Kazan historian: Slavs lived on the territory of Tatarstan even before the Bulgarians

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Kazan historian: Slavs lived on the territory of Tatarstan even before the Bulgarians

It is known that in the IV-VII centuries AD, a significant territory of the Middle Volga region - from the Sura in the west (Mordovia) to the Belaya River in the east (Bashkiria), from the Lower Kama in the north (Laishevsky, Rybno-Slobodskoy and other regions of Tatarstan) to Samarskaya Luka in the south, it was occupied by the population of the so-called Imenkov archaeological culture. In the 1980s, the point of view appeared that it was left by the ancient Slavic population.

Even earlier, in the 1940s and 1970s, when Moscow archaeologists worked in the Bulgarians, it was widely believed that this city arose on the basis of the Imenkov settlements. In some areas of the Bulgarian settlement there are no sterile layers between the Imenkovsk and Bulgar layers, they are mixed. It is quite possible that those who lived on the site of the future Bolgar from the middle of the 1st millennium AD. the Slavs mixed with the newcomers-Bulgars and gave rise to a new city. Relatively recently, materials were discovered in the Bolgar region that can be identified not even with the Slavs, but with the Proto-Slavs. There was a corresponding article in a small-circulation scientific collection, but this news did not reach the general public.

Bulgarian finds also indicate that in the X-XIV centuries. the inhabitants of Kievan Rus, and then of the Russian principalities, often visited the city, and not only "passing through". There are stone icons and crosses, metal icons, bronze church utensils: a candlestick, an icon lamp holder, the remains of a chain from an icon lamp. Such things could hardly be bought by the Bulgars professing Islam. The permanent residence of Russians in Bolgar and the presence of a Russian handicraft quarter is evidenced by the remains of dwellings with corresponding finds. Why this is not being focused on in Tatarstan today, I think, is understandable.

This issue is debatable in the political plane, in the plane of some personal ambitions of historians and archaeologists. If we take the scientific aspect of the problem, then it can be argued that the Imenkovites are more Slavs than anyone else. There are works of famous scientists, for example, academician V. V. Sedov, a leading specialist in Slavic archeology, orientalist S. G. Klyashtorny, the Samara researcher G. I. Matveeva.

In them, on the basis of a complex of sources, it is proved that the Imenkovites are a Slavic population, at least most of the population of this culture are Slavs. This is evidenced by the funeral rite, data from the language of neighboring peoples (Slavic borrowings in the language of the ancestors of the Udmurts), written sources - for example, the Arab traveler Ahmed ibn Fadlan, who personally visited the Volga Bulgaria in 922, calls the ruler of the Bulgars the king of the Slavs.

After Moscow archaeologists were ousted from Tatarstan in the 1970s, the local archaeologist A. Kh. Khalikov (this was due to the general tendency to strengthen the positions of the nomenklatura in the national republics of the USSR). Then they began to say that there was no continuity between the Imenkovites and the Bulgars, and the Bolgar became a purely Bulgarian, even a Bulgaro-Tatar city. Articles were written, theories were put forward that, perhaps, the Imenkovites were Turks, Balts or Finno-Ugrians, but somehow they did not pay attention to the fact that there is an excellent evidence base for the Slavs of this population.

The fact is that the fact of the Slavs living in the Middle Volga region even before the emergence of the Volga Bulgaria destroyed the official point of view, according to which the Tatars were always at home here, and the Russians were aliens, struck at the justification of the sovereignty of the republic. In the 1990s, with the rampant of this very sovereignty, and later, in the 2000s, Imenkov's problems in local scientific circles began to simply be glossed over. As a result, today the common truth is the idea that the Slavs appeared on the Middle Volga only after 1552, and the city of Bolgars was founded by the Bulgars, the ancestors of the Tatar people.

I wrote a term paper and a diploma under the guidance of the famous archaeologist P. N. Starostin, a well-known expert on the Imenkov problem, the author of a classic monograph on this topic. When, at a certain stage of work, it became necessary to move to a higher level of generalization - ethnic and linguistic affiliation - the scientific supervisor began to say: you need to be more careful.

