Ethnic histories and histories of the national republics were first compiled
mainly on the initiative of ethnically Russian and Jewish scholars from
Moscow and Leningrad. Their opinions per se had nothing to do with the nationalism
of the Volga-Ural or Central Asian peoples. However, because Soviet
policy promoted the growth of research organizations of ethnically non-Russian
researchers in the national republics, the study of ethnic history had to be
also ìnativizedî sooner or later. This could add elements of nationalism or, at
least, national self-consciousness, to discourses on ethnic history.
In the Volga-Ural region, where ethnic historiography had already a long
tradition, such tendencies surfaced immediately. In 1950, a Tatar historian from