This article provides an overview of various trends in Turkic linguistics related to the study of root bases. The paper examines the views of well-known Turkologists on the structure of root bases, morphological features and semantic features. Primary roots, as the simplest, smallest and at the same time important units, constitute a very ancient layer, like the linguistic phenomenon itself. Today, their collection and systematization is one of the urgent tasks of studying the history of the language. The theoretical and practical significance of this research is determined by the possibility of using its main results in comparative-historical and etymological studies, in developing the theory of the root in the Turkic and Altaic languages.

This article compares and studies the acoustic features of the vowel sound [a] coming after tongueteeth and uvular consonants in the Tatar and Kazakh languages. As during the speech production sounds undergo various changes, to identify them, an experimental study was conducted using the Speech Analyzer software. As a result of the comparative analysis, we have come to the conclusion that the acoustic features of the sound [a] in the Tatar and Kazakh languages depend on its position and on whether it is used in stressed or unstressed syllables.

The article highlights the life and creative path of Rakhim Sattar, a little-known poet, determines his place in Tatar poetry and reveals the traditions of literary criticism that he laid down. Based on the hermeneutic approach, the article analyzes, for the first time, the poet’s poems written by him in captivity, determines their main motifs and reveals the content of his poetic works in the context of the literature in that period. This determines the novelty and relevance of the article. The main goal of our research is to study Rakhim Sattar’s life and work, to include his works in a wide scientific circulation. The article is based on materials, memories and interviews, related to the biography of the poet and his life in captivity and preserved in the family archive, and the archive of the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan. In the course of our study, we have come to the conclusion that Rakhim Sattar both relied on the traditions of wartime literature and conducted poetic experiments. In addition, we have identified the genre diversity of the poet’s works and their main motifs, determined by the loyalty to his motherland, his longing for the native land when he lived in captivity. His innovations went hand in hand with the conception of the lyrical hero. The study evaluates the images and details, the techniques, used in conveying the main motifs, and the poetic goals of R. Sattar’s works. The proof of loyalty to the native country is the main motif of R. Sattar’s works, written during the period of imprisonment. This motif is closely connected with the images of an oath and faith, the concepts of death and immortality, it is the main means of conveying the relationship between the poet and his native country. The theme of fidelity, the image of an oath is widely embodied in his poems, which represent the chain: native country – nature – native land – mother. In the poems, devoted to the theme of the native land, the opposition of one’s own / alien is in the center, the native land is opposed to a foreign country, and this concept is reproduced through various images. The poems devoted to his life in captivity possess a tragic motif.

The article examines the literary activity of M. Idrisov, an outstanding printer, font master and the author of textbooks. The study is based on the stories of this multi-talented cultural figure. “No Wings to Fly” and “A Lucky Ticket” were published in 1916 in the journal “Aң” (“Consciousness”) and became the object of our scientific evaluation. The subject of the study is their ideological and aesthetic originality. The stories reveal the features of artistic thinking, characteristic of the literature in the early 20th century, intercultural ties, the role of musical images, the parallelism of natural phenomena and the human world in conveying the emotions of the characters. M. Idrisov’s story “A Lucky Ticket” is an attempt to write a work in the field of humor and satire.

This work is a continuation of the article “Symphonic Concert of Oriental Music in Kazan in 1923” (Tatarica. 2022. No. 1). The study is based on an interview with A. Eichenwald, reviews and opinions about the concert of oriental music in Paris published in foreign press. The author recon- structs the geography of the composer’s tours using archival sources. The article proves that A. Eichenwald carried out consistent work to promote Tatar songs in the world cultural space. Having become acquainted with the content of reviews and opinions, the author comes to the conclusion that the composer introduced the musical circles and correspondents to the reviews already found in Rus- sian and Tatar publications.

