Russian Politics & Law ISSN: 1061-1940 (Print) 1558-0962 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrup20 Types of Nationalism, Society, and Politics in Tatarstan J. R. Raviot To cite this article: J. R. Raviot (1994) Types of Nationalism, Society, and Politics in Tatarstan, Russian Politics & Law, 32:2, 54-83 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.2753/RUP1061-1940320254 Published online: 08 Dec 2014. Submit your article to this journal View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=mrup20 zyxwv zyxwvu zyxw J.-R. RAVIOT Types of Nationalism, Society, and Politics in Tatarstan From the editors: This article by Jean-Robert Raviot (National Foundation for Political Research, Paris) will acquaint the reader with French applied political science, unfortunately very rare on the pages of our journal; this is the school of Helene Carrere d’Encausse, a scholar whose name is known throughout the world. The youngpolitical scientist representing his school did his research in 1992 in Tatarstan. He has tried to interpret his vast field material using quite an interesting set of tools, including the concept of “high culture.” Perhaps this attentive look by an outside observer will be useful to Russian politicians and specialists trying to understand the puzzling role and meaning of the “nationalfactor” in the events unfolding on the expanses of our homeland. z zyxw zyxwvu zy If Tatarstan and Russia were capitalist countries in which the economy played the main role, the entire nationalist and separatist tendency would mean very little. . . . But as it is, the key role is played by ambitions and the fear of losing one’s soft chair, and not by the concrete economic situation.. . . Everyone wants to preserve his pseudocommunist stronghold. From a speech by M. Sirazin, Deputy, Supreme Soviet of Tatarstan, February 12,1992. On March 21, 1992, the majority of the voters of Tatarstan voted in Russian text 0 1992 by “Polis” (“Politicheskie issledovaniia”). “Tipy natsionalima, obshchestvo i politika v Tatarstane,” Polis, 1992, nos. 5-6, pp. 42-58. A publication of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 54 zy zyxwvu zyxw MARCH-APRIL 1994 55 favor of creating a sovereign state, a “subject of international law,” which would regulate “relations with Russia and the other republics by agreements based on the principle of the equality of the various parties” (61.4 percent were “for” and 37.2 percent “against”) [l, March 23, 19921. An analysis of the official documents taken out of the context in which they were drafted would lead one to think that Tatarstan had made a transition from the stage of being a nation without a state to that of a “nation-state.” But a reading of more recent documents should enable us to view the thrust for independence from another perspective and to raise the question of what practical purposes it serves. What independence is at stake? Cultural autonomy within the system of the empire? The constitution of a sovereign state in the Western sense of the term-with its own means of defense and its own currency? Or are we dealing with a tactical device calculated to render permanent the power structures existing on this territory? Most Western analysts studying Tatar nationalism see it as the driving force (direct or indirect) of the “march toward independence.” As it happens, the various national movements in Tatarstan are the most active political forces. Many specialists trying to study the problem limit themselves to geographical ethnocultural factors. It is very rare that Tatar nationalism is not compared with Chechen nationalism. Even “prophetic” conclusions are drawn to the effect that what is taking place in Tatarstan is related to the emergence of “a pan-Islamic” movement within the former Soviet Union [2]. We, however, will analyze events as they concern Tatarstan and the Tatars exclusively. In the final analysis, all commentators stress that the geographic position of this republic foreordains it to an alliance with Russia. But even so, it is necessary to analyze just what this assertion signifies. Tatar national movements, and then later the legitimate political power of the republic of Tatarstan, consistently made use of the national idea in their political discourses and programs. We must first determine what is understood by “nationalism.” We agree with E. Gellner, who views it as a political principle in accordance with which political unity and national unity should coincide, while every nation should have its own state structure [3]. However, this principle is not universal. A nation-state is not a historical stage that every society goes through. It is a phenomenon very intimately linked to the development of a specific type of society, namely an industrial society. Once it has 56 zyxwvutsrqpo zyxwvutsr zyxwvu RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW zy put in its appearance, nationalism has hlfilled a very specific function within the process of transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society, and then in the evolution of the latter as well [4]. An analysis of the history of Tatarstan and the Tatar people could lead one to think that the epoch in which nationalism was suitable for this type of community has already passed. However, nationalism is a mobilizing factor for Tatarstan and for all Tatars in Russia. Does it thus follow ipsofucto that contemporary Tatar society has not yet become an industrial society? Of course not. But it does demonstrate some symptoms of entropy when the model of an industrial body social is applied to it. Steady economic growth was artificially stimulated throughout the entire Soviet period: there exist in Russia no real and natural types of social or professional mobility, so that a generic universality, which makes for exosocialization, is produced by Soviet “high culture.” The latter has no historic ethnocultural roots whatsoever. Nonetheless, sociologically, contemporary Tatar society exhibits the characteristicsof industrial society: it is highly urbanized and fourfifths of the population is employed in the secondary and tertiary sectors. This means that the function of Tatar nationalism could be one of assisting the transition from an industrial society of an incomplete and voluntarist type to a real and legitimate type, and helping to form a new social cohesion in the process of this transition. For this it is necessary to determine the nature of Tatar nationalism. But what kind of nation can manifest itself with more than 5.5 million Tatars living outside the “borders” of Tatarstan and only 1.5 million living in the republic itself, whose inhabitants also include 1.3 million Slavs? Are there one or several definitions for the Tatar nation and, for that matter, for Tatar nationalism? Finally, what is the political function of these strivings for national unity? zyxwv The history and geography of the Tatars and of Tatarstan The ethnography of the Tatars is geographically simple and historically complex at one and the same time. What we can today call the Tatar ethnic community is the result of an intermingling within a specific territory of several non-nomadic peoples, or peoples who became settled during the epoch of the great migrations. The region of intermingling, the Volga and Kama, is the historical territory of this ethnic group. In the fourth century, a Mongol tribe called “Tatars” stopped zy zyx MARCH-APRIL 1994 57 here and mixed with the autochthonous Ugro-Finns. For present-day Tatars, their “culture” was born in the eighth century with the arrival of the Azov Bolgars (Bulgars). They brought a new language of the Turkic group, which firmly supplanted the local dialects [5]. At the beginning of the tenth century, the region was Islamicized by an emissary of the Baghdad caliph. During the Mongol incursion (thirteenth century), the kingdom of the Volga Bolgars was defeated by the Golden Hordes. When it disintegrated in the fifteenth century, the Kazan khanate separated off and reconstituted itself within the borders of the ancient Bolgar kingdom. The Bolgar Tatars in the meantime had been enriched by Mongol elements; the Russians eagerly assimilated Tatars and Mongols to an equal degree. Some Russian ethnographers are developing the concept of “a Tatar-Mongol ethnic community,” a branch of which could be represented by the Volga Tatars [ 6 ] . In the fifteenth century, the Tatars again became sovereign. After freeing themselves from the Mongol yoke, they integrated a new ethnic component and new political structures at one and the same time. A deeper historical analysis would disclose the degree and the pace with which the Tatars assimilated them. But, even without such analysis, the constancy of the territorial factor is evident in defining Tatar society and culture. Their lands were more welcoming than hostile to external penetrations. The first Tatar migrations were due to persecutions of all Moslems in Russia in the eighteenth century. Incorporated manu militari into the empire in 1552, the Tatars continued freely to speak their language and to profess Islam until 1740, when 516 mosques in Kazan Province were destroyed in three years. The Russian authorities proclaimed mass Christianization [7].Many Tatars in an effort to preserve their freedom of conscience emigrated to the Urals, to the Turkestan steppes, and to Siberia. In the early nineteenth century, a university was established in Kazan by decree of Alexander I. The strategic role of the Volga Tatars was appreciated during the course of colonization of Siberia and in the development of plans for expansion of the empire into Central Asia. In the early nineteenth century, the Tatar territory became an indispensable connecting link in trade routes from east to west and north to south. Ethnolinguistic and