Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 5 – Bashkortostan
is about to begin the complicated process of demarcating its borders with
neighboring federal subjects. In 1919, Ufa will do so with Orenburg and
Sverdlovsk oblasts and in the following year with Chelyabinsk and Tatarstan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/11/bashkortostan-set-to-define-its-borders.html).
The history of Bashkortostan’s
border with Tatarstan is relatively well-known because the separation of these
two Muslim Turkic peoples in 1920 was Stalin’s first great act of ethnic
engineering and because of the efforts in each republic to assimilate members
of the other titular nation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/11/along-tatarstan-bashkortostan-berlin.html).
But
Bashkortostan’s borders to the east are less well known, and the process of
establishing the border with Chelyabinsk Oblast has been long and complicated.
Indeed, Ilnar Garifullin says, the upcoming border talks will have to address
many issues that in the minds of many Bashkirs are far from settled (idelreal.org/a/29637387.html).
When Zeki-Validi Togan drew the
first borders of Bashkortostan, he included the eastern part of what is today
Bashkortostan as well as three exclaves: Argayash, Yalan, and Tok-Churan
“cantons,” which today are part of Chelyabinsk oblast, Kurgan oblast, and
Orenburg oblast even though they still have Bashkir majorities or pluralities.
The problem he and other Bashkir
leaders faced is that Bashkortostan draw according to strictly ethnic
principles would not have any major cities or economic centers but drawing it
in ways that would include both would significantly reduce the share of
Bashkirs in its population. Togan favored the former principle; early Soviet
Bashkir leaders the latter.
The compromise was the existence of
the three exclaves. But after Soviet power was firmly established, Moscow moved
to disband them. In 1924, Garifullin writes, the Tok-Churan canton was
transferred to the Kyrgyz ASSR and later put within the borders of the Orenburg
Oblast.
A similar fate awaited the other two
“cantons” as the exclaves were called. They were abolished and their
territories and populations transferred to other federal subjects in the 1920s
and 1930s. As a result of this, the borders between Bashkortostan and Chelyabinsk
Oblast were finally put in more or less their current place by 1934.
But that is not the end of this
story, Garifullin points out. In 1954, Moscow wanted to create a new oblast
around Magnitogorsk which would include part of Chelyabinsk and part of Bashkortostan.
Ufa objected strenuously; and at least in part for that reason, the project was
shelved with no border changes.
The economic links that formation
was supposed to give political shape to, however, have only intensified: “a
third of the working population of Magnitogorsk now are residents of the
Bashkir Urals area.” Moreover, Bashkirs remain the dominant portion of the
population in what were the canton-exclaves.
Clearly, Bashkir negotiators will be
affected by those realities; and the political analyst says that “the Bashkir
exclaves given sufficient political will could exist without particular
problems in the framework of a single state.” That is, they could be returned
to the control of Bashkortostan.
Indeed, Garifullin continues, “the experience
of Kaliningrad Oblast during the times of the USSR only confirms that.”
And Bashkortostan has another reason
to press for such a return: if these three regions were again part of the
republic, that alone would give the Bashkirs a majority in the republic,
something they do not now have but that from the very beginning Bashkir
activists going back to Togan have wanted.
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