New Bashkir National Strategy Looks Far Better than ‘Toothless’ Tatar One But May Entail Unexpected Risks, Sidorov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 2 – Last August, the National Council of the World Congress of Tatars adopted “an action strategy” (tatar-congress.org/ru/blog/export-blog/tatary-strategiya-deystviya/). And at the end of December, the World Kurultay of Bashkirs promulgated an analogous document (kurultai.ru/ru/content/1898-na-sajte-vsemirnogo-kurultaya-bashkir-opublikovana-strategiya-razvitiya-bashkirskogo-naroda/).

            That makes it possible to compare the contrasting approaches and agendas of the Tatar and Bashkir nations, Prague-based Muslim commentator Kharun Sidorov says, and to conclude that “the strategy of the Bashkirs looks better than the toothless strategy of the Tatars” (idelreal.org/a/31081997.html).

            Earlier in a Telegram channel post, the commentator said that the Bashkir strategy talks about financing, the establishment of institutions and the setting of specific times for the implementation of its provisions, and that it reflects popular aspirations rather than simply the goals of the government, all in contrast to the Tatar one (t.me/HVSchannel/4349).

            Now, Sidorov is offering a more comprehensive comparison, one in which he concludes that “the two strategies are written in different genres,” with the Tatar document being more “an ideological manifesto” and the Bashkir one devoting only “a minimum of attention” to “philosophical issues” like identity and religion and more to practical action.

            But that overarching conclusion, the commentator suggests, fails to recognize that behind the Bashkir strategy are those pushing for a neo-traditionalist agenda that seeks to support and even intensify the identities Bashkirs have with sub-national divisions such as families, clans and regions.

            That puts it at odds with Ufa and with Bashkir thinkers like Ayrat Dilmukhametov, now behind bars as a political prisoner, who advocates the creation of a Bashkortostan “political nation” involving all groups ethnic and otherwise within the republic analogous to the political nation of Russians some in Moscow call for.

            This division in Bashkortostan has both immediate and longer-term consequences, Sidorov says. In the short term, it limits the ability of Bashkirs to cooperate with the Navalny movement as compared to Tatars in Tatarstan who are quite ready to use pan-Russian slogans and support a broader agenda.

            But in the longer term, it may have even more serious consequences, making it far from difficult to come up with a single agenda for the Bashkirs in the event of a new period of political turbulence, opening the way instead for conflicts few have expected and alliances that even fewer think are possible.

            That makes these two national strategy documents far more relevant than such declarations usually are, not only as a measure of where the respective nations in fact are today but also as an indication of how they may develop in what Sidorov clearly sees as the looming crisis in the Russian Federation as a whole.

            And he speculates that in that crisis, the neo-traditionalists of Bashkortostan may find allies among the new right and neo-con communities in Europe and the West more broadly while the more civic-minded nationalists of Tatarstan may become partners with more traditionally democratic groups there.