religious identity made the Tatars excellent mediators in the trade between Russia and Bukhara and Kokand. The development of trade in the Kazan region resulted in the birth of an entrepreneurial, educated, and mobile Tatar bourgeoisie. zyxw zyx 58 zyxwvuts zyxwv RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW Their enterprises accumulated a primitive capital, which was able to serve the industrialization of the region. Their culture was not comparable to any of the cultures of non-Russian peoples of the Volga4Jral region: local dialects disappeared among almost all the groups with the exception of the neighboring Ugro-Finns [8]. The requisite correspondence between cultural and institutional (i.e., religious institutions) factors was for all practical purposes achieved. The mobility of the Tatar bourgeoisie made for a growth in its commercial activity in Central Asia and Siberia where a considerable Tatar diaspora had been living for hundreds of years already. All the signs of the consolidation of a Tatar “national” industrial society, distinct from the rest of Russia, in the Kazan region were present. But were the imperial authorities aware of this? If one accepts the opinion of many specialists in the sociology and anthropology of industrialization [9], namely, that the creation of a nation-state is due to the needs of industrialization, then the tsarist edict of 1886 which prohibited the Tatars from engaging in any trade activity or acquiring property in Central Asia, can be interpreted as a barrier set up by the imperial authorities to the development of a Tatar industrial society and the subsequent creation of a Tatar nation-state [lo]. But the intentions of these authorities were not strictly commercial. By preventing the establishment of a Tatar bourgeoisie in Central Asia, they were attempting to cut off a powerhl upsurge of a rival “high culture” [ 111. The premature disappearance of local dialects on the territory of Tatarstan in favor of a well-developed Tatar language resulted in a consequent loss of independence by the different local cultures and enabled cognitive rationality, necessary to industrial society, to establish itself. The ulema ensured the stability of a very refined agrarian society and the formation of an endogenous elite. At the end of the nineteenth century, the level of education of the population was more on a par with that of an industrial society than with that of an agrarian society. A transition occurred from endoformation to exoformation of a generic type: in 1905, the literacy rate among Tatars in Kazan Province was higher than among the Russians who lived there [lo]. The Jadid movement played a major role in modernization. This movement, which developed mainly among the Tatar intelligentsia of Kazan in the second half of the nineteenth century and was concentrated in Koranic schools, cohered specifically around the idea of a necessary reform of education, specifically, the introduction zyxwv zyx zy zyx zyx MARCH-APRIL 1994 59 of scientific disciplines into classroom instruction and the quest for the philosophical foundations of primordial Islam [ 113. The transformation of this educational movement into a political movement coincided with the evaporation of hopes that a thriving Tatar bourgeoisie would come into being. The Jadid movement, headed by the Ittifak party and its leader A. Ibrahimov, attempted to succeed where the bourgeoisie had failed: their aims were to gather all Moslems into an extraterritorial autonomous structure and establish a constitutional monarchy in Russia. The history of the Ittifak can be reduced to more or less successfbl attempts at ideological expansion into Turkestan and groping quests to find common positions with Russian anti-tsarist political movements. For quite a long time this party aspired to represent the Moslem branch in these movements. As a result, a very palpable segment of the members of Ittifak joined the Bolsheviks between February and October 1917 and through them became acquainted with Marxist ideas. On the example of M. Sultan-Galiev, Tatar Marxists from the left wing of Ittifak always considered an alliance with the Russian Kadets in 1907 to have been a fundamental mistake. They believed in the correctness of the theses of Otto Bauer on the organization of a multi-ethnic state on the basis of the principle of extraterritorial autonomy and supported Sultan-Galievism.But that current clashed with the objectives of Lenin and Stalin, who closed the borders in the new USSR, because that current defended the idea of a unification of all Moslems of Russia into a single state stretching from Kazan to Khamir (the Great Turgan), an idea that stemmed from the principle of the priority of national liberation over socioeconomic liberation. In 1922 Sultan-Galiev was removed from power in Kazan and his views were definitively expunged in the late twenties from the party apparatus during the course of several purges. For Soviet power it was important to control the entire territory of the country and to divide Moslems living in it, the new territorial division of the state underscoring ethnic and linguistic differences and incompatibilities. The Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was established within the RSFSR on May 27, 1920, after the project to create a Soviet republic of Tatars and Bashkirs along the Volga and in the Urals foundered on the Civil War. The new formation, with its center in Kazan, was within the old boundaries of the Kazan khanate. The existence of a diaspora was disregarded, and the autonomous formation was created on a strictly territorial basis: as a result, there were more Tatars than Bashkirs in the neighboring 60 zyxwvut zyxwvu RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW Bashkir ASSR; three-fourths of the Tatars live outside of their nominal political formation (M. Famkshin, Kazan University). The history of the Tatar ASSR from 1920 through 1988 resembles the history of many other “national” regions of the USSR: forced collectivization and industrialization,a considerable migration of Russians and Tatars into the republic and out of it. A supranational “Soviet” “high culture” supplanted the national cultures of a local autonomous type, inherited from agrarian society (the case of the neighboring Bashkirs) or another “high culture” vying with “Soviet” culture. Autonomization was forcibly imposed upon any other “high culture.” Here it is important to stress two principal features of this situation: for more than a thousand years, the Tatars had lived on one and the same territory and this was a land welcoming newcomers. The definition of the Tatar nation is closely connected with its territorial deployment. But the Tatars also became “immigrants” to other parts of Russian territory; the Tatar ethnic community was highly scattered. The national political movements of the twentieth century put forth an idea that the Tatar nation should be defined extraterritorially and preferably integrated into the totality of all Turkish-speaking Moslem nations of the former Russian or Soviet ensemble. zyxw zyx The impossibility of defining the Tatar nation In 1992 the Republic of Tatarstan, which had replaced the Tatar Soviet Socialist Republic in January of that year, had 3.6 million inhabitants, of which (according to the official ethnocultural definition) 48.5 percent were Tatars and 43.3 percent were Russians [121 living on an area of 68,000 square kilometers (this is roughly the territory of the Benelux countries). In addition, 5.5 million Tatars live in other regions of Russia: 1.4 million in neighboring Bashkortostan, more than one million in Siberia, about 1.5 million in Central Asia, and about a million near Ekaterinberg. There are also rather large communities along the Volga (near Samara and Simbirsk and in Chuvashia and Urdmurtia) as well as in MOSCOW, Petersburg, Astrakhan, and Riga. For analytical clarity we shall use the termpotential Tatars to designate all the inhabitants of Tatarstan regardless of their ethnic, linguistic, or cultural affiliation as well as Tatars living on the territory of the former USSR, i.e., somewhat more than nine million persons. Real zy zyxwvuts zyxw MARCH-APRIL 1994 61 Tuturs will be those whose ethnocultural and territorial affiliations coincide with those of the Tatar group (Le., 18.8 percent of “potential Tatars”). The term Tatar society will be used to designate structures existing in the ensemble of potential and real Tatars in accordance with the ethnocultural definition, and the term society of Tuturstun will designate social structures on the territory of the Republic of Tatarstan. Although the society of all potential and real Tatars is homogeneous overall, it nonetheless comprises numerous subgroups of diverse ethnocultural, geographic, social, professional, and other affiliations. Nonetheless we shall try to distinguish some of its general characteristics to demonstrate the uniqueness of what was the Soviet system. We shall distinguish between culture and “high culture” to the extent that we use the concept culture to define a nation. The existence of a high culture in fact creates the possibility for exosocialization of a human community-through the spread of some relatively autonomous totality of interrelated abstract knowledge [13]. The existence of such a totality is necessary for a national community to emerge and for the development of the idea of nationalism in the above-described sense. All Tatars (potential and real) are highly urbanized, which is what distinguishes them from other Turkish-speaking societies in the former USSR. Potential Tatars outside of Tatarstan were everywhere concentrated in cities with the exception of Siberia where they mostly live around large cities [14, September 12, 19891. The lack of official