Introduction
The Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was founded in 1920. In 1992, it was officially granted the status Republic of Tatarstan, within the Russian Federation. Its capital is Kazan. Tatar is a Turkic language, and is also referred to as Kazan Tatar and Tartar.
Additionally, this guide highlights several resources related to Tatar history, culture, language, and national bibliography. In addition to the resources below, please also consult the database: Elektronnyi katalog knig na iazykakh narodov RF i stran SNG from the Russian National Library. Lastly, this guide highlights the electronic library associated with the National Library of Tatarstan.
Sources: The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Volume 25, page 407); Ethnologue.
LIBRARY CATALOGS
Natsional’naia biblioteka Respubliki Tatarstan
http://kitaphane.tatarstan.ru/
The National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan was established in 1991. The website includes a list of reference resources and of publications.
The National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan has a searchable electronic catalog. Users can search by material type, language, author, title, date of publication, ISSN, ISBN, theme, language, and control number. There are documents in both Russian and Tatar, and users can search in both languages. The advanced search interface is shown in the image below.
Results give basic bibliographic information including the index number and call number, the number of copies and the number of available copies, the year of publication, the key words associated with the document, the number of pages, the author, the title and the language in which the document is written.
ONLINE RESOURCES
Natsional’naia elektronnaia biblioteka Respubliki Tatarstan = National Electronic Library of the Republic of Tatarstan
This is a database of documents across 49 different libraries in the Republic of Tatarstan. The number of libraries participating increases every year and currently all libraries under the ministry of culture are included. Furthermore, searches will reveal results from the entire collection of the municipal libraries of the Republic of Tatarstan. Users can search by author, title, subject, publication year, ISBN and ISSN. Users can also choose to search only in one particular library, if needed. Searches can be conducted in Russian and in Tatar.
Results show basic bibliographic information as well as information about the holding location. Additionally, the National Electronic Library of the Republic of Tatarstan has a number of collections that users can access online for free. There are currently 4,562 documents total in these collections. The following collections are included at the time of writing, but additional documents are being added daily.
- Collection of I.A. Vtorov
- Collection of work by I.A. Sakharov
- Collection of early print Russian books (up to 1830)
- Lifetime editions of G. Tukay
- Books donated by authors
- Periodicals from Kazan province
- Publications on the National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan and its collections
Please note that due to maintenance issues this website may time out. This can be corrected by refreshing the page.
Katalog literatury na tatarskom yazyke [microform] Rossiĭskai︠a︡ nat︠s︡ionalʹnai︠a︡ biblioteka. Otdel literatury na nat︠s︡ionalʹnykh i︠a︡zykakh.
New York: N. Ross, 1998. U of I Library Call Number: MFICHE 016.94745 R736k International and Area Studies Library, Microfilm Room. U of I record. OCLC Accession Number: 46949874 .
Katalog literatury na krymsko-tatarskom yazyke [microform] Rossiĭskai︠a︡ nat︠s︡ionalʹnai︠a︡ biblioteka. Otdel literatury na nat︠s︡ionalʹnykh i︠a︡zykakh.
New York: N. Ross, 1997. U of I Library Call Number: MFICHE 016.94771 R736k International and Area Studies Library, Microfilm Room. U of I record. OCLC Accession Number: 702570269.
The Russian National Library’s Department of Literature in National Languages [also known as the Department of National Literatures] of the Russian Federation, Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Baltic countries has reproduced holdings catalogs in microfiche format. The national languages imprints catalogs in microfiche format diffuse most of the difficulties associated with transliteration in the vernacular languages, spelling, forms of entry, and uncertainties with the entirety of the collection. Researchers can access the entire holdings for a specific language at the Russian National Library through the microfiche set; conveniently exporting selected titles via PDF scans. The following scans reflect some of the Tatar-language holdings available in microfiche format.
Other resources
Letopis’ pechati and publishing in Tatarstan
In the sphere of publishing, the Tatar ASSR experienced a strong growth in the first decades of the Soviet period. In 1958, around 500 new books were published, and in 1959 already over 600. In 1960, the republic published 34 periodicals and 128 newspapers. Alongside publishing, the number of publishing houses and libraries also expanded. Whereas in the pre-revolutionary period only a small number of publishing houses existed, in 1959 this number had increased to 62, and the number of libraries to over 2,400. In 1974, Tatarstan published 478 books and pamphlets, 129 newspapers (1 million copies), and 47 magazines (1.3 million copies). The following are a list of republic-level newspapers including their first year of publication: Sotsialistik Tatarstan (1918); Tatarstan yash’lere (1920); Yash’ leninchi (1924); Sovetskaia Tatariia (1917) and Komsomolets Tatarii (1919). Users can consult Gazety SSSR 1917-1960: Bibliograficheskii spravochnik 5 for a more comprehensive list of newspapers published in Tatarstan during these years.
