“National Women’s Issue”: Introduction

The article opens a special issue of the journal “Historical Ethnology”, dedicated to the Tatar woman. Its authors, who acted as compilers and scientific editors of the issue, substantiate the research focus, chronology and source base of the published materials. The emphasis on Tatar women as an object of a special study is explained by their active social and professional stand during the period of the Russian Empire and the USSR. The coverage of these two historical periods made it possible to identify the ethnospecific logic of integrating Tatar women into large-scale political and social phenomena. The bulk of the articles included in the issue are accompanied by the publication of materials from state archives, ego-documents, literary works, articles from Tatar newspapers and magazines of the pre-revolutionary period, inaccessible to most researchers. Their introduction into scientific circulation, according to the authors of the introductory article, strengthens the possibilities of a diachronic approach to the analysis of the ethnosocial field from a historical perspective. Giving a brief overview of the articles in the issue, the authors of the introduction come to the conclusion that in the era of bourgeois reforms, along with the traditional care for family and children for women, her role in the society is strengthening; her desire for education and educational activities is intensifying. With the advent of the Soviet system, which proclaimed gender equality of the sexes, the burden on women increases both in their personal life and in the public sphere. At the same time, Tatar women retain their most important purpose – educating and bringing up the younger generation.