statistics makes the study of the Tatar diaspora (i.e., the Tatar society in Russia) a very difficult business. However, one can assume that the living conditions of Tatars in Moscow, Siberia, or Simbirsk are similar to the living conditions of other segments of their population. Below, we shall show that the society of Tatarstan differs little from the general Russian (or, more accurately, Euro-Soviet) society. Therefore, it follows that Tatar society and the society of Tatarstan differ basically in regard to their ethnocultural and geographical characteristics. The level of urbanization in Tatarstan has reached 73.7 percent [ 151, while in Kazakhstan’ it has reached only 58.3 percent. This is due to the advanced state of industrialization of Tatarstan: 79 percent of its population is employed in the secondary and tertiary sectors (66.9 percent in Kazakhstan). The inhabitants of Tatarstan “follow” Malthusian counsels more than do the inhabitants of Central Asia and Kazakhstan: the average family in Tatarstan has 2.4 children, in Kazakhstan it has 3.8, and in Turkmenistan 5.9. If we look at potential zyxwv 62 zyxwvuts zyxwv zyxwv zyxwvu RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW Tatars and real Tatars living in their own republic in this regard, the difference is very slight: the former had an average of 2.2 children per family and the latter 2.9 children per family. The index of demographic growth in Kazan is 6.3 per thousand; it is practically equal to that of Vilnius (6.6) or Cheliabinsk (6.9), but it clearly exceeds the corresponding figures for Moscow (1 .l), and is much lower than in As& khabad (18) or even Kishinev (13 per thousand). Demographic and socioprofessional homogeneity is characteristic of Tatarstan, although real Tatars are much less urbanized than potential Tatars. Russians make up 54 percent of the population of Kazan and 65 percent of Naberezhnye Chelny. The sociologically homogeneous population of Tatarstan shows a tendency to become even more homogeneous through mixed marriages (between Slavs and Tatars): 37 percent of all marriages [ 161. Obviously, the inhabitants of Tatarstan differ little from one another and from other inhabitants of the RSFSR in living standard and in general from the population of the European republics of the former USSR. On the other hand, the society of Tatarstan differs substantially from Central Asian societies and to a lesser degree from the Kazakh society. This is especially true as the Tatar ASSR was economically integrated with the contiguous regions of the RSFSR in the Volga Economic Region [17]. On the industrial level Tatarstan shares some structural characteristics as well with its neighbors in the Volga-Ural regions: about 50 percent of industrial output of the republic goes to the military-industrial complex [ 181, and federal enterprises produced more than 80 percent of output in 1991. Tatarstan is completely integrated into the industrial framework of the USSR. Atomized territorially, the Tatar society can defend the common interests of its members with difficulty; only an ethnocultural bond is capable of uniting potential Tatars living outside Tatarstan with real Tatars. Culture serves much more than socioeconomic criteria to bring out what is distinctively Tatar about Tatars in the broader Euro-Soviet community in which they would seem to have been dissolved. This means that culture can be a more serious basis for distinguishing the Tatar “nation.” To what extent is a “high culture” common to all real and potential Tatars capable of existing or coming into being if we know that objectively it is not in evidence in either Tatar society or in the society of Tatarstan? Is there some sort of “national” supersensibility, or are we speaking simply of the desire to live together in a community? In the period to the end of 1988, manifestations of social protest in zyxw MARCH-APRIL 1994 63 Tatarstan more resembled the situation in the other regions of the RSFSR or the Baltic countries than in the Turkish-speaking republics of Central Asia. The first object was territory. Its ecological condition came under critical fire above all, followed by well-being in the broad sense of the word. Ecological protest was an issue for ethnically diverse groups (A. Kolesnik, Tatarstan), and thus enabled social indignation to be oriented toward saving first natural resources and then historical resources. Doubts as to the way natural resources were being socialized developed into a criticism of collective ownership of the means of production. The need to use the term (natural) resources linked to some specific territory no longer existed as the entire Soviet system, and not only its territorial aspects, was cast into doubt. Thus an anti-centralizing political reflex put in its appearance, although it did not cast doubt on existing local ideological and administrative structures. It was embodied in a demand for local self-government, supported heavily by Moscow reformers. At first it seemed that ecological slogans would be limited to a criticism of the how the environment was socialized and how natural space was distributed. The latter was perceived in a rather utilitarian spirit: water for drinking, land for agriculture, air for breathing. The ecological struggle was concentrated on local problems, and hence its success was directly felt by the population. The Tatars of Siberia [ 191 and Kazakhstan participated actively in this struggle in their cities: Russians in Tatarstan also very actively defended their living space. It seemed obvious in this case that the concept of territory is in itself not sufficient to explain the ecological roots of the development of national consciousness. Territory must be perceived in this process not as an object representing a danger but only as a subject. Then the generic attributes of nature will stand out. Nature can be appreciated not in a strictly spatial sense but more broadly, in a historical context. From this perspective, it is no longer the socialization of nature but the history of man’s conquest of it that is called into question. Political ideology, when it strives to reform itself, always vies with political mythology, which is characteristic of a society of the agrarian type [20]. But the political mythology used in this case glorified the Tatar past and portrayed Russians as the conquerors of the historical territory of Tatarstadespite the fact that initially the emphasis had been placed on the argument that nature was the common possession of all the earth’s inhabitants. The Volga (Idel‘) became a theme in all zy zyxw 64 zyxwvuts zyxwvu RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW public talks by Tatar public figures. The territory was no longer a space; it had been transformed into a holy of holies. From that time onward, there were two different understandings of territory: one as a space, and hence universal and consciously external to history, and the other as historical and symbolic. The national movements established during 1988 made wide use of the ecological argument first in the symbolic sense, to condemn despotic industrializationand in general to reinforce by graphic examples the latter’s kinship with the barbarian character of “Soviet colonization.” The political use of symbols bearing on the state of the environment enabled the national movements to open up the discussion of Tatar history and culture. Their activists soon refused to make appearances that were limited to problems of conservation of nature. The chief concern became the definition of culture or, more accurately, “high culture,” and first and foremost its instrument, i.e., language. Language has a clear function in the formation of a nation: language ensures a homogeneous exosocialization of a human community, depriving local cultures of autonomy. In the case of present-day Tatars, the issue is not so much a change in the status of autonomized local cultures as that of reviving the Tatars’ own “high culture,” which had disappeared long ago. But it can come into being again only if there is a renewed instrumentalization of language. Since 1989 the problem of resurrecting the language as a functional language has been central. The search for the foundations of a Tatar “high culture” has received less attention than the problem of its rebirth. “National” languages in the autonomous regions and territories of the RSFSR more than languages in other republics of the USSR were reduced to the level of “everyday” languages [21] used in the family and utterly divested of any social and economic functions. For example, about 90 percent of Tatar economic and political terminology is “Tatarized” Russian words [F. Khantemirov; 14, August 14, 19881. The Tatar language has become impoverished and has been arrested in its development. Some national movements have attributed this to the forced switch to the Cyrillic alphabet after the Revolution of 1917. They allege that it is important for the Tatar language to have a “natural” transcription (some propose the Latin alphabet for this, others the Arab alphabet) [F. Bairamova; 14, September 27, 19881. Folklore, which Soviet officials have emphasized, is a very artificial cultural bulwark since it affixes to language a very narrow function zyxwv zy zyx zy MARCH-APRIL 1994 65 zyxwvu and favors the development only of local cultures reflecting the characteristics of pre-industrial society. Moreover, the authorities encourage folklore more in a stylized version than in a traditional musical expression [R. Khakimov, Kazan]. From 1989 until the presidential elections in June 1991, national movements made the struggle for a linguistic revival their cornerstone: the Tatar language had to acquire its own social fimction. We should point out that, in 1989,98.9 percent of real Tatars and 80.1 percent