Must Tatars who Once Asked whether They were Tatars or Bulgars Now Ask Whether they are Russians and Not Tatars? Kazan Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 1 – At the end of Soviet times, many living in Tatarstan asked whether they should declare themselves Tatars or Bulgars, a question largely dropped after 1991 with the overwhelming majority of residents declaring that they were and remain Tatars, Rim Khisamutdinov says.

            Now, the Kazan commentator says, those living in Tatarstan are being compelled to ask themselves a different question about their identity: “Who are we now, ethnic Russians or ethnic Tatars?” Some in Moscow want them to answer the first, while most in Tatarstan, in reaction, continue to identify as Tatars (milliard.tatar/news/kto-my-teper-russkie-ili-tatary-4565).

            The question has been provoked in the first instance by Petr Tolstoy, first vice chairman of the Russian State Duma who recently declared that “our brother Avars, Chechens, Tatars and Bashkirs are all Russians,” using the Russian term russky which designates ethnicity rather than the term rossiyanin which is political rather than ethnic.

            Members of all these groups are russkiye, Tolstoy says, “because they live in Russia.” And as for the Tatars, “Ivan Grozny did not take Kazan so that now we would begin to suddenly speak about ‘rossiyane.’” Yeltsin, the Duma vice chairman says, came up with that absurd term apparently out of a desire not to offend anyone.

            According to Khisamutdinov, Tolstoy gets it wrong on two counts. On the one hand, it is absurd to suggest that Grozny took Kazan to make everyone into a Russian. Not only did he not have that as his goal but his actions in fact led to the rise of a Russian state rather than one based narrowly on Muscovy.

            And on the other, as anyone who goes beyond the Moscow ring road knows, there are a variety of different nations in the Russian Federation who value that identity even if they are completely loyal political subjects of the Kremlin. To deny that is to raise questions, it would be better for Moscow not to see asked.

            As for himself, the Kazan commentator says, he says that he is “not a russky but rather a rossiyanin” and intends to stay that way whatever someone in Moscow says.