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ПУБЛИКАЦИИ
УДК 930.1
ZERO POINT OF HISTORICAL TIME*
R.S. Khakimov
(Sh.Marjani Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan)
Historical studies are based on the assumption that there is a reference-starting point of the space-time - the Zero point of coordinate system. Due to the bifurcation in the Zero Point, the course of social processes changes sharply and the probabilistic causality replaces the deterministic one. For this reason, changes occur in the structure of social relations and statehood form as well as in the course of the ethnic processes. In such a way emerges a new discourse of the national behavior.
With regard to the history of the Tatars and Tatarstan, such bifurcation points occurred in the periods of the formation:
1) of the Turkic Khaganate, which began to exist from the 6th century onward and became a qualitatively new State system that reformatted old elements in the new matrix introducing a new discourse of behavior;
2) of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria, where the rivers (Kama, Volga, Vyatka) became the most important trade routes determining the singularity of this State. Here the nomadic culture was connected with the settled one and Islam became the official religion in 922;
3) and of the Golden Horde, a powerful State with a remarkable system of communication, migration of huge human resources for thousands of kilometers, and extensive trade, that caused severe "mutations" in the ethnic terms and a huge mixing of ethnic groups.
Given the dwelling space of Tatar population and its evolution within Russia, it can be argued that the Zero point of Tatar history, which conveyed the cultural invariants until today, begins in the Golden Horde. Neither in the Turkic khaganate nor in the Bulgar State, but namely in the Golden Horde.
Despite the radical changes, the Russian Empire failed to transform the Tatars in the Russians. Therefore, contemporary Tatars preserved the Golden Horde tradition as a cultural invariant.
Keywords: Tatars, Volga-Kama Bulgaria, Golden Horde, Russia, Zero point of history, historical time.
* Translation from Russian to English by Roman Hautala.
Turning to the past, we ask ourselves: What we want to learn from history? What evidence do we need? When an event becomes the event to be worthy of our attention? Do we need to collect the entire mass of historical documents and testimonies? After all, the current tasks may turn to be not a sequel but overcoming of the past. For example, we can publish hundreds of volumes of the scholastics' treatises and get the same answer that it was a dead-end of public thought, which became an obstacle for the social movement. It will be a labor of Sisyphus confirming the truth that has been revealed a long time ago.
Michel Foucault writes: "The history is only a tool, by which the entire body of historical documents finds the appropriate status starting to describe one or another society" [3, p. 10]. Documents do not determine the history, but it is the historiography who finds a suitable place for them. Before pulling out hundreds of thousands of documents from archives into the daylight, we need to answer the question: What is the phenomenon we are studying? History does not have its own object of study. In this sense, it is not a science in the strict sense of the word. It only provides the other humanitarian disciplines with research methodology of the objects' changing over time. However, the history receives the object of the study from ethnology, psychology, political science, linguistics, economy, etc. We have to define the limits of the phenomenon, which we extract from the current of life, so that it would become the object of study. We can study the history of the state or nation, or any territory. We can study them in their entirety or in some aspect: economic, linguistic, political, etc. Contemporary Tatars and the Tatars of the 7th century are not one and the same phenomenon. To compare the past with the present, we need a point of reference and the time scale in order to determine, which Tatars we are studying: those that continue today the former traditions or the legendary ones.
The concept of time is meaningless being situated outside the space, where it becomes mythologized. Then we talk about the time with a capital letter as the passage of Time, Destiny, Fatality, standing over the people. So it makes sense to talk about the chrono-space. Immanuel Wallerstein believes that time and space can not be regarded as a separate category, but they should be considered as a single concept, which he calls the "Time-Space". Mikhail Bakhtin defined it by using the term of "chronotope" and Krzysztof Pomian called it by the name of "chrono-sophy" stressing that, in that sense, the time becomes not simply the chronometry or chronology, but the object of discourse. Every nation and state has its origin, which does not synchronize with similar processes in other nations. It is difficult to determine the moment of appearance of each separate nation due to the lack of clear criteria, by which we can mark this time. Neither the language nor culture, or religion provide the exact date.