of Tatars of the diaspora considered the Tatar language a native language, but only 12.5 percent of Russians living in Tatarstan knew Tatar. A revival of the Tatar language as the principal instrument of a “high culture” a priori barred the non-Tatar-speaking population of the republic from participation in the definition of this culture. However, because the direction of discussions was so narrow, there was practically no public discussion of the foundations of a “high culture” as an alternative to Sovietism. Tatar national movements placed themselves squarely within the logic of the genesis of nationalism. But Tatar society is already industrial, and hence a new definition of nation must inevitably be based on arguments as to whether a particular nation has its own “high culture” and what its functions are, and not only on considerations concerning the instruments of that culture. Political culture can also be regarded as an element of the “high culture” of a human community.2 In the particular case disputes on Tatar political culture were rare.3 Very few people took the problem seriously. Initially, national movements accented a Tatar political culture based on the idea of winning back and defending a historical territory. Since spring 1989 they have used the rehabilitation of the epic poem Idegei, condemned by the Central Committee of the VKP(b) on August 9, 1944 [A.A. Rorlich, 23, no. 39 (1989)l. It is curious that activists in the national movements have almost never mentioned the Jadids or the rise of the Tatar bourgeoisie at the end of the last century, which served as a ferment for a possible national “high culture.” Also little attention was given to discussions of reformist Islam and economic problems; it seemed that links to the pre-Revolutionary traditions were lost. Rhetoric was concentrated mainly on a rehabilitation of specific individuals, and also on the symbols of Tatar resistance to the occupier^."^ The national movements attempted to re-animate ethnic culture by restoring its linguistic instrument, without 66 RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW zyxwvuts considering the necessity of establishing its priority as an alternative to the Soviet model of “high culture.” The narrowness of these actions and of their theoretical base, as well as ignorance of their own history, were criticized by some Tatar intellectuals [24]. The idea of a “national community of Tatarstan” uniting the Tatars and Slavs of the republic was persistently developed by the lawful political authorities [M. Shaimiev; 14, August 18, 19891. The authors of the idea proceeded from the existence of a Tatarstan political culture that had a greater reality and a greater mobilizing potential than the piecemeal attempts to restore the fragments of the historical political culture. The situation was analyzed with some realism: there are interests common to all the inhabitants of Tatarstan, and their political expression will communicate a new dynamic to quests for identity. It is in this way, on the basis of common interest, that a “high culture” can be created, and that the beginnings of a political culture different from the Soviet and Russian culture even now can be laid. But this theory was doomed to remain a pretty political discourse, although it contained a consensual definition of nation. It has been claimed that Tatarstan is capable of becoming a state even if it has not become a nation. But such a conception of a nation is voluntaristic, for it neglects the historical dimension of the national question. Moreover, in reducing the concept of heritage to nothing other than common property at a given moment, this conception essentially accused the national movements of wrongly concentrating the attention of “public opinion” on secondary questions. If the thesis that common interests form a basis for a new “high culture” was put forth at all, this was due more to a denial by the majority of the population of Tatarstan of the ethnocultural nationalism of the most radical movements than an expression of some positive program: in 1990 only 12 percent of blue-collar and white-collar workers of the republic said that “nationalist leaders speak about real problems,” but 44.9 percent of Tatars with a higher education thought this [14, June 25, 19901. In December 1991, 5 percent of inhabitants thought that interethnic relations were the main problem of the republic [25]. Incidentally, in early 1990, 58.4 percent of Tatars and Slavs of the republic believed that the “recent build-up of interethnic tension was due to economic problems” [14, February 12, 19901. The Communist Party of Tatarstan laid its emphasis on the multi-ethnic richness of the republic, endeavoring to show that it was this that formed the basis of its uniqueness, which sets zyxw zyxwvu zy zyx zy MARCH-APRIL 1994 67 Tatarstan apart from other regions of the USSR and the RSFSR [26]. The official discourse of the Kremlin and Kazan, regardless of who occupied the principal seats in them, also remained unchanged in this respect. In June 1992 M. Shaimiev remarked that “87 percent of Russian-speaking inhabitants of Tatarstan were also born there” [ 1, June 16, 19921. The lawful political authorities constantly strive to avoid a substantive discussion on the question of ethnic diversity (although it calls it its principal value), just as it sees intercultural problems to be merely a manifestation of socioeconomic tension due to unsuitable reforms imposed upon the republic from Moscow. This power is endeavoring to put through an alternative policy (due to national movements) of seeking a national legitimacy based on common opinions and even presentiments. So, have leading positions in enterprises (excluding the Kama Automobile Factory) and in the administrative apparatus really been distributed in the best way among the different ethnic groups? Indeed, only 4.7 percent of inhabitants think that the responsibilities of managing the economy and large enterprises are poorly distributed ethnically. In trying to reconstruct a national community by means of a “high culture” based on the opinions of the majority of the population that a re-ordering of the economy is necessary and on a rejection of a “nationalist” discourse, the official authorities are ignoring the invariable historical roots of any national “high culture.” For these authorities, the creation of a “high culture” should result in the formation of a “nation,” no matter how artificial it is, and then the formation of the state. The main question is the legitimacy of the central (first Soviet, then Russian) power, which seeks that legitimacy by finding arguments that parallel the theses of the national movements. In contrast, the purpose of these movements is to restore to the Tatar community its own “high culture” after it had been debased by the primacy of Soviet “high culture.” But they do not think it necessary to reflect on the functions of such a cultural renaissance. Even less do they attempt to adapt to contemporary social conditions the alternative political culture (for example, the role of the Tatar bourgeoisie in the development of culture in the early twentieth century is not explored). Thus, not one of the proposed “high cultures” is capable of ensuring a uniform exosocialization of all Tatarsreal and potential. The role of divergent factors is too great within this “society,” which is so heterogeneous. 68 zyxwvut zyxwvu zyx RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW The political function of types of Tatar nationalism An analysis of Tatar society and the society of Tatarstan with the aid of the concept of “high culture” confirms the conclusion that there is no such thing as a single objective and absolute definition of any nation. Nonetheless, at some time since early 1989 the discourse of political actors in Tatarstan began to concentrate mainly on this concept. Consequently, varieties of nationalism that have no objective social grounds to exist are no longer so unreal. Can they be reduced to simple political strategies of gaining power or holding it? Is it valid to see their emergence as a sign of a search for a political culture and, through it, for a specifically Tatar “high culture” and for conditions that would favor the formation of a politically independent community? The vast majority of Russian observers answer these questions in the negative. For them, the various types of nationalism that enflamed the former regions of the RSFSR are a manifestation of the manipulations of the former CPSU and its local leaders in an attempt to continue their anti-democratic influence over certain regions [V. Kaganskii; 27, December 31, 19911. For Tatarstan, this approach seems to us to be mistaken, owing to its extreme schematization. These commentators seem not to distinguish between nationalism professed by national movements (aimed mainly at a political resurrection of the historical Tatar community) and nationalism of another type-i.e., of the lawful political authorities of the Republic of Tatarstan. Such a nationalism is an instrument for constructing a political (in the form of a state) community distinct from the whole of Russia which is still under the influence of the Soviet model. These types of nationalism have adopted two different political strategies. They can be classified in respect to how they understand what Tatarstan should be. The former autonomous region of the former Soviet republic, Tatarstan, should define itself in contrast to its relation to the USSR and Russia. As a former historical territory of the Tatar people, it is also defined by its own history and by a modem political strategy aimed at uniting Tatars around the institutions on that particular territory. Each of these varieties of nationalism-ethnocultural and territorial-uses the two