The article studies the evolution of Tatar structures in Siberia at the beginning of the 20th century. Based on the analysis of the press in this period, the study proves that the vast majority of Muslims in Siberia identified themselves as Tatars, members of a single millet nation, possessing the Tatar literary language, which was used as the language of education. The paper states that among the structures created before the February Revolution of 1917 charitable societies, libraries, men’s and women’s mektebs predominated. The newspaper “The Siberia” and the musical-theatrical society were created in Tomsk. In 1917 and in early 1918, Muslim bureaus were beginning to appear in the cities, provin- cial Muslim congresses were held, the Muslim Shuro (National Councils) and branches of the Harbi Shuro (Military Councils) were formed. The Muslims of Siberia actually refused to create parallel structures, for example, their own Spiritual Assembly. The article records the emergence of Siberian Muslims’ fashion for holding holidays, following the model of the Muslims from European Russia: Mawlid, Hijri New Year and Sabantuy. The paper proves that Gabdulla Tukay, as a Tatar national po- et, occupied a key place in the gallery of symbolic leaders.

The article examines the history of the Tatars’ first visits to the Russian theater in Kazan. Naqi Isanbet was the first among Tatar researchers to raise this issue in his article published in 1962 in the Kazakhstan newspaper “The Kazakh Literature”. This article introduces into circulation two new sources on the history of Tatar theater, belonging to the encyclopedist: “Tatar theatry 25 el echende” (“Tatar Theater over a Period of 25 Years”, 1946/1947?); “On the National Identity of Tatar Theater” (1956?). When exploring the topic “The Tatars and Russian Theater in the 19th Century”, N. Isanbet referred to the work of Nikolay Bazhenov “The History of Kazan” (1847), and the literary and fictional collection “The First Step” (1876). In this article, the range of sources on this topic is significantly expanded due to newspaper publications in “Kazanskie gubernskie vedomosti” (“The Kazan Provincial Gazette”, 1838–1917) and “Kamsko-Volzhskaya Gazeta” (“The Gazette of the Kama and Volga Region”, 1872–1874), the works of Nikolay Rybushkin, Fhilipp Vigel and Mikhail Pylyaev. These sources indicate that as early as in the first decade of the 19th century, the Kazan Province landowner Pavel Esipov created special covered boxes for the Tatars at the expense of box office fees in his public theater (1802–1814), the boxes were covered with curtains. The repertoire of his theater included several works on the Tatar theme, related to the fall of the Kazan Khanate in 1552 and the fate of the last Kazan tzarina Syuyumbike. The failure of the premiere of Voltaire’s tragedy “Mahomet” had a negative impact on the Tatars’ visits to the theater. The building of the Russian Theater in Kazan had special boxes for Muslims with wooden bars. These boxes disappeared in a new building restored after a fire in 1874, which gave reason to Russian ethnographers to conclude that the Tatars did not experience any discomfort from visiting the theater. This article systematizes a range of works on Tatar themes, written in the first half of the 19th century by Russian writers.

The article reviews the book “Tatar Wedding Songs: The Siberian Area” (Kazan, 2021. 188 p.) by Ilgiz Kadyrov. The article provides information about the structure of the book, highlights the value and significance of the collection in the cultural life of the Tatar people. The book is based on the materials of Ilgiz Kadyrov’s expeditions to the Tyumen, Tomsk, Omsk and Novosibirsk Regions of the Russian Federation in 1967–1973, to the regions where the Siberian Tatars live compactly. The book presents excellent examples of the Siberian Tatars’ wedding songs not included in the folklore practice. The collection will be of interest to teachers and composers, as well as connoisseurs of Tatar folk music.

This paper reviews the six-volume explanatory dictionary of the Tatar language (“Tatar telenen anlatmaly suzlege”; 2015–2021). Continuing the best traditions of Tatar and Russian lexicography, a team of scientists from the Institute of Language, Literature and Art named after G. Ibragimov, the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, compiled a new fundamental explanatory dictionary of the Tatar language. The dictionary includes current vocabulary and phraseological units of the modern Tatar literary language, terms and names from various fields of science and their interpretations. Neologisms are also found here, those formed with the help of the word-formation means of the Tatar language, as well as historicisms and borrowed words, actively used in the general literary language. The dictionary contains about 70 thousand words and 10 thousand phraseological units.