The excessively cruel decision of the Baimak district court in Bashkirtostan, which sentenced a well-known local eco-activist, ex-head of the Bashkort organization banned in Russia, Fail Alsynov, to 4 years in prison, accused under Article 282.ch.1 of the Criminal Code of Russia (“Inciting hatred or enmity and humiliation of human dignity”) caused mass protests.
On the day of the sentencing, January 17, 2024, thousands of people gathered near the courthouse, just like the day before. In response, Russian security forces resorted to mass beatings, tear gas and detention of protesters.
On this day, there were interruptions in the work of the Internet in the city, some opposition telegram channels did not work. Despite the threat of mass repressions, Alsynov’s supporters called for peaceful protests and roadblocks to prevent the illegal prisoner from being taken away and to prevent security forces from entering the city. Dozens of arrests of protesters are reported.
Well-known figures of culture and arts publicly spoke in defense of Fail Alsynov. Some participants in the war with Ukraine released a video message. Bashkir women, in turn, called on the Bashkirs, whom Russia sent to the deadly war with Ukraine, to return and protect their relatives from repression and beatings by security forces.
Fail Alsynov, who became popular in Bashkirtostan due to the protection of the sacred Kushtau mountain (in 2020, massive protests swept through the country against the authorities’ intentions to hand over the “Bashkir Soda Campaign” to the industrial development of the Kushtau mountain, sacred to the Bashkirs, despite mass detentions and arrests: more than 90 detainees and 34 sentenced to administrative arrest, the protesters were able to defend the mountain) with the beginning of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, called the sending of Bashkir boys as part of the partial mobilization to Ukraine “genocide of the Bashkir people” and declared that the war against Ukraine “is not our war”.
The current protests in Bashkortostan testify to the rapid growth of the Bashkirs’ dissatisfaction with the actions of the authorities, among them the war against Ukraine, in which the Bashkirs, according to officially verified data, suffered some of the largest losses among the inhabitants of Russia in the national and regional dimensions.
The brutal attitude of the metropolis towards the Bashkirs, the attempt to mercilessly rob their natural resources and use them as cannon fodder prompts the inhabitants of the region to reconsider their attitude to the contractual relations with the Russian Federation formed in the 1990s.
Now a little about the history of Russian colonization and occupation of the Bashkirs.
Bashkortostan is an occupied republic within the Russian Federation with a size of 142,947 square kilometres and a population of more than 4 million people, of which Turks who practice Islam: Bashkirs (31.01%) and Tatars (23.82%) according to the latest official census make up the majority, the colonizers are Russians – only a third of the population – 36.89%.
The Bashkirs have a complicated history of relations with the Russian occupiers. After the annexation by Moscow of the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates in the first quarter of the 16th century, part of the Turkic-speaking Bashkir Muslims, the territory of which was settled in the southern Urals between Kama and Yak (Urals), came under the Moscow protectorate based on a treaty. In the middle of the 16th century, in the extreme north-west of the Bashkir settlements, Moscow built the Zakam defence line for “protection against the Bashkirs and Kalmyks”, and in 1586 the Ufa fortress was founded in Northern Bashkiria.
Bashkirs, some of whom were employed in Moscow’s service, for a long time resisted Moscow’s efforts to collect systematic taxes from them and to fulfill their obligations. Moscow encouraged more and more Russians, Tatars, Chuvash, Cheremys and Mordovians to move from the middle Volga region to the Southern Urals, to settle in the Bashkir pastures as farmers, as a result of which the Bashkirs found themselves in a minority in their territory by the end of the 16th century.
Growing imperial claims of Russia and violent colonization by foreigners caused mass resistance and armed demonstrations by Bashkirs in 1662-1664, 1676-1682 and 1705-1710. The Bashkirs, led by national hero Salavat Yulayev, took part in Omelyan Pugachev’s uprising (1773-1775).
Unlike the non-Russians of the Kazan Khanate, the Bashkirs were not fully integrated into the Russian Empire even in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, remaining in a special position – a military state, like the Cossacks, serving under their own command.
Only in 1985 was the military system abolished, and the Bashkirs were equated with villagers.
During the collapse of the Russian Empire, the III All-Bashkir Congress proclaimed the autonomy of Bashkurdistan on December 8-20, 1917. In March 1919, the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Republic was proclaimed in contractual relations with the Soviet authorities.
In 1990, the Verkhovna Rada of the Republic promulgated the Declaration on State Sovereignty. On February 25, 1992, the republic was renamed Bashkortostan. On March 31, 1992, the Republic of Bashkortostan signed the Federal Agreement on the Demarcation of Powers and Subjects of Powers between the state authorities of the Russian Federation and the authorities of the sovereign republics within it, which caused protests among the residents of the republic. On April 25, 1993, in the referendum on economic independence and contractual relations with the Russian Federation, 75.5% supported independence.
Currently, Moscow’s predatory colonial policy towards Bashkortostan, the mass extermination of Bashkirs in the war of aggression against Russia, and the neglect of national and civil rights, once again raise the question of achieving independence by the freedom-loving people of Bashkirs.
Therefore, mass protests can become a trigger for a wider reformatting of the post-imperial territory, the disintegration of Russia and the formation of sovereign national states on their own ethnic territories.
Yuriy Syrotyuk
