Bulat Rakhimzianov
“The Golden Horde Revisited? History and Regional Identity Politics in the late USSR and post-Soviet Russia (Republic of Tatarstan), 1985-2018”
Bulat Rakhimzianov is a PhD candidate at UCD's School of History and specialises in the field of history politics, with a particular focus on Eastern Europe, namely, the Republic of Tatarstan, a part of the Russian Federation. This geographical center of Russia had historically had a difficult relationship with Moscow – after the conquest of 1552, the Tatars were treated as a vanquished people in the Russian Empire and USSR. Bulat’s thesis examines changing depictions of the Golden Horde – the medieval polity that existed on the territories of contemporary Russia and Kazakhstan from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries – in historical narratives produced in the Republic of Tatarstan from 1985, the start of perestroika in the USSR, to 2018, when Russian federal law prohibited the obligatory study of national languages in national republics, which marked the end of
even symbolic autonomy for national minorities in Russia. The thesis explores and seeks to explain the nuances of these shifting historiographical interpretations, and in particular, the ways in which these histories affected, and were affected by, policy making processes.
E-mail: bulat.rakhimzianov@ucdconnect.ie
PhD Supervisor: (opens in a new window)Assoc. Prof. Jennifer Keating
Research Interests: Politics of History, Medieval Eurasian History.
Time Period: 1985 - present; 1300 - 1800
Academic Positions:
2023-2024: Non-Resident Fellow at the Global Academy, The Russia Program at George Washington
University.
2021-2024: Ph.D. Student, School of History, University College Dublin (Dublin, Ireland).
2008-2020: Senior Scholarly Researcher, Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the
Republic of Tatarstan (Kazan’, Russia).
2009-2010: Lecturer in History, Russian Islamic University.
2008-2009: Associate Professor of History, Kazan State Power Engineering University.
2007-2008: Assistant Professor of History, Kazan State Power Engineering University.
2003-2006: Assistant Professor of History, Kazan State University.
Education:
1998-2001: Kandidat nauk (Candidate of Sciences) in History (equivalent to Ph.D. in History), Kazan State (currently Federal) University, Department of History.
1993-1998: Specialist’s diploma in History (equivalent to B.A. and M.A. in History) magna cum laude, Kazan State (currently Federal) University, Department of History.
Professional honors, grants, awards and fellowships:
2023-2024: Ab Imperio Journal Project “Retaining Critical Historical Scholarship and Supporting Displaced Russian Historians in the Context of the Crisis of Russian War Against Ukraine” grant for consultancy on the “New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia” project.
2021-2023: University College Dublin’s School of History Scholarship for Ph.D. Program.
2018-2019: Academy of Finland mobility grant for one-year research at the University of Eastern
Finland.
2016: Deutsches Historisches Institut Moskau Fellowship for one-month research in Moscow libraries and archives.
2016-2017: Russian Foundation for Humanities (RGNF) 2-year research grant, PI.
2011: Centre franco-russe de recherche en sciences humaines et sociales de Moscou Grant for one-month research in Paris libraries and archives.
2010-2012: Gerda Henkel Stiftung two-year individual research grant.
2009: Winner in nomination “The best young scholar of 2009” established by the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan.
2007-2008: American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) one-year individual research grant.
2007: Carnegie Corporation one-semester individual fellowship in Social Sciences and Humanities for research in Saint-Petersburg libraries and archives.
2006-2007: Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program grant for 6-month research at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University.
2005: Kazan State University Faculty Development Stipends’ Competition small grant for course innovation.
2005: Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan publication grant for the book “Kasimovskoe khanstvo (1445–1552 gg.). Ocherki istorii” (rejected).
2005: Central European University grant for participation in SUN (2-week Summer University) (CEU, Budapest, Hungary) (July 2005).
2004: Prize of the Republic of Tatarstan for state support of young scholars in History, Language and Literature.
2004-2006: OSI-HESP grant for participation in International interdisciplinary 3-year Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching (held in Ekaterinburg and Svetlogorsk, Russia).
2003: EHESS-CNRS grant for participation in 2-week Summer School (Paris).
Publications:
Books:
Rakhimzianov, B., Moskva i tatarskii mir: sotrudnichestvo i protivostoianie v epokhu peremen, XV – XVI veka [Muscovy and the Tatar world: Cooperation and Confrontation in the Age of Change, Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries], St. Petersburg, 2016.
Rakhimzianov, B., Kasimovskoe khanstvo (1445–1552 goda). Ocherki istorii [The Kasimov Khanate (1445-1552), Kazan', 2009.
Edited collections:
Parppei, K., & Rakhimzianov, B., (eds.) Images of Otherness in Russia, 1547-1917, Boston, 2023.
Rakhimzianov, B., (ed.) Kazanskaia tsaritsa Siuiun-bike v istorii narodov Rossii: Sbornik statei [The Kazanian Tsarina Siuiun-bike in the History of the Peoples of Russia, Collection of Articles], Moscow, 2019.
Peer-reviewed articles and chapters:
Parppei, K., and Rakhimzianov, B., “Introduction: Images, Otherness, and Images of the Others,” in Parppei & Rakhimzianov (eds.), Images of Otherness in Russia, 1547-1917, Boston, 2023, pp. 3-21.
Rakhimzianov, B., “Muscovy and the Tatars: Cooperation and Conflict on the Boundary of Two Political Worlds,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, vol. 54, no. 4, 2020, pp. 403-431.
Rakhimzianov, B., “Meshchera as a Point of Political Interaction between Muscovy and the Tatar World,” Russian History, vol. 43, no. 3-4, 2016, pp. 373-393.
Rakhimzianov, B., “The Muslim Tatars of Muscovy and Lithuania: Some Introductory Remarks,” in Dubitando: Studies in History and Culture in Honor of Donald Ostrowski, edited by Brian J. Boeck, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland. Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica, 2012, pp. 117-128.
Rakhimzyanov, B., “The Debatable Questions of the Early Kasimov Khanate (1437-1462),” Russian History, vol. 37, no. 2, 2010, pp. 83-101.
Service to the field:
2018-present: Member of the Editorial Board of the scholarly journal “(opens in a new window)Canadian-American Slavic Studies”.
2018-present: Member of the Editorial Board of the scholarly journal “(opens in a new window)Novoe Proshloe/The New Past”.
Columnist for the Internet-newspaper “(opens in a new window)Real’noe vremia”.
Columnist for the Internet project “(opens in a new window)Milliard Tatar”.
Serving as a reviewer for the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program.
Publications relevant to PhD Project:
Rustem Shakirov, an (opens in a new window)interview with Bulat Rakhimzianov, “Bulat Rakhimzianov: «Antiordynskii narrativ ne ischeznet, slishkom velika inertsiia» [Bulat Rakhimzianov: «The anti-Horde narrative will not disappear, the inertia is too great»],” Tatar-inform, December
24, 2023.
Bulat Rakhimzianov, “Kak Kazan i Moskva dogovorilis’ v 1990-e: «vse postepenno uspokoilis’» [(opens in a new window)How Kazan and Moscow agreed in the 1990s: “everyone has gradually calmed down”],” Milliard.tatar, February 15, 2022.
Bulat Rakhimzianov, “«Dogovarivat’sia s sobstvennym regionom?»: kak rodilsia rossiiskii federalizm [“(opens in a new window)Negotiate with our own region?”: how Russian federalism was born],”Milliard.tatar, February 9, 2022.
Bulat Rakhimzianov, “Suverenitet Tatarstana: eto bylo. Bylo? [(opens in a new window)Sovereignty of Tatarstan: It Was. Was it?],” Milliard.tatar, August 30, 2021.