Bashkortostan Purges Tatar Ethnographer Apparently over Census But Possibly over Ukraine War as Well

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – Tensions over the counting of Tatars as Bashkirs in Bashkortostan in the Russian census, already near the boiling point there and between Ufa, Kazan and Moscow have now led the Bashkir government to purge an ethnic Tatar ethnographer for supposedly being “a Tatar agent.”

            (For background on these tensions which show no sign of easing, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/tatar-analysts-say-census.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/tatars-should-welcome-tishkovs-attack.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/kazan-failing-to-react-to-ufas.html.)

            In a classic case of telephone “justice,” the leadership of the republic has directed the Institute of Ethnological Research of the Ufa Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences not to renew the contract of Ildar Gabdrafikov, a well-known specialist there (idelreal.org/a/31776382.html).

            Gabdrafikov is a native of Bashkortostan and a graduate of Bashkir State University. He has worked at the Institute of Ethnological Research since 1990 where he has authored more than 200 scholarly articles and books and spoken at conferences in more than 30 countries around the world.

            Since 1993, he has also served as an expert of the ethnic monitoring and early warning system EAWARN in Bashkortostan; and it is in that capacity that he has attracted unwanted political attention from the powers that be in the republic who do not want anyone least of all a Tatar watching what they are doing with regard to census enumerations.

            Gabdrafikov says that he believes that “neither the state nor anyone else should be allowed to interfere in the process of ethnic and linguistic self-identification during a census. People must decide for themselves who they are by nationality and which language for them is their native tongue.”

            He says that local officials in western Bashkortostan did not violate those principles during the most recent census, but republic media, clearly at the direction of the Ufa leadership, promoted various measures designed to “’heighten the national self-consciousness of Bashkirs’” and thus boost their numbers at that time.

            The senior ethnographer says that he rejects suggestions that he is some kind of “agent of Tatarstan,” although he admits to being proud of his nationality and is a member of the council of the National-Cultural Autonomy of Tatars in Bashkortostan. He also rejects reports that he is an opponent of the war in Ukraine.

            Gabdrafikov says he will now turn to the courts to seek justice because he has no other choice. With the loss of his position, he will lose his housing; and he and his two daughters will be out on the street.