In Bashkortostan, apparently, the Bashkirs’ dissatisfaction with Moscow’s imperial policies is growing. On January 19, residents of the capital of the republic, Ufa, came out to a new rally in support of the Bashkir national activist Fail Alsynov (according to his passport – Alchinov), who was sentenced to four years in prison for “inciting ethnic hatred.” At least two thousand people gathered on Salavat Yulaev Square in Ufa. They danced in circles and “walked around.” But soon riot police officers appeared on the square and the police began making arrests.
This is not the first time that people have come out in defence of Bashkir national activist Fail Alsynov. A few days ago, Bashkirs protested in Baymak, a city in the southeast of Bashkortostan, on the border with the Chelyabinsk region. The Baymak region is a mountainous area, the indigenous lands of the Bashkirs. The region is rich in natural resources – coal, copper, zinc and gold. Large Russian industrial companies are engaged in their extraction.
37-year-old Alsynov, a historian by training, a father of four children, and a worker in a construction company, spoke out in defence of the natural resources of his region. However, the environmental motive soon grew into a national one.
Erzya writer and public figure, chief elder (inyazor) of the Erzya people Syres Bolyaen (Alexander Bolkin), member of the League of Free Nations, co-founder of the organization “Free Idel – Ural”, living in Kyiv and coordinating the activities of the indigenous nations of the Russian Federation to counter Russian imperialism, shared his view on what is happening in Bashkortostan:
The authorities are very mistaken if they think that everything is over.
However, some representatives of our nation do not quite understand what the essence of the confrontation is. They have hope that the authorities will hear us. And even at rallies, we heard requests to Putin to introduce external control. This is a very serious mistake. When you address Putin, you are addressing the Tsar. Russia today has “returned” to the 16th century, where everything is decided by the tsar in Moscow and the local boyars. These people consider us lackeys, slaves.
But the Bashkirs showed that they have dignity. In Putin’s words, we haven’t even started yet. Everything is ahead. The fight continues. We unite. We have one problem and it can only be solved together – with the Bashkirs and other nations. I am sure that we will win – Moscow has no chance.
Fail Alsynov has been participating in the Bashkir national movement since his student years. He always speaks Bashkir to people. In 2014, Alsynov, together with Ruslan Gabbasov, created the Bashkort organization, which became a popular opposition political force in the republic; over 60 thousand people subscribed to its group on VKontakte. The Supreme Court of Bashkortostan recognized Bashkort as an “extremist” organization and banned its activities. A few months later, Gabbasov, fearing criminal prosecution, left Russia and received political asylum in Lithuania, while Alsynov remained in his homeland. After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Alsynov was detained by police several times, but he was quickly released without charges.
Ruslan Gabbasov notes that it was no coincidence that the movement in defence of Alsynov acquired the character of national resistance of the Bashkirs:
The Bashkirs came out for their national leader Alsynov. Representatives of other nations also came to support them. Alsynov is accused of speaking in the Bashkir language – and therefore it is no coincidence that the Bashkirs supported him. The Bashkirs, moreover, are dissatisfied with the barbaric mining of minerals on their territory. Guest workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus also come here to extract minerals. After mining, what remains is degraded, unrecoverable nature. Also, there are arable lands, cattle grazing, and hayfields. It all gets polluted. People don’t like all this. And they come out with protests.
After one of these protests, led by Alsynov, the head of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, wrote a denunciation against him. Based on this denunciation, Alsynov was convicted and imprisoned. People supported him because they knew the Bashkir language and knew what Alsynov spoke about at rallies. He is a very authoritative person who defends the Bashkir language, traditions, and the sovereignty of the Republic of Bashkortostan. Representatives of the elite – former politicians, intellectuals – Bashkir singers, actors and writers also spoke out in support of him.
Why did the head of Bashkortostan write a denunciation against Alsynov? Khabirov is Bashkirian, isn’t he?
Yes, Bashkir. But here we call them mankurts. These are people who, for the sake of their careers, are ready to betray not only the people but also everything sacred. He curries favour with the Kremlin – he personally imprisoned a huge number of Bashkirs.
What percentage of Bashkirs support Moscow and what percentage opposes the war in Ukraine?
Even those Bashkirs who serve Moscow recognize themselves as Bashkirs. They just think that it will be better with Moscow. Their national identity is distorted under the influence of imperial propaganda.
But true Bashkirs oppose Moscow and their overwhelming majority is 80-90%.
Quite a lot of smart Bashkirs have always opposed the war in Ukraine. There are, of course, the illiterate – the drugged part of the population that supports the war.
How can the Bashkirs win independence, if even in Bashkortostan a significant part of the population is Russian, and Tatars also live?
The Tatars, like the Bashkirs, want independence. Because everyone understands perfectly well that Tatarstan will not be independent without Bashkortostan, and Bashkortostan will not be independent without Tatarstan. Bashkirs and Tatars together make up about 70% of the population of Bashkortostan. In addition, when any transformations occur in the national regions, Russians leave that area.
In addition, we believe that the Russian Federation will fall apart into several states, and we will negotiate with them ourselves, as with neighbours. Moscow will remain on its own.
Victor Korbut
Polskie Radio
