Bashkir National Organization Seeks Return of Nationality Line in Passports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 4 – One of the most notorious features of Soviet life was the so-called “fifth paragraph” in passports in which for all time the nationality of the bearer was listed. Moscow used this to discriminate against Jews and others it did not approve of at one time or another, and most Russians were delighted when it was eliminated by the Russian Federation.

            But members of some nations were convinced then and remain convinced now that they benefit from such a line not only because it reinforces the identities of the members of their nationalities but also because it slows or blocks assimilation to Russians either directly or through the notion of “mixed nationality” some Moscow experts and officials are pushing.

            Bashkort, the national organization of the Bashkirs, has now sent a memorandum to the republic’s State Council asking that it seek to ensure that citizens will have the opportunity to declare their nationality in the passport, an effective restoration of “the fifth paragraph” and also give their full names in the native languages rather than as transliterated into Russian.

            That would require that Ufa not only approve these steps but that it call on the Russian State Duma to amend the existing legislation on passports, something past experience suggests the federal legislature is almost certainly going to reject (vk.com/boobashkort?w=wall-70958470_267111 and idelreal.org/a/29859610.html).

            The Bashkort initiative is not the first time non-Russians have pressed for a return of the nationality line in passports. Encouraged by a 2013 poll which showed that 51 percent of Russian citizens favor the measure, the issue was then forwarded to the Duma but not taken up for consideration (lenta.ru/news/2015/02/02/nationality/).

            Last December, the Third Congress of the Bashkir People called on its leadership to prepare such a memorandum (idelreal.org/a/29673374.html), and one of its leaders, Ruslan Gabbasov tells IdelReal that Bashkirs feel threatened by assimilation and thus need the defense a nationality line provides. 

            They are especially worried by Academician Valery Tishkov’s promotion of both sub-ethnic identities and mixed ethnic identities to be recorded in the upcoming 2020 census, a shift in policy that Gabbasov says would constitute a serious and direct threat to the Bashkirs in particular.

            For background on what Tishkov is trying to do and how much opposition his efforts have sparked in the Middle Volga, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/05/imperial-ethnography-might-moscow-drop.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/tishkovs-continuing-attack-on-unity-of.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/moscows-plans-to-divide-up-tatars-now.html.

            According to Gabbasov, what he and his co-ethnics are trying to do is completely within the framework of the Russian constitution and Russian law; but he stresses that he and they are more concerned with protecting the rights of the Bashkirs than of observing the letter of Russian legislation.

            The Bashkir activist adds that he expects a positive response from officials both because of the transparent consequences of Tishkov’s efforts for Bashkirs and thus the republic and also because a Bashkir studying in the US now long ago concluded that the situation in Bashkortostan with regard to identity is truly dire.

            Leyla Latypova wrote, Gabbasov points out, that “a non-ethnic Russian identity is already dominant in Bashkortostan, and that “ethnic self-identifications on the other hand have receded to second place (idelreal.org/a/29461493.html).