‘Tatarstanism’ Failed Because Its Tatar Promoters Wouldn’t Give Up Tatar World, Shishkin Says

Paul Goble

            July 20 – Tatarstanism, an ideological position which holds that all residents of the Republic of Tatarstan should identify with it, rose when the republic was pursuing greater autonomy in the 1990s but ultimately failed because the ethnic Tatars backing it refused to give up their commitment to the Tatar nation as part of a larger Tatar world, Shishkin says.

            In the course of a roundtable organized by the Milliard.Tatar portal, the ethnic Russian publicist argues that both its rise and demise were inevitable (milliard.tatar/news/tatarstanizm-v-usloviyax-90-x-v-obshhestve-byl-neizbezen-1904 and milliard.tatar/news/mozet-li-kulturnyi-regionalizm-byt-fiskoi-tatarstana-v-dannom-slucae-1957).

             Its appearance and rise were inevitable when Kazan was focusing primarily on boosting the importance of the republic as a whole, but its demise became inevitable when the ethnic Tatars behind it weren’t willing to yield on their insistence that Kazan is not just the capital of Tatarstan but of the Tatar nation, most of whom live beyond its borders.

            This is a critical observation because while Shishkin does not say so, that has been the fate of all efforts in the past to promote a territorial identity in non-Russian areas with significant co-ethnic populations beyond the borders of the republic involved; and it highlights one of the problems of such efforts in the future.

            As Shishkin does make clear, that has left the Russians in Tatarstan in a different and more problematic position than ethnic Russians elsewhere. “A Russian in Siberia is a Siberian; a Russian in the south even if he isn’t of Cossack origin is a Cossack for the others. A Russian in the Urals is a Urals resident” and so on.

            But “a Russian in Kazan is a Russian” not only because of the attitudes of Tatars behind Tatarstanism but also because Kazan, unlike other region centers in Russia is not a peripheral city as far as Russians are concerned. Thus, relations between Russians and Tatars there are more fraught than is the case in other republics.

Another participant in the roundtable, sociologist Danis Garayev, calls attention to one aspect of this. Orthodox Christian Russians and Muslim Tatars have long been competing to assimilate the Finno-Ugric groups in the region. This struggle also heightens ethnic differences and thus reduces the possibilities for regional-republic identification.