Sadri Maksudi Arsal was one of the leading figures in the national awakening of Tatars in Russia during early 1900s. He worked as a writer, lawyer, politician, professor, lecturer, researcher of Turkic languages and a delegate of League of Nations. He was the president of the short-lived Idel-Ural State.

The Idel-Ural State, also known as the Volga-Ural State or Idel-Ural Republic, was an unsuccessful attempt of the autonomy of Tatar peoples that claimed to unite Tatars, Bashkirs, the Chuvash in the turmoil of the Russian Civil War. The republic was proclaimed on 1 March 1918, by a Congress of Muslims from Russia's interior and Siberia, but defeated by Bolsheviks the same month. Idel-Ural means "Volga-Ural" in the Tatar language.