secession footer

Laurence G4

Description

secession footer

Sujets

• Arts

Informations

• Publié par: ifydesut
• Nombre de lectures: 39
• Langue: Français

Extrait

Alexei Zverev

2. ‘  The Patience of a Nation is Measured in Centuries’. National Revival in Tatarstan and Historiography

Introduction The Tatars have always been part of Russian history and politics, ye from them. Historical self-perceptions have kept the Russians and t Tatar 1 sapart. The Russians cannot forget the ravages of the Golden which allegedly shut Russia off from Europe 2 faorn d2,4 a0s  yseoamrse believe, has left a lasting ‘Oriental’ mark on its polity ever since. For the Tatar ‘black legend’ that does not correspond to reality. In their view, the H ally kept Russia from falling apart and defended it from the invasions West, preventing Russia from being colonized by the Teutonic Order, Li Poland or Sweden. In fact, a salient tradition of Russian thinkers – from torians Nikolai Karamzin and Georgi Vernadsky to the ethnologist Lev – concurred with this view to a certain extent. For their part, the Tata forgive the Russian state for their defeat and the destruction of t Khanate at the hands of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in 1552, and the forced 3 ization and Russification that followed. Mutual wounds inflicted in history and enshrined in folk memory are forget. It is equally true that after the Russian conquest the Tatars found a modicum of co-existence with the Russians. Tatar blood flow veins of many outstanding figures of Russian history and culture – fro Boris Godunov to the poet Anna Akhmatova, as it did in the veins of th famous ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. Russian armies of the tsars and Bolsheviks were sometimes comm Tatar generals. Just as, on the eve of 1917, the well-off section of the T lation identified themselves with the tsarist monarchy (despite all it doing against the Tatars), in 1991 the Tatar ruling élites could not but tain affinity with the October Revolution (despite all its unfulfilled pr After all, it was the Bolsheviks that gave the Tatars their first (Soviet) 1920.

S M e i c c e h s e s l i   o H n u , y  H s i s s e t u o n r e y .     a © n   d 2  t 0 h 0 e 2     S V o U ci B a   l B  S ru ci s e s n e c ls e   s U .  n E iv di e t r e si d t   y b   y P  Brun I o S  C B o N p :  p 9 ie 0 6   t 5 e 9 r 4 s 8   7 a   n 3 d 1   2 4 ress.

Alexei Zverev

It is to be remembered that it was Tatar revolutionaries with impecca patriotic credentials who helped install Soviet power in Tatarstan in 1 that what these people were acting out – even if they could only partl was the Tatar (and Muslim) political agenda as they understood it at – ticular juncture. What these revolutionaries dreamed of was a self- Republic of Turan which would include the entire Turkic-populated area Soviet Union, and would be a spearhead of revolution in the colonial Ea plete with its own army, a separate Communist Party and a Colonial tional independent of the Komintern. What they achieved, however, Autonomous Tatar Republic (the Tatar ASSR) controlled by Moscow and from the Muslim East. Many Tatar historians nowadays create a vision of history in which a historical arguments for the Tatars as a distinct oppressed nationality i so that the question of independence begs itself, even if it is not dire One gets an impression of rather acute discomfort, among some secti nationally-conscious Tatar intelligentsia, at living in Russia, and of the h culty of preserving their cultural and historic identity – but it is a disco in their view, has to be patiently endured for lack of a better outcom Tatar author has put it, ‘the patience of a nation is meas 4 ured in centuri Nevertheless, both politicians and scholars in present-day Tatarstan d bouring secessionist objectives. Tatarstan’s major ideologist, the Dire Kazan-based Institute of History and one of the founders of the Tata Centre (TPC) – an umbrella Tatar nationalist organization, which eme the general context of Gorbachev’s perestroika – Republic of Tatars Presidential Advisor Rafael Khakimov, has denied that the ultimate obj the Tatar national movement is independence: ‘To suppose that, say, pursues a “false-bottomed” policy is not serious; the republic is not in secession, and there are valid reasons for this. Suffice it to say that 75 Tatars live outside Tatarstan, and that, incidentally, they live mostly in toric homeland, that is, on the territory of the former Kazan, Astrakh mov and Siberian Khanates. Thus a substantial part of Russia is Tatar t extent as it is Russian. It is in the interest of Tatarstan to conduct a enhancing its influence on Russian matters for the purpose of pre treaty-based status for the republic and developing the culture o Tatars 5 .’The message here is clear: we do not advocate secession, b intend to increase our influence. This does not mean that in the event of ‘what is due’, the Tatars may not remember their ‘historic rights’   secession on the agenda. The protean character of nationalism, which gent on the conditions in which the given ascriptive group lives and these people perceive these conditions, implies that radical changes mulation of political goals cannot be excluded.

70 Secession, History and the Social Sciences. Edited by Bruno Coppiete Michel Huysseune. © 2002 VUB Brussels University Press. ISBN: 90 5487