The Republic of Tatarstan from the Perspective of Human Geography

The human potential, ethnic structure and population characteristics of Tatarstan, one of the most developed and richest autonomous republics of Russia, were investigated in this study. With the study, the urbanization features and heterogeneous population structure of Tatarstan were brought up for discussion, along with its geographical location and geopolitical and geoeconomic sensitivity. In addition, revealing of the quantitative change in the Tatar ethnos within the borders of Russia and its geographical distribution characteristics and the analysis of the changes in the ethnic structure of Tatarstan in terms of the perspectives of time and space are also among the issues this study addresses. There are two fundamental results which are highlighted in the study. The first one is that by dividing & segregating the Tatars living within the borders of Tatarstan and the Russian Federation into different sub-nations and different sub-ethnoses in the last two censuses, their total population amounts were shown to be low. In the study, it is warned that this might lead to some important problems in socio-demographic and political aspects. Secondly, it is stressed that the economic and political unity of Tatarstan with the characteristic of a semi-Slavic and semi-Turkish population structure with Russia appears unavoidable.