Minnikhanov Visits Memorial to Ivan Grozny’s Soldiers who Died Attacking Kazan Khanate in 1552 Having Earlier Banned Meeting to Remember Its Defenders

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – The Kremlin’s efforts to rein in Tatarstan have just taken another step forward, one certain to undermine its authority among Tatars: Republic head Rustam Minnikhanov has visited a memorial to Russian troops who died during the sacking of the Kazan khanate in 1552 after having earlier banned a meeting of Tatars to remember its defenders.

            Between 1989 and 2021, Tatars assembled every year on October to remember those who died in Kazan fighting the Russian advance. At first, only a few hundred did so and then tens of thousands in the 1990s. But as Putin increasingly moved against the republic, Kazan officials were forced to restrict the size and location of such meetings and then in 2022 to ban them.

            (For this history, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/10/kazan-refuses-to-authorize-meeting-on.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/this-year-tatars-wont-mark-anniversary.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/latest-ban-on-tatarstan-memorial-day.html.)

            Over the last decade, the Russian Orthodox Church and Moscow officials have devoted more attention to marking the 1552 battle at a monument built two centuries ago in tsarist times to those Russian soldiers who lost their lives in the course of their conquest of Kazan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/muscovite-plans-to-memorialize-russians.html).

            And earlier this year, the government of Tatarstan announced that it had allocated 300 million rubles (three million US dollars) to refurbish the Russian monument (m.business-gazeta.ru/news/628522), but few Tatars thought that their own leaders would go there, especially on such a sensitive anniversary.

            Now, however, that has happened, sparking anger among Tatars not only at Minnikhanov who has shown himself increasingly deaf to the demands of the Tatars but at Moscow for its increasingly hostile attitude (idelreal.org/a/dlya-chego-publichno-sech-sebya-ruslan-aysin-o-poseschenii-minnihanovym-hrama-voinam-pogibshim-pri-vzyatii-kazani/33163431.html).

            Minnikhanov’s visit to a Russian shrine may seem a small thing to many outside observers, but it is likely to prove anything but, given that it shows there are apparently no limits to what the Moscow-imposed head of Tatarstan is prepared to do to satisfy the wishes of the Kremlin at the expense of his own nation.