Latest articles
All public articles of the knowledge base, newest first.
The Tatars' deeper history
The Volga Vikings: the Varangians
The Varangians — also known as the Volga Vikings — were Viking warriors, traders and settlers, mostly from present-day Sweden, who in the 8th–11th centuries opened and ruled the ea…
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The Soviet Union needed help to fight its former friend
This page is a summary of what kind of country the Soviet Union was — and what that meant for the occupied. It was not enough for Stalin to pressure Estonia into giving away its fr…
Read →A timeline of the Estonian Tatars
The story of the historical Estonian Tatars on one timeline. Until the Second World War it ran a single course; the war and the Soviet occupation split the community in two — those…
Read →Tatar heritage
The riddles of the Codex Cumanicus — all 50
Pages 119–120 of the German part of the Codex Cumanicus preserve about fifty riddles in Cuman (Kipchak) — the oldest recorded collection of Turkic folklore (the Turkologist Andreas…
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The Kremlin Letters: the psychology of the Big Three's correspondence
The Kremlin Letters (eds. David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov, Yale University Press 2018) publishes and annotates Stalin's wartime correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt —…
Read →The language platform: what this software does
This platform is a tool for saving and keeping the language of the historical Estonian Tatars — Mišär Tatar. It brings together four things: recording the language, grammar analysi…
Read →Estonian Tatar history
The Estonian Tatars kept the Estonian language even in exile
In exile — above all in Sweden and the United States — the Estonian Tatars kept more than their Tatar heritage. They also preserved the Estonian language and an Estonian identity.…
Read →Estonian Tatar history
Turk-Islam Föreningen i Sverige
Turk-Islam Föreningen i Sverige för Religion och Kultur (the Swedish Turkish-Islamic Religious and Cultural Association) was Sweden's first Muslim organisation, founded on 22 Octob…
Read →Estonian Tatar history
The Estonian time — the best of times
This page is the summary of everything. The historical Estonian Tatars have travelled a long road — from the Kipchak steppe and the Golden Horde, across the centuries, from the vil…
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The shadow language of the occupation
During the Soviet occupation (1940–1991), under constant surveillance, the Estonian Tatar community developed a shadow language — everyday words took on hidden meanings so that peo…
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Communist crimes against Estonia's minorities
The Soviet occupation (1940–1941 and 1944–1991) brought Estonia mass repression that also struck the country's ethnic and religious minorities. Deportations, executions and the Gul…
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Estonianisation: how the Mišär Tatars became an invisible minority
The historical Estonian Tatars — the Mišär merchant community, already well integrated into the pre-war Republic of Estonia — largely dissolved into Estonian society during the dec…
Read →Tatar heritage
Turkic and Tatar heritage in Russian culture
The Golden Horde — the Tatar-Mongol state of the Kipchak steppe — ruled the Russian lands from about 1240 to 1480. Two and a half centuries of overlordship left a deep Turkic-Tatar…
Read →Estonian Tatar history
The cemetery as the community's backbone
The destruction of the Tallinn Muslim cemetery by the occupation authorities is documented as the cultural genocide of the historical Estonian Tatars. It was not merely physical de…
Read →Estonian history
Innocent Estonia: the Tatars' good life before 1939, and Estonians at Nuremberg
Before 28 September 1939, Muslims — mainly Mišär Tatars — lived very well in free Estonia. Estonia was innocent: not an instigator of war but a victim, coerced by Stalin and Hitler…
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Union of Estonian Tatars
The Union of Estonian Tatars (Eesti Tatarlaste Liit) is an association of the historical Estonian Tatars (Mišär Tatars) whose purpose is to preserve and promote the community's lan…
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Estonian Tatar soomepoisid (Finnish Boys)
The Estonian Tatar soomepoisid ("Finnish Boys") were members of the historical Estonian Tatar (Mišär Tatar) community who volunteered for the Finnish armed forces during the Second…
Read →The Tatar world
The Kryashens: Christianized Tatars
The Kryashens (Keräşen in Tatar) are a subgroup of the Volga Tatars who are Orthodox Christians. They regard themselves as distinct from other Tatars, although their dialect differ…
Read →The Tatar world
The Lipka Tatars
The Lipka Tatars are a Turkic minority in Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. They descend from the Kipchaks of the Golden Horde and the Crimean and Kazan Khanates, and settled in the G…
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Souvenirs from the Golden Horde: Turkic and Tatar words in Russian
Over its history Russian has absorbed a substantial layer of Turkic-origin vocabulary — much of it in the Middle Ages through the Golden Horde and the Kazan Tatars. There is no exa…
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