Paul Goble<\/p>\n
Vienna, August 9 \u2013 A Tatar author\u2019s richly illustrated children\u2019s book on Ivan the Terrible\u2019s conquest of Kazan in 1552 that asserts Tatarstan\u2019s \u201cstruggle for the restoration of independence continues in our day\u201d has prompted a Russian activist to demand that Moscow intervene to ban the book for \u201cfalsifying history to the detriment of Russia.\u201d
\nOn the \u201cSvobodnaya pressa\u201d website at the end of last week, Yan Stashkevich says that \u201cchildren\u2019s literature in Tatarstan is teaching that the Russian state is a mob of marauders, thieves and usurpers\u201d and that the Tatar\u2019s \u201cstruggle for the restoration of independence\u201d has never ended (svpressa.ru\/issue\/news.php?id=12268).
\nAnd the Moscow journalist adds that this case is \u201cnot about ignoring the role of the Red Army in the victory over fascism and not about the revision of the results of the Second World War but about a war which ended \u2026 500 years ago,\u201d when the Russian tsar conquered the Kazan khanate.
\nDespite the antiquity of these events, Stashkevich continues, debates that \u201care no joke\u201d have broken out in Tatarstan over these events. Moreover, he says, the Russian president\u2019s commission on historical falsifications has been asked to look into the matter, a potentially disturbing extension of what Dmitry Medvedev said he was creating that body for.
\nThe current \u201cscandal\u201d broke out following the publication in 5000 copies of a children\u2019s book entitled \u201cThe Liberation Struggle of the Tatar People\u201d by Nurulla Garif, a Tatar historian who describes the conquest of Kazan in 1552, the Christianization of the Muslims of the Middle Volga, and \u201c\u2019the five-hundred-year-long war\u201d of the Tatars for independence from Russia.
\nAccording to Garif, Stashkevich says, this period has been one of \u201cunceasing war against Russian \u2018occupation,\u2019\u201d the Russian state \u201ca mob of marauders, thieves and usurpers,\u201d and Moscow\u2019s representatives on the scene \u201c\u2019vengeful\u2019\u201d men capable of all sorts of crimes including burying Tatars who resist them alive.
\nThe Moscow journalist says that at the end of his book, Garif calls on his young readers \u201cnot to follow stereotypes\u201d but rather to \u201cthink about the lessons of history, in particular over the themes which consider \u2018Moscow-Kazan relations.\u2019\u201d But to give them direction, Stashkevich says, Garif illustrates the page on which this appeal is made in a highly suggestive way.
\nOn that page, Garif\u2019s book shows \u201ca black crow with two heads which reminds one of the state shield of Russia rapaciously attacking the tower of the Tatar queen Syuyumbika, the symbol of Tatarstan independence.\u201d And given that clear message, Stashkevich suggests, it is no surprise that many Russians have been outraged.
\nSeveral weeks ago, one of their number Aleksandr Ovchinnikov, who teaches at a higher educational institution in Kazan, wrote to the Tatarstan republic procuracy asking that Garif\u2019s book be examined by experts to determine whether its content was extremist and thus subject to a ban.
\nThe republic procuracy immediately sent it to the Mardzhani Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, but scholars there, Stashkevich recounts, \u201cshared the views of Nurulla Garif on the national path of the Tatar people and assured the procuracy\u201d that the book in question did not contain any \u201ccall to national or religious hostility.\u201d
\nMoreover, the Moscow journalist says, the Tatarstan historians accused Ovchinnikov of being engaged \u201cin a provocation of destructive processes, pseudo-patriotism and the exacerbation of inter-ethnic antagonism.\u201d After that, the procuracy dropped the case, and articles attacking Ovchinnikov began to appear \u201con the pages of the local press.\u201d
\nThese articles made it clear that \u201cthe scholars who had conducted the expert assessment of Garif\u2019s book are his former colleagues with whom he had worked closely in the quite recent past,\u201d Stashkevich reports, something that \u201ccasts doubt on \u2018the independence\u2019 of their expert assessment.\u201d
\nHowever that may be, Ovchinnikov for his part has raised the possibility of sending Garif\u2019s book to the Russian president\u2019s commission on blocking attempts at the falsification of history and in the mean time \u201chas again turned to the [Tatarstan] procuracy\u201d which has again passed the volume to the same Institute of History, thus \u201cclosing the circle.\u201d
\nBecause Tatarstan\u2019s Institute of History is headed by Rafael Khakimov, a longtime advisor to that republic\u2019s president, Mintimir Shaimiyev, this incident might prove to be little more than yet another Russian probe against the latter, an effort to cast doubt on his loyalty to Moscow by questioning his ability to control his Middle Volga republic.
\nBut even if that is so, this complaint and the readiness of some like Ovchinnikov to turn to the presidential commission is a disturbing indication of the way in which Moscow\u2019s ostensible effort to deal with discussions of the Soviet role in World War II could rapidly become an attack on any independent thinking on other historical questions as well.
\nAnd because history is ultimately where many struggles about the present and future take place, both the original impulse between Dmitry Medvedev\u2019s commission and the extension of the application of concern about \u201charm to Russia\u2019s reputation\u201d are a threat to far more than the righting of history: they are a threat to those who would make it as well.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/windowoneurasia.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/window-on-eurasia-tatar-childrens-book_09.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paul Goble Vienna, August 9 \u2013 A Tatar author\u2019s richly illustrated children\u2019s book on Ivan the Terrible\u2019s conquest of Kazan in 1552 that asserts Tatarstan\u2019s \u201cstruggle for the restoration of independence continues in our day\u201d has prompted a Russian activist to demand that Moscow intervene to ban the book for \u201cfalsifying history to the detriment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":179175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[604,820,460],"class_list":["post-14139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","tag-tataristan","tag-tatars","tag-tatarstan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}