Non-Russian Republic Heads Destroying Ethnic Identities Even when Claiming to be Fighting to Defend Them, Sidorov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 31 – Most observers of the non-Russian republics divide their leaders between those who work for Moscow and seek to destroy national movements there and those who work for their own populations and thus use the national feelings of the populations of their region to boost their power.

            But in an analysis of the situation in Bashkortostan over the last year, Kharun Sidorov, a Prague-based specialist on the Middle Volga, says that many republic leaders are now doing both simultaneously and thus obscuring what is going on (idelreal.org/agody-dlya-bashkortostana-bylo-ploho-no-mozhet-byt-esche-huzhe/32751952.html).

            “While fighting the national movement,” he writes, Ufa officials “are at the same time trying to use the national factor in their policies;” but in doing so, Sidorov suggests, they are making the national in this case “less and less” unique “not only in content but also in form” with anti-ethnic elements being introduced into what had been purely ethnic events.

            For example, in Bashkortostan this year, the national Sabantuy events “took place not only under Z symbols but also with a performance of the song, ‘Sky of the Slavs,’” yet another way in which Bashkir identity is being destroyed by those who argue that they are in fact defending it.