Ethnicity in the City: Tatar Urban Youth Culture in Kazan, Tatarstan

Abstract

In this article, the city and the urban space shall be understood as a political platform, where identities and powers are bargained, and as a screen on which they are projected. In this context, I will reflect on the strategies of identity management ‘from below’ employed by Tatar young people in Kazan and on their attempt to build a ‘Tatar urban youth culture’. These identity strategies are mainly oriented against the ‘Russian other’, a decadent consumerist West and an ignorant rural Tatar culture and their main issue is the ‘repossessing’ of Kazan and the Tatarisation of the city. Such strategies namely include the use of the Tatar language in predominantly Russophone public spheres, the introduction of Tatar folkloristic elements in music and fashion as well as the appeal to a (lost) Tatar urban culture associated with an enlightened approach to Islam and to the pre-revolutionary Tatar intelligentsia. Tatar youth scenes thus use ethnicity as a resource in the linguistic, religious, historic and cultural (re)appropriation of the urban space, which in turn has to be understood as a symbolic political act in a specific historical as well as ‘glocal’ context. Thus, this article can be seen as a contribution to a critical approach towards cosmopolitanism introducing alternative concepts to reflect relationships, norms and values in urban life.

The Local Dynamics of Nation Building: Identity Politics and Constructions of the Russian Nation in Kazan and Ekaterinburg

“…The Forum strives to find creative ways to make Tatar identity appealing and relevant to young people, responding to concerns about the increasing dominance of the Russian language in the region and a perception of Tatar culture as vulnerable. In doing so, it supports an emerging Tatar urban youth culture that has become prominent in Kazan in recent years (Poliakov, Omelchenko, and Garifzyanova 2020;Suleymanova 2018;Friedli 2012Friedli , 2018. Rather than nesting identities under a statist Russian identity, the Youth Forum's narratives construct boundaries between Russia's (ethnic) nations and identify a need to keep a sense of them as separate.…”

“…In this view, Tatar identity is not safe under Russia’s wing but rather needs to become competitive in its own right. As Friedli notes, “Tatar urban youth see the city not as a cosmopolis where identities are merged and multiplied and boundaries blurred but as a place of distinction and competition for recognition” (2012, 14). In reclaiming spaces in the city as sites of Tatar revival, the Forum contributes to an alternative placemaking process in which the local banalization of Russian culture is questioned and disrupted.…”