Vol 14, No 4 (2024)

The preface provides an overview of the All-Russian Scientific Conference “Tatars in the Service of the Fatherland” held in Kazan on September 27, 2024, as well as a brief description of each article included in the 4th issue of the journal “From History and Culture of Peoples of the Middle Volga Region” for 2024.

The article examines the participation of the Astrakhan Yurt Tatars in the Smolensk War of 1632–1634. The mobilization potential of the Turkic service population of the Lower Volga region, the features of its involvement in the war against Poland and other peoples involved in raids on the Russian border lands by the Poles are analyzed. The study focuses on the preparation for the Lithuanian campaign of 1632 and its implementation under the command of governors I. Kondyrev and S. Matveev, as well as the participation of the Astrakhan Yurt Tatars in the campaign against the Little Nogai Horde (Kazyev Ulus) in 1633 under the command of governor V. Turenin and P. Volkonsky.

The article is devoted to the study of a new source on the military history of the Teptyars, stored in collection No.489 "Formulary records and other documents on the service of personnel of the Russian army (collection)" of the Russian State Military Historical Archive – service (formulary) records of the Teptyar Cossack regiments. This source is introduced into scientific circulation for the first time and is of exceptional value, since it allows us to learn new facts about the military history of the Teptyar class. The work provides a description of this source, an analysis of its structure and information content. The names and biographical data of some officers of the Teptyar regiments indicated in these lists are given.

The article is devoted to the study of the issues of practicing Islam by Muslim military personnel in the first half of the 19th century.

Based on legislative sources in a broad historical context, state measures to streamline the system of integrating Muslims into the military and civil services of the Russian Empire while maintaining the possibility of their traditional confession of their faith, which was also aimed at solving new military and foreign policy tasks of the state are considered.

170 years ago, on October 17, 1854, the 349-day defense of Sevastopol by Russian troops began in the Crimean War. This defense is also called the First Defense of Sevastopol, in contrast to the defense of the city in 1941–1942. The Crimean War began in 1853 and at the initial stage against the Ottoman Empire was accompanied by victories of Russian troops both on the land theatre of military operations and in the Black Sea. However, after France, Great Britain and the Kingdom of Sardinia entered the war on the side of Turkey, the position of the Russian Empire changed for the worse - Russia lost the most important battles on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula. Limited military operations were also conducted in the Baltic, the White Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Tatars of Kazan province were mainly recruited to the Baltic fleet, only a few were sent to the Black Sea Fleet. But from the southern provinces, especially Saratov province, where in some districts there were areas of compact residence of Tatars, Tatar recruits were periodically sent to the Black Sea Fleet. Tatar sailors took part in all the battles of the Crimean War – on land and at sea.

This article is a study about the participation of Tatar women in military medicine in the early 20th century: from the state-awarded service of doctor R. Kutluyarova-Suleimanova during the Russo-Japanese War to volunteers and nurses of the World War I (H. Akchurina, G. Izhbirdeyeva, M. Sainova, G. Sainova, Z. Talkovskaya, etc.). The names of many heroines from visual sources have not yet been identified, so new research is needed in this area. The introduction of the concept of "shafkat tutashi" into the Tatar vocabulary during World War I is also considered. The author concludes that the preservation of this concept after 1917 was due to its late appearance and the absence of semantic load in the form of stable associations with the Tatar culture of the imperial period.

This article is devoted to the study of participation of residents of the Tatar village Inderka of Sosnovoborskiy district of the Penza region in the World War I. The central issue is the fate of the war participants. The primary goal of the research is to trace their military and personal journeys. The article includes brief biographies of veterans.

The publication presents documents from the Ufa Prikaznaya Izba collection of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA), which reveal a number of issues on the history of the Karinsk princes Davletyarovs family. These materials expand the source base for studying the history of the Karinsk Tatars, as well as the processes of their migration to the Urals and integration into the social structure of the population of the Ufa district in the 17th century. The publication may be useful in studying the social processes that took place in the Volga-Ural region in the 16th – 18th centuries, as well as for research in genealogy and local history.

This review is devoted to a recently published collection of documents and materials related to the development of naval shipbuilding in Russia in the 18th – first third of the 19th century. The author and compiler of the collection, I.Z. Faizrakhmanov, has been successfully developing this issue for a long time. In the reviewed publication, he introduces into scientific circulation a large corpus of sources found in the funds of the Russian State Archive of the Navy (St. Petersburg). The documents in the collection reflect various aspects of the activities of the Kazan Admiralty, one of the leading centers of domestic shipbuilding. The enterprise played an important role in strengthening the country's defense capability, ensuring, in addition to the construction of warships in Kazan, the procurement of ship timber for other Russian shipyards. In addition, the Admiralty participated in the administrative management of the peoples of the Volga region who performed the lashman duty, was engaged in the registration and protection of forest lands, and the implementation of other tasks set by the state. The materials of the collection expand the range of sources on the history of the Volga-Kama region in the Petrine and subsequent eras, are of interest to historians, lawyers, philologists, and all those interested in the history of their native land.

The essay briefly examines the scientific biography of Doctor of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the Institute of History, Language and Literature of the Ufa Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences M.I. Rodnov. It shows the museum, social, publishing, editorial activities of M.I. Rodnov, and formulates the main features of his style of historical writing.