There is no universal coordinate system of space-time to comparing the processes of world history. There is no history of the world as a
holistic phenomenon. This is an issue considered by many scholars. Alfred Schütz writes in the generalized form: "Another completely unclarified step is the transition from entities that communicate with each other, toward the constitution of personal unities of a higher order, associations of actors who have their own world surrounding them; and the subsequent transition from these associations to a comprehensive community, surrounded by the world that no longer contains the entities -toward the community of spirits (Geister Gemeinschaft) faced with a world of objects, meaningful to the spirit, as if it was a world for the spirit (Geist). One can already see that the meanings of "person", "communication", "surrounding world", and "subjectivity" shifts during the transition to the higher levels to such an extent, that it can only be regarded as metaphorical use of inappropriate terms" [11, p. 72]. Despite the difficulty of formulating a community that go beyond the state or nation, Wallerstein proposes to consider the world-systems covering many nations and long periods of time [13]. He introduces the concept of "historical system" based in the developing division of labor. The boundaries of system become established depending on the boundaries of the labor division efficiency. Each system necessarily possesses various kinds of institutions that control social activities. Wallerstein identifies different variations of these institutions, in particular, economic, political, socio-cultural, which operate simultaneously and can not be considered separately. In this approach, the most important technique is to change the object of analysis from "society" for "world system". This method does not reject the importance of the concept of "society", but argues that there is a more important level of social laws and interactions over the society and the State. Wallerstein cites the example of such historical systems as the Roman Empire, the capitalist world economy. Other authors rank among world-systems the Mongol Empire as well.
Interconnected world is a very recent phenomenon. It is still impossible to speak about an unified history even after the great discoveries and emergence of colonial empires. Even after had fallen into the dependence on European countries, the peoples continued to live within their culture preserving their concepts of time and the meaning of life. We can speak about the global community as a more or less integral phenomenon only after World War I, when the rules and institutions appear to regulate international relations in matters of war and peace, diplomacy, trade, human rights, etc. However, despite intense globalization, we have no confidence that the peoples will accept the common patterns of behavior.
For each nation, time flows in different ways depending on the state of social processes, mentality, cultural features. It is usually accepted in the international practice to divide the history of humanity into periods before and after the birth of Christ, to relate it to some technological features as the Stone, Bronze, Iron Ages, or our era; to commensurate it
with the European time scale distinguishing the ancient period, the Middle Ages, modern and contemporary times. Such a division is useful in the teaching of history, but of little use for research purposes.
The difficulty in determining the timescale manifests itself when comparing materials of historian, sociologist, anthropologist, economist. For the traditional historian, time is measured by events, he strings one event to another, collects documents, compares them, and tries to determine their authenticity, even though the documents may mean nothing to history. Events by themselves do not allow to separate the essential from the accidental. So, Lev Gumilev believed that the event represents a break of relations. We, in turn, are interested not only in rupture, but also in continuity, because the tissue of history is continuous (Lord Acton). Fernand Braudel paid special attention to the ambiguity of the concept of "event", but he limited its value with compressed periods of time. For him, the event is an explosion [1, p. 115] and the chronicle of events is a "foam of history", which hides the fundamental laws. Spectacular event can be significant, but can appear simply a scandalous news as well. In this case, a collection of documents becomes an empty directory, and a chain of events - a succession of accidents, an ordinary chronicle without significant effects. Sometimes a kaleidoscope of events, arranged in chronological order, gives the illusion of causality and regularities, but it can be just an illusion, a set of facts from a random collection of documents.
Braudel introduces the concept of a "long duration" as an alternative to chronological time of the "history of events". In this case, there can be detected permanent structures in the history as a system of rather sustainable relationships between social reality and the masses. He writes: "For historians the structure is an ensemble, architecture of social phenomena, but, above all, it is a historical reality, stable and slowly varying in time" [1, p. 124]. With this approach, the historian turns from the narrator and chronicler in the analyst, he is searching behind the documents the actual reality, which has continued to this day.
Sociologists and economists limit themselves with a short-term analytical materials and their research tasks are often opportunistic by nature. A sociologist can easily distract himself from the concept of time, an economist - to confine himself with short period of economic cycles. The concept of frozen time creates the illusion of scientific character representing an analogy with Newton's classical mechanics, which fascinate us with its logic, precision, and grace. Not coincidentally, when we talk about science, we mean a rational view of Newton and Descartes. However, it has become evident nowadays that classical mechanics is just a particular case, even in the physical nature, not to mention the complex systems. However, our way of thinking has been formed through the culture of mechanistic rationalism. How does this affect the humanities? Researchers approach to social phenomena exactly in the same way as to a mechanical system, excluding the time direction and historical disconti-
nuities. For example, we have in mind that the Tatars have always been the Tatars. Even though the whole of history, ethnography, literature, and language refute this axiom, we try to find an eternal and unchanging, arguing about the Tatars of the 7th century as if they were the direct ancestors of the Tatars of the 21th century. We accept this a priori, without evidence.
