RUSSIA The future of Bashkortostan, inside or outside Russia

Among the Baskars, one of the least aggressive and most autonomous parts of the Tatar-Mongol universe, there is growing unrest over the abolition of any form of autonomy by Moscow and the recruitment of their young men to go and die at the front. The former Speaker of the House of Commons, Rostislav Murzagulov, now in exile: “We were free men. I don’t understand how we became slaves, or even murderers.”

Moscow () – In Bashkortostan, the Russian Tatar republic in the Urals, discontent is growing over the conditions imposed by the Putin regime in Moscow, according to which there is no longer a “president” but only a “leader”, and the local language is now optional, while Russian is mandatory. Discussions on forms of autonomy are strictly prohibited, and instead of support for local youth, there are increasing numbers of protests, which mean that a large part of the future generations of this and other peripheral regions of Russia are killed in the war.

In August, it was 30 years since the signing of the agreement on the forms of autonomy of the Bashkiri region from central authorities. The text was supposed to be automatically confirmed after 10 years, but in 2004 Vladimir Putin’s “power vertical” was installed in the Kremlin, and confirmation was not forthcoming not only for the Ufa Republic, but also for the other Tatar republic of Kazan. The political scientist Ruslan Gabbas, who has been living abroad for a long time, and the former speaker of the House of Commons of Bashkortostan, Rostislav Murzagulov, who is also in exile, spoke about this in Idel.Realii.

They recall the speeches of the 1990s and the early Putin years, when “we wanted to be part of Europe and be friends with the whole world, recognising the borders of all neighbouring states… All this was a trivial lie, a special operation to avoid facing reality.” The president’s Westernised rhetoric was “a pretence due to the still preponderant force of the oligarchic elites that he struggled to control, then came the imperial ambitions and the formation of the KGB, which are now obvious to everyone.”

The two politicians in exile are surprised that most of their friends and associates have remained in Bashkortostan: “They either keep quiet or repeat slogans like parrots,” or they have completely lost their way, “to the point of going out and killing people or getting themselves killed.” Gabbas recalls how in 2006-2007 he had a round of meetings in Europe and America, and suddenly “everything changed, and this does not depend on the will of one person; there is a whole gang around Putin who suggest shameful ideas to him.” That is why Murzagulov believes that “it is not enough to declare independence from above, all citizens must be involved.”

Both believe that in the future, “if a region really wants to separate from Russia, it will have to be respected,” but the best solution would be to move “towards a real federalism for the whole of Russia: sooner or later it will come.” Rostislav recalls the past examples of the democratic republic of Novgorod, but also of Bashkortostan itself, which before being suffocated by Tsarist pressure was the heir to one of the most liberal khanates in the Tatar world: “people used to gather in the square and consider problems together, we were free men… I don’t understand how we have become slaves, or even murderers.”

Gabbasov recalls that even before Putin, after the end of the USSR, a strong Russian chauvinist nationalism had grown, which made films like Brat 1 and 2 popular, with strong elements of contempt for non-Russian peoples, even for Ukrainians themselves – “these are feelings rooted in the soul of Russians.” Hostility towards Asian peoples already existed in Soviet times, when they were called Čurki (a derogatory term for Caucasians) or Uzkoglazye (“narrow-eyed”), and many doubts remain about the possibility of building true federalism.

According to the 1994 agreements, Bashkortostan, like Tatarstan, decided for itself what percentage of its budget could be allocated to the federal centre, had its own citizenship, at least on paper, and also its own foreign policy. The Bashkars, one of the least aggressive and most autonomous parts of the Tatar-Mongol universe, dream of one day becoming a free people again, able to live in peace with the whole world.