Images of Revolutionary Events of 1917–1920 in Post-Soviet Tatarstan: Elitist Discourse and Mass Representations

Abstract: 
The paper, firstly, analysis images of 1917 revolution history and events of Civil war of 1918–1920 that are produced by political and intellectual elites by post-Soviet Tatarstan. Secondly, we consider images of that period which are created in mass historical representations of the population of the Republic. Revolutionary events of 1917–1920 are produced in elite discourse with the reference to national history of Tatars on the regional level. That’s why great attention is given to national democratic movement of Tatars while these events are described. The Whites in Civil war are estimated negatively because they were committed to the idea of “united and indivisible Russia” and didn’t recognize the rights of Tatars of national self-determination. At the same time elite discourse is ambivalent about the Bolsheviks although they are estimated all-in-all negatively. Declaration of Tatar ASSR in 1920 is the main achievement of the revolution and the war. This declaration is represented as a partial reconstruction of the state sovereignty of Tatars that they lost in 1552. Revolutionary events of 1917–1920 are represented in mass historical discourse of Tatarstan dwellers as one of the main landmarks of the XXth century history along with the Great Patriotic War and dissolution of the USSR. In contrast to elite discourse mass historical representations do not connect revolutionary events of 1917–1920 with national history of Tatars and consider these events as ones of all-Russian scale and history. However these events are emotionally evaluated very differently. Federal Mass Media (and not textbooks and other academic and popular literature on history of Tatars) play an important role in creating of mass historical representations about revolutions of 1917 in Tatarstan.

Keywords:

doi: 

10.25990/socinstras.pss-10.58hx-6963

For citation: Karbainov N.I. Images of Revolutionary Events of 1917–1920 in Post-Soviet Tatarstan: Elitist Discourse and Mass Representations. St. Petersburg Sociology Today. 2018. N. 10. P. 77-98. DOI: 10.25990/socinstras.pss-10.58hx-6963

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