History of Tatarstan - Soviet Rule

Soviet Rule

On 27 May 1920 the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (TASSR) of the RSFSR was declared. However, in the late 1920s the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin began to place restrictions on the use of the Tatar language (among many other minority languages in the Soviet Union). The development of national culture declined significantly. The Tatar alphabet was switched twice (to the Latin alphabet and then to Cyrillic). From the 1930s through the 1950s, Tatar-language press, cultural institutions, theatres, national schools and institutes gradually disappeared, as education was required to be conducted in the Russian language. Industrialization, the rise of the collective farms kolektivizatsiya and persecutions such as the Great Purge contributed to this decline.

Religion was also repressed. At first, Soviet rule favored mostly the Eastern Orthodox Church, and some Islamic religious streams were preserved (see Jadidism, Wäisi movement), but later they also were repressed. Some theologians of Jadidism (which was liberal to Soviet rule at first) escaped to Turkey or Egypt.

More than 560,000 Tatarstan soldiers took part in World War II and more than 300,000 of them were killed. Many Soviet plants and their workers, as well as the Soviet Academy of Sciences, were evacuated to Tatarstan. During the war large petroleum deposits were discovered. During their exploration, Tatarstan became one of the most industrially developed regions of the Soviet Union.

In 1960s-1970s Tatar ASSR's industry was developed not only in the petrol sector; a major car plant, KamAZ was built in Naberezhnye Chelny, making this city become the second largest in the republic. Other major cities, built and developed in those years are Nizhnekamsk and Almetyevsk.