brought forward at the 1946 conference. He denounced as groundless the ar-guments of Smirnov and Khairi Gimadi (a historian from Kazan) for the exist-ence of a Bulghar principality within the Golden Horde, which was to bridge the pre-Mongolian Bulghars and the Kazan Tatars. He asserted that the Tatars had their origin in Tatar (in his opinion, Turkic-speaking) tribes of Mongolia, who mixed with Bulghar and other tribes during the reigns of the Golden Horde and the Kazan khanate. It was not so dangerous to denounce Bulghar autoch-tonism after Stalins criticism of Marr, but the anti-Golden-Horde campaign since 1944 was still in force. The importance that Safargaliev attributed to the Golden Horde (although he differentiated Tatar tribes from Mongol rulers of the Horde) and his emphasis on the similarity between the Tatar communities (the Volga, Kasimov, Astrakhan, Siberian, Tatars) on the territory of the former Golden Horde were politically problematic, and Gimadi refuted him.64 Safar-galievs relatively free position may be explained in such a manner that schol-ars outside Tatarstan were not subject to the control of the Kazan bureaucrats, who were very sensitive about the implementation of policies of the Union leadership.