Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 26 – In recent
months, Tatar activists have suggested that Ufa is seeking to have Tatars living
in Bashkortostan reidentify as Bashkirs in order to boost that nation’s numbers
and reduce the number of Tatars. And
they have even suggested that the Bashkir authorities are prepared to falsify
the figures to get their way
Now, a Bashkir activist has
responded and suggested that Tatar fears are overblown and that both Muslim Turkic
peoples face a common threat, Moscow’s assimilationist and divide-and-conquer
policies. But despite that call for cooperation, his words may have exactly the
opposite effect and exacerbate concerns in Kazan.
“The Tatar nation,” the Bashkir
activist says, “mostly lives compactly in Tatarstan itself (two million) and in
neighboring Bashkortostan (one million). In the other regions of Russia, Tatars
live dispersed among others.” They are
concerned but have largely accepted the fact that many groups which identified
as Tatars earlier are now identifying as separate people.
These include the Siberian Tatars,
the Crimean Tatars, and the Nogays of Astrakhan. Supporters of a civic Russian
national identity like Vladimir Tishkov are thrilled by this development. But Tatars
see it as a direct attack on their status as the second nation in the country.
They are even more alarmed by moves
to separate out from themselves the Mishars and the Kryashens, although they
are losing that battle with the number of Kryashens rising rapidly in recent
censuses, Gabbasov says. And so some Tatar activists are focusing on the assimilation
of Tatars as such outside of Tatarstan.
According to the Bashkir activist,
“the Tatars just like any large ethnos, is infected with the virus of ‘great
power chauvinism” (stress supplied), and that sometimes is expressed in
anything but “the best way.”
The number of Tatars and Tatar
speakers has been falling because of assimilation and mixed marriages, Gabbasov
says. According to research by Yevgeny
Soroko of the Higher School of Economics, Tatars are the Muslim nation least
opposed to ethnic intermarriage. Bashkirs, like the Chechens, are at the other
end of the scale.
As far as the issue of “the problems
of the North-Western Bashkirs,” Gabbasov says, the situation is very different
than the way some in Kazan have been presenting it. Historically, it was populated
by Bashkir tribes. Then some Tatars moved in because of Russian pressure on
Kazan, and more recently some of them have left because Tatarstan is doing better
economically.
Many local people who had identified
as Tatars are now identifying as Bashkirs given the departure of so many Tatars
and the absence of Tatar schools. But this is a natural process, and there is
no reason to believe that Ufa is forcing it or that it would ever think to
falsify data as some in Tatarstan have suggested. That would be lying to
oneself and counterproductive.
“Nothing should be allowed to divide
the Tatars and Bashkirs,” he says; “we are absolutely in the same position. We
have had our sovereignty taken from us, our Constitutions have been rewritten, the
obligatory study of the state languages of the republics has been banned, and
our children speak Russian.”
Today, the Bashkir activist says, we
have to stop attacking one another and sit down to discuss any common problems.
The only questions are “’are we ready for this?’ and ‘who will be the first to
take this step?’”
