Solidarity of the Volga peoples

The Republic of Tatarstan issues manual for learning the UDMURT language. Small signs of the periphery's independence from Moscow emerge. The growing centrality of the Tatars. With the Ukrainian crisis, the suggestion of a Tatar-Bashkian state between the Urals and the Volga returns.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Much astonishment and interest has been aroused this week by the publication of the Udmurta language learning manual "Mon Ačim" (I Myself/Myself), prepared by an eminent philologist of the minority languages of the Volga, Aleksej Arzamazov.

The surprise stems both from the publication itself, as books on the languages of ethnic groups with 'separatist tendencies' are very rare in today's Russia, and from the fact that it was not an institution from Udmurtia itself, but from the neighbouring republic of Tatarstan that promoted it.

The manual is even published with the support of the president of the Tatar republic, Rustam Minnikhanov, despite the fact that the political leadership in Kazan has been rigidly aligned since the 1990s with the Kremlin's policies, which certainly do not favour the self-awareness of Eurasian peoples.

Yet what various local commentators call 'the Deep State' (Glubinnoe Gosudarstvo), which manages to break through the barriers of official censorship, also seems to emerge in this context.

By this expression is meant political decisions, however marginal, that denote a certain spirit of independence from Moscow, in favour of its own people. This was also the case in the days of the USSR, where the 'Soviet republics' and 'autonomous regions' were considered little more than puppets in the theatre of imperial folklore, but every now and then, some official would move outside the official score.

Tatarstan is certainly the most important of these republics, which even in the Russian Federation are reminiscent of the subjugation of the peripheries to the centre, due to its centrality and geographical breadth, and the evocative power of its ethnicity, which dominated Eurasia for more than two centuries, remaining very significant even in the succession of Russia's kingdoms and empires.

It therefore happens that the Tatars also take on the demands of the other Volga peoples such as the Udmurts, formed in ancient times by various Finno-Ugric groups who came down from the north in search of less icy shores, who today number around half a million people.

Recently, seminars have also been organised in Tatarstan for the study of the Chuvascian language, benefiting an even more significant minority, the heirs of the Volga Bulgarians who now number over one and a half million, by gathering students in the neighbouring province of Buynsk with teachers invited directly from Chuvasci.

In Tatarstan, there are numerous public schools for udmurts, Chuvashis, Marists, Mordovians, Baškiri and even Jews, despite the less than favourable directives of the Moscow and Kazan Ministries of Education, with the use of old textbooks that are now at least occasionally replaced by new ones.

A few months ago, the publication of a textbook even in the language of the 'krjašeny', the Tatars who received Orthodox baptism (kreščenje) and were considered by the Russians to be a separate ethnic group, of which today there remains a minority of about 30,000 people within the republic of Tatarstan, had caused great discussion.

Here, the Russified 'pseudo-ethnicity' developed its own mixed language, highlighting the contradictions of colonialism and independence fused within the same people.

The Tatars' paternalistic treatment of the other Volga peoples reflects ancient autonomist and expansionist instincts at the same time, reinforced by the contingency of the Russo-Ukrainian war that puts these populations under great stress, sacrificed by Moscow in the toughest fighting as 'cannon fodder'.

Thus the 'deep' representation of the 'Idel-Ural State' re-emerges, a name that goes back to the time of the Bolshevik revolution, when an attempt was made to form a new Tatar-Bashkian state between the Urals and the Volga (called Idel in the Turkic language).

Support between these neighbours indicates a desire to overcome deep-rooted hostilities between the peoples of these lands, and imagine a new common future in the borderlands between Europe and Asia.

• russia
• moscow
• tatars
• udmurti
• volga
• urals
• independence
• economy
• war
• ukraine