them, because of self-glorification, also call themselves Mongols, despite the fact that in ancient times they did not recognize this name ... Their present descendants, therefore, imagine that they have been referring to the name of the Mongols since ancient times and are called by this name - but this is not so, for in ancient times the Mongols were only one tribe out of the totality of the Turkic steppe tribes "[Rashid-ad-din,t. i, book 1, p. 102-103].

In different periods of history, the name "Tatars" meant different peoples. Often this depended on the nationality of the authors of the chronicles. So, the monk Julian, the ambassador of the Hungarian king Bela IV to the Polovtsy in the XIII century. connected the ethnonym "Tatars" with the Greek "Tartaros" "-" hell "," hell ". Some European historians used the ethnonym "Tatars" in the same sense as the Greeks used the word "barbarian". For example, on some European maps Muscovy is designated as "Moscow Tartary" or "European Tartary", in contrast to Chinese or Independent Tartary. The history of the existence of the ethnonym "Tatars" in subsequent eras, in particular, in the 16th – 19th centuries, was far from simple. [Karimullin]. Damir Iskhakov writes: “In the Tatar khanates formed after the collapse of the Golden Horde, representatives of the military-service class were traditionally called“ Tatars ”... They played a key role in the spread of the ethnonym“ Tatars ”in the vast territory of the former Golden Horde. After the fall of the khanates, this term was transferred to the common people. But at the same time, a multitude of local self-names and confessions "Muslims" functioned among the people. Overcoming them and the final consolidation of the ethnonym “Tatars” as a national self-designation is a relatively late phenomenon and is associated with national consolidation ”[Iskhakov, p.231]. This reasoning contains a considerable amount of truth, although it would be a mistake to absolutize any facet of the term "Tatars". Obviously, the ethnonym "Tatars" was and remains the subject of scientific discussions. It is indisputable that before the 1917 revolution, not only the Volga, Crimean and Lithuanian Tatars, but also Azerbaijanis, as well as a number of Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus and Southern Siberia, were called Tatars, but in the end the ethnonym "Tatars" was fixed only for the Volga and Crimean Tatars.

The term "Tatar-Mongols" is very controversial and painful for the Tatars. Ideologists have done a lot to present the Tatars and Mongols as barbarians and savages. In response, a number of scholars use the term "Turkic-Mongols" or simply "Mongols", sparing the pride of the Volga Tatars. But in essence, history needs no justification. No nation can boast of its peaceful and humane character in the past, because one who did not know how to fight could not survive and was himself conquered, and often assimilated. The crusades of Europeans or the Inquisition were no less brutal than the invasion of the "Tatar-Mongols". The only difference is that the Europeans and the Russians took the initiative in interpreting this issue into their own hands and offered an advantageous version and assessment of historical events.

The term "Tatar-Mongols" needs careful analysis in order to find out the validity of the combination of the names "Tatars" and "Mongols". The Mongols relied on the Turkic tribes in their expansion. The Turkic culture greatly influenced the formation of the empire of Genghis Khan and especially Ulus Jochi. It so happened historiography that both the Mongols and the Turks were often called simply "Tatars". This was both true and false. It is true, since there were relatively few Mongols proper, and the Turkic culture (language, writing, military system, etc.) gradually became a common norm for many peoples. False due to the fact that Tatars and Mongols are two different people... Moreover, modern Tatars cannot be identified not only with Mongols, but even with medieval Central Asian Tatars. At the same time, they are the successors of the culture of the peoples of the 7th-12th centuries who lived on the Volga and the Urals, the people and state of the Golden Horde, the Kazan Khanate, and it would be a mistake to say that they have nothing to do with the Tatars who lived in East Turkestan and Mongolia. Even the Mongolian element, which today is minimal in Tatar culture, influenced the formation of the history of the Tatars. After all, the khans buried in the Kazan Kremlin were Chingizids and it is impossible not to reckon with this [Mausoleums of the Kazan Kremlin]. History is never simple and straightforward.

When describing the history of the Tatars, it turns out to be very difficult to separate it from the general Turkic basis. First of all, it should be noted some terminological difficulties in the study of general Turkic history. If the Türkic Kaganate is quite unambiguously interpreted as a common Türkic heritage, then the Mongol Empire and especially the Golden Horde are more ethnically complex education. Indeed, Ulus Jochi is considered to be a Tatar state, understanding by this ethnonym all those peoples who lived in it, i.e. Turkic-Tatars. But will today's Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and others who formed in the Golden Horde agree to recognize the Tatars as their medieval ancestors? Of course not. After all, it is obvious that no one will particularly think about the differences in the use of this ethnonym in the Middle Ages and at the present time. Today in the public consciousness the ethnonym “Tatars” is unambiguously associated with the modern Volga or Crimean Tatars. Consequently, it is methodologically preferable, following Zaki Validi, to use the term "Türko-Tatar history", which allows us to separate the history of today's Tatars and other Türkic peoples.

