1In this article the A. examines the image and legacy of the early-twentieth century Vaysi movement among the « Neo-Bulgharists » in post-Soviet Tatar society. The A. demonstrates a definite link between the radical Sufi movement led by Ginan Vaisov, until his death in Kazan in 1918, and the modern-day nationalist movement, which has engendered a sharp polemic among Tatar intellectuals over the last twelve or so years  specifically, in the person of Mirkhad Vaisov (1918-1986), Ginan Vaisov’s son. The younger Vaisov, as an adult, compiled his own version of « Bulghar » history, based on his father’s vision, and it was his version that the Neo-Bulgharists’ current ideological leader, F. Nurutdinov, used to formulate the current nationalist interpretation of what had originated as a religious movement. The A. traces the transformation of the Vaysi’s Bulghar identity, which he characterizes as « confessional » (indeed, the Vaysi movement led by Ginan Vaisov was actually a later radicalized incarnation of a more widespread regional Islamic identity centered around the Islamic sacred history of Bulghar), to a « national » conception articulated by the Neo-Bulgharists, in which the former « confessional » features are completely lacking. Here the characterization of the Neo-Bulgharist interpretation as « national » rather than « confessional » may be too broad. A more precise characterization of the conceptions defining Neo-Bulgharist identity would be « Soviet », since the fundamental conceptions characterizing the conceptions and arguments of both the Neo-Bulgharists and their opponents the « Tatarists » emerged from Soviet ethnographic models.