The Tatars of Siberia learning the Russian language in the late 19^th – early 20^th centuries

This article is devoted to the history of Russian language learning by the Tatars of Siberia in the late 19th–early 20th centuries. In accordance with the Rules on Measures for the Education of the Inorodets (national minority) Inhabiting Russia, Approved by His Majesty on March 26, 1870, schools were established where Muslims learned Russian and other secular disciplines as part of the primary school curriculum. The Tomsk Russian-Tatar School was the first to be established. It was opened in the 1875-1876 academic year. With the development of Jadid education in Siberia, from the end of the 19th century and especially after the Russian Revolution of 1905-1907, the Russian language was introduced in madrasahsand maktabs. The most important phenomenon was the creation of women’s maktabs, where, along with religious subjects, girls began to study secular disciplines. At the same time, Russian-Tatar schools were created in accordance with the education reform carried out by P. Stolypin, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire, and the introduction of a number of new Rules of the Ministry of Public Education (MNE) on the education of non-Russian peoples. In Siberia, the most significant examples were the Russian-Tatar school in Tyumen, opened in 1913, and the Tomsk two-class Russian-Tatar school, opened in 1913 in memory of the centenary of the Patriotic War of 1812. Along with education for Tatar children in Tomsk, courses for adults were run in Tomsk from 1909. In 1916, training courses were organized in Tomsk, where Muslim youths (primarily Tatars and Kazakhs) could prepare for a teacher’s certificate and a certificate of maturity exams. Russian Muslim libraries played an important role in familiarizing the Tatar population with Russian culture. Along with the periodicals and books in Tatar, other Turkic languages of the peoples of Russia and Arabic, there were periodicals and books in Russian. Thus, by the revolution of 1917, a whole set of Tatar Muslim educational and cultural-educational institutions had emerged in Siberia, which made it possible to study and further improve the level of proficiency in the Russian language and literature.