Human life fits into the philosophical categories of space and time. Time inexorably weeds out everything material, leaving only names and returning them to the space in which they lived and created. Former Persona non grata in the USSR, Zaki Validi Togan is now widely recognized as a world-renowned orientalist. He made a great contribution to the study of the history and ethnography of the Turkic-speaking peoples of Russia, but a special place in his work is occupied by an interest in the historical fate of the Bashkir, Kazakh and Nogai peoples. In the past, he is an equally well-known politician, statesman, founder of the first autonomous republic of Bashkortostan in Russia. This article is an attempt to consider some episodes of the multifaceted activities of Zaki Validi Togan through the prism of modern approaches to his era.