It is clear that these are Slavs, but it is better to say vaguely that the Imenkovites are a population of "Western origin". Due to adolescent maximalism, I did not listen to him and defended my position at all scientific conferences. When I graduated from the university, those on whom my admission to the graduate school of the Academy of Sciences of the republic depended, set a condition: not to update the ethnicity of the Imenkovites. I again disobeyed, a flurry of accusations rained down on me - rumors began to spread about me that I was a "black archaeologist".

Gradually I turned into an outcast, it got to the point that in April 2005 the monograph on the Bogoroditsky burial ground of Imenkovskaya culture, which was being prepared for publication (written by me in collaboration with P. N. Starostin), was simply destroyed in my presence … One non-fragile laboratory assistant came, took the manuscript - and that's it. He said - you do not understand how to behave … Even the supervisor could not do anything. In the end, I somehow miraculously entered the graduate school, then there were problems with the defense of the candidate's thesis. In 2009 I started my public activity, updated Imenkov and some other problems in the press.

I started having difficulties at work, my colleagues were afraid that with my speeches I would bring trouble to the whole department. I succumbed to pressure and since 2010 stopped actively participating in the public life of Kazan, again switched to science, but here too the problems began: they stopped taking at conferences, refused to publish articles, especially those VAK-ovs that were so necessary for scientists.

It was often said that the topic of the article did not correspond to the profile of the publication. The editor-in-chief of the "Echo of Ages" magazine D. R. Sharafutdinov frankly said that every nation should have its own myth, and I destroy this myth. No tutorials have been published recently. In 2015, I have a re-election. Most likely, they will be re-elected from assistant professor to assistant (the formal reason will be just the lack of teaching aids), or maybe they will even have to look for a new job. But there is nothing strange here, we have an authoritarian state, and historians should serve it not with a sword, but with a pen.

The main myth, which is very difficult to overcome, is that in the territory of Tatarstan live two peoples: Russians and Tatars, supposedly separate closed communities, which have a very difficult historical fate, and if there is no wise leadership, then these two peoples will enter into an interethnic conflict. All historians should support this myth, someone should study the history of the Russian people, someone - the Tatar, everyone should behave correctly. To change something, it is not enough to scientifically prove that the same Imenkovites are Slavs.

The problem is in the social environment in which professional knowledge circulates. Historians of Kazan are grouped into professional groups - these are departments, departments, etc. Each collective is a kind of world with its own interpersonal relationships, and the normal existence of this world depends entirely on the goodwill of the ruler. The system of relationships between the authorities and scientists, which now exists in Tatarstan, repeats the system of relationships in the eastern despotism between the ruler and the subjects … This mechanism ensures the functioning of historical myths.

The specificity lies in the fact that even conscientious scientific research is included in the general ideologized narrative. For example, an archaeologist works with ceramics, makes scrupulous calculations, and in a generalizing work such as "History of the Tatars" it will be indicated that this is the ceramics of the ancestors of the Tatar people. A myth has the function of ideology: in authoritarian states, ideology is always a myth, and often it borders on delirium.

A professor friend of mine used to say: when they ask you about nationalism, talk about urbanization, and he was right. Throughout the 20th century in Russia, people from the countryside moved to cities, where it was very difficult for them to get a job. They lost touch with their family, their native places, they achieved everything on their own. They had a feeling of loneliness, they needed to associate themselves with some circle of people who would help. This is something like a village, a family. Therefore, national stories are popular.

Yes, they are delusional, but a person who stumbles through rented apartments, who hardly earns his own food, knows that he will soon take out a mortgage and will pay it off all his life, so as not to sleep and not break up, needs some kind of myth. And then he takes another work by a local historian and sees: here it is! I belong to a great people, my ancestors are the shakers of the Universe.

This, it turns out, is the reason for my problems - the Russians captured Kazan 450 years ago, if we had our own state, our own independent Tatarstan, I would live very well now. National history (it does not matter, Russian, Tatar or Bashkir) is the history of marginals, people between two worlds. They have broken away from rural life, have not yet settled in the city. Specialists in the theory of modernization write that this disorder leads to a splitting of the personality, a mythical understanding of the surrounding world, a craving for surrealistic images. Therefore, national stories are popular.