above factors for defining Tatarstan in different ways. Thus, national movements and the legally constituted political authorities of a republic initiate two types of Tatar nationalism with divergent strategies, but above all with disparate ways of defining zyx zy zyxwvu MARCH-APRIL 1994 69 Tatarstan: a historical community or a geographical community? A nation striving to become a state or a state with the intention of becoming a nation? Sovereignty as a basis of economic policy Since 1989 the national demands in Tatarstan have been structured politically. The development of criticism of the Soviet regime and of its methods of socialization and control over resources required creation of a genuine alternative to the official ideology of the center. Tatar nationa1 movements and then the legally constituted authorities of the republic strove to separate themselves from the discourse of the central Soviet and Russian authorities, which were becoming more and more divergent from the national movements in their opinions. The existence of an ethnocultural community (distinct from the USSR and from Russia) was the first argument for defining Tatarstan. At the time that the Tatar Public Center (TPC) was founded in February 1989, the ethnocultural uniqueness of the republic and the search for a historical legitimacy of a political community distinct from the RSFSR became the leitmotifof heated discussions. The TPC was born on the initiative of a few dozen intellectuals from Kazan University. Many of them had come from the Communist Party of the republic and were conscious of the lessons of the CPSU Conference in June 1988. The entire nature of the TPC, headed from the very beginning by M. Miliukov, the rector of Kazan University, was that of a basic national Tatar movement [U. Shami1’-Oglu; 23, 1989, no. 511. Gradually, several Tatar national movements from the diaspora joined ranks with it: namely, the Tugan Tel‘ (Moscow), Bolgar-el-Jadid (Ul‘ianovsk), and the TPC of Bashkortostan (created independently of the Kazan TPC in summer 1989). In late 1989, movements such as Saf-Islam (Pan-Islam) and Marjani (which called for restoring Tatar traditions and for a national state) were formed. Of course, representatives of these movements strongly criticized the TPC for its moderate and centrist positions. Passionaria Fazia Bairamova, a philologist and chairman of the Mothers’ Committee, struggled for Islam as a “bulwark of the Tatar nation and culture.” She headed the movement Ittifak, which was openly pan-Turkist and pan-Islamic from the very moment of its creation in October 1990 [A.A. Rorlich; 23, no. 11 (1989)l. Together with the movement of young Tatars (Azatlyk), 70 zyxwvut zyxwvu RUSSIAN POLITICS A N D LAW Ittifak waged a struggle for the resurrection of a Tatarstan that would unite all Tatars of Russia and Central Asia as a first step for gathering together all Turkish-speakingMoslems in the USSR into a single state. But only the TPC was registered as a political party (October 1991). Other organizations still have the unclear status of a “cultural association.” These are very active locally and quickly differentiated themselves from the TPC. Azatlyk and Ittifak political strategy entails resurrecting a Tatar state on a strictly ethnocultural basis. Generally, they believe, it is necessary to remove the structures imposed by the Soviet regime to find the historical roots of the Tatar nation. In January 1992, only two percent of voters intended to vote for Azatlyk and Ittifak [L. Pol’shinskii; 14, February 18, 19921. These organizations excluded themselves from the discussion of the definition of Tatarstan relative to Russia because they refused to think about its economic, political, geographic, and historical position in Russia and the USSR. It seemed to them that Tatarstan should demonstrate its strength to Russia and become a rival state with it, and that its unity should be based on an extraterritorial foundation. Even if these movements displayed some continuity with Ittifak in the early twentieth century, contrary to the latter, they distanced themselves from Russia, rejecting any negotiations with Russian (Soviet) authorities and political movements (no difference was seen between the former and the latter). The people in the TPC soon saw the fruitlessness of such a strategy, first and foremost because the political ideology (or mythology) that had formed such a strategy was, in the opinion of the TPC activists, stunted and obsolete. Furthermore, an orientation of the nascent political discourse exclusively toward questions of language and culture and toward a historical definition of Tatarstan in terms of extrinsic factors cut off the national movements from direct dialogue with the central authorities [M. Miliukov; 27, December 12,19911. In fact, only the legally constituted political authorities were able to carry on negotiations with the center. They quickly monopolized dialogue with Moscow and thereby monopolized the means for moving the question of the autonomy of Tatarstan in the desired direction. Because of this strategy, the key to defining the republic in the Soviet and Russian community was in their hands. For the lawhl authorities, the definition of Tatarstan had first to take place a contrario, i.e., more in respect to Russia than to the USSR. In political discourse, the accent MARCH-APRIL 1994 71 was placed on the divergent interests of the republic and the rest of the RSFSR. It was in this way that the reformist political power represented by Shaimiev, secretary of the Communist Party of Tatarstan (he was elected president of the republic in June 1991), became the leader of a strategy that was in opposition to the central Russian and Soviet authorities. One of the initial demands of the TPC was quickly snatched up: the sovereignty of the republic and granting it federative status. This line fit in equally well with both internal and the external demands. The Supreme Soviet of Tatarstan voted for sovereignty on August 30, 1990, and thus transformed the republic into a federative republic. It was the intention of the Tatar authorities in doing this to show the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and [RSFSR] President Yeltsin that henceforth they would not be prepared to discuss ways of acquiring their own independence directly with the central Soviet authorities. In October 1990 Yeltsin spoke very positively about expanding the powers of the autonomous republics of the RSFSR, recalling in passing that they could not exist on any other than a national foundation [28, October 23, 19901. At that time Yeltsin was averse to regarding the demands for autonomy as manifestations of an exclusively radical nationalism. Later, on the eve of the referendum on Tatarstan’s “independence” in March 1992, President Yeltsin cautioned the Supreme Soviet of the republic about differences between the interests of Tatars and those of the Russian-speaking population, stating his intention to defend the latter [ 1, March 20, 19921. At first, for the legally established authorities of Tatarstan, the sovereignty of Tatarstan was something on the order of today’s “regionalism” among Siberians and residents of the Urals. Until the August putsch in 1991, the key to economic self-sufficiency (the slogan of the Kazan authorities, and considered the quintessence of sovereignty) was in the hands of the Soviet authorities in Moscow. Self-sufficiency of this order was the core of all the demands put forth by Kazan. Nonetheless, the USSR authorities did not honor their faithful friends in Kazan even with a reply and relegated the problems of the autonomous republics to the background. While in Kazan the issue was sovereignty, the government of the USSR shamefully discussed “sovereignization” or access to sovereignty. This term concealed differences in the way the two sides perceived a common reality. For the Russian democrats, sovereignization signified a blurred autonomy within a self-affirming RSFSR; for influential Moscow reformers close zy zyxwv 72 zyxwvutsrqp zyxwvuts zyxw RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW zyxwvu to Gorbachev, it meant mainly a successive institutionalization of economic self-government of all regions of the USSR irrespective of national or ethnic differences. These reformers believed that their theses were valid and that they conformed to local needs [A. Abalkin; 18, February 1, 19911. Such theses corresponded with Khrushchev’s plans to reorganize the economic space of the USSR on the basis of sovnarkhozes or with theories of constructive geography that defended the creation of “regional economic spaces” [29]. While recognizing the necessity of a reform of the institutions of economic regulation, the Tatarstan authorities nonetheless perceived any reform from above as inflicting a crucial blow on the republic. From then on, the stability of their position in the structures of power depended on their control over the republic’s economic affairs. To realize this objective on the political level, it was also necessary to make use of the concept of sovereignty to give political legitimation to economic ambitions. The Kama Automobile Factory in Naberezhnye Chelny became an object of contention among all parties from the very beginning of privatization of large enterprises in the USSR. Since this factory was not under the jurisdiction of Tatarstan, it quickly became a symbol of the struggle for economic self-government and sovereignty of the republic, and, moreover, for a stake in the political disputes with Moscow. Since early 1989, changes in the functions of local leaders of the CPSU have been a central point in Soviet internal policy, and the idea of decentralization of political and economic power became the principal intrigue of perestroika. Perestroika forced a