Patriotic Unity and Ethnic Diversity at Odds: The Example of Tatar Organisations in Moscow

Abstract

The Russian Federation's policy of promoting patriotism, in place since the early 2000s, raises the issue of how the country's non-Russian ethnic groups receive this policy. To answer this question, this essay studies the reception of Russian state-promoted patriotism in the 2000s among the Tatar community in Moscow. Looking at the activities of Tatar associations (especially the Regional Tatar National-Cultural Autonomy organisation), it shows the syntheses and compromises negotiated by activists between patriotism and ethno-cultural belonging in the capital. Paradoxically, their attempts at synthesis strengthen an essentialist representation of the Tatar community, leading ultimately, on the one hand, to criticism of state nationality policy, and on the other, to the discontent of Tatar independent activists who criticised the undemocratic rules and personal domination in the Regional Tatar National—Cultural Autonomy organisation supported by state authorities. These criticisms echo the tensions in the Russian political agenda at the beginning of the 2010s.

Notes

This essay is the result of a French–Russian collective research project on ‘Patriotic practices in contemporary Russia’ undertaken between 2008 and 2010. This project was financed by an International Scientific Cooperation Programme of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and supported by the Center for the Study of the Russian, Caucasian and Central-European Worlds (CERCEC), the Centre for International Studies and Research (CERI), the Fondation-Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (MSH), and the Russian State Fund for Fundamental Research (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Nauchnyi Fond—RGNF).

¹ While all citizens of Russia are described as rossiiskie, those who are ethnically Russian are termed russkie. According to the 2010 census, Russians (russkie) were 80% of the total population, and Tatars made up 3.8%. Vserossiiskaya perepis' naseleniya 2010, Natsional'nyi sostav, available at: http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/perepis2010/croc/perepis_itogi1612.htm, accessed 3 November 2014.

² I am extremely grateful to Elena Filippova and Olga Podlesnykh, from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology RAN, for their help in arranging these meetings and interviews.

³ ‘Ob obshchestvennykh ob'edineniyakh’, Zakon SSSR, 9 October 1990, available at: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_1883, accessed 3 November 2014.

⁴ Interview with a former civil servant in charge of nationality policy, Moscow, 30 May 2006.

⁵ Interview with Alya Abdullaevna Baranikova, a Tatar language teacher, Moscow, 30 May 2006.

⁶ ‘Ustav’, Tugan Tel, 20 November 2002, document given to the author.

⁷ ‘Ustav Regional'noi obschestvennoi organizatsii–Tatarskoi natsional'no-kul'turnoi avtonomii g. Moskvy’, Moskovskoe tatarskoe svobodnoe slovo, 2009, available at: http://www.mtss.ru/?page = ust190209, accessed 28 November 2011.

⁸ ‘Ustav Regional'noi obschestvennoi organizatsii–Tatarskoi natsional'no-kul'turnoi avtonomii g. Moskvy’, Moskovskoe tatarskoe svobodnoe slovo, 2009, available at: http://www.mtss.ru/?page = ust190209, accessed 28 November 2011.

⁹ ‘Ustav Regional'noi obschestvennoi organizatsii–Tatarskoi natsional'no-kul'turnoi avtonomii g. Moskvy’, Moskovskoe tatarskoe svobodnoe slovo, 2009, available at: http://www.mtss.ru/?page = ust190209, accessed 28 November 2011.

¹⁰ Interview by the author, Elena Filippova and Olga Podlesnykh with General Akchurin, Moscow, 24 May 2006.

¹¹ Interview by the author, Elena Filippova and Olga Podlesnykh with General Akchurin, Moscow, 24 May 2006.

¹² Paper to the conference, Istoki velikoi pobedy v Moskovskoi bitve, 25 November 2011, available at: http://www.asi.org.ru/news/25-noyabrya-konferentsiya-istoki-velikoi-pobedy-v-moskovskoi-bitve/, accessed 10 November 2014.

¹³ Fikrat Tabeev became first secretary of the regional committee of the Party of Tatarstan in 1961.

¹⁴ Interview by the author and Olga Podlesnyh with Nazifa Karimova, chair of the Tatar–Bashkir Club of Intelligentsia, Moscow, 26 June 2007.

¹⁵ Dzhalil was a Soviet Tatar poet and resistance fighter, who died in 1944 in Moabit prison in Berlin.

¹⁶ Interview by the author, Elena Filippova and Olga Podlesnykh with General Akchurin, Moscow, 24 May 2006.

¹⁷ ‘V Moskovskoi shkole otkryt pamyatnik Muse Dzhaliliyu’, Kadry.viperson.ru, 27 October 2008, available at: http://kadry.viperson.ru/wind.php?ID = 614228, accessed 12 July 2010.

¹⁸ ‘V Moskovskoi shkole otkryt pamyatnik Muse Dzhaliliyu’, Kadry.viperson.ru, 27 October 2008, available at: http://kadry.viperson.ru/wind.php?ID = 614228, accessed 12 July 2010.

¹⁹ This website is no longer active.

²⁰ Interview by the author with Gayar Iskandyarov, Foundation for the Development of the Muslim Peoples, Moscow, 24 May 2010.

²¹ ‘Rezolutsiya mitinga protesta protiv nezakonnykh deistvii rukovodstva RTNKA’, 6 December 2009, available at: http://www.mtss.ru/?page = /conf221109/rez061209, accessed 7 November 2014.

²² Interview by the author with Gayar Iskandyarov, Foundation for the Development of the Muslim Peoples, Moscow, 24 May 2010.

²³ Interview by the author with Refkat Galimov, Moscow, 23 May 2010.

²⁴ ‘Kak Rinat Mukhamadiev pobedil kreaturu kazanskogo Kremlya’, Biznes Online, 27 January 2014, available at: http://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/96071/, accessed 7 November 2014.