The other main means the Soviets employed to consolidate power, were the cultural revolution and the dissemination of the Soviet schooling system. As the Bagulals were considered to have no future as a nation, the Soviet authorities paid no attention to creating a written language and a schooling programme based on the mother tongue. Instead Avar school curriculum was taken over. In the first five forms the language used for teaching was Avar and later in the school Russian. Constant brainwashing by the Soviets led to a change in the Bagulals’ way of thinking, the results of which became obvious only after World War II. Among the younger generation there is a tendency to favour Soviet customs. The organic link between the national traditions has disappeared, and were maintained it is simply from habit. There have been even greater changes in the material culture which has been greatly influenced by the Soviet form of European urban culture. This prevails in clothing, household equipment, furniture, food and architecture. National costumes are no longer in everyday use.
The problem of language is of great importance, as the Bagulals’ mother tongue is the only important characteristic preserving their national identity. In the present-day Bagulal society the mother tongue plays a secondary role, being only spoken at home. The language used in public is Avar. Education in a foreign language and the constant weakening of national traditions are two of the reasons why Bagulal is becoming extinct.
BARABA TATARS
Self-designation: the name for themselves, baraba — parabaa, originates in the name of their territory, the Steppe of Baraba. The name of the steppe as well as the tribe has been explained by the Turkish verb par-, the negative form of which is parma — meaning ‘not to go forward’. This is an explanation the Tatars themselves offer.
Family names, marking their descent, have been of great importance for the Tatars, e.g. Terena, Tara, Barama, Kelebe, Longa, Lovei. Since the 18th century the name shop-ierlyhalk (i.e. indigenous) has been in use, in order to distinguish the Barabas from the resettled Volga Tatars.
The name of the Baraba Tatars has become common through its use by the Russians since the end of the 16th century. It is possible that there might be earlier records of them by Arab merchants and travellers.
Habitat. The Baraba Tatars live in the district of the Chany lakes in western Siberia and on the Steppe of Baraba between the Rivers Irtysh and Om. Administratively they belong to Russia, to the Novosibirsk region (the districts of Baraba, Chany, Kuybyshev, Kargat, Kyshtov etc.), but to some extent also to the district of Tevriz in the Omsk region. The former compact settlement has been broken and the Tatar villages are jumbled up with Russian, Ukrainian, Komi and other villages.
Population. Data for the Baraba Tatars comes mainly from censuses:
| 1854 | 4,946 |
| 1883 | 4,459 |
| 1897 | 4,433 |
| 1926 | 7,528 |
| 1959 | c. 8,000 |
| 1970 | ? |
| 1979 | c. 8,000 |
| 1989 | ? |
The postwar figures are only approximations. The number of Tatars in the whole of western Siberia has been estimated at around 103,000 (1970) and 150,000 (1990).
Anthropologically the Baraba Tatars represent a mixture of two races — Uralic and Mongolian. As the Baraba Tatars have many tribes (Talangot, Pimai, Yryspai, Polmak, Misheri, Karga etc.), their appearance depends greatly on their descent and tribal mix. The majority are related to the Mongols judging by their appearance; they are of short stature, with a dark complexion. Other Tatars, however, are of tall stature, with comparatively light skin and hair.
The language of the Baraba Tatars belongs to the group of Turkic languages and dialects spoken in Siberia, which have the characteristic traits of the Volga-Tatar and Kazakh-Altaic (Kipchak) language group. Earlier records indicate that the Baraba language used to have dialects. P. S. Pallas, V. F. Miller and J. G. Georgi considered Baraba to be a separate language, but since V. Radlov it has been treated as a dialect. The present-day Baraba language has evolved to a common tongue and it is difficult to distinguish different subdialects. Among the dialects of Siberian Tatars the Baraba dialect is the transition form between the dialects of Tom and Tobol-Irtysh, with a tendency towards the latter due to its Kipchak features.
Language relations. There are long-standing ties with the Ugrians and the Samoyeds, but they have no had a deep effect on the language of the Baraba Tatars. It has been influenced more by the Kalmyks (16—17th cent.), the Russians (since the end of the 18th century) and, most notably, by the Tatars resettled from the Volga. Their language usage has levelled the differences between the Barabian subdialects and introduced its own elements. TatarRussian bilingualism was already in existence in the 19th century, but it became more widespread in the 1930s. Today all the Baraba Tatars are fluent in Russian and it is the dominant language in social spheres. The native tongue is spoken mainly by the older generations.
History. The Kipchak tribes, who lived in western Siberia in the 12th and 13th centuries and partly also west of the Ural mountains, are considered to be the historical ancestors of the Baraba Tatars. In the 13th century Genghis Khan conquered all the Kipchak tribes and in his khanate, later the White Horde, the ethnic Turkic features became mixed with Mongolian ones. In the 15th century the khanate of Siberia was founded, with a centre in Chingi-tura (later Tyumen) and after that in Isker (near the present-day Tobolsk). The 15th and 16th centuries were a comparatively good times for the Tatars. They had good trade relations with China, Mongolia, Moscow and Bukhara and they received taxes from the Ugrians and Samoyeds. The Tatar epic that relates tales of the Khans Yedigey and Tokhtamysh dates from this period. The ancestors of the Baraba Tatars lived in the eastern part of the khanate and formed a somewhat marginal ethnic group. As they belonged to the khanate of Siberia they had to pay taxes to the Kalmyks. When the Russian troops, led by Domozhirov, came in 1595, the Baraba Tatars sided with them in order to attack the
Kalmyks. When the Russians left, Kuchum took its revenge for the Baraba alliance with the Russians. In the 17th century they were under Kazakh rule, then in the 18th century the Russians came again. The Kazakhs, as well as the Barabas, were subdued and united with the Russian empire as tax-paying foreigners. This also marked the beginning of Russian deportations to Baraba.
The first Russian settlements were founded as military strongholds (1722 Ust-Tara, Kainsk, Kargat) or by deported peasants. At the beginning of the 18th century the Old Believers, who had escaped from Russia, came to the region of Baraba, in the 1840—1850s there was a mass deportation of peasants from the regions of V oronezh, Tambov, Pensa, Ryazan and others; and at the end of the century some voluntary resettlers arrived. Kainsk became the centre for political exiles in western Siberia and the Tatars became an ethnic minority.
In 1822 an act by M. Speransky, regarding the non-Russian population, was passed. In this act the Baraba Tatars were marked as locals. The act also fixed taxes and tributes, which were too high and often resulted in the sons inheriting their fathers’ debts. In the 19th century the autonomy of the Baraba Tatars was eroded by numerous new settlers and the pressure of the Russian administrative system with its high taxes.
One source of