SUMMARY:

This article is concerned with the effects of policies on the Tatar alphabet in the 1920’s on the cultural memory of the Tatars. It begins with a discussion of the concept of cultural memory as developed by the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann. A short chronological introduction to the history of Tatar alphabet policy in the 1920’s follows. This introduction describes the main events that lead to the replacement of the Arab-based alphabet, used by Tatars for centuries, by the Latin script. The article treats several aspects of the relations between the reform in alphabets and cultural memory. Areas examined include cultural and religious memory (i.e., exactly which cultural memories were attacked and who tried to defend which aspects of memory); issues of canon and censorship (how to intentionally change the cultural memory of a given group of people and the instruments of creating cultural memory); and issues of ethnic identity and script, which analyzes the effects of memory politics in the context of the creating of new group identities. This last section specifically deals with the creation of a Tatar nation in place of a pan-Islamic or pan-Turkic identity. As a whole, the article serves two purposes. First, it scrutinizes the reform of the Tatar alphabet in order to criticize superficial judgments of that policy. Second, the paper bases its concept of cultural memory on methodological individualism and thereby demonstrates that cultural memory is not a given recollection, but always object of strategic, intentional action.