The Politics of the City Image: The Resurrection of the Kul-Sharif Mosque in the Kazan Kremlin (1995-2005)

Abstract

This article studies the resurrection of the Kul-Sharif Mosque in the Kazan Kremlin in the context of the political transformations that Russia and the Republic of Tatarstan went through in the 1990s. The original structure was destroyed in 1552 when Ivan the Terrible conquered the capital of then Kazan Khanate. In 1990 the Republic of Tatarstan declared its sovereign status. The mosque was cited as a symbol of the heroic resistance to the Russian invaders, restoration of the Tatarstani statehood and cultural revival of the Tatar nation. The mosque became an essential part of the new image of Kazan, the capital city of Tatarstan. The article explores the mechanisms that brought the project into being and attempts to conceptualize the links between the image of the city and political and economic forces of the society.