In 1926, for the first time in the Tatar Republic, a Book Chamber (knizhnaia palata) was established in Kazan, which is responsible for keeping bibliographic and statistical record of all the publications in the republic and collecting and preserving rare materials. The Book Chamber is also responsible for publishing letopisi pechati for the republic: bibliographic overviews of the books, articles, periodicals, and other materials published in Tatarstan in a given year. In the Soviet period, letopisi pechati were published in different forms:
- Between 1938-1941 and between 1945-1960, a knizhnaia letopis’ appeared annually (in some years two-four times). These provided an overview of books and pamphlets, music, and printed artwork
- Between 1938-1948, letopisi periodicheskikh izdanii Tatarskoi ASSR were published annually, which contained the journal and newspaper articles published in that particular year
- Between 1955-1960, there was also a separate Letopis’ zhurnal’nykh i gazetnykh statei that appeared once a year, which highlighted articles and materials from journals and newspapers.
- In 1958, this letopis’ was published in two editions, one in Tatar and one in Russian. In 1959 and 1960, the letopis’ only appeared in Tatar
- In the years 1953-1959, a letopis’ retsenzii was published annually, for reviews of books as well as of journal and newspaper articles
- Since 1961, letopisi are published four times per year under the title letopis’ pechati Tatarii. Each edition consists of five sections: books, reviews, music, periodical and newspaper articles, and Tatarstan in the Soviet press. In each edition, the materials are first provided in Tatar and other languages (except for Russian), and then in Russian.
The letopisi pechati for 2006-2016 are available online on the website of the arkhivnaia sluzhba Respubliki Tatarstan. On this page, users can also find bibliographies associated with specific themes and years of the Soviet period. Through WorldCat, users can also find earlier issues of the letopis’ pechati in physical (OCLC accession number 26465708 or 34272860) and electronic form (OCLC accession number 609865404 or 742437488).
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Volume 25, page 407); Sorok let sovetskoi gosudarstvennoi bibliografii (1920-1960) (1960), pp. 251-258; Gosudarstvennaia bibliografiia SSSR. Spravochnik (1967), pp. 104-106.
Archival materials
For users interested in working with archival materials, the website “Arkhivnaia sluzhba Respubliki Tatarstan” (www.archive.gov.tatarstan.ru is unresponsive as of January 2020) provides a helpful guide for some of the major archives of the Republic of Tatarstan:
- Natsional’nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstan
- Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskoi dokumentatsii Respubliki Tatarstan
- Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv dokumentov po lichnomu sostavu Respubliki Tatarstan
- Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv audiovizual’nykh dokumentov Respubliki Tatarstan
- Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv pechati Respubliki Tatarstan
For each of the archives, the website provides information about the history, collections – including an overview of the available fonds – new materials, opening hours, and additional services.
Source: Arkhivnaia sluzhba Respubliki Tatarstan
The Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan
The Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan is one of the major research institutions in the republic. In its current form it was founded in 1991, although its predecessor, the Society for Tatar Studies (Obshchestvo tatarovedeniia) already existed since the late 1920s. The institute’s website provides an overview of its subdivisions and projects, as well as bibliographic records of their publications. Electronic versions of the institute’s journals for recent years are also accessible on the website (under “Izdatel’stvo Fen”).
Language and keyboard
Tatar is a Turkic language, and is also referred to as Kazan Tatar and Tartar. Until 1928, the Tatar written language used an Arabic script. Between 1928 and 1939, a Latin alphabet was introduced, and in 1939 there was a turn to the Cyrillic script that it still uses today. The Tatar alphabet has a number of characters that do not exist in the Russian alphabet: Ә ә, Җ җ, Ң ң, Ө ө, Ү ү, and Һ һ. Users who are interested in working with vernacular languages, can download a Cyrillic extended keyboard that can be used for Tatar and many of the other languages of the Russian Federation.
Source: Ethnologue; Tatarskaia pis’mennost’