Tatar nationalism

Tatar nationalism has been cited by historian Sergei Kondrashov as having two historical causes: Firstly is the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' and the subsequent "Mongolo-Tatar domination of Russia".

The Bulgarists place Volga Bulgaria as the historical origins of modern-day Tatarstan, with the Golden Horde being a foreign, but culturally influential occupying power.

Tatar nationalism at this time was influenced by the progressively-minded Jadid movement, which sought to fuse Islam and western innovations in regards to education and other similar topics.

Beginning in the 1920s, they were steadily removed from power as part of simultaneous purges of Ukrainian, Central Asian, and Tatar national communists.

After military setbacks during Operation Barbarossa and protests by the government of Turkey on the treatment of Muslim Soviet prisoners of war, Nazi Germany organised the Idel Ural Legion in 1942.

Most of its members, in addition to their status as prisoners of war, also stated different reasons for joining, such as anti-Russian sentiment, opposition to collective farming, anti-communism, and their families' religion.

[4] This manifestation of Tatar nationalism did not include its interwar-era leaders, such as İshaki, who, like many of his peers, was viewed with suspicion by the German government and sidelined.

Cälil was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for his military activities, as well as the Lenin Prize for his Moabit Notebook [ru], at the urging of Tatar intelligentsia.

[8] When the Soviet Union dissolved, Tatarstan found itself in a state of de facto independence, something which Tatar leaders sought to strengthen with a 1992 sovereignty referendum and a wide-reaching nation-building exercise.