Are the Tatars of Bashkortostan a Diaspora, an Irridenta Population, or a Native People? The Answer Matters, Garifullin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 8 – Some Bashkirs and some Tatars describe the Tatars of Bashkortostan as a diaspora, others in both groups say they are an irredenta population, and yet another group says they are a native people while others dispute each of these assertions, according to historian Ilnar Garifullin.

            Words matter, and these terms are especially freighted with meaning, he says; and 2019 is an appropriate time for clarifying the situation as the United Nations has declared it the Year of the Languages of Indigenous Peoples, using terms somewhat differently than Russian citizens normally do (idelreal.org/a/29978986.html).

                “The term ‘indigenous people’” is used around the world, but “in Russia as a rule, the word ‘numerically small’ is as a rule added to it,”  to indicate that in Moscow’s understanding an indigenous people is one that is relatively small and does not have anywhere in Russia is own political support in the form of a national republic.

            Consequently, Garifullin continues, “it is no accident that ‘the term indigenous numerically small peoples’ is applied only toward those people who are not involved the process of nation building in the framework of national republics.”

            In Bashkortostan, there is only one “indigenous people,” the Bashkirs, and Bashkirs routinely use the term “diaspora” to describe both immigrants from elsewhere and the ethnic Tatars in their midst. That is inappropriate as “a diaspora is part of a people living outside the country of its origin, which forms a stable ethnic group in the country of its residence.”

            The term “diaspora,” he says, “cannot apply by definition, since Bashkortostan, having a definite (although now only nominal) autonomy is part of the state under the name Russian Federation.” Moreover, the Tatars living in Bashkortostan are not territorially dispersed, but live “compactly in the western part of the Republic of Bashkortostan.”

            In that respect, Garifullin continues, the Tatars of Bashkortostan are most appropriately described as an irredenta population, however explosive that term may be for the two nations involved. As far as the term “indigenous people” is concerned, he says, the Tatars of Bashkortostan certainly are under international definitions but not Russian ones.

            Internationally, an indigenous people is any population which traces its ancestry back for centuries on a given segment of territory. Under Russian and Soviet definitions, however, it is generally applied only to those small groups which continue to practice traditional forms of economic activity.

            From this terminological discussion, three things follow, Garifullin insists. First, the Tatars under UN rules are a genuinely indigenous population of Bashkortostan and in no way a diaspora. This is something the Tatars of that republic should insist on a regular basis lest the use of alternative terms lead to unfortunate consequences.

            Second, the Tatars are also an indigenous people with roots in what is now Bashkortostan going back centuries and thus are part of its “political subjectivity.”  And third, efforts by Bashkirs to describe them otherwise are a transparent effort to diminish the rights of the Tatars living in the republic.

            Garifullin’s article is devoted only to the Tatars of Bashkortostan, but his discussion applies to a large number of other nations within the current borders of the Russian Federation and especially to those which do have republic status but many of whose members live beyond the borders of the republics.