revolution in ways of thinking and, more concretely, in the functions of local Party leaders and heads of executive committees. Earlier, they were satisfied with their status of being the simple executors of decisions of Moscow in accordance with plans also worked out there, and worked within very well defined financial limits. But now local personages had to work out a common policy of development and find the resources to implement it. Their administrative functions quickly became decision-making functions [30]. In Tatarstan, the intentions of the Moscow reformers were fulfilled beyond any expectations. The instructions on self-government were taken literally, and an original economic policy based on a rejection of central directives was worked out. The Shaimiev team intended to extract several political advantages from the participation of Tatarstan in the privatization of the Kama Automo- MARCH-APRIL 1994 zyx zy 73 bile Factory: to deprive national movements of the means for increasingly harsh criticisms, to strengthen their own positions for the time when the Russian state would become stronger than the Soviet, and to ensure that Tatarstan had the financial resources necessary for an independent economic and international policy. The battle for the Kama Automobile Factory enabled the political authorities of the republic to define the core of a “national” economic policy based on a rejection of the principles of privatization of large enterprises and decollectivization. This opposition to the theses of the center became systematic after the August putsch. It strengthened even more after the signing of the Minsk accords creating the CIS in December 1991. Deprived of its own ideological and strategic redoubts in Moscow, Shaimiev skillfully turned his support of the putschists into “national resistance to Great Russian chauvinism” [M. Shaimiev; 14, August 19, 19911. The Russian government’s refusal to concede a portion of the capital of the Kama Automobile Factory to Tatarstan reinforced Shaimiev’s conviction that the interests of the republic were henceforth irreversibly divergent from the interests of Russia. Indeed, that was also the opinion of the majority of the persons living in Tatarstan. They eagerly supported the Shaimiev theses: 62.9 percent of respondents in a survey said that privatization and decollectivization were ruinous; 75.7 percent of the respondents were in favor of supporting large enterprises under federal authority in the state sector [25]. In addition, 83 percent of the respondents said that the natural resources of Tatarstan, especially oil, were of little benefit to Tatarstan. Thus, the position of the Tatarstan leaders enjoyed a certain legitimacy: a considerable majority of Tatarstan inhabitants agreed that there was a divergence of interests between the republic and Russia. This majority very easily brought Shaimiev to the post of president and came out in favor of “independence” in the referendum. The legally constituted authorities succeeded in defining a legitimate identity for the Tatar community based on its common economic interests, which differed from the interests of Russia. After ensuring a monopoly in talks with the central authorities (Soviet and then Russian), the authorities of Tatarstan were able by means of an original political discourse, relatively well received by the population, to impose a political identity on the territory they controlled. Skillfully using some of the slogans of the TPC in its discussions with Russia, the presidential team nonetheless concentrated its main efforts on eco- zyxwv 74 RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW zyxwvuts nomic and social problems of the republic. A rejection of the policy of reforms devised in Moscow was becoming evident, which indeed was also a reason why the Tatar government decided not to sign the federation accord in April 1992 [31, May 23, 19921. Shaimiev especially resisted the centralized tax system, which this accord stipulated [23, 1992, no. 141. Of course, it must be noted that it would not have been possible to create the outward image of a reformist Tatarstan without a skillful internal policy concentrated on removing the national movements from the decision-making process so as to ensure the lawful authority a monopoly on the endogenous definition of the Republic of Tatarstan. zyxwvu zyx zyx Independence as a foundation for an alternative economic policy In early 1992 the Kazan political scientist A. Iurtaev told me: “After long doubts, I have nonetheless finally come to the conclusion that the intention of Shaimiev and his team to institutionalize the state of Tatarstan has no political or even historical foundations whatsoever.” Some heads of the neighboring republics also think that the current ruling circles in Kazan are endeavoring to eternalize the power structures inherited from the Soviet past [V. Portnikov; 27, February 26, 19911. It is becoming increasingly clear that Tatarstan is gropingly trying to find a political identity different from the identity of Russia. As they constantly defined themselves in opposition to it, Tatar leaders gradually moved from an idea of economic autonomy to the idea of political independence. This in their opinion is the only guarantee of a truly self-sufficient economic policy. Of course, after the emergence in 1989 of a “national” opposition in Tatarstan, the Shaimiev team strove to minimize the influence of pluralist discussions in parliament on social control. But this tack was mainly due to the unwillingness to share control of the economy with anyone. For Shaimiev, a definition of Tatarstan in terms of endogenous factors was conditioned by a recognition of economic and political unity on the territory of the republic. In the first instance Tatarstan must defend its rights and force Russia to respect its distinctiveness. But can a progressive institutionalization of national movements threaten the existing power structure and force the president to bring his political discourse more in line with these movements? Specifically, this applies to the potential rival MARCH-APRIL I994 75 zy to the republic’s Supreme Soviet, namely, the All-Tatar Parliament (Millimejlis), which is gradually striking roots. Recently a convergence of this sort began to put in its appearance, but too little time has passed to evaluate it correctly. The Tatar president showed himself to be the only possible partner in talks with Moscow since he gradually guaranteed that there would be no competition on this level within the republic. He succeeded in this by strengthening the institutional structures of his power. Initially, it was a matter of intervening in the internal political discussions to influence relations between the republic and the center. In spring 1989 the TPC was already capable of putting forth its own candidates for people’s deputies of the USSR. The republic committee of the CPSU put forth the only candidates against all the others, so that the independent claimants were able to do nothing, neither within Tatarstan nor in its relations with the center. After the non-Communist deputies entered the Supreme Soviet of the republic in the aftermath of the elections in February 1990, Shaimiev used some of their ideas in his dialogue with Moscow, but at the same time he strengthened the influence of intrarepublic non-parliamentary institutions. And in fact the CPSU was in a serious internal crisis and its organs were unable to take advantage of decisions taken in Kazan for conveyance to Moscow. The new parliament, which was divided between persons oriented toward the Shaimiev ex-Communists and deputies from national movements, became more of a political tribunal than a center for decision making (93 of the 250 places in the Supreme Soviet belonged to the “Tatarstan” group, consisting of representatives of the TPC and Ittifak). The Tatar Communist Party, which was split by national sentiments even before the creation of the TPC, entered a phase of profound sclerosis. It had a very conservative apparatus which opposed the acceptance of the new rules of the political game (in 1990, only 1 1 percent of Party cadres did not support the establishment of an independent Russian Communist Party opposed to perestroika; 42.3 percent thought that communism was a “goal of history,” and 97 percent were against the independence of the Baltic countries [32]). The cadres of the Tatar Communist Party, despite their being used to discipline, were able to oppose the economic policy of the Tatar authorities only in those of its aspects which went beyond the bounds set by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. In contrast, the new republic Supreme Soviet was a young and progressive institution: on January 1, 1992, 70.5 zyxwv zyxwvutsrq zyxwvutsr zyxwvu zyxw zyx 76 RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW percent of the deputies were between the ages of 30 and 49, and 88 percent had completed higher education [ 151. Shaimiev’s strategy was to secure the alliance of these two seemingly irreconcilable forces: he compelled the young and dynamic members of the Communist Party to transform some of the ideas of the parliament into a political reality capable of serving as a foundation for the legitimacy of the power of his team. The official slogan of struggle for economic self-sufficiency was designed not only to strengthen the external positions of the republic, but also to effect a distribution of internal factions favorable to Shaimiev. Shaimiev sensed a shift of the center of political life from the Party toward the national movements and the Supreme Soviet in 198%90, and thus began systematically to select the most dynamic Party and economic cadres for his government team in order to give it a solid foundation. He saw the task to be to ensure that