Peoples and Religions of the Urals: Ethno-historical Mapping
Dr. Elena Glavatskaya
Svetlana Tcemenkova

The Urals have always been a multi-ethnic and multi-religious region housing representatives of some 100 nations according to the 1989 census. The Finno-Ugric speaking Mansi, Khanty, Komi, Permyaks and Mary; Turkish Bashkirs and Tartars and the Russians have molded unique ethnic and religious landscapes.

Since the beginning of the Russian colonization of the Urals, its peoples were exposed to a strong foreign political, economic and cultural influence. The ethnic and religious interactions in the course of the 17th-20th centuries resulted in ethnohistorical changes, as well as changes in both the ethnic and religious landscapes of the area. Mapping ethno historical changes helps us visualize the historical process in the region.

Our main effort was put toward mapping the ethnic history of the peoples of the Urals. This includes both indigenous groups and newcomers, as well as numerous small ethnic, religious and ethno-religious groups, and how the historical events affected their way of life. In addition, changes in religious landscapes of the different peoples were analyzed.

In order to achieve this aim information was extracted from different types of sources: state and local laws, official reports, correspondence between officials, reports of missionaries and travelers, complaints made by indigenous peoples, folklore, archaeological investigation reports, and census.
As a result a set of digitized ethnohistorical maps on the Religious landscape of the Urals were prepared, among them: “The religious situation in the late 16th and 17th century”; “Formation of the Christian landscape”, “Russian Orthodox Church Missionary Campaigns in the 18th century”, and “The ethno-religious landscape in the early 20th century”.

The next steps planned are to work with contemporary maps in order to transfer the ethnohistorical maps into GIS software, combining this with pictures, video and audio into a multimedia resource.

The Experience of Creating the Historical Cartographic Series of Atlases "Tartaria"
Ramil R. Khairutdinov,
Radik R. Salikhov

An Ethno-Statistical Atlas of Bashkortostan
Alexander Korostelev
Valery Stepanov

An ethnic map of Bashkortostan (Bashkiria), a republic within the Russian Federation, resembles a mosaic shaped and reshaped in the last four and a half centuries. Unstable ethnic identifications among Turkic-speaking Muslim groups throughout this period allow ideologues of two of such groups – Tatars and Bashkirs – to build competing interpretations of the past. This atlas draws on a previously created database "Rural Settlements of Bashkortostan and the Dynamics of Their Populations’ Ethnic Identities” and results from additional research between 2003 and 2005.  It includes a series of electronic maps reflecting the development of settlements in Bashkortostan and changes in the number and ethnic composition of their populations from the mid-XIXth through the end of the XXth century.  These maps precisely locate more than 7,000 settlements with information about them in digital format. 

Creation of the atlas involved archival and field work in several regions of Bashkortostan. Numerous changes of administrative divisions and renaming of settlements, often not reflected in archival documents, complicated the task. In addition, there is a lack of detailed cartographic materials covering various time periods, and existing maps do not correspond to available statistical sources. The paper describes work on the atlas, analyzes its historical and statistical sources, and surveys prevailing methods to map settlement patterns over long periods. A single region of Bashkortostan serves to illustrate the dynamics of settlement and the evolution of ethnic identification.

Atlas of Ethnic-Religious History of Middle Urals: 17 - 20 cent. A.D
L.N. Mazur
Svetlana I. Tsemenkova

The use of Atlas cartography in the modern educational process is the task of current importance. The generalized and visual historical maps data increase the efficiency of history teaching. The Atlas of Ethnic-Religious History of Middle Urals project was worked out exactly toward this end.
The project was divided into two stages.

The concept and method of mapping the historical data were developed and tested at the first stage. The project “Ethnos and Religions of Middle Urals in the 17th – 20th cents: the Experience of historical-ethnic mapping” was supported by the Russian Foundation for Humanities. In the frames of this project a set of maps was worked out that reflected certain tendencies of ethnic and religious landscape of Middle Urals in the period indicated.

The second stage envisages drawing a set of maps in the following units:

The geographic ABC making out and map drawing would be done using the CorelDRAW software.
We plan to use this Atlas for giving a course on the History of Urals at the Historical Faculty of Alexey M. Gorky name Urals State University.

The Russian Ethnical Maps of the XVII through the First Half XX Centuries: One kind of sources for Cultural Atlas
Aibulat Psyanchin, Center for Ethnological Studies, Ufa Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences

It is known that the early Russian maps (containing without any doubts ethnical information) have not been conserved. There is well known “Khiga Bolshomu chertezu” (Book to the Big Design), dated 1627. In fact, this book is the description of the biggest Russian map. The description has been made on the main river base. In this manuscript many objects are mentioned, the distance between them is indicated, the book contains very interesting ethnographic information about the Russia peoples. So we can affirm that in the XVI through the first half of the XVII centuries the Russian maps had ethnical information too.

In the end of the XVII through the beginning of the XVIII centuries we can see a new direction in Russian ethnical cartography due to the new lands attachment and the Russia advance to the East. In 1667, the “Chertez Sibiri” (The Design of Siberia), directed by P. Godunoff, was created. Here some Urals and Siberia ethnos dissemination was shown. The XVII century of the Russian ethnical cartography was resumed by the map of S. U Remezoff. He included it in his atlas “Cherteznaya kniga Sibiri” (Siberia design book) (1701). S. U Remezoff shows not only ethnos and ethnical groups disseminated in the Urals, Siberia and Extreme-Orient. The ethnical limits constitute an important feature of this map. An interesting information of the Russia peoples and ethnical data have been also represented on the other maps in the “Cherteznaya kniga Sibiri”, as well as in “Horographicheskaya cherteznaya kniga” (Morphography design book) (1697-1711) “Sluzebnaya cherteznaya kniga” (Service design book) (1702-1730), compiled by S. U. Remezoff.

In 1851 P. I. Keppen’s “Ethnographic map of the European part of Russia” was published on 4 sheets in the scale 1:3 150 000. By different colors, the 38 ethnos dissemination areas in the European part of Russia was shown (the territories where Russian, Ukrainian, Bielorusse predominate are not colored).

In 1875, A. F. Rittikh “Ethnographic map of the European part of Russia” was published. The larger scale was its distinguishing feature  (1:2 520 000). In spite of the both maps same principle, the Rittikh’s map is better, because it’s more detailed and another ethnos presence is shown. In total, the maps presents 46 ethnos, each of them is marked by different colors.

In the XIX century the other ethnical maps were published, the ethnical maps of some peoples or areas were created. They also contain the information about the Russia ethnos (some industries location etc.)

At the beginning of 1917 Provisional Government organized Commission for study of tribal structure of the population in Russia (CSTS). The purpose of the Commission was to clarify the settlement borders of different peoples in Latvia, Poland, Galicia, Bukovina and frontier lands in Asian parts of Russia and to draw up ethnical maps of the regions. Members of the commission had been made interesting ethnic cards of different regions of the country.