In 1994, the term 'Tatarstan model' came into use to describe the path which one of Russia's constituent republics had adopted during the unprecedented conditions of its transformation from a Soviet-period pseudo-autonomous entity into a democratic market-economy state. Since then, this particular model of development has attracted increasing attention from both domestic Russian and international observers, not least on account of its enduring ethnic and religious multiculturalism. Focusing as it does on one of the most interesting and unusual regional examples of the Russian market...

Learned by heart and copied by hand in the Volga region for generations, Kyssa'i Yusuf (The Story of Joseph) is today the only surviving work by the founder of Bulgar-Tatar literature Kol Gali (1183-1236) and is here rendered into English for the first time in its entirety by Fred Beake and Ravil Bukharaev. Supporting the translation, which is fully annotated, are forty specially commissioned illustrations by one of Russia's leading contemporary artists Azat Minnekaev. The volume also includes a facsimile of one of the newly discovered handmade copies of the nineteenth century,...