Focus on Past Rather than on Future Puts Survival of Tatars as Nation at Risk, Latypov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 7 – Nations like individuals who focus on the past rather than on the future and who are primarily focused on defending what they have rather than on seeking to achieve something new are condemning themselves to stagnation and even ultimate death, Ramis Latypov, editor of the Tatar-language online newspaper Intertat says.

            His point challenges what many Tatars and many members of other nations in the Russian Federation believe but is so important that the editors of Milliard.Tatar, a Russian-language portal have translated it so that it can serve as the basis for a broader discussion (milliard.tatar/news/teoriya-zizni-i-smerti-budet-li-zit-tatarskaya-naciya-5952).

            Latypov argues that “the majority of those who are considered to be part of the Tatar intelligentsia do not speak Tatar and do not display interest in nationality questions” and that even those who do speak Tatar remain classified as members of the Tatar nationality “only because they don’t know Russian well. If they did, they would redefine themselves.

            Even among this group, he continues, “Tatars are conservative and fear everything new.” They focus only on preserving what they have and defending it against attack rather than on coming up with new things.  Almost the only exceptions are publications directed toward young people, but these are seldom read by the national intelligentsia.

As a result, “the contemporary Tatar intellectual elite lives in and by the past. This stratum of the intelligentsia is aging. Here, one is speaking not about the age of an individual but about the age of his spirt because even at 30, someone can be old in his spirit.” Thus, “it seems to me that many of our representatives of the intelligentsia are tired, morally tired.”