Tartars

Categories / Population/Ethnic Groups
TARTARS, an ethnic community forming a part of the St. Petersburg population. The Tartar language is related to the Turkish group of Altaic languages. Their faith is Sunni Islam. The Tartars participated in the construction of St. Petersburg. At the early 18th century on City Island there was a Tartar settlement and market (at Sytny Market). In 1722 the Tartars were removed from St. Petersburg, but the memory of their settlement in this region has been preserved in the name Tatarsky (Tartar) Lane. In the 19th century the Tartars were a small group, which in 1869 consisted of 2,000 people, in 1910 - 7,300. Tartars were mainly engaged in small trading (including among them old-clothes men), were employed as servants (many Tartars were caretakers and waiters). In 1914 the Mosque was opened. From 1827 Tartar burials took place at the Novo- Volkovskoe Cemetery. In 1905 the paper Nur (Ray, restarted in 1991) began to be published in St. Petersburg. After October 1917 the number of Tartars increased (in 1989 - 44,000). The Tartars represented the middle of all social groups of city-dwellers. In the 1920s-30s the Tartar House of Education operated (32 Sadovaya Street), the Tartar Department of the Pedagogical Institute by the name of А.I. Herzen, the Tartar Theatre Collective, and other ethnic organizations, these were liquidated in 1937-38. In 1989 the Leningrad Tartar Cultural Centre was established (from 1992 the Tartar society Nur), involved in the preservation of cultural traditions and the Tartar language. The Tartar community annually holds the celebration Sabantui (The Celebration of the Plough) at the village of Syarga in Vsevolozhsky Region of Leningrad District. In 1997 the Tartar Ethnic-Cultural Autonomy of St. Petersburg was founded.

References: Аминов Д. А. Татары в Санкт-Петербурге: Ист. очерк. СПб., 1994; Карпенко О. Быть "национальным": страх потерять и страх потеряться: на примере "татар" С.-Петербурга // Конструирование этничности: Этнич. общины С.-Петербурга. СПб., 1998. С. 37-96.

A. Y. Chistyakov. Herzen Alexander Ivanovich
Sadovaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 32
Tatarsky Lane/Saint Petersburg, city
Аминов Д. А. Татары в Санкт-Петербурге: Ист. очерк. СПб., 1994
Карпенко О. Быть "национальным": страх потерять и страх потеряться: на примере "татар" С.-Петербурга // Конструирование этничности: Этнич. общины С.-Петербурга. СПб., 1998 Mosque
Pedagogical University