The scientific standards introduced by Newton and Roger Bacon, proved to be too attractive not only for researchers of the natural sciences. They have also been borrowed by humanitarians who, in one way or another, try to follow their older brothers - mathematics and physics, forgetting the qualitative difference between the objects of study.
Roughly speaking, there is no history in the Moon's motion around the Earth, which is described by the laws of classical mechanics, although the Moon eventually moves away from the Earth. Ilya Prigozhin writes: "In order to make meaningful the speaking about history, it is necessary to imagine that that was the case, could also not have happened; it is necessary that probable events would have played irremovable role. But a series of accidents are not the history all the more. It is also necessary that some of these events would be able to give way to opportunities that they cause. But of course, this excludes that they can explain these opportunities" [9, p. 11]. The complex social system can not be described in deterministic terms.
Research activity of humanitarians is hampered not only by the entrenched mechanistic thinking, but also by the nature of their work. A sociologist and an economist often perform a very specific task of a certain group of people, large corporations or governmental programs. Their task is to achieve a short-term success rather than lasting effects. To political scientist, the time scale of one year, terms of office of the deputy or president is quite sufficient for the analysis, because he considers the time as a simple sum of astronomical days. An economist, in turn, needs a longer time scale for understanding fluctuations in prices and bank interest rates, demographic processes, for the study of production, and for analysis of commodity circulation. A historian, in principle, should be distracted from the conjuncture and, therefore, he should not determine the time by events but associate it with the appearance and disappearance of phenomena, structure constancy, identification of the factors that determine the exact duration of the movement and the decline of national life.
The coordinate system can not be based on the approaches of the sociologist, political scientist or economist, because, in their view, the timescale seems to be frozen; and even referring to historical events, they consider it as a chronology, but not as the duration of time. Generally speaking, this scale should be the universal and initial category for all social sciences, since it is impossible to separate from each other the economy, politics, social and cultural life. In this case, only the historical understanding of time may act as a common denominator. Braudel writes:
"A historian can never escape the time. A sociologist, in turn, does not experience any difficulties in oblivion of time. He either removes in the moment of eternal present, where the time comes to a stop for him, or refers to a repetition of events that does not belong to any particular time. Thus, he escapes the time through two different mental processes. Using one of them, he restricts his analysis by the events in the strictest sense of the word. Resorting to the second, he chooses the point of view of quasi-eternal time. Does all of this legitimate? Exactly this question represents a genuine matter of dispute between historians and sociologists or even among historians with different convictions" [1, p. 124]. We can agree that the time of the historian should be the basis for all of the humanities; however, there remains the question of time scale, of its beginning for the phenomenon, which we are studying, about the significance and meaning of the concept of time for a specific people. We need the criteria for selection of the coordinate system and here we find ourselves between two extremes. On one side is located a moment, explosion, fact of chronicle as a certain "atomic" element of historical research, but on the other side is the long duration, which can be presented as arbitrarily extended; and, as Braudel said, it "can not be anything else than the time of the prophets". Wallerstein calls the first type of the time the "eventtime" and the second - the "infinite time" [12, p. 194]. In order to reconcile the extreme points of view, Braudel offers an alternative concept of "non-excluded medium", which includes the development of two new types of the time: the temporality of slowly changing sustainable structures and the cyclic temporality of conjunctural fluctuations within these structures. Wallerstein refers to these concept as the "structural time" and the "cyclic time".
