Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 5 – Two ethnic
Ukrainian commentators, one living in Kazan and the other in Kyiv, argue
Tatarstan today is contributing to the disintegration of the Russian Federation
in much the same way that Ukraine contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union
25 years ago.
What makes their arguments so interesting
is that they reach a common conclusion but are diametrically opposed to the
outcome they see, with Sergey Gupalo in Kazan viewing the disintegration of the
Russian Federation as another stage in the tragedy of the end of the USSR and
Oleg Shro welcoming it as ushering in a new era of freedom in at least part of
Eurasia.
Gupalo, a communist in Kazan, writes in
Forum-MSK.org that fate has so organized his life that it has been divided
“between two small motherlands – Ukraine and Tatarstan” which he has always
viewed as part of a larger one, the “illegally and unnaturally destroyed Soviet
Union” (forum-msk.org/material/region/11295969.html).
He says that today, at the beginning of
2016, he “cannot separate himself from the sense of déjà vu, from an analogy
with that interval of time between August and December 1991,” a time when he
“lived and worked in Ukraine” and when everything then was pointing to the
destruction of the USSR and, for him, unwelcome independence of Ukraine.
After August 1991, he continues, it was
quite clear to him that “the song of the USSR had been sung” and that its
demise had become inevitable. “Something analogous,” he says, he “feels now but
already in relation to the Russian Federation when [he] watches the television
appearance of the so-called elite of Tatarstan.”
Their “’sovereignty game,’” he suggests,
is not just about “the secondary question about the preservation for the head
of the region of the title ‘president.’ Ever more loudly are sounding voices
about the need for a return to the former edition of Tatarstan’s constitution,”
voices that are coming not just from nationalist activists but from the
government itself.
The crisis in the Russian Federation,
Gupalo says, has grown from “the economic into the political,” as is shown by
the fact that with the transfer by Moscow of Rosneft structures to Grozny,
there has been completed “de facto the formation of a Sovereign Ichkeria which
only formally remains within the Russian Federation.”
These two developments and many others
show that Russia “in fact has been converted into an asymmetrical federation,”
if one wants to be “euphemistic,” but that in reality what is going on is “the
continuing disintegration of the USSR but already in a new phase,” Gupalo
argues.
And because that is so, the Ukrainian in
Kazan says, he is not prepared to assert “with complete confidence” that the
Russian Federation will exist another year.
Other reasons for his conclusion, Gupalo
says, include the way in which law enforcement agencies in Tatarstan supposedly
subordinate to the federal system have acted against Rais Suleymanov. His
arrest and fine is enough to make one believe that specialist Islam’s arguments
that Wahhabis “de fact control everything” in Tatarstan.
And he suggests that in addition, there is
the passive response of the KPRF and other supposedly “healthy” forces to what
is going on now – exactly the same thing that happened in 1991. If there were a
real Leninist party, that would not be true, “but alas, there is still no such
grouping in our region” ready to act.
If Gupalo, whose commentary is called “Will
Tatarstan Do to the Russian Federation What Ukraine Did to the USSR?” is
unhappy about that prospect, Oleg Shro, a Ukrainian in Kyiv is pleased and
entitles his essay, “Russia on the Brink of a National Liberation War” (nr2.com.ua/blogs/Oleg_Shro/Rossiya-na-poroge-nacionalno-osvoboditelnoy-voyny-114433.html).
Shro comes at the
issue in an entirely different way. About 18 months ago, he made the
acquaintance of Bolyaen Syres, an Erzyan activist known “’in the world’” as
Aleksandr Bolkin who served in the Soviet and then Ukrainian army and has
fought in defense of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty.
Syres told him about the plans of
the Erzyan national movement for the establishment of a nation state of its
own, a movement little known by other than experts because the Erzyans are
grouped together with the Moksha under the common official name “Mordvin” even
though the two are very different.
“The unification of these two
peoples in the Russian Empire and then in the USSR under one let us say
denigrating term occurred under the influence of imperial policies of
assimilation which the Russian Empire began and the USSR continued,” largely on
the basis of the notion that two peoples with similar languages could be
treated as one, Shro writes.
Both these peoples have a long
history not only of competing with each other but of resisting Russian power,
from the times of Pugachev to the present, the Ukrainian commentator
continues. And that makes what is going
on in the Volga and Urals regions now so potentially significant.
These two regions, Shro points out,
“are characterized by an ethnically mixed population, even with the existence
of nominal nation state formations, representatives of these peoples live
throughout the Volga and Urals regions” and have done so for centuries. Many
villages have representatives of seven or eight nations.
Such ethnic and alongside it
religious diversity has given many occasions for clashes, but it has also meant
that at various points, different people have emerged who have set the tone for
the others. Today, in many cases in these regions, the Republic of Tatarstan is
doing just that.
Not only did it acquire more
concessions from Moscow than did Chechnya early on by quietly working behind
the scenes, so too today, Kazan has shown that it “does not intend to sacrifice
its sovereignty” and meet the Russian government’s demands that it break ties
with Turkey or follow all the laws of the center.
Consequently, “if in Tatarstan
itself, all this will continue under the banners of a struggle for national
independence, then in the Tatar enclaves throughout the entire Volga and Urals
region,” it will acquire as “one of its main aspects the religious factor”
given that Tatars formed local jamaats during the first decade of this century.
That will allow the Tatars to
“quickly assembly allies from other peoples [of the region] who profess Islam,
such as the Bashkirs or those from among the Finno-Ugric peoples who have
accepted Islam. This in its turn will create the basis for the appearance of
places of resistance to the federal authorities not only in Tatarstan” but more
broadly.
As Syres points out and Shro
reports, the Erzyans could not but be part of this process. “In fact, over
recent years, they have created exactly the same form of society which
historically was characteristic for Ukraine and which allowed the Maidan to
win,” even though the Erzyans have faced even more genocides over a longer
period than have the Ukrainians.
“The programs of national rebirth
have had their effect,” Shro points out, “by attracting people to the study of
their native language, history, and culture.” And there is a reason for that
success: “To a certain degree, the attention of the federal forces was
disoriented by the fact that the Erzyans did not make open demands and did not
give way to the radicals, let alone to terrorist methods in the
national-liberation struggle.”
The Erzyans have sowed the seeds so
that “when the time comes,” they will be ready to flower. And there are indications that that time is
coming this year. 777 years ago, after three years of fighting Baty Khan, the
ancestors of today’s Erzyans predicted that by staying united, they would
achieve their goal of a separate state – in what will be 2016!
According to Shro, there are “in
general objective preconditions for this if a serious conflict between
Tatarstan and the federal center begins,” one in which Bashkortostan will back
Kazan as will Tatar, Bashkir, and “Islamic enclaves of the Middle Volga and the
Urals,” including the Eryans.
“All are now waiting for X hour…”
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