ABSTRACT
This chapter explores questions of identity, empire, and memory in twenty-first-century literature and film in the Russian Federation’s Republic of Tatarstan. Focusing on a 2004 film and a short story published in 2011, I examine how and why these sources utilize the historical context of nineteenth-century, state-sponsored missionary efforts as a setting for discussions of contemporary Tatar identity and nationhood. I argue that this use of the historical past sheds light on how Tatar cultural figures hope to define Tatar identity vis-à-vis the continued presence of Tatarstan within a Russian national state.
