The Provisional Muslim Committee for Assistance to Soldiers and Their Families in 1915–1916 (Based on Materials from the Tatar Periodical Press)

   The Provisional Muslim Committee for Assistance to Soldiers and Their Families was the fi rst attempt in the Russian Empire to establish a nationwide Muslim charitable organization operating on democratic principles and initiated by Muslims themselves. However, its activities and outcomes are fragmentarily covered in the existing literature due to the scarcity of archival documents.

   The purpose of the article is to identify various viewpoints on the committee’s goals and strategies, based on an analysis of the Tatar periodical press in 1914–1916, and to trace how these opinions correlated with the actual decisions of the committee.

   The study relies on a historical-comparative analysis of publications in the newspapers Il’ (“Country”), Vakyt (“Time”), Tormysh (“Life”), and Suze (“Word”), as well as on materials from the Russian State Historical Archive.

   It has been established that two main positions emerged in the public discussion: the “idealistic” and the “pragmatic”. The study demonstrates that, despite the management crisis and criticism in the press, the committee succeeded in dispatching an ambulance detachment named after Russian Muslims, with the support of the Committee of the State Duma. For the fi rst time, the article introduces newspaper and archival materials into scholarly discourse, enabling the reconstruction of the chronology of the Provisional Muslim Committee for Assistance to Soldiers and Their Families’ work, the tracing of developments within it, and to observe how its activities were covered and evaluated by society.

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4. Newspaper “Il’” [Country]. (1914, 21 November). No. 43. (In Old Tatar)

5. Newspaper “Il’” [Country]. (1914, 8 December). No. 48. (In Old Tatar)

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