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Winner of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies' Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History.

Through close study of Russian, Eurasian, and Central Asian ethnographic, administrative, literary, and missionary sources, this book shows how traditional Islamic education among the people of Tsarist Russia's Middle Volga region (today's Tatarstan) helped to Islamize the area's Turkic peoples, setting the stage for the development of modernist Islam in Russia.

"Agnes Nilufer Kefeli's thorough and imaginative use of sources is notable. She makes use of Russian official sources from the State Archives of Tatarstan and elsewhere, but she also consults a broad range of nonarchival Islamic sources, including Tatar-language Arabic-script popular literature. This makes the book highly original and important to both Russian history and Islamic studies."—Allen Frank

Defence date: 13 January 2014 ; Examining Board: Professor Stephen Anthony Smith, University of Oxford /EUI (Supervisor); Professor Alexander Etkind, EUI Professor; Alexei Miller, CEU Budapest; Professor Boris Kolonitskii, European University in St. Petersburg. ; First made available online on 26 February 2015. ; The dissertation investigates the Russification policy of the late-imperial Russian state, as it related to educational policy in the Middle Volga region. It seeks to understand how the tsarist authorities sought to define Russianness and how they sought to craft relations with pagan minorities and Muslims in a region where the Slavic-Orthodox, the Turkic-Islamic and the Finno-pagan worlds interacted. It asks how far the educational projects of the Orthodox missions and the secular authorities brought about Russification. The analysis of the changes in imperial policy in the period between the 1860s to 1914 allows for the conclusion that the methods, instruments and aims of Russification policy continually changed and that policy was applied quite differently vis-à-vis the Muslim and pagan, or in most cases only superficially Orthodox , population of the region. When dealing with the educational project for the non-Muslim population in the region, also known as the project of N.Ilminskii, the dissertation aims to understand how the russifying and missionary components related to each other. Furthermore, it studies the alternative educational projects aiming at Russification of the non-Russian population of the region that the Ilminskii system had to compete with. A considerable amount of the dissertation is devoted the discussion of the Muslim reform movement and emergence of Jadidism. By analyzing and comparing the curricula of old-method madrasahs and the new-methods ones, the dissertation demonstrates the evolution that the Middle Volga Muslims underwent under the influence of both inner reforms and the actions of the authorities.

Maklasheevsky II settlement is a complex archaeological site, which includes settlements of the early Iron Age and the early Middle Ages, separated by more than six hundred years of natural development and transformation of anthropogenic structures. Maklasheevsky II ancient settlement is a remnant of a terrace 10 m high above the reservoir level and the defensive structures (3.0 m high) of the Early Iron Age and the early Middle Ages preserved on it. By origin, this object is a natural and anthropogenic geosystem. During the period of natural development of the middle part of the Maklasheevsky II settlement, soil formation prevailed on relatively flat surfaces and the formation of underdeveloped soils – sod-carbonate, subsequently buried by deluvium. In buried soils, an improvement in structure and water resistance is noticeable, up to a good estimate, in comparison with overlapping deluvium. In addition, there was an increase in the carbon content of humus by almost 1.5 times, the actual acidity decreased to neutral, the hydrolytic acidity increased, compared with overlapping deluvium.

THE VOLGA RIVER, THE LONGEST IN EUROPE, IS VERY DEAR TO THE HEARTS OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE, WHO HAVE EXPRESSED THEIR AFFECTION FOR IT FOR CENTURIES IN NATIONAL SONGS AND FOLKLORE. THE NINE HUNDRED-MILE CRUISE ALONG THE VOLGA-DON RIVERS FROM KAZAN TO ROSTOV-ON-DON BRINGS THE TRAVELLER THROUGH THE HEART OF THESE VOLGA LANDS AND IS A PLEASANT AND HISTORICALLY EVOCATIVE EXPERIENCE. IT ALSO PROVIDES A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF A MAJOR INDUSTRIAL AREA OF THE SOVIET UNION TODAY. THE GENERALLY VAGUE NOTIONS PREVAILING IN WESTERN EUROPE ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE TO RUSSIA OF THE VOLGA COULD NOT FAIL TO BE SHARPENED BY THE CONTACT, DIRECT EVEN IF SLIGHT, AFFORDED BY THIS CRUISE ALONG THE GREAT NATURAL BARRIER TO THE EAST OF WESTERN RUSSIA, CONTAINING THE HISTORIC TOWNS OF KAZAN, SIMBIRSK (NOW ULYANOVSK), SAMARA (KUYBYSHEV), SARATOV, TSARITSIN (STALINGRAD-VOLGOGRAD), ALL STRATEGICALLY PLACED ALONG THE BANKS OF THE VOLGA. THEY WERE ORIGINALLY ESTABLISHED AS OUTPOSTS OF RUSSIAN POWER FOLLOWING THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TATAR-MONGOLIAN KHANATES IN KAZAN AND ASTRAKHAN BY THE RUSSIANS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. THUS THE MENACE TO MOSCOW FROM THE TATAR HORDES IN THE EAST WAS ELIMINATED AND THE FURTHER THRUST OF RUSSIAN DOMINION EASTWARDS TOWARDS THE KAZAKH STEPPES AND THE CENTRAL ASIAN KANATES WAS FACILITATED, LEADING EVENTUALLY TO THE FORMATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OF THE IMPERIAL RUSSIAN EMPIRE - WITHIN MUCH THE SAME FRONTIERS AS THE SOVIET UNION TODAY.

