For young people who had always read about their ancestors in the official literature as if about some kinds of barbarians and betrayers who were always being vanquished by the heroic Russians, it was of course pleasant to hear the "news" that the glorious Russian Czar Petr I was soundly beaten in 1711 at the river Prut by the Tatar forces, that Crimean Tatars had put things in order in Moscow more than once, and that Crimean Tatars had institutions of higher learning long ago.