Volga Tatars

The Volga Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group, native to the Volga-Ural region, Russia. They are in turn subdivided into various subgroups. They compose 53% of the population of Tatarstan. Volga Tatars are Russia's second largest ethnicity.

Volga Tatar history

Tatars inhabiting the Republic of Tatarstan, a federal subject of Russia, constitute one third of all Tatars, while the other two thirds reside outside Tatarstan. The formation of some of the communities residing outside Tatarstan took place before the Russian Revolution of 1917 due to Tatars being specialized in trading.

The emergence of ethnonym "Tatar" is disputed, with two theses trying to explain its origins. Mongol thesis, according to which etymology can be traced back to the Chinese "Ta-Tan" or "Da-Dan", is more widely accepted than Turkic one. Ethnonym "Tatar" first emerged in the fifth century BC.