Rethinking Political Repression in the Tatar Republic, 1917–41

Abstract

Rethinking Political Repression in the Tatar Republic, 1917–41 John M. Romero (bio) Nikolai Frolov, Tragediia naroda (Iz istorii repressii Cheremshanskogo raiona Tatarstana) (The People's Tragedy [From the History of Repression in Tatarstan's Cheremshanskii Raion]). 320 pp. Kazan: Pamiat´, 1999. ISBN-10 5852471183. A. L. Litvin, Zapret na zhizn´ (Prohibition against Life). 224 pp. Kazan: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1993. ISBN-10 5298002838. A. F. Stepanov, Rasstrel po limitu: Iz istorii politicheskikh repressii v TASSR v gody "ezhovshchiny" (Shooting by Quota: From the History of Political Repression in the TASSR during the Ezhovshchina). 311 pp. Kazan: Novoe znanie, 1999. ISBN-10 5893470370. B. F. Sultanbekov and R. G. Khakimzianov, Politicheskie repressii v Tatarstane: Zakony, ispolniteli, reabilitatsiia zhertv (Political Repression in Tatarstan: The Laws, the Perpetrators, and the Rehabilitation of Victims). 145 pp. Kazan: Pravozashchitnyi tsentr goroda Kazani, 2002. No ISBN. B. F. Sultanbekov and S. Iu. Malysheva, Tragicheskie sud´by (nauchnopopuliarnye ocherki) (Tragic Fates [Academic and Popular Essays]). 285 pp. Kazan: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1996. ISBN-10 5298006531. Bulat Sultanbekov, Istoriia Tatarstana: Stranitsy sekretnykh arkhivov (The History of Tatarstan: Pages from the Secret Archives). 253 pp. Kazan: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1994. ISBN-10 5298004849. Ramzi Valeev, Poslednii vrag naroda (The Last Enemy of the People). 303 pp. Kazan: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 2013. ISBN-13 978-5298025553. [End Page 841] In early 2019, an English-language translation of Guzel Yakhina's Zuleikha otkryvaet glaza (Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes) was first published in the West.1 The novel, recipient of the Iasnaia Poliana and Bol´shaia Kniga literary awards, has become, practically overnight, perhaps the best-known nonacademic work about ethnic Tatars to ever appear in English. The story's protagonist is the titular Zuleikha, a young Tatar widow exiled from her village to far-off Siberia during collectivization and dekulakization. The novel is notable for its vivid but accessible portrayal of the nature and consequences of Soviet political violence. Yakhina's novel highlights this violence in a way that is particularly relevant for scholars of the Soviet Union. Although Zuleikha experiences a general sort of violence also visited on ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and others, Yakhina is careful to never let Zuleikha's Tatarness slip away from the reader.2 The translation of Yakhina's novel into English, as well as its recent television adaptation on Rossiia-1 in April 2020, provides historians an opportunity to shift our attention toward Tatars in general and their experience of Soviet state violence in particular. Indeed, there is almost a total lack of English-language scholarship investigating state repression of ethnic Tatars or of other inhabitants of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (TASSR or Tatar Republic).3 [End Page 842] Scholars of the Soviet Union have long debated the nature of organized state violence against the country's non-Russian minorities. Did the Soviet state pursue "racial politics" in the 1930s and 1940s akin to those of Nazi Germany, or was the targeting of ethnic groups during this period "a reaction to the threat of nationalism"?4 Were ethnic groups suspect because of inherent biological traits or due to temporary geopolitical considerations? I agree with Francine Hirsch and other scholars that the latter explanation better conforms to the situation in the Soviet Union during this period.5 However, based on an investigation of the fate of members of the Tatar intelligentsia in the 1920s and 1930s, in this essay I make two major interventions into this debate. The first is to shift our attention backward in time into the 1920s. Members of the Tatar intelligentsia were targeted as early as 1923, and violence against them continued in several waves throughout the following decade and a half. Many ethnic Tatars who were arrested, imprisoned, or executed in 1937–38 had already been caught up in these earlier waves and subsequently released or paroled. Second, I nuance Hirsch's discussion of "diaspora nationalities" by emphasizing that Soviet authorities targeted Tatars even though there was no external Tatar state that could claim Tatars' allegiance.6 It was instead the short-lived Tatar-Bashkir Idel-Ural state of March 1918 that attracted the loyalty of both Tatar nationalists abroad and, allegedly, so-called...