«I Know You as a Venerable Scholar and a Great Connoisseur of Oriental Nationalities, a Defender of Their Interests in the Academic Field...». Scholars and Educators G. Rakhim and G. Saadi (Unpublished Letters to Academician V.V. Bartold (1927–1929))

The period from the late 19th to the first third of the 20th century witnessed a revival and advance of national science, culture, and art. It was also marked by a growing sense of national identity and a historical and cultural pursuit by the Tatar intelligentsia. In the 1920s, the formation and development of national humanities research in Kazan were driven by the efforts of dedicated Tatar scholars and educators. Among the most prominent figures were Gali Rakhim (Mukhametgali Mukhametshakirovich Gabdrakhimov) (1892–1943)–a writer, poet, literary historian, and folklorist, Gabdrakhman Saadi (Saadi Gabdrakhman Gainanovich (1889–1956)–a literary critic and orientalist. They were the pioneers of the Tatar Renaissance and contributed substantially to the development of scholarly studies in history, literature, linguistics, and archeography of the Turkic peoples, with a particular focus on the Tatar people. Engaged in solving a variety of problems, they were the encyclopedists who determined modern academic and pedagogical trends in many university and educational centers of Kazan during the 1920s. This article considers their previously unknown epistolary heritage: one letter of G. Rakhim (1927) and two letters of G. Saadi (1928 and 1929) to V.V. Bartold, an outstanding orientalist and academician, from his personal collection stored in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg Branch. These letters provide clear and strong evidence of the enduring professional and personal contacts between the Tatar scholars and leading Russian orientalists in the late 1920s.