Time Table of the Project

The project "Regional Memory in Kazan" started in March 2007 and will come to an end in April 2008. During this term, three meetings of the Russian and German groups are scheduled to take place, twice in Tübingen (Germany) and once in Kazan (Russia). The most important meeting was the German group's stay in Kazan at the beginning of October 2007: during the visit, the interviews were conducted and the project's participants visited the selected churches and mosques.

In April 2007, the Russian and the German participants of the project met for the first time in Tübingen. After having read the relating literature on the topic, the two groups exchanged their knowledge and expressed their expectations of the project during the first meeting in order to create a "common denominator", a basis for the intensive work to come. Furthermore, the religious buildings - five russian orthodox churches, one monastery and six mosques - were selected. There was more investigation about their history during the term of the project. The first topics for the interviews were fixed and a complex of questions was worked out. The choice of appropriate interviewees was made at the first meeting.

The period until October was devoted to further preparations. The German group was occupied with the creation of the homepage and analyzing Western literature about antireligious politics in the 1960s, whereas the Russian participants were looking for the appropriate interviewees and were exploring the local dimension of the antireligious politics.

During the meeting in Kazan the interviews with the contemporary witnesses and the young believers took place. The participants of the project also took into account the results of the archival work as well as they visited the chosen religious buildings. After the meeting the German and the Russian parts of the project analyzed the results of the interviews and included them to the entire context of the project. A booklet, which was published at the end of the project in April 2008 and which presents a cityguide through Kazan's memory of the antireligious politics, opens the results to a broader public. More information about the city guide are available at kazan-memory@inbox.ru. Also our homepage offers an overview over the results of the interviews and the historical research about the religious buildings on the site about "Present-day Memory".