Official lists of the Kazakh steppe officials as a source for studying the career of Tatar employees in the eastern outskirts of Russia

The relevance of the problem under study is due to the poor knowledge in the national historiography of the activities of Muslim Tatars in the Kazakh steppe, who were included in the hereditary and titled nobility. The article aims at examining the official lists of Tatar translators and interpreters as a source revealing the specifics of the social status and functions performed by Tatar officials in the Kazakh steppe. The principle of historicism, which allows us to consider the problem under study in all its versatility and permissible completeness, came as the leading approach to the study of this problem. The study revealed that Tatar officials at the end of the XVIII and the first half of the XIX centuries could occupy the civil ranks from the 8 th up to the 14 th category of the "Table of Ranks". However, there were two people to be identified having risen to even the higher ranks. The main function of Tatar officials in the Kazakh steppe was military intelligence; the information they obtained was confidential and was necessary for the Russian authorities to build relations with Central Asian elites. The official lists is a representative source for studying the social and property status of Tatar officials, their corporate ties at the level of business and matrimonial relations.