Along with elucidation of the time scale, it is important to clarify the question of the origin of time. The European definition is not suitable for research of the history of Russia and, in particular, of the Tatars. The same applies to many other peoples and countries, because they had a different historical beginning and a different rate of movement. In such a way, the question arises about the Zero reference point. From which moment we need to begin the history of an individual people and in what space? How difficult and important it is, shows the Russian historiography, which does not know where to start its own history. Polyethnicity of the country, in which the people under democracy write their own history, accrue the problem of ethnic background of the Russians. In the case of the Tatars, their historiography is not identical in all with the official point of view expressed in the Russian history textbooks. This problem inevitably acquires a political and ideological character since it relates to the understanding of the State system. If Russia is a federal State, as it is written in the Constitution, if it is multiethnic and other languages along with Russian are approved to be official languages in the republics as its subjects, then the history of Russia should be multiethnic. In this case, there
is no clarity with the Zero reference point. Should we take as a basis the Slavs, Russians, Kievan Rus', or is it necessary to start with the ancient peoples who lived in this territory and already had their own statehood before the appearance of the Slavic-Russian principalities? Politicians do not have the answer to this question trying to continue the old historiography with a presentation of the Russian colonization of present territory [6, p. 50]. However, Russia has no future as a purely Russian unitary State. Political realities make more preferable the federalization of the country and, thus, the pluralistic presentation of the history.
Thus, the Zero space-time is not tied to the European system of coordinates. It is associated with ethnic origin and/or the emergence of the State, it takes into account the space of historical and present residence of the peoples. Exploring the origins of the people, we have to go deep into the stratum of centuries, where we are looking for an endonym of the people, cultural markers, and the evidence, by which we can judge, whether it is the same people or already another. It is obvious that the Tatars are the Turks and that the Turkic Khaganate was founded by Ashina clan of the Hunnish origin. And the Huns are associated with the Xiongnu or Hsiung-nu, etc. But such a chain does not explain anything to our lives today. In addition, this does not contain any evidence of preservation of the ethnic constant or cultural invariants. In this way, we simply want to withdraw the solution back to the centuries and bury it there referring to the insufficient study of ancient history, to the lack of documents and archaeological evidence. This is an escape from the problem rather than its solution. But even if we had the whole chain of events, documents, specified ethnonyms, examined language and culture; then, even in this case, the question arises about the Zero reference point. We can not begin history from the Neanderthals!
The history of nations and states is a constant absorption of some by others, integration of communities, their decay and establishment of new alliances. In this process, there is a steady flow periods of time, but there are also turbulent periods of breaking of the foundations. One phase of social change succeeds another. Moreover, some nations or states may disappear from the historical arena or they can create a new state and, in this case, there arises a new system of the space-time coordinates. In fact, there occurs a new phase characterized by qualitatively different social processes. Figuratively speaking, the old history dies and gives life to a new history.
In this chain of phasis' changing a new stage, demolition of old and emergence of new entities and relationships can be a consequence of both the external influences, such as war, and internal changes. External forces can not be regarded as extraneous, separated from internal processes, as environmental factors, such as a hurricane or flood. An interaction between internal and external factors is essential. If there is a conquest of the country, its success depends not only on the strength of external forces,
but also on the resistance ability of the internal forces. The nature of community interaction with the external world will be prepared by internal changes. One day, the smooth flow of social processes gives way to a rapid flow. This may be the result of an accident or of the impact of some kind of forces; but more important is the fact of changing. Deterministic causality fails due to the random fluctuations, and a new sequence of events begins. Geneticists talk about mutations that are difficult to predict, they are probabilistic. Ethnic changes may be caused by the border situation, split of ethnic group, or, on the contrary, by unification of different ethnic groups in a single one. The mixing of genotypes and cultures is facilitated by trade, wars, cultural influence, the power of the State, mixed marriages, etc. As a result, there comes a turning point, which Prigozhin called a bifurcation point, where it is basically impossible to predict, in which direction the further movement would occur: whether the state of the system will become chaotic or it will move to a new, more differentiated and higher level of order. Prigozhin and Stengers write: "There are significant fluctuations in the systems close to the bifurcation points. Such systems seem to "oscillate" before selecting one from several ways of evolution. And the famous law of great numbers ceases to have effect, if we understand it as usual. A small fluctuation can serve as the beginning of evolution in a new direction, which will dramatically change the entire behavior of a macroscopic system. There comes to mind inevitably an analogy with social phenomena and even with a history. Far from the thoughts to oppose the accident with necessity, we believe that both aspects play an important role in the description of the non-linear, strongly non-equilibrium systems" [8, p. 56]. In the humanities, we usually speak about social or scientific and technological revolution, economic crisis, paradigm shift, mentality, new era. The core of the phenomenon lies in the fact that the smooth flow of time ends and a new historical phase begins. Thus, the Great History appears as alternation both of stable periods with a single coordinate system of space-time dominated by deterministic laws, and of unstable phases close to the bifurcation points, where the system is facing a choice of one from several options for the future. The very possibility of any changes of the system suggests that these changes contain the germs of future scenarios.
