When ‘an American Victory Map’ Showed an Independent Kazan Republic

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 4 – At the end of February 1918, in order to block the proclamation of an Idel-Ural state in the Middle Volga, Bolshevik forces declared the establishment of the Kazan Soviet Republic – and remarkably, it was shown as an independent country on “an American victory map” prepared at the directive of US President Woodrow Wilson.

            In a commentary for the IdelReal portal, historian Ilnar Garifullin discusses the complicated history of that period and the map, whose existence was never acknowledged in Soviet times but constitutes a significant aspect of Tatar political history in the 20^th century (idelreal.org/a/30690283.html).       

                On January 8, 1918, the second All-Russian Muslim Military Congress assembled in Kazan for two purposes: the establishment of the Idel-Ural Republic that would unite all the peoples of the Middle Volga region and the formation of non-Russian military forces capable of defending it against outsiders. 

            Those projects had a great deal of popular support but they were actively opposed by Bolshevik leaders in Kazan, Karl Grasis and Yakov Sheynkman, both of which were Great Russian chauvinists with no local ties and both of which insisted that the Tatars wanted to “revive the Kazan khanate” and drive out all the Russians.

            To block the supporters of Idel-Ural, the two convened a Congress of Soviets of the Volga and Urals and proclaimed the Kazan Soviet Workers and Peasants Republic. Only one of the participants in this project at the level of a people’s commissar was an ethnic Tatar. The rest were Russians or other arrivals from outside.

            But because their policy ran counter to Lenin’s call for self-determination, the Kazan Republic was liquidated in May 1918 on Moscow’s order with the explanation that “no organ of Soviet power proclaimed such a republic,” a repudiation of the Russian nationalist wing within the Bolshevik organizations there.

            During its brief existence, however, the Kazan Republic worked to undermine the co-existing Idel-Ural project by declaring it “bourgeois” and “counter-revolutionary.”  And its leaders continued to advance that position even when Moscow proclaimed a Tatar-Bashkir Soviet republic as the center’s preferred resolution.

            Remarkably and intriguingly, Garifullin continues, “the Kazan Soviet Workers and Peasants Republic appeared on a map prepared according to the directive of US President Woodrow Wilson in 1918. There it was shown alongside Finland, Ukraine and the Baltic Republics.

            The existence of this map, which the historian reproduces as an illustration to his article, is extremely interesting, especially since one cannot find any reference to it in Soviet or Russian materials. That suggests that the possibility a state based on Kazan would be independent was recognized far beyond the borders of the Moscow-led state.