I was born in Omsk and my personality was pretty much was formed there. The building where we lived was in Neftyaniki [which means Oil Workers in Russian]; that's what the neighborhood was called. My father worked at an oil refinery that was built in the 1950s. So, we received the last benefits of late Soviet civilization. All our neighbors also worked there.

Omsk already had a population of over a million, which it reached in 1975, thanks its industrial development.

I went to school in 1994. There was a criminal element, of course—like, who's from what hood, and so on, but I don't remember that Omsk had anything like the criminal gangs in Kazan.

Our parents remember well how all these transitions—privatization and all that—affected the plant. Like, the director suddenly decided to go for a drunken "swim" in the Irtysh River in the winter and drowned. That's when the redistribution of everything and everyone began.

One time at school I saw an ad that the Museum of History and Regional Studies was hosting a class on local history. For some reason, that seemed interesting. I was in the 9th grade. I decided to go, and there were older kids and a crowd of people interested in science or that just wanted to hang out. It was an interesting way to spend time.

I can't really explain why, but from start I studied the history of the Mongol Empire, the Golden Horde, that was what interested me.

Maybe (I think so, looking back) I've always had the realization that we're Tatars. My parents are from villages in Omsk Oblast, Siberian Tatars. Their ceremonies, communication with relatives, they created this feeling that you belong to a cultural world which is different from what surrounds you. This idea of "us and them" formed quite early for me. And I think this feeling of a kind of cultural isolation poured into this interest: where does it all come from and where does it go?

That's probably one of the perks of the oil and oil refinery—they built a huge regional library in 1995.

I entered the faculty of history, and from the very beginning I knew that I wanted to continue my research; I wanted to do science. I read thick, fat books on Oriental studies.

In my first year I met the old guard, the professors who founded the history department in Omsk. Archaeologist Vladimir Matyushchenko, for example, conducted our first-year exams.

I saw these professors and understood that they had this pure standard of service to science. That is, we weren't there to receive money from doing science, but we served it with pure interest.

When I was studying, I had this internal struggle, like, youthful arrogance. I saw how other students were defending dissertations, and sometimes, out of stupidity, I would say

What was your complaint about their work?

My complaint was about the system: nothing colossal seemed to be happening, no breakthroughs. Where is the search for truth?

And at the same time, we have to pay our tributes: there were other examples to follow. Since I was interested in the subject of the Golden Horde, one of the first authors I could not pass by was Mirkasym Usmanov, a professor at Kazan University. He wrote a lot of works on the history of the Golden Horde, and I just had to read him. He was probably one example of something cool happening.

I remember taking catalog cards in the library, those boxes. I found the box I needed, for example, History of Russia in the Pre-Revolutionary Era, and flick–flick–flick, shuffled through these cards.

Then, when I went through them, I started looking for old catalog boxes, and it turned out that they were different. There was old literature, old books that they didn't want show for some reason, and these old bundles were left there and never transferred to new boxes.

It was a feeling, like, of being a discoverer and gaining access to knowledge that was inaccessible to others. I probably still enjoy that.

At some point, the topic of my research began to drift towards the history of Islam in Russia. By my senior years in the university, I began having arguments with colleagues, disputes of a fundamental nature.

Some of my colleagues—well, they weren't colleagues then, but teachers in the department—believed that what I was studying was, in principle, not Islam; it was folklore covered by an Islamic shell.

At some point, I would've remained all alone if I had not gone on an expedition in 2005. I met a very interesting person, also a graduate of Omsk University, Igor Belichev. He lived and worked in Tobolsk.

He shared my views and had dealt with similar topics himself. We always had something to talk about. He's much older than me and far more experienced, and in him I found an unofficial mentor for myself, like a sheikh.

Mr. Belichev was not a candidate of sciences, because he got carried away by his expeditions and completely forgot about his career. That is, he was interested in producing great works, he was a master of texts, but he could not formalize this in a thesis and, accordingly, could not be my scientific leader.

First I went to Kazan, to Professor Usmanov, saw him at the faculty of history, and he told me: "Don't count on me doing it; I'm going to die soon. You'll most likely have to deal with my students." And he died a year after we met. He also said: "Give it a go in St. Petersburg."

So, I went to St. Petersburg for an internship. That was also interesting: people from outside, businessmen, helped me to live in St. Petersburg two times a month and deal with manuscripts there. We met at a conference on numismatics, and they were wealthy people also interested in this subject. They said "We'll help you." I always remember what they did for me with great appreciation, because I learned a lot from these trips.