The use of this term carries a different weight. There is a problem of correlating the common Turkic history with the national one. In some periods (for example, the Türkic Kaganate) it is difficult to distinguish individual parts from the general history. In the era of the Golden Horde, it is quite possible to explore, along with the general history, individual regions, which later emerged as independent khanates. Of course, the Tatars interacted with the Uighurs, Turkey, and the Mamluks of Egypt, but these ties were not as organic as with Central Asia. Therefore, it is difficult to find a unified approach to the correlation of the common Turkic and Tatar history - it turns out to be different in different epochs and with different countries. Therefore, in this work will be used as a term turkic-Tatar history (in relation to the Middle Ages), and just tatar history (in relation to later times).

"History of the Tatars" as a relatively independent discipline exists insofar as there is an object of study that can be traced back from ancient times to the present day. How is the continuity of this history ensured, which can confirm the continuity of events? Indeed, over many centuries, some ethnic groups were replaced by others, states appeared and disappeared, peoples united and divided, new languages \u200b\u200bwere formed to replace the departing ones.

The object of the historian's research in the most generalized form is the society that inherits the previous culture and passes it on to the next generation. At the same time, society can act as a state or an ethnic group. And during the years of the persecution of the Tatars from the second half of the 16th century, separate ethnic groups, little connected with each other, became the main keepers of cultural traditions. The religious community always plays a significant role in historical development, serving as a criterion for classifying society as a particular civilization. Mosques and madrasahs from the 10th century to the 20s XX century, were the most important institution for the unification of the Tatar world. All of them - the state, ethnic group and religious community - contributed to the continuity of the Tatar culture, which means they ensured the continuity of historical development.

The concept of culture has the broadest sense, which is understood as all the achievements and norms of society, be it economy (for example, agriculture), the art of government, military affairs, writing, literature, social norms, etc. The study of culture as a whole makes it possible to understand the logic of historical development and determine the place of a given society in the broadest context. It is the continuity of the preservation and development of culture that makes it possible to talk about the continuity of Tatar history and its features.

Any periodization of history is conditional, therefore, in principle, it can be built on a variety of foundations, and its various versions can be equally true - it all depends on the task that is posed to the researcher. When studying the history of statehood, there will be one basis for identifying periods, while studying the development of ethnic groups - another. And if you study the history of, for example, a dwelling or a costume, then their periodization may even have specific grounds. Each specific object of research, along with general methodological attitudes, has its own logic of development. Even the convenience of presentation (for example, in a textbook) can become the basis for a specific periodization.

When highlighting the main milestones in the history of the people in our publication, the criterion will be the logic of the development of culture. Culture is the most important social regulator. Through the term "culture" can be explained both the fall and rise of states, the disappearance and emergence of civilizations. Culture determines social values, creates advantages for the existence of certain peoples, forms labor incentives and individual qualities of an individual, determines the openness of society and opportunities for communication between peoples. Through culture, one can understand the place of society in world history.

It is not easy to present the Tatar history with its complex twists of fate in the form of an integral picture, since the ups were replaced by a catastrophic regression, up to the need for physical survival and preservation of the elementary foundations of culture and even language.

The initial basis for the formation of the Tatar or, more precisely, the Türko-Tatar civilization is the steppe culture, which determined the appearance of Eurasia from ancient times up to the early Middle Ages. Cattle breeding and horse determined the basic character of the economy and way of life, housing and clothing, and ensured military successes. The invention of a saddle, a curved saber, a powerful bow, war tactics, a kind of ideology in the form of Tengrianism and other achievements had a huge impact on world culture. Without the steppe civilization, it would have been impossible to develop the vast expanses of Eurasia, this is precisely its historical merit.

The adoption of Islam in 922 and the development of the Great Volga Way became turning points in the history of the Tatars. Thanks to Islam, the ancestors of the Tatars were included in the most advanced Muslim world for their time, which determined the future of the people and its civilizational characteristics. And the Islamic world itself, thanks to the Bulgars, moved to the most northern latitude, which is an important factor to this day.

The ancestors of the Tatars, who passed from nomadic to sedentary life and urban civilization, were looking for new ways of communication with other peoples. The steppe remained farther south, and the horse could not perform universal functions in the new conditions of a sedentary life. He was only an auxiliary tool in the household. What connected the Bulgar state with other countries and peoples was the Volga and Kama rivers. In later times, the route along the Volga, Kama and the Caspian Sea was supplemented by access to the Black Sea through the Crimea, which became one of the most important factors in the economic prosperity of the Golden Horde. The Volga Route played a key role in the Kazan Khanate. It is no coincidence that the expansion of Muscovy to the east began with the establishment of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair, which weakened the economy of Kazan. The development of the Eurasian space in the Middle Ages cannot be understood and explained without the role of the Volga-Kama basin as a means of communication. The Volga still serves as the economic and cultural core of the European part of Russia.

The emergence of Ulus Jochi as part of the Mongol super-empire, and then an independent state, is the greatest achievement in the history of the Tatars. In the era of the Chingizids, Tatar history became truly worldwide, touching the interests of the East and Europe. The contribution of the Tatars to the art of war is indisputable, which was reflected in the improvement of weapons and military tactics. The system of state administration, the postal (Yamskaya) service inherited by Russia, an excellent financial system, literature and urban planning of the Golden Horde have reached perfection - in the Middle Ages there were few cities equal to Saray in terms of the size and scale of trade. Thanks to intensive trade with Europe, the Golden Horde came into direct contact with European culture. The huge potential for the reproduction of the Tatar culture was laid precisely in the era of the Golden Horde. The Kazan Khanate continued this path mostly by inertia.

