SUMMARY:

The article deals with the Tatarism-Bulgharism dispute that dominated the academic and popular landscape of Tatarstan in the late 1980’s and the early 1990’s. Beginning in 1988, the Bulgharists (who were often self-made academics) demanded that the ethnonym of the Tatar people be changed to Bulghar while their opponents demanded that the Golden Horde be rehabilitated as a manifest act to defend the traditional ethnonym. The Tatarism-Bulgharism dispute lasted for almost a decade and saw its participants draw on a wide range of scientific and non-scientific fields – from linguistics and history to political considerations. Political arguments often played the dominating role. The Bulgharists claimed that that the Tatars’ traditional ethnonym was too stigmatized and that Tatars had come to be ashamed of themselves, while the Tatarists preceived political aims behind the propagation of Bulgharist views of history. After heated debates, the dispute has lost its strength and most proponents from both sides – apart from a few Bulgharist extremists outside the academic field – seem to be prepared to integrate both the history of the Bulghars and the Golden Horde into the accepted Tartar historical heritage.
In the end, the dispute has left its traces in the institutional landscape of historical research in Tatarstan: the founding of the Institute of History of Tatarstan, a branch of the Russian Academy of Science, in 1996 can be directly linked to the Bulgharist-Tatarism dispute. Moderate advocates of the Tatarist point of view now dominate the historical landscape in Tartarstan.