gh estate, have never vanished in the Slav
ocean. Although many of them have been for four centuries under Russian
rule, they have stubbornly maintained their religious, racial, and
cultural identity. Clustered thickly along the Volga, especially at
Kazan and Astrakhan, retaining much of the Crimea, and forming a
considerable minority in Transcaucasia, the Tartars remained distinct
"enclaves" in the Slav Empire, widely scattered but indomitable.

The first stirrings of nationalist self-consciousness among the Russian
Tartars appeared as far back as 1895, and from then on the movement grew
with astonishing rapidity. The removal of governmental restrictions at
the time of the Russian revolution of 1904 was followed by a regular
literary florescence. Streams of books and pamphlets, numerous
newspapers, and a solid periodical press, all attested the vigour and
fecundity of the Tartar revival. The high economic level of the Russian
Tartars assured the material sinews of war. The Tartar oil millionaires
of Baku here played a conspicuous role, freely opening their capacious
purses for the good of the cause. The Russian Tartars also showed
distinct political ability and soon gained the confidence of their
Turkoman cousins of Russian Central Asia, who were also stirring to the
breath of nationalism. The first Russian Duma contained a large
Mohammedan group so enterprising in spirit and so skilfully led that
Russian public opinion became genuinely uneasy and encouraged the
government to diminish Tartar influence in Russian parliamentary life by
summary curtailments of Mohammedan representation.[161]

Of course the Russian Mohammedans were careful to proclaim their
political loyalty to the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, many earnest
spirits revealed their secret aspirations by seeking a freer and more
fruitful field of labour in Turkish Stambul, where the Russian Tartars
played a prominent part in the Pan-Turk and Pan-Turanian movements
within the Ottoman Empire. In fact, it was a Volga Tartar, Yusuf Bey
Akchura Oglu, who was the real founder of the first Pan-Turanian society
at Constantinople, and his well-known book, _Three Political Systems_,
became the text on which most subsequent Pan-Turanian writings have been
based.[162]

Down to the Young-Turk revolution of 1908, Pan-Turanism was somewhat
under a cloud at Stambul. Sultan Abdul Hamid, as already remarked, was a
Pan-Islamist and had a rooted aversion to all nationalist mov