After the capture of Kazan in 1552, the cultural core of Tatar history was preserved primarily thanks to Islam. It became a form of cultural survival, a banner of the struggle against Christianization and assimilation of the Tatars.

There have been three turning points in the history of the Tatars associated with Islam. They decisively influenced the subsequent events: 1) adoption in 922 of Islam as an official religion by the Volga Bulgaria, which meant recognition by Baghdad of a young independent (from the Khazar Kaganate) state; 2) isthe lamas "revolution" Uzbek Khan, who, contrary to Genghis Khan's "Yasa" ("Code of Laws") on equality of religions, introduced one state religion - Islam, which largely predetermined the process of consolidation of society and the formation of the (Golden Horde) Turkic-Tatar people; 3) the reform of Islam in the second half of the 19th century, called Jadidism (from the Arabic al-Jadid - new, renewal).

The revival of the Tatar people in modern times begins precisely with the reform of Islam. Jadidism outlined several important facts: first, the ability of the Tatar culture to resist forced Christianization; secondly, confirmation of the Tatars' belonging to the Islamic world, moreover, with a claim to an avant-garde role in it; third, the entry of Islam into competition with Orthodoxy in its own state. Jadidism has become a significant contribution of the Tatars to modern world culture, a demonstration of Islam's ability to modernize.

By the beginning of the XX century, the Tatars managed to create many social structures: the education system, periodicals, political parties, their own ("Muslim") faction in the State Duma, economic structures, primarily commercial capital, etc. By the 1917 revolution, the Tatars had matured the idea of \u200b\u200brestoring statehood.

The first attempt to recreate statehood by the Tatars dates back to 1918, when the State of Idel-Ural was proclaimed. The Bolsheviks were able to forestall the implementation of this grandiose project. Nevertheless, a direct consequence of the political act itself was the adoption of the Decree on the creation of the Tatar-Bashkir Republic. The complex vicissitudes of the political and ideological struggle ended with the adoption in 1920 of the Decree of the Central Executive Committee on the establishment of the "Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic". This form was very far from the formula of the State "Idel-Ural", but it was undoubtedly a positive step, without which there would have been no Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Republic of Tatarstan in 1990.

The new status of Tatarstan after the announcement of state sovereignty put on the agenda the issue of choosing a principled path of development, determining the place of Tatarstan in the Russian Federation, in the Turkic and Islamic world.

Historians of Russia and Tatarstan are facing a serious test. The 20th century was the era of the collapse of the first Russian and then the Soviet empire and a change in the political picture of the world. The Russian Federation has become a different country and it is forced to take a fresh look at the path traveled. It faces the need to find ideological reference points for development in the new millennium. In many respects, historians will determine the understanding of the deep processes taking place in the country, the formation among non-Russian peoples of the image of Russia as “their own” or “alien” state.

Russian science will have to reckon with the emergence of many independent research centers with their own views on emerging problems. Therefore, it will be difficult to write the history of Russia only from Moscow, it should be written by various research teams, taking into account the history of all the indigenous peoples of the country.

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The seven-volume work entitled "History of the Tatars from Ancient Times" is published under the stamp of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, nevertheless, it is a joint work of Tatarstan scientists, Russian and foreign researchers. This collective work is based on a whole series of scientific conferences held in Kazan, Moscow, St. Petersburg. The work is academic in nature and therefore is designed primarily for scientists and specialists. We did not set ourselves the goal of making it popular and easy to understand. Our task was to present the most objective picture of historical events. Nevertheless, both teachers and those who are simply interested in history will find many interesting stories here for themselves.

This work is the first academic work that begins describing the history of the Tatars from the 3rd millennium BC. The most ancient period cannot always be represented in the form of events, sometimes it exists only in archaeological materials, nevertheless, we considered it necessary to give such a presentation. Much of what the reader will see in this work is a subject of controversy and requires further research. This is not an encyclopedia where only established information is given. It was important for us to fix the existing level of knowledge in this area of \u200b\u200bscience, to propose new methodological approaches, when the history of the Tatars appears in a wide context of world processes, covers the fate of many peoples, and not only Tatars, to focus on a number of problematic issues and thereby stimulate scientific thought ...

Each volume covers a fundamentally new period in the history of the Tatars. The editors considered it necessary, in addition to the author's texts, to provide illustrative material, maps, as well as excerpts from the most important sources as an attachment.

This did not affect the Russian principalities, where the dominance of Orthodoxy was not only preserved, but also developed further. In 1313, Uzbek Khan issued a label to the Metropolitan of Russia Peter, which contained the following words: “If someone revolts Christianity, speaks badly about churches, monasteries and chapels, that person will be subjected to the death penalty” (quoted from: [Fakhretdin, p.94]). By the way, Uzbek Khan himself married his daughter to a Moscow prince and allowed her to convert to Christianity.