The Lay of the Historic Land

Abstract

In the popular Russian film about the famous icon painter, “Andrei Rubliov,” we hear a shout and read the subtitle “The Tatars are coming! The Tatars are coming!” Soon, a band of men on horseback gallops across the steppe, barges through the gates of a small city, and proceeds to stab, shoot, and lop off the heads of the priests, monks, and passers-by it encounters. The year is 1408 and the Tatars, along with the Russian Prince who invited them, enter the cathedral without dismounting. The worshipers scatter or are killed as the Tatars set the ancient building and its priceless icons on fire. We are led to believe by their satisfied smiles that the Tatars derive pleasure from this—it’s what they do. Wild, dark-skinned, blood-thirsty, barbarian: these are some of the images that filter through the Russian imagination at the mention of Crimean Tatars. Vilified and demonized over the centuries, the Tatars are associated with the Golden Horde of Chingis Khan and charged with raiding Russia, especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The raiding culminated when they reached Moscow and set fire to the outskirts of the city.1 While awareness that the Crimean Tatars are bearers of an ancient, highly developed culture has grown, the old stereotypes and images continue to circulate, fueled by Soviet-era representations of Tatars as “traitors” who sold the Motherland.