A very significant event took place in Tobolsk, which perfectly illustrates how panicky Russians are about the national memory of the indigenous peoples of Siberia.
They stole and took away, to an unknown location, a bronze sculpture of Queen Suzga, weighing 850 kilograms and standing 2.75 meters tall, worth 4.2 million rubles: the lock on the metal gate was broken, and Suzga herself, standing on the property, was kidnapped.
Luiza Shamsutdinova, one of the initiators of the memorial to the beloved wife of the Siberian Khan Kuchum, witnessed the sculpture being taken away, wrote down the license plates of the thieves’ cars, and called the police. Officers stopped the thieves at a traffic police checkpoint and let them go. They then checked Shamsutdinova’s documents until the thieves fled, according to local media.
Luiza Shamsutdinova, head of the regional Tatar public organisation “Heritage” in the Tyumen region, was accused of illegally erecting a monument and insulting the Cossack ataman Yermak, who became famous as the conqueror of Siberia. She was fined 17,500 rubles. The court ruled that the Suzge sculpture, created entirely with volunteer funds, must be confiscated and turned over to the state.
According to Shamsutdinova, the sculpture was not installed but simply stored on a leased plot.
Queen Suzge Khanum was the daughter of the Kazakh Khan Shigai by one of his wives. According to legend, Suzge was the favorite wife of the famous Khan of the Siberian Khanate, Kuchum. During Yermak’s campaign, the Cossacks besieged Suzge-Tura. Legend has it that during the capture of the city, Suzge committed suicide by stabbing herself with a dagger given to her by Kuchum, but she refused to submit to the conquerors.
Siberian Tatars have wanted to erect a monument to Queen Suzga for many years, as well as build a historical memorial complex “Suzga” near the hill where her town stood. But when the war with Ukraine began, things became more stringent, and funding for a monument to Queen Suzga was forgotten, so the Tatars decided to build it themselves. And it hasn’t even been installed yet! The monument was simply stolen.
The Nomad unit claims that the theft of the monument to Queen Suzga, like the demolition of the monument to Salavat Yulaev in Ufa, is part of the same chain. This is a deliberate Russian policy of erasing the national memory of the peoples they have oppressed, an attempt to change the historical narrative, replacing true national heroes with more convenient figures.
Such actions by Russians cannot be ignored. This is a fundamental question: which path will the indigenous peoples of Russia take—further assimilation and decline, or prosperity?
You can sign a petition calling on the Russian authorities to protect the monument to the Siberian queen Suzga, which they will, of course, ignore. Or you can join the resistance.
If you’re not ready to join us on the battlefield but are willing to help in other ways, please contact us. These could include resistance actions within the Russian Federation, protests, human rights and educational work, information activities, cultural front actions, and more.
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