In my fifth year, I received a scholarship from the DAAD Foundation, a student educational exchange fund for studying German in Germany.

I went and lived in Freiburg for a month and studied German. At the same time, I decided that I wanted to continue my studies, so maybe there were some scholarships I could use there?

I was told there's a professor named Michael Kemper in Amsterdam who specializes on my field: "Write him. Here's the address; maybe he can tell you something." I wrote to him, and he answered me: "Come visit if you want."

I had some money saved up. I had a scholarship to live in Germany for a month, and there was money left for expenses to eat, somewhere around €500, probably.

I saved some of that, enough for a train to Amsterdam and back, and I still had €3 in my pocket.

We met in Amsterdam, walked around the city, got to know each other. He had heard that I was working on these genealogies, Siberian legends of Islamization. He gave me his books and then we parted ways.

That is, he didn't say "I'll take you on" or "I won't take you on." He didn't say anything at all.

A couple of months later, he sent a letter that he had won a grant to study the history of Soviet Oriental studies. He said, "If you want, apply for it."

And you applied?

For me it was a conundrum, because I had my own field: I dreamed of those manuscripts, the study of the Siberian tradition of Islam. And then they tell me: let's go study Soviet Oriental studies in Kazakhstan.

I was, like, "what should I do?" Then I weighed it all over: I had entered graduate school in Omsk, and had focused on the same topic. So, I thought: okay, let's give it a shot.

I went. In the end, they accepted me, even though I didn't know English, only German. And I probably didn't look very impressive—could you expect good enough training from Omsk University to get you ready for postgraduate studies at one of the best universities in the world?

Was it hard for you at the University of Amsterdam?

The first six months were just awful: I didn't understand anything. I was completely alone. I had nobody there; there was no one to comfort me while I cried [laughing]. Everything was strange: how people behave, how they talk, what they considered right or wrong.

But, on the contrary, there was something interesting about it too: it felt like a Muslim country: they sell halal meat everywhere and Arab clothing. You can hear Arabic, Turkish, and Person spoken on the street.

If Omsk had shaped my personality, where I received my foundations, then in Amsterdam my worldview was formed, my view of the world as so multicultural, with freedoms, and with an idea of where borders should be.

I learned a lot there, but that education was achieved through destruction, by overcoming myself, overcoming my uncivilized ways. For that I'm grateful to myself, that I didn't waste any time and did everything I needed to do. I signed up for Dutch and studied English there, and in the first year I started going to Arabic and Farsi classes.

So you learned four languages?

Well, yes.

What did you like and dislike there?

There's a kind of feeling of being closed-off there, in Holland. I missed real communication, soul to soul. I had a lot of friends in Omsk, in my courtyard, at the university, relatives, hanging out, all of that. What is considered sincerity in our country is more sincere, when you hang out with someone not for the sake of money, not for the sake of prestige, not for the sake of anything, but just for fun. I didn't have that in Holland.

How did you decide to return to Russia?

I defended my dissertation in 2013, but I also continued my Siberian studies and formed my opinion and vision of the context in which this culture belongs more and more.

I also formed a kind of vision of Tatarness, or something. It's a scientific vision. I continued traveling to Kazan and tried to think about what other materials I could find here so I could study them after I defended my dissertation.

It was the Lobachevsky Library at Kazan University, with its thousands-strong collection of Tatar manuscripts, where, of course, I found the thoughts, the sources, whatever you want.

And at some point I convinced myself that I want to work in the library; it was a kind of messianic of me, because there are all these manuscripts that no one is studying, and I have the knowledge and I can use it there.

When I moved to Kazan, I started preaching to my relatives that, compared to Omsk, Kazan is a great city. And, so far, two cousins, my brother, my mother, and our imam—five families—have moved here.

At some point I won a competition and received a professorship at the European University in St. Petersburg. I told my colleagues buh-bye and moved to St. Petersburg, where I lived from 2014 to 2019. We lived downtown, near the mosque, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. And yeah, it was a very cultural environment, with views as pretty as a postcard.

But, at the same time, all the gypsies near the Cathedral Mosque, the slush on the way to work across the Trinity Bridge, the darkness, depressive blackness that makes you want to jump off this Trinity Bridge sometime in December. Because it's dark when you leave and it's dark when you come back.

What did you gain from that period at the European University?

The European University taught me how to build bridges between people of completely different fields.