Terra Sebus. Acta Musei Sabesiensis, 7, 2015, p. 565-583. TATARS OF SIBERIA: RELIGIOUS REBIRTH AND IDENTITY PROBLEMS Nursafa Gafurovna KHAIRULLINA  Irina Sovetovna KARABULATOVA  Marina Fedorovna SHVEDOVA  Kenesar Kuanyshevich KOYSHE  Introduction  The Tyumen province is a fast developing multinational region of the Russian Federation. It is a significant region of Russia where the role of ethno-cultural processes and inter-ethnic interactions is rising. This role is conditioned by the preceding historical interaction of ethnic groups living here and the existence of peoples with traditional ways of life in the territory. One such people are the Siberian Tatars. 1 A peculiarity of Tyumen province, as of many other regions of Russia, is its poly-ethnicity. According to the results of the last All-Russian population census, representatives of more than 143 nationalities and ethnic groups live in the region. The most numerous are Russians, Tartars and Ukrainians. The specifics of international relations in the region are determined considerably by its multi-ethnic population make-up. According to the territorial body of government statistics on the Tyumen province federal agency, the Tartar population of Tyumen province South amounts to 106,954 people for 2002. That makes 8.1% of the total number of inhabitants. Of these, 47% (50,273) are men and 53% (56,681) are women. Among them 7,629 are Siberian Tartars. This number is not to be considered reliable, as many Siberian Tartars declared their nationality as Tartaric. According to Tyumen and Kazan scientists’ classification, three relatively independent ethno-territorial groups - Tobol-Irtysh, Tomsk and Barabinsk - are distinguished in the composition of native Siberian Tatars settling the vast territory of the West-Siberian plain South that includes parts of the modern Tyumen, Tomsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk and Kemerovo provinces. The groups are divided into smaller subdivisions. 2 It is mainly Tobol-Irtysh Tartars who live in the territory of  Tyumen State Oil and Gas University, Russian Federation; e-mail: nursafa@inbox.ru.  Institute of Social and Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation; e-mail: radogost2000@mail.ru.  Tyumen State Academy of World Economics, Management and Law, Russian Federation; e-mail: shvedova-72@yandex.ru.  Tyumen State Oil and Gas University, Russian Federation; e-mail: koishe.k.k.@mail.ru. 1 Khairullina et al. 2011, p. 79. 2 Zamaletdinov et al. 2014, p. 215; Yusupov, Karabulatova 2014, p. 248.