Tatars in Bashkir City Copy Baltic Tactic to Save Their Tatar-Language Paper

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 13 – The print run of the Tatar-language paper in Bashkortostan’s Belebey had fallen to 324 when its readers copied a tactic Baltic activists used earlier to save their papers: some subscribers have begun to form not one subscription but two or more. They’ve now boosted the paper’s print run to 534 and at least delayed the demise of Belebey kheberlere.   

            Because of the Internet, television, and rising subscription costs, the print versions of local papers across Russia in all languages are in trouble; but those in non-Russian languages are at still greater risk – and those in non-Russian languages different than those of the titular nationalities and their officials are especially so.

            The Tatar-Bashkir Service of Radio Liberty provides a glimpse into what is going on in Belebey as Tatars there try to save the local paper in their native language that has been a unifying force in their community for more than a century (azatliq.org/a/30124015.html in Tatar; idelreal.org/a/30131773.html in Russian).

            The 100,000-strong city of Belebey and its surrounding district in Bashkortostan is ethnically mixed: Russians form 49 percent of the total; Tatars, 24 percent; Chuvash, 13 percent; and Bashkirs 12 percent. But a generation ago, it was a key center of Tatar activism not only in that republic but more generally.   

            It was in Belebey that the first branch of the Tatar Social Center (TOTs) was formed, where the first issues of the Bashkir TOTs, Zhidegen, were published, where the first local Tatar Congress and the first Tatar gymnasium beyond the borders of the Republic of Tatarstan were organized. 

            But in recent years, the community has become less active, and ever fewer Tatars use their native language.  That has hit the paper hard, Zaifa Salikhova, a poetess who works as its editor in chief, says. Earlier this year, its print run fell to 384 and that meant it would have had to close had it not been for the intervention of the local TOTs.

            A similar fate awaited the Bashkir-language paper, Belebey kheberzere, ne it was not able to avoid – and now that paper comes out only on the Internet (belizv-b.rbsmi.ru/). (The Tatar paper has an Internet version as well at belizv-t.rbsmi.ru/.) But thanks to the efforts of activists, the Tatar paper has been saved, at least for the time being. 

            They pressed businesses and organizations to subscribe and some Tatars adopted a strategy that Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians used when their native language press began to revive in the 1980s: to boost the print runs, some individuals took out more than one subscription! The print run of the Tatar paper is now back at 534.

            Salikhova says that the print run  had fallen because of rising subscription costs reflecting rising postage charges and because of “the dying out of the native Tatar language in the life of the population.”  There are no longer any Tatar middle schools in the villages, and people are moving into cities where they use Russian and forget Tatar.

            “Of course, now everything is measured in terms of money,” she continues. “But there are values which cannot be measured in that way: national dignity, our heritage, our native language, our religion, our faith and the melody of our lives.” The newspaper is one of the most important means of defending these values. 

            Nurmukhamet Khuseynov, the former director of the Belebey Tatar gymnasium, says that many people stopped reading the paper because local officials insisted on the publication of documents on the front pages. Those bred people and they didn’t look at the third and fourth pages where real local news appears. 

            On those back pages, he says, are reflected “the most immediate problems of our people – the fate of the Tatar countryside, the paths of preserving it, questions of identity and national education,” all of which are under attack.   There are fewer classes in Tatar in the schools, national self-consciousness is falling, and the generation of activists is passing from the scene. 

“But despite these difficulties,” Khuseynov says, “we must live and must hold things together. Therefore, we are planning to organize a round table in September where we will raise the issues of renewing the activity of the national movement and the issue of preserving the paper will also be discussed.”