An unstable social system contains within itself a certain "opposition" as an alternative that can benefit from a situation of instability for the realization of its own ideology. Such "dangerous" elements are contained in any system, but they can manifest themselves only during the periods of fracture or under the influence of unfavorable external factors. The instability itself can not be evaluated as a negative factor. Although any system tends to stability, however, it is the non-equilibrium state that determines the existence of dynamism. Otherwise, the system begins to stagnate transforming into a land of Nod, in that, what was called
"stagnation" in relation to the Soviet system. And therefore it will lose, sooner or later, in the competition with external forces. Moreover, it is the existence of alternative opportunity that saves the system in the times of chaos allowing to regroup the social forces on the basis of a new ideology.
Over time, life becomes more complicated and, therefore, the stability and simplicity become the exception rather than the rule. It is well known from the political history that the State with the rigidly constructed control system perishes sooner or later because of its inflexibility. Stability of the dynamic system, i.e. the stability of the second order in contrast to the "stagnation", appears due to the nonequilibrium state of the system, structure flexibility that allows the alternative forces to pick up the baton in time avoiding the transformation of community into relict civilization. Prigozhin and Stengers write: "Here we come to one of our main conclusions: at all levels, whether it is the level of macroscopic physics, the level of fluctuations, or the microscopic level, the source of order is represented by disequilibrium. Disequilibrium is what generates "order out of chaos" [8, p. 357]. This conclusion can be extended to the social systems, as indicated by the authors themselves: "The ideas, to which we paid quite a lot of attention in this book, the ideas of fluctuations' instability begin to penetrate into the social sciences. Now we know that human society represents an extremely complex system capable of undergoing a huge number of bifurcations. This is confirmed by the example of many cultures developed over a relatively short period of time in the humankind history. We know that such complex systems are highly sensitive to the fluctuations" [8, p. 386]. If we use the terminology of classical mechanics, we can affirm that the linear development periods are extremely rare in the social systems; they are exception rather than the rule.
Another consequence of the bifurcation, we can say of the "quantum leap", is that the system moves into a state of irreversible processes, in the state, when the future is not contained in present but it is radically different. This is not a transition from the present to the future with predictable consequences, but a revolution, which breaks the old to the ground and builds a new world. In other words, the transition over point of no return denies any hope for restoration. The time arrow no longer has a reverse. Episodes from the history of revolutions, when after radical reforms begins the restoration like the return of the Bourbons, should be regarded as a mere continuation of the revolution, which does not happen in a moment, as well demonstrated Pitirim Sorokin [see 7]. Deterministic judgments are applicable only within certain limits of the stable, sleepy state of society. In other respects, we have to use probabilistic judgments and consider, in the points of fracture, the non-linearity of the bunch, the fan of possible paths of evolution.
We naively believe that any event of the past had some effect on the subsequent event and, therefore, in one way or another, it is relevant to us. We proceed from the Newtonian determinism, which is applicable to
simple systems. To this is added the teleological idea of predestination. But this determinism "breaks" at the bifurcation point and, thus, the former causal link terminates. In other words, the history begins again. Only events of the last phase of space-time have a real impact on our contemporary life.
This theoretical approach leads to unexpected conclusions: the Zero point can be shifted in the historical timescale depending on the turning leap. We can consider any stable community as an autonomous phenomenon with its own system of coordinates. So, the Turkic Khaganate was founded as a union of various tribes in 551. This is the Zero point of the coordinate system. We can consider the previous history of the elements included in this State, but they are already carrying out other functions. As a phenomenon, the Turkic Khaganate begins to exist only from the 6th century. Prior to that there was a different history of nomadic and, in particular, Hunnish steppe empires. Certainly, the Turks borrowed from previous empires the language, elements of culture, similar methods of housekeeping, military regime, and administration. However, the Turkic Khaganate became a qualitatively new State system that reformatted old elements in the new matrix introducing a new discourse of behavior.
