PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

same right applied to his family, to his children until their marriage andalso to his vvidovv. It is important to note that the regulation did not makeany distinction on the basis of the religion of the ex-soldiers.The great majority of the Jewish community in Finland -1100 atpresent, as mentioned earlier- are descendants of the soldiers dischargedfrom the Russian army.In contrast, very few Müslim ex-soldiers settled in Finland duringthe Russian period. The stability of family connections betvveen the Müslimsoldiers and their home villages may be one explanation for this difference.In fact, the great majority of Tatars came to Finland as pedlars fromthe Tatar villages of the region between the Volga and Ural from the1860s on, the first of them via St. Petersburg. Several family traditions ofthe "discovery" of Finland by Tatars have been preserved. It is told thattwo young Tatar soap sellers vvere sailing from St. Petersburg to the fortressisland of Kronstadt in the Finnish Gulf; hovvever, they vvere asleepvvhen the ship continued the voyage from Kronstadt to Finland. In Finlandthe men vvere able to engage successfully in business and so theystayed in the country. Another story maintains that in 1868 "the King"(i.e. Queen Victoria)! of the United Kingdom vvas to visit St. Petersburg,and, in order to "clean" the city, the pedlars vvere expelled; because ofthis purge a Tatar small retailer had to travel 100 kilometres to Finland tothe city of Viipuri (Vyborg)-vvhich he discovered to be a proper place forhis future life.No matter in vvhat vvay the fırst Tatars in fact came to Finland, thesettlers vvere soon in correspondence vvith their relatives left behind intheir native villages. The message "come here, here you have an opportunity"vvas effective. As a result numerous family members and neighboursvvere attracted to visit Finland as pedlars of textiles and other minörarticles in vvinter, vvhen they had spare time from the duties of the agrarianlife. Gradually an increasing number of visitors stayed in Finland andthen invited their families and fiancees to follovv them. In this context it isvvorth mentioning that a railvvay vvas opened betvveen St. Petersburg andHelsinki in 1870, and inside Finland numerous cities vvere connected byother railvvays at the same time.The great majority of the ancestors of the Tatar community of Finlandarrived from a rather limited region in the province of Nizhniy Novgorod,vvhere they had been living south of Sergach, the terminus of therailvvay. The village of Aktuk/Yangapar (Aktukovo) and the district centreof Uraz (Urazovka) vvith many villages in that area are most frequentlyreferred to as the birthplaces of the immigrants. Linguistically theseTatars represent the so-called Mishâr dialect, the vvesternmost Tatar dialect.724