Ufa has Been Reidentifying Tatars as Bashkirs Since the 1950s, Garifullin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 29 – In recent weeks, Tatars have expressed serious concern that Bashkortostan will use administrative pressure and direct falsification of data from the upcoming 2020 census in order to boost the number and share of Bashkirs in Bashkortostan by reidentifying Tatars living there as Bashkirs (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/02/in-advance-of-2020-census-kazan-urged.html).

            Now, Tatar commentator Ilnar Garifullin shows why they have reason to be afraid: Except for the 1989 census, which occurred under the relative freedom of perestroika, the Bashkirs not only have falsified the numbers of Bashkirs in all other censuses since World War II – 1959, 1970, 2002 and 2010 -- but also have been caught at it or even admitted as much (idelreal.org/a/30459554.html and idelreal.org/a/30468323.html).

            Even a cursory examination of the 1959, 1970  and 1979 censuses, he says, raises questions because it shows the number of Tatars in Bashkortostan falling even though their natural rate of increase was higher not only of the Russians but of the Bashkirs, a violation of the law that the CPSU Central Committee apparatus identified.

            In a report in 1987, Moscow documented that Ufa had reidentified whole villages as Bashkir when they were in fact Tatar and that it had then had census takers in 1979 and “in part” in 1959 change the number of Bashkirs and Tatars they recorded, boosting the latter by cutting the number of the latter.

            Tagir Akhunzyanov, a Bashkir obkom official who was fired for overseeing this program, admitted in a 2002 interview that he had directed local officials regarding what percentages of Bashkirs and Tatars they were to report. “One of the raikom secretaries of Burayev district in the course of the census reported that ‘the assignment of the obkom concerning the number of Bashkirs not only has been fulfilled but was overfulfilled by 15 percent.”

            The Bashkir authorities then used the falsified figures to cut the number of Tatar language schools and thus boost the number of Tatars they could count as Bashkirs because they spoke Bashkir after leaving school rather than Tatar. In December 1978, the Bashkortostan Constitution in fact dropped Tatar as an official language in the republic.

            Under the authoritarian conditions that existed in 1959, 1970 and 1979, Garifullin continues, the Bashkirs found it easy to falsify census returns. But when conditions liberalized by 1989, their game was exposed: the number of Tatars rose and the number of Bashkirs fell when Tatars who had been forcibly listed as Bashkirs declared who they really were.

             Compared to the 1979 census, the number of Tatars rose to 1.13 million while the number of Bashkirs fell to 864,000.  Data on native language use followed the same pattern in these two censuses, although the share of Bashkir-speaking Bashkirs naturally rose when the ruse was uncovered.

            In the lead up to the 2002 census, Ufa officials made it clear that they wanted to reverse the trends shown in the 1989 census and were ready to use administrative measures again to get their way.  To that end, they launched a major propaganda campaign intended to get Tatars in Bashkortostan to identify as Bashkirs on their own.

            That didn’t work and so administrative measures were employed. This reached the point of absurdity, Garifullin continues, “when census takers even before talking to the population already had in their hand exact figures as to how many Bashkirs there were supposed to be in any specific population point.”

            It took three years for the nationality results of the 2002 census to be published, at least in part because of machinations behind the scenes by Bashkortostan officials.  Ufa got its way, Garifullin says, and it was able to secure the counting of 200,000 Tatars as Bashkirs and dramatically boost the number of Bashkirs in the republic.

            “Preparations for the 2010 census campaign took place in approximately the same conditions as those for the 2002 enumeration. However, there were some special features,” Garifullin says. Now, Ufa ordered that the Bashkir share of the population was to reach 41 percent, something improbable that it didn’t achieve in 2002.

            The situation might have been truly unfortunate had it not been for the fact that Bashkortostan President Murtaza Rakhimov was forced out of his position in July 2010, the Tatar analyst says.  In the confusion, Ufa didn’t send specific numerical requirements to the villages and regions, thus allowing a more accurate count.

            In the absence of similar confusion this all, Garifulllin suggests, falsification is more likely than not once again.