Certainly, with means of a thin analysis, we can try to trace the independent "Tatar" ethnic history in the various states. For this, we need to bind our reasoning to the ethnonym as a starting point. The Terkhin inscription states that "when these writings were being written - oh my Khan! - this was attended by the eminents of my Heavenly Khan, the eight-tribal Tatars, seventeen Az Buyruks, the Senguns and the thousand detachment from (the people) of Tongra, the Uighur people with my Tegins" [5, p. 43-44]. Initially, the Tatars were one of the active historical actors involved in the formation of the Turkish people. However, there were plenty of Tatar tribes and each of them had its own self-designation. We can discuss the history of "white", "black", and "wild" Tatars. The Tatars, which established the Kimak Khaganate with Kipchaks, entered the history as Kimaks. Based on these and other evidences, we can say only that various Tatar tribes were integral part of the various states. However, this is not a proper history of the Tatars but, it can be said, historical vicissitudes of the ethnonym. The ancient and modern Tatars are connected with each other only by self-designation. The history of ethnonym is fascinating, but what can we learn today from its past? We can only create confusion in the modern history as it happened with the poly-ethnonym of "Bulgars".
Thus, we came to the idea of Zero-point of history, which is associated with the chrono-space. Of course, the chrono-space itself has periods of more rapid or stable movement. When the movement is linear, there can be the points of return, i.e. what is called the restoration, cyclic development, etc. In order to avoid a confusion between historical time and existing periodization, we can divide it into phasis. Each new phase can be
considered as an independent history with its own system of coordinates. In this case, the Zero point will shift as we move from the depths of ages to our times. Certainly, we can deepen the history up to the Neanderthals, but only such period remains meaningful, which is associated with semantic structures, discourses of behavior. Altaic roots of the Tatars can be easily proven at the academic level. Moreover, these roots were quite visible in the state forms of Turkic or Kimak khaganates. However at the psychological level, this is too distant history for the Tatars, which is not fixed in the motivation. The legends preserved the memory about this, but they were transformed and arranged under the new situation with reference to the territory of contemporary residence [see the legends about Alp in 14]. For ethnic thinking there is no an abstract territory, it must be linked to its current existence, otherwise it starts to carry a legendary character. There is no infinitely deep history for ethnic consciousness. It can be very distant. For example, the Tatars perceive rather painfully the events of 1552 associated with the capture of Kazan. Despite the fact that this event is remote chronologically, it is associated with the loss of statehood. Therefore, this event is quite sensitive in the present. The history could be very close chronologically, but already become legendary. Edward Evans-Pritchard writes about the Nuer people of Southern Sudan: "How shallow is the Nuer perception of time can be judged by the fact that the tree, under which mankind was born, was still standing a few years ago in the western part of the country" [2, p. 100]. For many peoples the choice of the time reference point is determined by the value that it has for the person in everyday life.
Now we try to apply aforesaid to the history of the Tatars and Tatarstan. We are interested in all what once happened in the territory of republic: prehistoric campsites, the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages. All these chronological years are the subject of archaeology but not of history, because it is difficult to speak in such antiquity about any community as an object of historical research. Neither definition of the people nor, especially, of the State could be applied to those periods of human life.
The appearance of the Huns in Tatarstan changes the object of the study because the Huns already represent a union of tribes with a strong statehood and uncertain boundaries of the residence. Nomadic empire uses the space differently from the sedentary states. This does not mean that there is no concept of boundaries among the nomads. The boundaries not only have a clear configuration, but are also extremely important for the whole economy, because of their relation with pastures, on which the power of the cavalry depends as well as quantity of cattle. The territory of present Tatarstan was drawn into the world of the nomadic culture of the Huns followed by the Turks, but as an element of a huge space rather than an independent community.
Disintegration of the Turkic khaganate and establishment of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria can be considered a point of bifurcation. The ethnic
elements included in the new State remained largely unchanged. They regrouped and built a new administrative structure. It is not difficult to trace the succession of a new State from the Turkic Khaganate, but that is another history with its own system of space-time coordinates. Rivers (Kama, Volga, Vyatka) as the most important trade routes, determine the singularity of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria. Here the nomadic culture was connected with the settled one. This was a prerequisite for determining the nature of the future Golden Horde State connecting the steppe by the rivers as paths (land and water) of transportation. On this connection was also build the future Mongol Empire.
We can consider the year 922 AD as a Zero reference point, when Islam became the official religion of Volga-Kama Bulgaria that ceased to pay tribute to the Khazar Khaganate. And, most importantly, a young State received international recognition, which was reflected in the fact of the arrival of the Ibn Fadlan's embassy. The phasic chrono-space of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria ends in 1236, when it was included in the ulus of Jochi.
