Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 20 -- Censuses in
Russia, as in many other countries, are never easy or non-political, and the
upcoming one there promises to be both. On the one hand, there are unresolved
issues about how to ensure that this enumeration won’t miss five million people
as the last one did; and on the other, there are serious conflicts about the
categories it will use.
The latter issues involved are by
far the most controversial politically, and a debate is now raging about
whether the census will allow residents of the Russian Federation to identify
as being of “mixed ethnicity” or not.
The evidence suggests, Tatarstan ethnographer Damir Iskhakov says, that
it is far from being resolved despite the claims of some that it has.
The reasons for that are obvious, he
suggests in the course of an interview
to Kazan’s Business-Gazeta, given the potentially explosive and
destabilizing consequences of some proposed changes for Tatars and other
non-Russians in the first instance and even for ethnic Russians over the longer
term (business-gazeta.ru/article/432128).
Scholars since Soviet times have
been talking about mixed “Tatar-Bashkir” or “Bashkir-Tatar” identities but the
state has not been willing up to now to move toward recognition of these. As
early as 1986, the late Vladimir Pimenov of the Institute of Ethnography,
discussed this; but his results were never published.
The reasons for that is that
officials could see that if Soviet citizens were allowed to declared mixed
nationality, that would highlight the divergence between census enumerations
and their passports. Moreover, they recognized that this would be an indirect
way to see how many mixed marriages there were or weren’t, always a sensitive
subject.
Now, however, Iskhakov says, Moscow
is thinking about adding this category, something that could divide rather than
unite neighboring groups and create claims of irredenta and the like. Valery
Stepanov, Valery Tishkov’s “right hand man on the census, says privately that
there will be such a category in the 2020 enumeration. Tishkov, however, says publicly
there won’t be.
“Apparently,” the Tatarstan
ethnographer continues, “the issue has not been finally resolved,” and there
remain people on both sides of the issue within the expert community and the
political elites. A major reason for the
delay is that “the Moscow side isn’t certain that the census will be conducted
normally in Bashkortostan.”
In 2010, the Bashkir authorities
counted some 150,000 Tatars as Bashkirs; and they are currently engaged in a
drive to get as many people in the republic as possible to declare that they
are members of the titular nationality.
Moscow simply isn’t in control of this situation, Iskhakov says; and it
could easily get out of hand, sparking a conflict between Ufa and Kazan.
But the Tatar-Bashkir connection isn’t
the only one that will be affected, he continues. There are large parts of
Russia populated by Ukrainians who aren’t identifying as such now but might in the
future if they have the option of dual nationality. Certainly, Iskhakov says,
someone in Moscow must be thinking about that.
If all those of mixed Ukrainian background
suddenly declared themselves to be Ukrainians, Ukrainian and not Tatar would be
the second largest nationality in the Russian Federation. That would have
serious consequences for the Tatars who gain by being so acknowledge
officially.
There is also the issue of the
ethnic Russian Cossacks. Officials have
always tried to include them as Russians even though “they are not,” the Kazan
scholar says. And one could extend this
list with the possibility of declaring mixed nationality opening the way not to
assimilation as Moscow hopes but to unpredictable shifts over time.
Tatarstan has “real interests” in
Bashkortostan, he says. “According to official statistics, there are more than
a million Tatars there; but if you add to this [those miscounted in 2010 and on
other occasions], the real number would be 1.5 million. This is already a second Tatarstan as it were,
a smaller version, although not that small.”
As far as the impact of this on
assimilation is concerned, Iskhakov cites the words of Yulian Bromley, the director
of the Moscow Institute of Ethnography before Tishkov. Bromley insisted that “when
two ethnoses interact, the numerically dominant one always has the advantage”
and will assimilate the smaller.
That is usually but not always the
case, the Kazan scholar continues. “The
experience of Tatarstan shows that when there was a strong growth in national
spirit (in the 1980s and 1990s), identity grew to the proportion of 50-50.”
Thus, what happens to the Tatars is affected not just by Russians but by their
own self-consciousness.
At the same time, Iskhakov says,
there is the issue of Islamic identity, something that is strengthening
especially among the young. All these changes make the issue of how many Tatars
will be counted in 2020 complicated to predict. Some say their number will fall
but most that they will increase but only by a small amount.
Moscow may play games by promoting
the Kryashens, the Siberian Tatars or the Nagaybaks, he continues; but those
actions will not have as great an impact as whether people will be allowed to
declare themselves binational – with officials then allocating them to one or
the other as they see fit.
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