the decisions taken by these cadres (they would become Shaimiev’s personally appointed heads of local administrations) would be adopted without the approval of the Supreme Soviet [31, January 9, 19921. Thus the old Party apparatus was reincarnated in a state apparatus. The institution of presidential power, supported by parliament, became popular although more among real Tatars than among Slavs.s The principal finctions of power were concentrated in the hands of the president and his advisers, who were not accountable by law to the Supreme Soviet. Also, all the chairmen of Supreme Soviet committees were close to the new President. Only the Supreme Soviet had the right to introduce legislation on economic questions and external relations. By delegating the right to take real decisions to the presidential and para-presidential structures, the Supreme Soviet relinquished the functions of control and real opposition to these structures. The political definition of Tatarstan was totally relinquished to the Shaimiev team. The national movements, like the Democratic Party of Russia (DPR-the Travkin party), whose activity has been steadily increasing since August 1991, continue as pressure groups to enliven internal political life, but they have no influence on public issues, and especially on the economic reform. The draft of a constitution for Tatarstan developed by several of Shaimiev’s advisers and the two heads of the Supreme Soviet committees contains the idea of a strong presidential power without a real parliamentary counterweight [34]. It even provides for the possibility of presidential intervention in the elections of executive committees in cities with a population of more than 50,000, and for presidential emergency pow- zyx zyx zy MARCH-APRIL 1994 77 ers in special situations. The total lack of clarity surrounding the prerogatives of the future constitutional court is striking. Moreover, this draft constitution does not specify what relations with Russia will be, and does not provide for any special organ to examine problems with “neighbors.” However, according to the words of the chairman of the Juridical Commission of the Supreme Soviet, “Everything that is not within the competence of the president and his advisers is included in the draft.” This statement strongly suggests that any division of powers is utterly ruled out, and that all power is concentrated in principle in the hands of the president. Also, Shaimiev currently has control of the present state apparatus, which enjoys some effectiveness. His decisions are effectively carried out by enterprises under republic jurisdiction and by other local organs. Since the August putsch, the presidential team has had only one source of political legitimacy-its opposition to Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. This opposition is manifested in a rejection of mass privatization, and for this the Shaimiev structures within the republic are being strengthened. However, an exacerbation of political discussions in Kazan and the spread of the conflict between Russian democrats in the Tatarstan and national movements are impelling the republic government more to intervention in the internal political situation than through reforms in the apparatus or to a self-satisfying discourse on the “community of the nations of Tatarstan.” Shaimiev currently has control of a stable power apparatus and is relatively popular; accordingly, he operates quite resolutely relative to the Russian government. But the activity of the presidential team is revealing at every step that it has no specific political project other than proposals that would allow Tatarstan to avoid the difficulties of a radical transition to a market economy. The legally established authority was too concerned with administrative matters to notice early on that various political movements were taking shape, organizing themselves, and even becoming institutionalized. The DPR mounted a campaign against Shaimiev, portraying him as a petty local power-monger having only one goal, to stay where he was. On October 15, 1991, some bloody incidents occurred near the Supreme Soviet building in Kazan. The TPC organized a demonstration for the independence of Tatarstan, forcing the Supreme Soviet to declare independence that very same day. The Russian democrats mounted a counter-demonstration to protest against the “pressure of zyxwv zyxwvutsrq zyxwvuts 78 RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW national movements on institutions (authorities)” [D. Mikhailin, Kazan correspondent of Rossiskaiu gazeta]. Probably these very first drops of blood forced the president’s men to reflect. The radicalization of the political positions of the Russian democrats, who were already casting doubts on Shaimiev’s economic ideas (which the majority of their representatives in the Supreme Soviet supported in 1990), drove the presidential team closer to the opinions of the TPC. The latter, contrary to spontaneous sentiments, considers the establishment of a Tatar national state on an extraterritorial foundation to be inevitable (M. Miliukov; 31, February 17, 19921. This belief helped the TPC leaders to create in autumn 1991 an all-Tatar national parliament comprising representatives of different tendencies of the Tatar movement in Russia and in Central Asia. The Millimejlis was meant to be a counterweight to the republic Supreme Soviet (something on the order of a senate). Some movements, in particular Ittifak and Azatyk, see it as an ideal substitilte for the present Supreme Soviet, which they consider to be a vestige of Soviet power. Initially the Millimejlis had expected to obtain the right of veto on the decisions of the Supreme Soviet concerning linguistic and cultural questions, and to extend the force of its resolutions even to the domain of education. But the Russian democrats resolutely resisted the institutionalization of the Millimejlis, as an attempt to firm up a dual political representation of national movements. In the light of the prerogatives of the Supreme Soviet, Shaimiev obviously thought that the second parliament would hardly have a negative influence on the established institutional order. The president supported the initiative of the Millimejlis at its first session in February 1992. This gesture may be interpreted in various ways: either as an attempt to force the national movements to agree with the project of a referendum on “independence,” or as a sign of a willingness to tacitly accept the thesis that the hture Tatar state should be defined extraterritorially and as a promise to henceforth include it in his projects, if for the time-being exclusively on a territorial basis [V. Portnikov; 27, December 3, 19911; or finally, as simply the desire to extend his circle of friends. Despite the intensity of the negotiations, first with the Soviet and then with the Russian central power: the Kazan leaders were unable to develop a real strategy for international relations or even simply to establish such relations with other republics and regions of the former USSR. In spring 1992 the Russian government consented to transfer zy zy zyxw MARCH-APRIL 1994 79 some prerogatives to the former autonomous structures: to permit them to create their own central banks [35]. In addition, the federal accord would include the right of autonomy over any profits accrued from the use of natural resources on their territories. These concessions to all the “autonomous” units of Russia did not satisfjr the Shaimiev group, which stresses the specificity of the Tatar “case” and on this basis the impossibility of being regulated according to any general model. That is why the latent support of the Millimejlis should be interpreted as a cue to Moscow and not as a turn in Kazan policy. It reflects the intentions of the Tatarstan authorities to expand the circle of their allies and to support independent international relations with the Russian authorities. As of the end of 1991, Tatarstan had only signed one agreement, with the neighboring Bashkirs, to accept the principle of inviolability of their present borders. But in February-April 1992 the republic signed agreements on friendship and cooperation with Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan [23, nos. 5,7,9, and 13 (1992)l. Trade contacts with Western investors attracted by the petroleum wealth of Tatarstan are multiplying, and more and more Turkish goods are appearing in private shops in Kazan. The development of international relations should show Moscow that Tatarstan is capable of becoming a state organizing its own relations with Russia on a basis of equality. The national movements, for their part, are setting up their own network of international relations. All Tatar movements were present at a pan-Turkish assembly in Alma-Ata in December 1991 [V. Khalilov; 361. While it is moving closer to the national movements and developing international relations, the legally constituted authorities in Tatarstan are not only seeking new tools for the negotiating process with the Russian government, they are also hoping in this way to acquire a new political legitimacy, for the demands for economic power are already partially satisfied. The most important issue is to get on top of events so as not to give the national movements a chance to become a genuine armed opposition as in Chechenia. For this the presidential team must maintain its monopoly on decision making in the Tatar political community. For the timebeing, it is not insisting on the institutionalization of the state in the full sense of the term, as evidenced by Shaimiev’s words in July 1992: what we need is an economically independent state capable of conducting negotiations on economic assistance and establishing its own economic rules; in any case, we do not need our own army