Certainly, the Bulgarian State had a strong influence on the formation of not only the Tatars, but also of the entire Volga region. However, the Bulgarian roots do not reflect real history, but perform the function of the myth about the origin. This myth is still a myth, despite the fact that it is very plausible and authentic scientifically. The adoption of Islam, first Sahabah, Ibn Fadlah's journey are perceived as the legends. Even when we turn to the image of the Great Bolghar, we have before our eyes the city that was built by Batu khan as the first camp of the Golden Horde. The actual memory of Bulgarian roots appeared in the 19th century in parallel with the emergence of a national (in the European sense) consciousness. The Bulgarian theme became relevant only after Marjani had justified the local roots of Islam and created the proper Tatar educational system in order to write integral history of the Tatars. Kursavi, Utyz Imyani, Marjani, and others were disappointed in Bukhara as the center of religious knowledge and set themselves the task to create their own system of education that could meet the interests of Russian Tatars. Both the emphasis on voluntary and independent adoption of Islam by the Tatars in Bolghar and the interpretation of Kazan as a "New Bolghar" ("Bolghar al-Jadid") contained actual rejection of the prevailing at the time orientation to Central Asia. Michael Kemper writes: "As a result, Bukhara began to be regarded as antithesis of a new emerging culture. In this process, the "Bulgarian" ulema of the 19th century, reinterpreting Islam, sought to the realization of its true essence, while Tatar intellectuals emerged in the early 20th century, developed a national and secular ideology based on the European model, which subsequently focused on the ideas estranged from the Central Asian traditions" [4, p. 168]. Utyz Imyani reflected in his work the disappointment experienced
by Tatar youth in the center of education - Bukhara. The image of the "Holy Bolghar" carried out a symbolic function.
It was the Golden Horde as a powerful State with a remarkable system of communication, migration of huge human resources for thousands of kilometers, and extensive trade, that caused severe "mutations" in the ethnic terms. There was a huge mixing of ethnic groups. Certainly, continuity with the previous states had been preserved. A direct borrowing of many elements from the Turkish culture is evident not only in the art of war or economic management, but also in the language and culture. However, dramatic changes are also indisputable.
At first glance, the collapse of the Golden Horde and formation of many of the Tatar khanates reflect the beginning of a new phase in history. However, it is not the case. If the Golden Horde would really be destroyed from the outside by another State, that had another administrative system and culture, then we could talk about a new phase. But the Muscovite State to which some try to attribute the honor of destruction of the Golden Horde, never was at war with latter. Therefore, the time of the Tatar khanate was only the inertial period, it was the epilogue of the Golden Horde.
Tatar factor disappears from the foreign policy along with the fall of the Crimean Khanate, but in the internal affairs the Tatars displayed most lively activity, especially in the Time of Troubles. This was associated not only with the Kasimov khanate, Romanov Tatars, Cossacks, but also with many nobles of Tatar origin, among which there were quite remarkable political figures, such as Semion Bikbulatovich.
Subsequently, the Tatar influence was more pronounced through the peasant uprisings against the Christianization. How greatly considerable it was indicates the fact that Catherine II was forced to promulgate the decree on religious tolerance. Along with capitalism, influence of the Tatars moves to another sphere. In this case, a detailed analysis of these transitions is not as important to us as their continuity, which indicates that the Tatars did not drop out from the history of Russia. Put simply, their influence sometimes diminished, sometimes amplified. We have no reason to interrupt the thread of historical narrative since the emergence of Batu khan on the Volga banks.
