Iskander lives in Cheboksary, the capital of the Republic of Chuvashia. One of Russia’s 22 national republics, Chuvashia joined the Grand Duchy of Moscovy in the time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. It is home to the Turkic Chuvash people whose language and culture have special…
Category: Russia
Russian/Tatar couple on a night out in the twilight hours of mid-summer Kazan in the Republic of Tatarstan.
Damir is working for a company producing Tatar traditional dresses and tubeteikas (traditional Tatar heads for men) for many years. According to him, Putin and other important politicians have bought their tubeteikas and worn them on public occasions in Tatarstan. While he himself prefers the drab post-Soviet uniform of older…
Erischat works in the Märcani Mosque in the old Tatar quarter of Kazan. He says that his family always kept their faith, also during Soviet times, when it was hard to be openly religious. Indeed, religious practice of Muslims as well as Christians was suppressed by the communist authorities and…