Tatar educators and printers in Turkestan (late 19th – first quarter of the 20th centuries)

The article analyses the educational activities of Tatars, the emergence and development of printing and polygraphic production in Turkestan in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The development of printing in the languages of the local Turkic population in Turkestan is associated with the socio-cultural and religious activism of Tatars. The author analyses historical and archival documents, a number of printed publications in the Uzbek language of the specified period and traces the logistics of the formation of printing culture in this region, which was significant for the Russian Empire. The article shows the effects of the modernisation trend among Tatars in the context of the scientific and technological revolution, and its transit through the Russian society to the foreign Turkic peoples of the country. The author describes the activities of Tatar typesetters who brought Muslim fonts for printing to the given region, thereby showing how the provision of a material and technical base stimulated the development of printing for the local Turkic-speaking population. The author demonstrates the development of the printing culture of Turkestan in the late 19th – early 20th centuries through the analysis of various aspects of the activities of such Tatar figures as Shakhimardan Ibragimov, Mukhammad Khasan Chanishev, Shakhingirey Bekkulov, Abdulatif Yaushev, Ali Bektemirov, Ismail Abidov, Arif Klevleyev, Akhmad Donskoy, and Shagid Akhmadiev. Along with that, the author analyses the participation of the Tatar intelligentsia in the development of printing activities and the establishment of printing in the new socio-political conditions that emerged after the revolution of 1917 – already in the Turkestan ASSR, in particular, in the Khorezm and Bukhara People's Soviet Republics.