Paul Goble
Staunton,
November 23 – The government of the Republic of Bashkortostan plans to delimit
and demarcate its borders with four adjoining regions over the next two years –
with Orenburg and Sverdlovsk oblasts and the Udmurt Republic next year and
Chelyabinsk Oblast and Tatarstan in 2020, Moscow’s Kommersant reports (kommersant.ru/doc/3806814).
And even though the paper says that Ufa
was able to reach an agreement on the borders with Perm Kray this year without
difficulties, there is good reason to believe that one or more of the borders
yet to be established may be a problem because the frontiers between them are
ethnically mixed and so where the borders are drawn will matter to both sides.
One indication of dangers ahead is
provided by recent discussions about the border between Bashkortostan and
Tatarstan, a line that was drawn by Stalin in his first great act of ethnic
engineering and remains controversial – some call it “the Berlin wall of the
Middle Volga” – because the population is ethnically mixed on both sides (idelreal.org/a/29532239.html and
windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/11/along-tatarstan-bashkortostan-berlin.html).
If a serious conflict does break out
along any of Bashkortostan’s borders – and it would seem extremely unlikely
that Ufa can manage to reach agreement without taking steps that will spark
controversy – it will dramatically overshadow what has been taking place in
Ingushetia and Chechnya this fall.
Not only is Bashkortostan far larger
– Ingushetia is the smallest federal subject except for the three federal
cities – and economically more important, but like Tatarstan, it sits astride
all of the east-west transportation and communications links between European
Russia and Siberia. If there is a crisis, it could easily disrupt those ties.
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