‘Tatar Lobby’ in Moscow Plays Key Role Now and Could Play Larger One in the Future, Three Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – What is often called “the Tatar lobby” in Moscow -- the numerous officials and businessmen both ethnic Tatar and ethnic Russian who work in the Russian capital -- have long attracted attention there and in other republics for their role in promoting and defending the interests of Tatarstan there, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

            (For background on this group, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/bashkirs-upset-by-power-of-tatar-lobby.html, prufy.ru/news/kazan/176823-ot_mordovii_do_khabarovska_kak_tatarskoe_lobbi_vozglavilo_ministerstva_i_regiony_v_8_subektakh_rf/ and realnoevremya.ru/articles/193598-v-moskve-vse-familii-izvestnyh-tatarstanskih-upravlencev-na-sluhu.)

            The IdelReal portal asked three experts –Ruslan Aysin, a Tatar political émigré and activist, Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter and now Putin critic who earlier worked in Bashkortostan, and Irina Busygina, formerly at the HSE and now at Harvard’s Davis Center, for their views on the Tatar lobby and its future (idelreal.org/a/tatarskoe-lobbi-i-predely-loyalnosti-gotova-li-kazan-k-samostoyatelnosti/33714210.html).

            Aysin says that Tatarstan’s political leadership posses “significant lobbying capabilities” but ones that tend to be concentrated in specific areas of importance to the republic such as construction. Their role there has become possible because “Moscow views the Tatarstan elite as highly effective and sufficiently loyal.” That gives this elite “a special value.”

            Sometime the lobby is successful in promoting a cause or delaying the implementation of a Moscow decision but that its position is “behavioral rather than strictly political” and in any case reflects the views of Kazan rather than being an independent actor in its own right. That could change, however, if Moscow weakened and could no longer eliminate rivals.

            Gallyamov says that neither the Kazan elite nor its lobby will push for secession anytime soon but instead will seek to maximize Tatarstan’s influence and freedom of action within the Russian Federation. Both groups resent much that Moscow does but recognize that too actively expressing such views would be dangerous.

            And Busygina observes that the Tatar lobby is an intriguing object for study because she does not know of any other region or republic which has anything like it -- although all have permanent representations in Moscow that may provide something similar. (On these, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/embassies-of-non-russian-republics.html and indowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/apparently-on-moscows-order-functions.html.)

            She says that there is discontent with Moscow in both Kazan and among the Tatar lobby and that “A weakening of Moscow could serve to expose it. But it is definitely there. However, to openly demonstrate this discontent right now would be tantamount to political suicide. It would be an absolutely irrational move."

She says that what she means by the "weakening of the center" would be Putin’s loss of his current ability to mediate among various groups in the center and have the last word. At present, none of these groups is capable of challenging him.”  But that could change; and if it did, these groups which “loathe one another” and have different visions of the future could act.

In that event, regional and republic capitals and their representatives in Moscow could play a dramatically expanded role in determining the direction Russia will take given the likelihood that some of the competitors for power in the Russian capital will seek them as allies in that struggle.