Tatars Stress Turkic and Muslim Background of Orenburg Residents Moscow Counts as Russians

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 7 – The Milliard.Tatar portal carries a small story that suggests research done in 1963 found that the Orenburg Cossacks had a Tatar origin, the kind of report that typically gets passed over as being of only antiquarian interest but in fact is very much part of a serious political struggle.

            Tatars and Bashkirs believe that only by recovering portions of the Orenburg Oblast which once was part of Kazakhstan but now is a predominantly ethnic Russian region within the Russian Federation can they achieve a bridge to a country already independent and thus set the stage for themselves to achieve independence in the future.

            (On this, see belief and the calculations underlying it as well as Moscow’s opposition, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/03/kazakhstan-events-echo-in-orenburg.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/03/moscow-analyst-denounces-kazakh.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/11/orenburg-corridor-threatens-russia-more.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/if-tatarstan-had-bordered-foreign.html.)

            To support their arguments, the Tatars, Bashkirs and Kazakhs have suggested that Orenburg includes many who are now listed as Russians but who in fact trace their origins to Turkic Muslim nations like themselves (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/new-research-highlights-past-tatar.html).

            Among those in that category the research cited this week suggests that the Orenburg Cossacks were of Tatar and Muslim origin (milliard.tatar/news/orenburgskie-kazaki-mogut-imet-tatarskoe-proisxozdenie-5112). Such assertions not only challenge Moscow’s control of Orenburg oblast but also Putin’s repeated insistence that all Cossacks are Orthodox Christians.

            That last assertion would be laughable were it not accepted by so many. In fact, some Cossacks were Muslims, among them the Orenburg Cossacks, as well as Buddhists and even Jews (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/08/muslim-cossacks-making-comeback-in.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/01/cossacks-vastly-more-diverse-than-putin.html).