Kazan is a city with a colourful, violent, complicated, rich history. Relations between the city and Russia, its gigantic neighbour to the north, were volatile for centuries, as Tatar troops invaded Russian lands and Russian armies (both temporal and spiritual) tried to take Tatar land and convert its Islamic population to Russian Orthodoxy. The attitude of the Russian rulers to the Tatars was varied: in the 16th century, Ivan the Terrible tried to forcibly convert the Tatars; in the mid-18th century, Empress Elizabeth decreed that all Tatar mosques in the city should be destroyed, leading to the razing of more than 400 mosques; and in the late 18th century, Catherine the Great allowed building of new mosques. Some mosques dating from this period still stand in the city.

One of the most famous and venerated Orthodox icons in Russian history is closely tied to the city of Kazan. When volunteer fighters went from Kazan to help setting free Moscow from Polish troops in 1612, they carried an icon called Our Lady of Kazan with them. The subsequent victory in Moscow was widely attributed to the mystical powers of this icon, and two grand churches were built - one in Moscow, and one on St. Petersburg's Nevsky Prospect -- in honor of the icon.

Kazan has also long been known as a center of intellectual and revolutionary activity in Russia. Famous students at the city's renowned University of Kazan have included Lev Tolstoy, Lenin, and Karakozov, a 19th-century revolutionary who attempted to assassinate Tsar Alexander II. Also, the great opera singer Fyodor Chalyapin was born here.

Present relations between the Tatars and Russians are for the most part stable, although there are segments of Tatar society who agitate strongly for Tatar independence. The long history between the Russian and Tatar peoples has resulted in a large number of mixed marriages, which adds to the general stability. Tatar language is taught in schools in Kazan, and the red, white and green flag of Tatarstan flies over government buildings