I thought a lot about this question and came to the conclusion that there is a fact of doublethink here. There are works of psychologists who write that people who are constantly in closed groups often have the phenomenon of doublethink. That is, the logic mechanisms stop working. Logic was born in Ancient Greece, it is a product of an atomized society, from the standpoint of logic, a person, individuality, reflects. Black cannot be white - this is logic.

Doublethink is when black can be white at the same time, i.e. when two mutually exclusive judgments are recognized as true. In Tatarstan conditions, a scientist thinks as follows: Yes, I write fairy tales about the history of the Tatar people, but maybe they have some kind of rational grain. Most of the humanitarians of Tatarstan, and in general people of creative professions, are yesterday's villagers, and one should not be ashamed of this. They are marginalized and at some point can really believe in the myths that they themselves compose. We are faced with the problem of modernization, catching up with the type of development of the country. Let's hope that already their children, real townspeople in the second and third generations, will get rid of it.

As for the global trend, I do not presume to judge this, I can only say that the whole developed world has adopted the concept of so-called civil nationalism, when a nation is co-citizenship. Within a nation, there can be many people with different ethnicities, languages, religions, etc. All together - one nation. In America and France, for example, history is the history of a territory.

As for the post-Soviet space, here the situation is exactly the opposite, ethnogenesis and the history of the state coincide with each other. In Central Asia and Transcaucasia, myth-making is flourishing. Modern Uzbekistan, according to some authors, continues the traditions of the state of the great Timur (Tamerlane), and Tajikistan, by the way, is the heir to the great Aryan civilizations, for example, the Persian state of the Achaemenids, Darius himself was a Tajik. In Azerbaijan, for doubts about the greatness of ancestors, you can be subject to criminal prosecution. In terms of mythologizing history, Russia is no exception.

To change the situation, changes are needed in the entire society, its democratization, the development of a sense of citizenship, the transition from the archaic to modernity, when people begin to perceive the world rationally. And then the majority of the population will perceive the writings of local historians with a smile. This process will be long if the modern political system remains in Russia and the country is ruled not people living in it, but several hundred rich families, which make scientists come up with myths to justify their power. Civil nationalism is a product of a democratic society, and Russia is still far from it.

No, it won't. I studied the project very carefully and I can state that it was written in the same ethno-nationalistic discourse. That is, the history of Russia is primarily the history of the Russian people. There will be complaints about the project, Damir Iskhakov has already made an article that the textbook pays little attention to the Tatars, in neighboring Chuvashia they will say - the Chuvashes. The very idea of writing textbooks from the standpoint of ethno-nationalism, a civilizational approach is flawed.

I believe that the history of Russia should be, first of all, the history of the territory. It is necessary to talk about everyone who inhabited the territory of modern Russia, starting from the Paleolithic era. With this approach, for example, the history of East Prussia as a geographical space in which people lived who spoke different languages and were organized into many political and state systems (including the German Empire) is equivalent to the history of the modern "Russian parts" of Kievan Rus, the Bohai state or the empire jurchen. Unfortunately, the project you are talking about will still be accepted as the basis for a new textbook, and the authorities (federal and local) will continue to play the ethno-nationalist card.

According to the opinion of some experts in the field of sociology and political science, in the 1990s Russia began to see a return to the archaic, even such a term appeared - "archaic syndrome." This is a return to those socio-political relations that were characteristic of the Middle Ages or even earlier eras. The concept of "new Russian feudalism" appeared.

Power is organized on the basis of interpersonal patron-client relationships. Feudal immunity is in effect when the chief ruler sitting in Moscow gives the local feudal lord the right to collect income from a certain region, for example, from Tatarstan. Moscow overlord does not interfere in the affairs of the vassal - the main thing is that the latter shares part of the income. A vassal can do anything (of course, within certain limits) and excesses in historical myths - the very last thing he can do to anger the overlord.