The Golden Horde matter is more complicated and not as straightforward as it might seem at first glance. The matter is that the Zero point of Russian history also begins with the Golden Horde. Kievan Rus' is interesting only as a place of acceptance of Orthodoxy, as the idea of statehood; it had no effect on the appearance of Russia. In this sense, it represents the "legendary" period of Russian history. Also other principalities could not be the basis of the Russian statehood. Muscovy was merely the great principality. The territory and, in part, the culture of the Golden Horde became the base for the future of Russia, and therefore the appearance of the Tatars in the European part became a bifurcation point
for Russian and many other nations. On a place of the Muscovite State, that gathered around itself a number of principalities, appeared Russia, which became the State along with the conquest of the Kazan Khanate. But the idea of the Great State was born in the depths of the Golden Horde, when Moscow began to grow as the financial and ideological center. N.S. Trubetskoy writes about the Russian principalities as about the provinces of a large State: "It is known for certain, that Russia was involved in the overall financial system of the Mongol State. A number of Russian words relating to the financial economy and continuing to be used in the Russian language even today, are the words borrowed from the Mongol or Tatar (e.g. kazna, kaznachey, den 'ga, altyn, tamozhnya). This fact suggests that the Mongol financial system in Russia was not only adopted and established, but survived the Mongol yoke" [10]. It is important to note such factor as the model of statehood, which became the ideological core of the actual Russian idea. Trubetskoy continues: «Of course, the inclusion of Russia in the Mongol statehood could not be only an external and reduced to a simple extension to Russia of the Mongol administrative system that prevailed in other areas and provinces of the Mongol Empire. Russia had to accept to a certain extent the very spirit of the Mongol statehood". It was this spirit that actually became the Russian idea, coupled with Byzantine traditions of Orthodoxy through the activities of St. Sergius of Radonezh, the founder of the main center of religious movement - the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Although Russia formally appeared after the capture of the Kazan Khanate, to which Trubetskoy adds also the Astrakhan and Siberian khanates, however, the ideology was born in Moscow as a protectorate of the Golden Horde. In the newly appeared Russia neither the administration, nor the finances, nor the means of communication had nothing in common with the former Russian principalities. The State structures continued the Golden Horde traditions until the reforms of Peter I. Therefore, the Golden Horde should be seen as the Zero point in the history of the Russian statehood. Its vast territory, multiethnic composition, and character of statehood emerged from the Moscow's hegemony on the Horde spaces.
Given the dwelling space of Tatar population and its evolution within Russia, it can be argued that the Zero point of Tatar history, which conveyed the cultural invariants until today, begins in the Golden Horde. Neither in the Turkic khaganate nor in the Bulgar State, but namely in the Golden Horde.
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About the author: Rafail' Sibgatovich Khakimov - Director, Sh.Marjani Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan (AS RT), Vice-president of AS RT, Academician of AS RT, Dr. Sci. (History) (420014, Kremlin, entrance 5, Kazan, Russian Federation); [email protected]
НУЛЕВАЯ ТОЧКА ИСТОРИЧЕСКОГО ВРЕМЕНИ
Р.С. Хакимов
(Институт истории им. Ш. Марджани Академии наук Республики Татарстан)
Исторические исследования предполагают некое начало отсчета пространства-времени - Нулевую точку координат. В силу бифуркации в Нулевой точке течение социальных процессов резко меняется и детерминистская причинность заменяется на вероятностную. В силу этого меняются структура социальных отношений, форма государственности, течение этнических процессов. Появляется новый дискурс поведения народов.
Применительно к истории татар и Татарстана такими точками бифуркации становилось время образования:
1) Тюркского каганата, который появился в VI веке и представлял собой качественно новую государственную систему, переформатировавшую прежние элементы в рамках новой матрицы, с новым дискурсом поведения;
2) Волжско-Камской Болгарии, чья особенность определялась наличием рек (Камы, Волги, Вятки) в качестве важнейших торговых путей. Здесь кочевая культура соединялась с оседлой и ислам стал официальной религией в 922 году;
3) и Золотой Орды, мощного государства, с замечательной системой коммуникации, передвижением громадных людских ресурсов на тысячи километров, обширной торговлей, которые, в совокупности, привели к серьезным «мутациям» в этническом плане.
Учитывая пространство проживания татар, эволюцию в рамках России, можно утверждать, что Нулевая точка татарской истории, донесшая культурные инварианты до сегодняшнего дня, начинается в Золотой Орде. Не в Тюркском каганате и не в Булгарском государстве, а именно в Золотой Орде.
Российская империя, несмотря на радикальные перемены, не сумела превратить татар в россиян, а потому современные татары сохранили золо-тоордынские традиции в качестве культурного инварианта.
Ключевые слова: татары, Волжско-Камская Болгария, Золотая Орда, Россия, нулевая точка истории, историческое время.
Сведения об авторе: Рафаиль Сибгатович Хакимов - директор Института истории им. Ш. Марджани АН РТ, вице-президент АН РТ, академик АН РТ, доктор исторических наук (420014, Кремль, подъезд 5, Казань, Российская Федерация); [email protected]