In Russian and European historiography D. V. Gorbachev's article presents the first example of a critical analysis dealing with memoirs of I. A. Fessler, being a German thinker, public and religious figure, writer and freemason. The author purposes to estimate the reliability of information about Fessler's stay in Saratov Volga region in 1810–1820th which is described in these memoirs. In connection with this aim author ascertains the subjects, which are passed by Fessler over (circumstances of his journey from St. Petersburg to Saratov province, Saratov Freemasonry, conflicts connected with a church practice of the Volga Germans).

Introduction. The article analyzes circumstances of the emergence of regional sociology in the Soviet era. To describe this phenomenon, the author applies the concept of "sociology without sociology". This idiom means scientific and sociological activity without the participation of the professional sociological community and describes this multivariate and non-linear process. The author also describes the reasons of existence of "sociology without sociologists" in Soviet and then in Russian social sciences. Methodology and sources. The category "sociology without sociologists", used by R. Ahlberg, N. Werth, and J. Matthes describes the abnormal state of science. In addition, the author uses the concept of "public sociology" by M. Burawoy to determine the vectors of evolution of Soviet and Russian regional sociology. The main research method is the analysis of documentary sources of the Soviet era. Also new, previously unexplored archival documents have been introduced into scientific circulation. Results and discussion. The studied issue is examined on the ground of mass surveys of the state of religiosity of the population, which were initiated and carried out by the party bodies of the Tatarstan ASSR and Kuybishev area in 1964–1966. The results of those amateurish surveys served as a foundation for the development of sociology in the region. The article shows that throughout the existence of the "legal" regional sociology, in parallel with it, there were various forms of "sociology without sociologists". The specificity of the Soviet period was that the existence of "sociology without sociologists" met the expectations of some CSPU circles, responsible for ideology tasks.Conclusion. The application of the category "sociology without sociologists" is of great importance for the implementation of the demarcation of scientific and non-scientific forms of social knowledge.

Janet M. Hartley's The Volga: a History of Russia's Greatest River gives an overview of the cultural history of the river Volga. Geir Pollen's Volga: A Russian Journey (Volga: En russisk reise) is a meandering travelogue with frequent excursions in time and space. Lena Jonson's Volga and the Inner Russia (Volga och det inre Ryssland) is a political scientist's tour along the same river with a sharp analysis of the uneasy geopolitical situation in the multinational Russian Federation of 2022.
Janet M. Hartley gir i The Volga: a History of Russia's Greatest River en översikt över Volgas kulturhistoria. Geir Pollens Volga: en russisk reise är en vindlande flodresa med många exkurser i tid och rum. Lena Jonsons Volga och det inre Ryssland är en statsvetares resa längs samma flod med skarpa analyser av den osäkra geopolitiska situationen i den multinationella Ryska federationen av år 2022.

The text is a part of the project for the historical reconstruction of the Soviet regional sociology of religion in the late Soviet Middle Volga region. The process of the development of the discipline is studied primarily from the point of view of the interaction of the state-party apparatus and various groups of the scientific community. This approach is dominant in the study of the revival of sociology in the USSR. The weak side of the issue is its historiography that remains the problem at the regional level. The research is based mainly on the set of sociological data, on documents discovered by the author in historical archives, on the works of domestic and foreign researchers, and author's expert interview. The author's point of view is that, first of all, the development of the regional sociology of religion was influenced by the state-party order created by the need for scientific support of the Soviet atheistic campaigns. There was also a significant public demand for the services of the sociology of religion. The flip side of the CPSU's enthusiasm for sociology turned out to be ideological diktat over scientific activity. The ideological and corporate interests of various groups engaged in the ideological service of party politics hindered the institutionalization in the region of both sociological science in general and the sociology of religion as its particular discipline. The article describes various barriers to the institutionalization of regional sociological science at the union, regional and intra-university levels. Political fluctuations have negatively affected the development of discipline. Since the early 1970s in most republics and regions of the Middle Volga region, it is going through a stagnation period.

Nadir Devlet, Islamic revival in the Volga-Ural region.
In 922, Islam had acquired the status of the official creed of the region that at the time was known as the Turkic Bulgar State. In 1552, after the decline of the Kazan khanate, the Russians, who were now ruling this land, persecuted the Islamic religion. The oppression lasted till the advent of Catherine II (1762-1796) who inaugurated a more liberal policy towards her Muslim subject. In particular, it is under her reign that in 1789, the Pan-Russian Muslim Religious Administration was organized. The Soviet government, after its institution, embarked on an anti-religious campaign in defiance of all its former promises. This policy was somewhat revised with regard to all the creeds of the USSR, after the outbreak of the Second World War as the authorities deemed it necessary to thus boost the morale of the population. However, after the war, attacks on religion started again. This lasted until the perestroïka and glasnosť when some freedom was again awarded to Muslims, enabling them to create new mosques, to reopen old ones and to practise and propagate freely their religious beliefs. Thus, we can speak of a measure of Islamic revival in this region.