or currency [3 71. zyx zyx 80 RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW zyxw zyxwvut *** Is nationalism capable of existing without a nation that would have its own identity ethno-historically and culturally within a specific society? Tatar society and the society of Tatarstan, which do not meet any of the above-mentioned criteria, have expressed themselves politically since the beginning of perestroika by drawing on the principle of nationalism, however anachronistic it might seem to us in essence. The rise in different types of nationalism in the former USSR at first caused a strong reaction of rejection in the West. The joy of peoples that had once again acquired their national symbols was perceived in a very mediated form, forcing people sometimes to speak about the “repetition of history,” interpreted as regression. The first national Tatar demonstrations were less frightening than confusing [38]. All the same, what does a “return of nationalism,” as it is called, really mean? Nationalism in Tatarstan is much more a political discourse than an obvious anthropo-historical reality. It has two expressions: on the one hand, the hereditary and historical aspects of this political principle are stressed and, on the other, accent is placed on its direct and utilitarian aspects. Of course, the actions of the lawful political authorities of Tatarstan can be interpreted as a tactic of a reactionary apparatus to maintain itself in power at any price. Such a view seems to be the prevailing one today in Russia [39] as well as in the West [40].Even so, we are not very satisfied with it. First, such an approach focuses only on that nationalism that is present in national movements: this nationalism is readily associated with the democratic movement that is a continuation of the dissident course, which was guided by human rights. However, the reality of national movements is not this. On the one hand, the activity of the lawful Tatar authorities is not very much analyzed; we have attempted, on the other hand, to show that it, too, is an expression of nationalism, perhaps a voluntarist nationalism, but nonetheless a very real nationalism. In Tatarstan the two types of nationalism overlap and hlfill a clear political function: to define the identity of Tatarstan and of all real and potential Tatars in general. Unfortunately, we know little about the Tatar society in the diaspora, whose role could be central. The future political behavior of the society will show which of these two types of nationalism will be more legitimate. The originality of the geographical situation of the Tatars will some zyx zy zy zyxwvu MARCH-APRIL 1994 81 day enable us to determine the significance of the ethnic and historical factors in the rise of different types of political nationalism in the former USSR. The types of nationalism that have so far found expression naturally are seeking a sociological grounding. That could be a “high culture” which ensures the homogeneous exosocialization of the community. If one takes into account public opinion in Tatarstan, then we find that the definition of such a “high culture” explicitly assumes an equation between social and economic identity. Thus, an anthropohistorical interpretation of the principle of nationalism, according to which nationalism develops rapidly owing to the necessity of social rationalization when a society is making the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial stage [3], proves to be applicable here as well. Of course, Tatarstan and the society of potential and real Tatars is altogether “structurally industrial.” But is it such from the standpoint of culture? An industrialization that had no ethno-historical roots or social support was carried out in the USSR through a rational “high culture,” but the latter did not explicitly guarantee the exosocialization of the Soviet commonwealth. The attachment of the population to a high culture that meets its present needs is consequently dominant in the process of industrialization. Therein undoubtedly lies the reason why today the nationalism of President Shaimiev is clearly victorious over President Yeltsin’s promises of economic reform. The foregoing could be taken as confirmation that the territorial factor of exosocialization is prevailing over the cultural factor. A political scientist of the twenty-first century will probably have more opportunities to answer this question. But what is important today is to show on the basis of the Tatar example the complexity of the concept of nationalism, as well as its two sides, the sociological and the strictly political. Externally they contradict one another, but essentially they are mutually complementary, for there is no way out other than through their overlapping. When the relevance of the question of the independence of Tatarstan is posed in this way, it loses its urgency. And indeed could Tatarstan, in the image and likeness of Russia, ever have determined itself without taking recourse to its external role? July 1992 Notes zyx 1. We have chosen this republic because of its similarity with Tatarstan as regards the ethnic and religious composition of nominal “nationalities.” 82 zyxwvu zyxwvutsrq zyxwvuts RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW zyxw zyxw zyxwv zyxwvuts zyxwvu 2. True, some authors consider it an incidental emanation of a national “high culture” [22]. 3. A political science student at Kazan University told the author that in October 1991 the decision to introduce a course on Tatar social thought provoked the derision of all professors and students. 4. The anniversary of Kazan’s being taken by Ivan the Temble was commemorated with a period of mourning; a holiday festival was declared on the occasion of the one-thousandth anniversary of the Islamization of the Volga region. 5 . The idea of a presidency was supported by 34.5 percent of the inhabitants of the republic, including 38.9 percent of Tatars and 30.1 percent of Slavs; 33.9 percent thought that this institution would be able more effectively to deal with economic problems, including 41.5 percent of Tatars and 25.6 percent of Slavs P31. 6. Between October and March 1992 there were eight meetings with Soviet leaders and twenty meetings with Russian leaders. References 1. Rossiiskaia gazeta.* 2. Malashenko, A. “L’Islam comme ferment des nationalismes en Russie,” Le Monde diplomatique, May 1992. 3. Gellner, E. Nations and Nationalism, Oxford, 1893, p. 1 1. 4. Olson, M. The Rise and Decline of Nations: An Anthropological Perspective, New Haven, 1982, p. 12. 5. Riasanovsky, N. Histoire de la Russie, Paris, 1988, p. 79. 6. Murombekov, M. Istoriia bashkirov v drevneishikh vremenakh, Ufa, 1969, p. 32. 7. Bennigsen-Broxup, M. “Volga Tatars,” in The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union, London, 1991, p. 278. 8. Karpov, A. Istoriia sovetskoi etnografii, Moscow, 1961, p. 218. 9. Seton-Watson, H. Nations and States, London, 1977, p. 302. 10. Bennigsen, A. and Quelquejay, C. Les mouvements nationaux chez les Musulmans de Russie, Paris, 1960, p. 22. 1 I . Carrkre d’Encausse, H. Reforme et revolution chez les Musulmans de 1 ’Empirerusse, Paris, 1966, pp. 117ff. 12. Naselenie Tatarskoi SSR, Kazan, 1991, p. 28. 13. Dictionary of Social Sciences and Humanities, Oxford, 1991, p. 123. 14. Vechemiaia Kazan ’. 15. The statistical data on the Tatar economy and society are given in Pasport respubliki Tatarstan, Kazan, 1992 (unpublished official document); see also Kazakhstan v tsifrakh, Alma-Ata, 1987; Sbornik statisticheskikh materialov, Goskomstat SSSR,Moscow, 1989, p. 7. 16. Busygin, E. and Stoliarova, G. “Mezhnatsional‘nye braki: za ili protiv,” Komsomolets Tatarii, February 12, 1989. * All quotations from sources in the Russian and Tatar languages are retranslated from the French. zyx zy zyxwvuts zyxwvu MARCH-APRIL 1994 83 17. Radvani, J . L ’URSS,regions et nations, Paris, 1990, p. 138. 18. Ekonomika i zhizn ‘. 19. Trofimov, V. and Khakhulina, L. “The Standard of Living in Siberia Compared with Other Regions of the RSFSR,” Soviet Sociology, 1987, no. 4, pp. 17-34. 20. Balandier, G. Sens et puissance, les dynamiques sociales, Paris, 1971, p. 105. 21. Silver, B. “The Status of National Minority Languages in Soviet Education: An Assessment of Recent Changes,” Soviet Studies, no. 26-1 (1974), pp. 2841. 22. Clastres, P. La societe contre 1 ’Etat,Paris, 1974, p. 161. 23. Radio Free EuropeRadio Liberty [RFERL]. 24. See, for example, Iskhakov, D. “Vzgliad na formirovanie natsii,” Sotsialistik Tatarstan (in the Tatar language), August 15, 1989. 25. Obshchestvennoe mnenie v 1991 godu, Tatarstan Supreme Soviet Center for Sociological Studies, Kazan, 1992, p. 13. 26. Usmanov, G. “Nashe budushchee-v edinstve,” Sovetskaia tatania, September 20, 1989. 27. Nezavisimaia gazeta. 28. Izvestiia. 29. Radvani, J. Regions et pouvoirs regionaux en URSS. Constraintes spatiales et politique regionale. These de doctorat d’Etat, Paris, 1985. 30. Pchelintsev, 0.“Perekhod k rynku: regional’ny aspekt,” Narodny deputat, no. 12 (1991), pp. 52-58. 3 1. Izvestiia Tatarstana. 32. Partiia i partorganizatsiia Tatarii v zerkale obshchestvennogo mneniia i sotsiologicheskikh issledovanii, Ideological Department of the Tatar Oblast Party Committee, Kazan, 1990. 33. 0 gosudarstvennoi vlasti v TSSR, TSSR Supreme Soviet Center for Sociological Studies, Kazan, July 1991. 34. Proekt konstitutsii respubliki Tatarstan, Kazan, 1992 (unpublished). 35. Business Moscow News, no. 6 (1 992). 36. Kommersant, no. 16 (1 991). 37. Shaimiev, M. “Vzglyad v budushchee,” Kazanskie vedomosti, July 7,1992. 38. Far Eastern Economic Review, September 26, 1990. 39. See the article by V. Radzievskii, Moscow News correspondent in the VolgaUral and Western Siberian regions. 40. “Tatar Sauce,” The Economist, September 7, 1991. zyxwv zyxwv