History of Tatarstan: Encyclopedia II - History of Tatarstan - The Soviet rule

History of Tatarstan - The Soviet rule

The main article is Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

On 27 May 1920 the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the RSFSR was declared. However, in the late 1920s the Soviet government under Stalin began to place restrictions on the use of the Tatar language (among many other minority languages in theSoviet Union). The development of national culture declined significantly. The Tatar alphabet was switched twice (to the Latin alphabet and then to Cyrillic). From the 1930s through the 1950s Tatar-language press, cultural institutions, theatres, national schools and institutes gradually disappeared, as education was required to be conducted in the Russian language. Industrialization, the rise of the collective farms kolektivizatsiya and persecutions such as the Great Purge contributed to this decline.

The religion also was repressed. At the first time Soviet rule discriminate mostly Orthodox Church and some Islamic religious streams was preserved (see Jadidism, Wäisi movement), but later they also was repressed. Some theologians of Jadidism (that was liberal to Soviet rule at the first time) escaped to Turkey or Egypt.

More than 560,000 Tatar soldiers took part in World War II and more than 300,000 of them were killed. Many Soviet plants and their workers, as well as the Soviet Academy of Sciences, were evacuated to Tatarstan. During the war large petroleum deposits were discovered. During their exploration Tatarstan became one of the most industrially developed regions of the Soviet Union.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Soviet rule", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki