Identity change in Bashkortostan: Tatars into Bashkirs and backgorenbur/gorenburg ers1999.pdf ·...

Identity change in Bashkortostan:Tatars into Bashkirs and back

Dmitry Gorenburg

Abstract

Students of ethnic identity have recently begun to recognize the role of thestate in causing identity shift. Constructivists, in particular, focus on theimportance of state institutions and policies in creating new identities andtransforming old ones. This article focuses on identity creation and changein Bashkortostan, an ethnic region within the Russian Federation. It showshow, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian/Soviet statecreated new ethnic identities from pre-existing regional, estate-based andreligious identities. It also shows how later changes in state institutions andpolicies played a crucial role in determining the direction of identity changeamong a mixed population, straddling the geographical and cultural bound-aries between the Tatar and Bashkir ethnic groups. By tracing the impact ofthe state on one ethnic group over an extended time-period, this articleshows that state actions can lead to both instrumental and culturally-basedshifts in ethnic identity.

Keywords: Identity; Bashkortostan; Russian Federation; Bashkirs; Tatars;ethnicity.

In recent years scholarship on the formation and maintenance of ethnicidentity has largely focused on the debate over whether students of eth-nicity should focus their attention on the effects of cultural boundarymaintenance between neighbouring groups (Barth 1969; 1994) or on cul-tural development among an ethnic group’s core members (Roosens1994). In some ways this is an outgrowth of the earlier debate between sit-uationalists, who assert that ethnicity is �exible and is often used for econ-omic and political gain, and primordialists, who argue that ethnicity is apermanent and essential aspect of one’s identity.1 Barth and his followersargue that ethnic identity is ‘a feature of social organization, rather thana nebulous expression of culture. . . . This means focusing on the bound-ary and the processes of recruitment, not on the cultural stuff the bound-ary encloses’ (Barth 1994, p. 12). Roosens (1994, p. 84), by contrast, arguesthat ethnic identity cannot exist without some cultural or genealogicalsubstance, which provides an internal source of identi�cation for the

Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 22 Number 3 May 1999© Routledge 1999 0141-987 0

groups’ members that is at least as important as the external source ofidenti�cation provided by group boundaries.

Scholars who study ethnic identity change have attempted to surmountthis debate by synthesizing the two approaches. Charles Keyes (1981), forexample, begins with the cultural core of ethnic identity, but argues thata complete analysis of ethnic change must incorporate factors such associal structure and inter-group interaction. Judith Nagata (1981) ex-plicitly argues for combining primordialist and situationalist approaches.Studies of ethnic change based on this synthetic perspective argue that theway members of an ethnic group conceive of their identity may change asthe result of interactions between neighbouring ethnic groups, but thatnewly modi�ed identities will remain anchored by a cultural core whichis based on the members’ self-perception. Keyes argues that primordialidentity serves as a gyroscope for individuals facing radical changes intheir political and economic environment. Individuals may change theiridentities as a consequence of migration, changes in state boundaries, theestablishment of new government programmes, and revolutionary changein the structure of society (1981, pp. 27–28). In an introduction to a col-lection of articles on identity and change in Central Asia, Jo-Ann Gross(1992) provides a similar list of factors that may lead to shifts in ethnicidentity, including changes in economic and political conditions in aregion, cultural differences between neighbouring groups, changes in theinterpretation of a group’s shared experiences, the emergence of national-ist ideology, and changes in power relations between groups.

The sources of ethnic change described by these scholars focus on theactions of group members, who change their identity to correspond withvarious kinds of changes in their environment. Such a view plays downthe ability of outside forces to deliberately shape ethnic identity. In thisarticle I argue that such outsiders, particularly states that are not con-trolled by any of the local ethnic groups, can create changes in ethnicidentity among the populations living in areas under their control. Stateinstitutions such as the census and administrative boundaries, as well asstate policies such as preferential treatment for members of certaingroups, often lead to the formation of new ethnic groups and to changesin the cultural content of existing ethnic identities. This point of view,often labelled constructivism, has been articulated by Leroy Vail (1989)and his collaborators in ascribing the creation of tribalism in SouthernAfrica largely to European colonial rule. They argue that the Europeanscreated ethnic divisions between cultural groups in order to make rulingtheir colonies easier. I show how similar processes were at work in thedevelopment of contemporary ethnic identities among the Tatars andBashkirs, two Turkic Muslim minorities inhabiting the Volga-Ural regionof Russia.

This change of focus is particularly important for students of ethnicityin the territory that formerly comprised the Soviet Union. Until the 1990s

Identity change in Bashkortostan 555

Soviet scholars were the strongest remaining proponents of a pri-mordialist view of ethnicity. Ethnos theory, as championed by YulianBromley and his colleagues at the Institute of Ethnography of the SovietAcademy of Sciences, argued that all ethnic groups have a stable core,called ethnos, that persists across time and space, despite all changes ina group’s political and economic circumstances (Bromley 1981). Need-less to say, such a point of view does not allow for the possibility that aparticular ethnic identity may be a construct created and spread by thestate. According to the ethnos theorists, Soviet nationalities policy simplycatalogued existing ethnic groups, allowing them to receive, usually forthe �rst time, political and cultural institutions such as literary languages ,native language school systems, and self-governing territorial units.Although a few Russian anthropologists have recently begun to movetowards the constructivist argument (see Tishkov 1997), the primordial-ist view of ethnicity continues to predominate among scholars in theregion. However, the evidence strongly disputes their claims that ethnicidentities in the former Soviet region have remained relativelyunchanged for many centuries. Tishkov (1997, pp. 15–21), for example,describes how deliberate ethnic engineering for political purposes on thepart of Soviet authorities created new ethnic identities by combining ordividing previously existing ethnic groups. In this article, I go one stepfurther by using census data to show how particular government policiesled to changes in ethnic identi�cation at the district and village levels.

Before moving on to the case-study, it is necessary to distinguishbetween two types of ethnic identi�cation. Although the state is the mostimportant actor in the creation of new ethnic labels, it is left to the poten-tial members of the newly established or transformed ethnic group toaccept or reject their new ‘identity’. In cases where rejection of the state-sponsored labels may lead to negative consequences or hinder the acqui-sition of bene�ts, affected individuals sometimes adopt the new ethnonymas their public ethnic identity, while continuing to identify along tra-ditional lines in the private sphere. Roosens (1994, p. 88) notes howmigrants to Belgium from Catalunya assume ‘Spanish’ as their public iden-tity when interacting with Belgians or the state, while retaining ‘Catalan’as their identity when interacting among themselves and with migrantsfrom other regions of Spain. Following Roosens, I distinguish betweenpublic ethnic identity, which refers to the identity used by members of agroup in interactions with outsiders or with the government, and privateethnic identity, which refers to the identity on which interactions withinthe group and with neighbouring groups are based. As shown in this essay,private and public ethnic identities are not always congruent. Changes ofethnic identity may also be either public or private. Public identity changeusually occurs when members of a group accept newly created or changedof�cial designations for use when interacting with outsiders without adopt-ing them for use within the group. Private identity change occurs when

556 Dmitry Gorenburg

members of a group change their self-designation and adjust their socialinteractions with others to correspond with the new identity.

The case described in this article shows how state policies and insti-tutions create the conditions for changes in ethnic identity. The state isshown to play a key role in both boundary shifts and changes in the cul-tural cores of ethnic identity, creating conditions that lead to changes inboth public and private ethnic identity.

Ethnic re-identi�cation in Bashkortostan: 1897–1989

Bashkortostan is a republic in the Volga-Ural region of the RussianFederation. It is one of the largest and wealthiest ethnic republics ofRussia, with a territory of 143,000 sq km and a population of over fourmillion. It is unusual among Russia’s ethnic republics in that the titularethnic group, the Bashkirs, is only the third largest group, less numerousthan both Russians and Tatars. Furthermore, the relative percentages ofBashkirs and Tatars have varied signi�cantly over the course of the lastcentury. Figure 1 shows two periods of signi�cant change in the propor-tions of Tatar and Bashkir ethnic groups in the total population. Duringthe �rst period, which lasted from 1897 until 1939, the percentage of thepopulation which identi�ed itself as Bashkir fell by one-half, while theabsolute number of Bashkirs declined by a quarter. The Tatar populationmore than tripled in number, increasing its proportion of the populationfrom 11 to 25 per cent.2 A period of relative stability followed, but then,during the 1979–1989 intercensal period, the Bashkir population fell by70,000 while the Tatar population rose by 180,000. Yet local ethnogra-phers have shown that none of the usual sources of such �uctuation, such


Figure 1. Ethnic distribution in Bashkortostan

as migration or differences in rates of population growth, was present.Instead, many Bashkirs re-identi�ed as Tatars during both periods. Whywas ethnic re-identi�cation so frequent among Bashkirs in the �rst halfof the twentieth century and again in the 1980s?3

This topic has political implications that go beyond the scholarlydebates outlined in the introduction to this article. Bashkir cultural andpolitical leaders have long blamed the relative decline of the Bashkirpopulation as compared to the Tatar population on assimilation throughTatar cultural imperialism. Political tensions over this pattern of re-identi�cation existed throughout the twentieth century and, as I showbelow, in�uenced the cultural and census policies of the Bashkortostangovernment from the 1920s to the 1980s. However, the political liberal-ization of the Gorbachev and post-Soviet periods brought these tensionsinto public discourse for the �rst time, leading to con�icts betweenBashkir and Tatar cultural élites. Debate on the causes of identity shiftsin northwest Bashkortostan has in recent years become closely tied tothe debate on the status of Tatars and the Tatar language within therepublic and therefore highly politicized. This environment has madescholarly study of the topic by local scholars very dif�cult. In analysingthe factors leading to changes in ethnic identities in this region, I hope toprovide an outsider’s point of view that is not biased by the politicaldimensions of this question.

In order to explain the factors behind Bashkir/Tatar identity shift, it isimportant to consider the speci�c area where most of this re-identi�-cation took place. District-level ethnic breakdowns show that ethnicidentity was relatively stable in most of Bashkortostan throughout thetwentieth century (see Appendix 1). Almost all of the shifts in ethnicidentity were limited to northwestern Bashkortostan, indicating thatidentity changes were even more pronounced in this area than aggregatecensus data for the entire republic would suggest. Since this area bordersTatarstan, it is not surprising that it is home to most of the republic’sTatars (see Figure 2). It is also populated by many Bashkirs who considerTatar their native language. This group was �rst noted in the 1926Census, the �rst census to separate ethnic identi�cation and native lan-guage into distinct categories. The number and percentage of Tatar-speaking Bashkirs among the total Bashkir population has been steadilydeclining since that time (see Table 1). This sets up the second puzzle thisarticle will need to explain: considering the strong connection betweenlanguage and ethnic self-identi�cation in communist ideology, how did aTatar-speaking Bashkir group form? How did members of the groupresolve the contradiction between these two ethnic identity markers,retaining their identity as Tatar-speaking Bashkirs over several decades?And what happened to them when they did change their identity? Didthey re-identify as Tatars or did they switch their linguistic identi�cationto correspond with their ethnic identi�cation? Finally, how does this


process interact with the general demographic trend towards Tatariza-tion described above?

First period: 1897–19394

During the nineteenth century, the territory that is now northwesternBashkortostan was the northwestern region of the Ufa province[guberniia] of the Russian empire. This region of the Ufa province


Verkhniye Tatyshly

Neftekamsk Askino

Kaltasy

KaraidelBurayevo

Dyurtyuli BirskMaloyaz

Bakaly

Kushnarenkovo

UfaTuymazy

Buzdyak Uchaly

Beloretsk

Kirgiz-MiyakiBizhbulyak

Ishimbay

KumertauBaymak

Belebey

Figure 2. Map of BashkortostanNote: Highlighted areas represent northwestern counties.

consisted of the Belebey, Birsk and Menzelinsk districts [uezdy]. Ufaprovince also included several districts to the south and east where ethnicidentity remained relatively stable. After the revolution, the administra-tive division of this territory was radically altered by the creation of theautonomous ethnic republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Ufaprovince was divided between the two republics in 1922. Most of theprovince, including Belebey and Birsk districts, became a part of Bash-kortostan, while Menzelinsk district was annexed by Tatarstan.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, northwestern Ufa provinceattracted large numbers of Tatar-speaking migrants. During this period,the Tatar ethnonym had not yet been universally adopted by Tatar-speaking Turks in the area. All Muslims living in the Volga-Ural regionstill shared a common identity based on their religion and a myth ofdescent from the Bulgar state of the tenth to thirteenth century (Frank1998). Only gradually did the people who identi�ed with this commonidentity come to refer to themselves as Tatars. Furthermore, whilesharing this common regional identity, the migrants were divided intotwo groups based on their land of origin. The two groups were calledKazanly (people from Kazan) and Mishars.5 There were two othergroups already established in northwestern Ufa province: the Bashkirsand the Teptiars. These were considered both ethnic groups and estates[soslovie], stemming from a sixteenth-century royal decree givingBashkirs special land-owning privileges on their territory.6 Teptiars werealso declared a land-owning estate, although they were entitled to asmaller portion of land and therefore had less prestige than the Bashkirestate. While the Bashkir estate as a whole was dominated by membersof the Bashkir ethnic group, the Teptiar estate included members of mostethnic groups in the Volga region, including non-Turkic groups such asthe Mari and Udmurts (Yakupov 1992, p. 168). Ethnic minorities whowere not members of the Bashkir or Teptiar estates could not own landand were required to rent it from members of one of the estates. Duringthe late nineteenth century, the land-ownership system was reformed,of�cially eliminating the estate system and placing members of all ethnic


Table 1. Native language among Bashkirs in Bashkortostan

Language 1926 1939 1959 1979 1989% % % % %

Bashkir 53.8 54.3 57.6 64.4 74.7Tatar 46 45.4 41.4 32.9 20.7

Sources: Murzabulatov 1995, p. 20 (1939). Calculated from Yuldashbaev 1995, Tables 6&7(1926). Yuldashbaev 1995, Table 3 (1959–1989). 1939 Tatar percentage approximate, basedon subtracting total number of Tatars from total number of Tatar-speakers, then dividingby total number of Bashkirs. The actual percentage may be slightly lower.

groups on an equal footing. On the ground, however, the last vestiges ofthis system did not disappear until the 1917 revolution .7

Ethnic identity in northwestern Ufa province was highly unstablethroughout this period. Korostelev (1994) has compiled a database whichincludes information on the dominant ethnicity in all villages in north-western Ufa province/Bashkortostan at various times from 1870 to 1989.This database shows that the dominant ethnicity in 47 per cent of all vil-lages changed between 1870 and 1913. These changes included not onlyswitches from Mishar, Teptiar and Tatar to Bashkir, but also fromBashkir to the other groups (see Table 2).

After 1917 ethnic identity changed again. The census administrationgradually eliminated the Teptiar and Mishar categories, asking membersof these categories to choose among ethnic labels recognized by theSoviet government. For Muslim Turkic-speakers, this allowed a choicebetween Tatar and Bashkir. Korostelev shows that approximately two-thirds of Mishars and Teptiars identi�ed themselves as Tatars, while one-third identi�ed as Bashkirs. In addition, during the 1920s many Bashkirsre-identi�ed as Tatars (1994, pp. 77 and 91).

The distinction between ethnic identi�cation and native language, �rstmade in the 1926 Census, allows us to see two distinct patterns in Bashkiridentity change. In those parts of Ufa province which were joined toTatarstan after the revolution, the number of Bashkirs declined from123,000 in 1897 to none in 1926 (Table 3). Bashkirs who found themselves


Table 2. Changes in predominant village identity in NW Bashkortostan,1870–1913 (number of villages)

Identity in 1913———————————————————————————

Identity in 1870 Bashkir Mishar Teptiar Tatar

Bashkir 264 21 71 14Mishar 109 30 10 1Teptiar 47 2 31 9Tatar 18 3 2 20

Source: Korostelev 1994, p. 90.

Table 3. Bashkirs in neighbouring regions of Ufa province (in thousands)

1897 1897% 1913 1913% 1926 1926%

Menzelinsk 123 32% 154 34% 0 0%Belebey 233 54% 213 37% 118 21%Birsk 262 53% 233 39% 178 33%

Sources: Yuldashbaev 1995, Table 8 (1926), Table 49 (1897), Table 56 (1913). VsesoiuznaiaPerepis Naseleniia 1926 goda, vol. 3, pt. 1, Table X, page 281.

living in Tatarstan re-identi�ed as Tatars. In areas which became part ofBashkortostan, some Bashkirs re-identi�ed as Tatar, but many retainedtheir Bashkir identi�cation in the 1926 Census. Bashkirs who re-identi-�ed as Tatar primarily consisted of individuals who had adopted theBashkir self-designation recently, previously calling themselves Misharor Teptiar. Bashkirs who maintained their identity were concentrated inthose villages which were considered Bashkir prior to the 1865 landreform (Rodnov 1995, p. 76). However, in the northwest, almost all ofthese Bashkirs declared Tatar to be their native language. Whereas 89per cent of the Turkic population in this area declared Bashkir to be theirnative language in 1897, 94 per cent declared Tatar to be their native lan-guage in 1926 (Korostelev 1994, p. 80). Among Bashkirs, Tatar-speakersmade up 46 per cent of the total population in 1926, including 89 per centof northwestern Bashkirs.8

The period between 1926 and 1939 witnessed a continuation of theprevious pattern with a gradual tendency towards stabilization. TheTatar percentage of the population continued to increase at the expenseof the Bashkirs, but at a slower rate than before (see Table 4). MostBashkirs in the northwest maintained their ethnic identity while at thesame time retaining Tatar as their native language.

Causes of ethnic re-identi�cation: 1897–1939

As shown above, ethnic identity was highly unstable during this period.This instability was caused primarily by changes in state policies towardsnon-Russian minorities and by the establishment of new ethnic insti-tutions in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution. The tsarist system of popu-lation classi�cation based on estates encouraged most local non-Russiansto identify as Bashkirs in the 1897 Census. The gradual elimination ofestate-based privileges, combined with the establishment of ethnic admin-istrative units by the new communist government, encouraged many localinhabitants to switch to Tatar identi�cation during the 1910s and 1920s.As a result of government decisions in creating a Bashkir literary lan-guage, a sizeable number of those inhabitants who retained their Bashkiridentity declared Tatar to be their native language .Estate-based privileges. At the end of the nineteenth century, ethnicidentity for local inhabitants was closely connected to their estate, whichdetermined their place in the local socio-economic hierarchy. In this hier-archy, Bashkirs occupied the top rung, followed in order by Teptiars andMishars, with everyone else at the lowest level. Bashkirs were the onlygroup allowed to own land until 1865, when land reform gave some land-ownership rights to Teptiars and Mishars. The 1865 reform also made itsigni�cantly easier for individuals to change their estate status. After1865, Teptiars and Mishars who changed status became New Bashkirs[NovoBashkiry ], while those who continued to rent land from Bashkirs


retained their old label. Increasingly in the 1890s, members of the lowestlevel of the estate hierarchy, consisting mostly of former crown serfs,became known as Tatars (Rodnov 1995, pp. 64–6 and 77).

It seems likely, therefore, that the number of Bashkirs according to the1897 Census has little to do with the number of people who consideredthemselves culturally Bashkir or who spoke the Bashkir language ,9 whichwere found largely in areas to the south and east of Belebey and Birsk.Many of the people who identi�ed as Bashkirs in the 1897 Census con-sidered themselves members of the Bashkir estate while sharing theculture and dialect common to all groups in the area. The predominanceof Bashkirs was due to the economic desirability and prestige of theBashkir label and the 1865 institutional reforms which made re-identi�-cation possible for many Mishars and Teptiars. This explains the rapidgrowth in the number of Bashkirs in the west as compared to the east,where a distinct Bashkir culture and language did exist and which hadnever experienced an in�ux of migrants10 (see Table 5).

The 1917 revolution changed the economic and political environmentfor the inhabitants of northwest Bashkortostan. All estate-based privi-leges, which had been in decline since the 1890s, were revoked by thecommunist government, giving all inhabitants the same rights to ownland. (Collectivization would not take place until the 1930s.) Further-more, the political administration of the region underwent a decisivetransformation with the creation of autonomous ethnic republics for theTatar and Bashkir ethnic groups. In 1922 the Ufa province was divided


Table 4. Ethnic distribution in Bashkortostan

1897 1920 1926 1939 1959 1970 1979 1989% % % % % % % %

Bashkir 40.9 30.2 23.5 21.2 22.1 23.4 24.3 21.9Tatar 11.2 21.0 23.3 24.6 23.0 24.7 24.5 28.4Slavic 38.2 38.5 43.6 44.2 45.5 43.0 42.7 41.6

Sources: Yuldashbaev 1995, Table 5 (1920), Table 8 (1926), Table 9 (for 1939), Table 10(1959–89). Also Khismatullin 1992, p. 1 (1897). Tatar population includes Teptiar andMishar for 1897–1926. These categories were eliminated from the census after 1926. Slavicpopulation includes Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians.

Table 5. Total Bashkir population: 18th–19th centuries

1726 1849 1897

Eastern 168,000 280,000 478,000Western 89,000 216,000 832,000

Source: Ganeeva 1992, pp. 60–1.

between Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, with Menzelinsk canton joiningthe former while the rest of the province became part of the latter. Thesechanges together had a decisive impact on ethnic identi�cation.

Census data can help to separate the political and the economic factorscausing ethnic re-identi�cation. The 1913 rural Census shows the effectthat the decline of estate privileges was having on ethnic identi�cation.The proportion of Bashkirs in Ufa province fell from 41 per cent in 1897to 32 per cent in 1913. The 1920 Census, conducted after the revocationof estate privileges but before the consolidation of the ethnic republics,shows a slight further decline, to 30 per cent11 (Yuldashbaev 1995, Tables5 and 56). Altogether , the end of estate privileges led to an 11 per centdecline in the relative proportion of Bashkirs in Ufa province. Thisdecline was primarily caused by the return of New Bashkirs to theirprevious Mishar and Teptiar identities. Mishars increased from one percent to 6 per cent of the total population between 1897 and 1920, whileTeptiars increased from 1.8 per cent to 5.3 per cent. Tatar identi�cationalso rose, but to a much lesser extent, from 8.4 per cent to 9.7 per cent.Altogether, the three groups’ proportion of the total populationincreased by 10 per cent. The remaining one per cent decline can beattributed to Russian migration into the region (Khismatullin 1992;Yuldashbaev 1995, Table 5).Institutional effects. After 1920 political factors played the most impor-tant role in causing ethnic re-identi�cation. The creation of Tatar andBashkir ethnic republics reinforced these ethnic identities. At the sametime, Soviet nationalities policy declared Mishar and Teptiar as un-acceptable ethnic labels, asking all Teptiars to choose another desig-nation beginning with the 1926 Census and identifying all Mishars asTatars beginning with the 1939 Census.12 Starting with the 1920s, Sovietnationalities policy called for privileges for members of the titular ethnicgroup in ethnic republics. These privileges included control of republicadministration, preferences in hiring, promotion and acceptance by uni-versities, and priority in cultural development funding. These privilegesmade it advantageous for individuals to identify as members of the titularethnic group. For members of most ethnic groups, changing one’s iden-tity to the titular ethnicity was impossible because linguistic and culturaldifferences between groups made it relatively easy to detect ‘inauthen-tic’ titulars. However, for groups as closely related as Tatars andBashkirs, detection was quite dif�cult, making such a choice not onlypossible, but even quite easy to accomplish.

The division of Ufa province between Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in1922 allows us to study the effect of belonging to an ethnic republic onidentity choice. In this division, Menzelinsk canton became a part ofTatarstan, while the rest of Ufa province, including neighbouring Birskand Belebey cantons, joined Bashkortostan. Table 6 shows the sharp fallin the Bashkir population in the region as a whole between 1897 and


1926.13 Part of this fall can be attributed to the decline of estates dis-cussed above. But while a sizeable Bashkir population remained in thetwo regions that joined Bashkortostan, by 1926 not a single Bashkirremained in Menzelinsk.14 Menzelinsk Bashkirs shared the language andculture of Bashkirs in Belebey and Birsk. The difference in their rate ofassimilation can most plausibly be attributed to the difference in theirpolitical circumstances after 1922. Finding themselves in Tatarstan,Menzelinsk Bashkirs recognized the advantages of belonging to thetitular nationality and quickly re-identi�ed as Tatar. They were able todo so because of the extensive cultural similarities between them andKazan Tatars. In addition, they were undoubtedly encouraged to re-identify by the Tatarstan government’s cultural and linguistic policies,which fostered Tatar education and culture at the expense of Bashkir lan-guage and culture. Similarly, Bashkirs in Belebey and Birsk wererestrained from re-identifying by their recognition that the titular ethnicgroup would be privileged in Bashkortostan.

If being a member of the titular ethnic group provided cultural andpolitical bene�ts, why did a sizeable number of Bashkirs in Belebey andBirsk still re-identify as Tatars between the 1913 and 1926 Censuses?While no certain answer to this question can be given, Rodnov (1995,p. 73) proposes an interesting hypothesis. He argues that a signi�cantpart of the instability in ethnic self-identi�cation in this region can beexplained by changes in the meaning of the ethnonyms, rather thanchanges in individual self-identi�cation. People changed their identi�-cation depending on changes in the popular perception of what an eth-nonym stood for, while keeping their private identity constant. Thecreation of ethnic republics solidi�ed the popular understanding of theTatar and Bashkir ethnonyms, leading many individuals to re-identify asTatar. Since local customs and dialects were more closely related to thoseof neighbouring Tatarstan than to the core Bashkir area in the south-eastern part of Bashkortostan, many local inhabitants changed theiridentity to correspond with their perception of the meaning of theseethnic labels. The change in label occurred because individuals recog-nized that their culture and language �tted better with their perceptionof Tatar identity than Bashkir identity. While this hypothesis cannot beproved conclusively, it does make sense given the confusion surroundingethnonyms in the area.Language policy. The language policies of the Bashkortostan govern-ment may also help to explain why Bashkirs re-identi�ed as Tatars. Thesepolicies are also instrumental in explaining the development of a groupof Bashkirs who considered Tatar to be their native language.

As mentioned above, before 1926, censuses determined ethnic identi�-cation according to a question about native language. The 1926 Censusthus provides the earliest opportunity to study differences between nativelanguage and ethnic identity. Language and ethnic identity coincided for


over 97 per cent of respondents from most ethnic groups and regionscovered by this census. Bashkirs in Belebey and Birsk cantons were themajor exception to this rule. Only 11 per cent of the Bashkirs in theseareas declared Bashkir to be their native language, whereas 92 per centof Bashkirs in the rest of the republic did so. Altogether, there were264,000 Tatar-speaking Bashkirs in Belebey and Birsk, with another24,000 in the rest of the republic.

This disparity was created by the language policy of the Bashkirgovernment. In the early twentieth century, the Bashkir language wasdivided into three major dialects: the southern, eastern, and northwest-ern. Of these, the northwestern dialect was most similar to Tatar. Afterthe formation of the Bashkir republic in 1919, local of�cials and scholarsbegan to develop a Bashkir literary language to replace the Turko-Tatarliterary language that was previously used by all Muslim Turks in theRussian empire. Their purpose was to assist the consolidation of Bashkiridentity by establishing a Bashkir high culture that was distinct fromTatar or Russian high culture (Bikbulatov 1992, p. 45). These scholarswere divided into two groups. The �rst sought to recognize the commonfeatures of the Bashkir and Tatar language by basing the Bashkir liter-ary language on a combination of all three major Bashkir dialects. Thesecond wanted to emphasize the uniqueness of Bashkir by distinguishingit as much as possible from literary Tatar. The latter group won, creatinga literary language which incorporated those traits shared by the easternand southern dialects that distinguished them from the northwesterndialect (Yuldashev 1968, p. 70; Ishberdin 1989, p. 140; Kuzeev 1994,p. 121). The new literary language was introduced in 1923, quicklybecoming the language of of�cial business and cultural activity through-out the republic (Bikbulatov 1992, p. 45).

This context sheds considerable light on the twin puzzles of Bashkirethnic re-identi�cation and language choice. Faced with a literary lan-guage which differed signi�cantly from the language that they spoke,Bashkirs in the northwest selected the literary language that most closelyresembled their dialect, Tatar. Many of them chose Tatar ethnic identityas well, probably out of a sense that language and ethnicity should corre-spond. Others, however, chose to adopt the Tatar language but not theTatar identity. These people may have felt a deeper sense of Bashkirethnic identity, which allowed them to dismiss the contradiction betweenethnic identi�cation and native language. They may also have more clearlyrecognized the bene�ts of being a member of the titular ethnic group.Combined, these factors allowed a signi�cant percentage of the localinhabitants to identify themselves as Tatar-speaking Bashkirs. This expla-nation is consistent with the observed differences between Menzelinskand the northwestern cantons of Bashkortostan. For Bashkirs in Men-zelinsk, political, economic, and linguistic incentives all encouragedassimilation into the Tatar group. Bashkirs in Belebey and Birsk, on the


other hand, were torn. On the one hand, their culture and languagepointed towards Tatar identity. On the other hand, there were political andeconomic incentives to identifying as Bashkir. In this situation, almost halfof the Turkic population of the region resolved this dilemma by choosingBashkir as their ethnic identity and Tatar as their native language.

* * *

We can now summarize by answering the questions presented at thebeginning of this section. The predominance of Bashkir identi�cation in1897 resulted from the economic bene�ts of belonging to the Bashkirestate and from the land reforms of 1865, which made changing estateeasier. The revocation of land-ownership privileges for Bashkirs led to agradual decline in Bashkir identi�cation, as many non-Bashkirs returnedto their previous designation . Government policies contributed to thistrend in two other ways. In those parts of the area that became part ofTatarstan, bene�ts for members of the titular ethnic group made re-identi�cation as Tatar highly advantageou s. In addition, all speakers ofthe local dialect were affected by the creation of a Bashkir literary lan-guage on the basis of other dialects. This language policy, combined withthe bene�ts for belonging to the titular ethnic group, led many people innorthwestern Bashkortostan to choose the best of both worlds by declar-ing Bashkir as their ethnic identity and Tatar as their language .

Second period: 1959–1989

During this period, censuses recorded two periods during which thenumber of Tatars declined while the number of Bashkirs grew rapidly.This was followed by one period of rapid Bashkir decline and Tatargrowth which more than offset the earlier Bashkir gains. (See Tables 4and 6.) District-level data show that the oscillations in the republic-leveldata are entirely the result of events in the northwest. Areas outside ofthe northwest experienced a gradual decline in the Russian percentage


Table 6. Population of Bashkortostan (in thousands)

1897 1920 1926 1939 1959 1970 1979 1989

Bashkir 900 833 626 671 738 892 936 864Tatar 246 580 621 777 769 945 940 1121Russian 840 950 1065 1281 1418 1546 1548 1548

Sources: Yuldashbaev 1995, Table 5 (1920), Table 8 (1926), Table 9 (for 1939), Table 10(1959–89). Also Khismatullin 1992, p. 1 (1897). Tatar population includes Teptiar andMishar for 1897–1926. These categories were eliminated from the census after 1926. 1897Russian population includes Ukrainians and Belorussians.

of the population in favour of a gradual increase in either the Bashkirproportion or in both the Bashkir and Tatar percentages.

The following analysis focuses exclusively on rural areas because wide-spread migration to the cities makes it dif�cult to distinguish demo-graphic changes due to re-identi�cation from changes due to migration.Throughout this period, there was virtually no migration between ruralareas. Although Tatars and Bashkirs left rural areas at similar rates,different cities served as each group’s favoured destination .

Table 7 shows that the majority of northwestern districts experiencedincreases in the Bashkir proportion of the population at the expense ofthe Tatars between 1939 and 1959, and again between 1970 and 1979.Between 1959 and 1970, there was a slight shift back towards Tatar gains.Finally, there was an overwhelming shift towards Tatar identi�cationbetween 1979 and 1989.15 Korostelev’s database on village ethnic identityin the northwest shows that 40 per cent of the villages that registered asTatar in 1959 had become Bashkir by 1979. Of these, 77 per cent switchedback to Tatar identity in the 1989 Census. Another 19 per cent switchedto mixed Tatar/Bashkir identity and only 3 per cent remained predomi-nantly Bashkir. In tracing village ethnic identity from 1870 to 1989,Korostelev (1994, pp. 78 and 91) shows that by 1989, the Bashkir ethnicgroup was reduced to its core – 95 per cent of villages identi�ed as Bashkirin 1989 had identi�ed as Bashkir in all of the previous censuses.16

Of the villages identi�ed in 1989 as Tatar, 48 per cent had previouslyalways identi�ed as Tatar, Mishar, or Teptiar. The rest of the Tatar vil-lages had at some point identi�ed themselves as Bashkir. These villageswere divided into two groups. The �rst, comprising 15 per cent of thetotal number of Tatar villages, had always identi�ed as Bashkir prior tothe 1989 Census. This group mostly consisted of villages inhabited bypeople who had identi�ed as Tatar-speaking Bashkirs in 1926 and bytheir descendants. The second group, comprising the remaining 37 percent of the Tatar villages, had identi�ed as Tatar at some previous time,then switched to Bashkir during the Soviet period. This group primarily


Table 7. County level population changes between censuses in northwestBashkortostan (number of counties)

1939–1959 1959–1970 1970–1979 1979–1989

Bashkir+, Tatar– 11 6 16 2Bashkir+, Tatar+ 10 10 6 3Bashkir–, Tatar+ 4 10 4 20Bashkir–, Tatar– 1 0 0 1

Sources: Calculated from Yuldashbaev 1995, Tables 18–20 and 1979 Census data providedby Ildar Gabdra�kov.‘–’ represents decline in population. ‘+’ represents increase in population.

included Tatars switching to Bashkir identity for instrumental reasons inthe 1950s or later (Korostelev 1994, p. 91).

An example can demonstrate the extent of the demographic shifts thatoccurred between 1939 and 1989. In 1939 Baltachevsky district was 53per cent Tatar and 24 per cent Bashkir. By 1959, Tatars comprised only17 per cent of the population, whereas Bashkirs had increased to 62 percent, essentially reversing the balance from twenty years earlier. Ensuingcensuses showed a continuing decline, so that by 1979 Tatars comprisedonly 6 per cent of the district population, while Bashkirs made up 74 percent. Yet by 1989, the 1939 balance was essentially restored, with theBashkir proportion dropping to 22 per cent as the Tatars increased to 59per cent (Figure 3). Other districts saw similar variation in ethnic identi�-cation over time.

While the proportion of Tatars and Bashkirs in the total populationoscillated in the post-war period, the percentage of Bashkirs who con-sidered Tatar their native language uniformly declined. The decline in the�rst thirty years was gradual, dropping from 46 per cent of the totalBashkir population in 1926, to 41 per cent in 1959. Between 1959 and1989, the decline was far more rapid, with only 21 per cent of the Bashkirpopulation declaring itself Tatar speaking in the most recent census (seeTable 1). District-level data on language choice are only available for 1959and 1989. It shows that in eighteen of the twenty-six districts where thepercentage of Tatar-speaking Bashkirs declined between these years, thepercentage of Tatars in the total population increased. In the remainingdistricts, Tatar-speaking Bashkirs either declared Bashkir to be their


Figure 3. Baltachevsky district ethnic distribution

native language or divided evenly between Tatar and Bashkir/Bashkiridenti�cation. In an additional �ve districts which had sizeable numbersof Tatar-speaking Bashkirs, their percentage of the Bashkir populationdid not decline. While the data cannot prove conclusively the direction ofTatar-speaking Bashkir identity change, they imply that about three-quarters of the Tatar-speaking Bashkirs who changed their identityswitched their ethnic identi�cation to correspond with their Tatar lan-guage while the other one-quarter switched their native language to cor-respond with their Bashkir ethnic identity.

Causes of ethnic and linguistic re-identi�cation: 1959–1989

Unlike the previous period, the meaning of ethnic labels did not changeduring this period. People who declared different ethnic identities indifferent censuses were not changing their understanding of the labels’meanings – they were changing their ethnic identi�cation. What causedlarge numbers of people to change their declared ethnic identities repeat-edly over a few decades? And why did the number of Tatar-speakingBashkirs decline so precipitously by 1989? The answers to these questionscan be found by examining government policies on the census and onnative language education, as well as in the effects of Soviet institutions.Census policy and government pressure. The swings towards Bashkiridenti�cation in the 1959 and 1979 Censuses can be explained to a largeextent by government tactics in explaining census questions, expressed asadministrative pressure for respondents to identify as Bashkir. Prior tothe 1959 Census, the Bashkir government conducted a propaganda cam-paign arguing that the census question about ethnic identity was con-cerned with ethnic self-identi�cation, which was independent of nativelanguage. If the two did not coincide, respondents were instructed todeclare their ethnic identity based on the self-identi�cation (Kuzeev 1994,p. 122). This policy went against the Stalinist conception of ethnicity,which argues that an ethnic group can have but a single native language17

(Stalin 1994, p. 19). This campaign, repeated in later censuses, wasdesigned to prevent Tatar-speaking Bashkirs from re-identifying en masseas Tatars. Furthermore, the central government required local adminis-trators to produce a ‘quota’ of Bashkirs. Results that did not achieve thisquota were returned to the local administration for revision, leading oneadministrator to note that he was trying his best but there were no moreBashkirs to be found in his district (Khalim 1991, p. 166). Such a quotawas not required in 1970, leading to a partial swing back in favour of Tataridentity according to that year’s census results. Finally, on the basis of hisanalysis of village ethnic identi�cation, Korostelev (1994, p. 78) notes thatpressure by census of�cials and even falsi�cation at the margin were alsobehind the sharp swing towards Bashkir identity in the 1979 Census,although he does not provide any proof of such actions.


Administrative pressure during the census was certainly responsiblefor the sharp swings towards Bashkir identity in the results of the 1959and 1979 Censuses. But it cannot explain the persistence of the Tatar-speaking Bashkir identity or the extent of the shift back to Tatar iden-tity. To explain these phenomena, we must return to the Sovietinstitutional structure and also to Bashkir language policy.Institutions. Soviet institutions contributed to the trend towards Bashkiridenti�cation in the 1959–1979 period. The advantages of being amember of the titular ethnic group were reinforced throughout thisperiod. Tatar writers were required to publish their books in Bashkir;members of the artistic community were told that they could onlysucceed if they identi�ed as Bashkir painters or musicians. It was dif�-cult for a Tatar to become a government of�cial or a manager in an enter-prise.18 In this environment, not only was it irrational for Bashkirs toswitch to a Tatar identity, thousands of Tatars began to list themselves asBashkirs in of�cial documents (Kulchik 1992, p. 37). The extent of thiseffect, even after the mass switch to Tatar identity in the 1989 Census, isshown by a survey conducted in Buraevsky district in 1990. This surveyshowed that 43 per cent of the population declared themselves Bashkirin of�cial documents. An equal number declared themselves Tatar. Inresponse to a question about their ethnic self-identi�cation, more thanhalf of the ‘passport’ Bashkirs declared that they actually perceivedthemselves as Tatar despite their of�cial designation . Thus, 24 per centof the population were of�cially designated as Bashkir even though theirself-identity was Tatar19 (Vecherniia Ufa, 24 August 1990).

How was this change accomplished in a society where people’s ethnicidentity seemed to be rigidly de�ned on the basis of their parents’ eth-nicity? First of all, local administrators had a great deal of leeway inenforcing the requirement that newborns’ ethnic identity correspondedto that of their parents. In a region like Bashkortostan, where theadministration sought to increase the Bashkir proportion of the popu-lation, administrators at the birth registry often turned a blind eyetowards cases where Tatar parents declared their baby to be of Bashkirethnicity.20 Furthermore, Tatars were encouraged to declare themselvesBashkirs when joining the Communist Party. Party leaders were only tooglad to modify the necessary identity documents to allow such a change(Sovetskaia Bashkiria, 29 November 1989). Despite the formal SovietUnion-wide policy that an individual ’s ethnic identity match the identityof at least one of his or her parents, republic leaders created conditionswhere this requirement could be widely ignored by local administrators.

The creation of a sizeable group of ‘passport’ Bashkirs was seen as amixed blessing by many Bashkir intellectuals. On the one hand, theydesired to increase the size of their ethnic group. They found it particu-larly galling that they were outnumbered by Tatars on territory that theybelieved they ‘owned’. At the same time, they saw Bashkirs from the


northwest, especially those who considered Tatar their native language ,as less truly Bashkir than those from the southern and eastern regions,who spoke the Bashkir literary language and whose culture was moresimilar to what they perceived as traditional Bashkir culture.21 The resultof this duality was a tendency for the Bashkir-controlled government totry to force or persuade people in the northwest to identify as Bashkirduring the census campaign, followed by an equally strong tendency toenact policies that favoured areas where ‘real’ Bashkirs lived (Kuzeev1990, p. 41). This dual policy had the effect of increasing the amount ofrevenue that could be directed towards Bashkir needs by in�ating thetotal number of Bashkirs, while at the same time restricting the sphereof legitimate recipients of this largesse, cutting out ‘fake’ Bashkirs andleaving more for the ‘real’ Bashkirs who controlled the government. I callsupporters of this policy, who controlled government ethnic policy untilthe 1970s, the ‘self-consciousness’ faction.Language policy and 1989. The dual track policy described in theprevious section produced the desired results for several decades. Itfailed in 1989 because of a combination of factors. First, democratizationand the Gorbachev reforms, which emphasized individual merit, madeethnically-based privileges morally suspect – many such privileges wereeliminated. Without privileges, many Tatars who had changed their iden-tity to Bashkir for instrumental reasons switched back to their previousTatar identity. Second, democratization also made government pressureand campaigns to persuade Tatars to declare themselves Bashkir moredif�cult. This led many Tatars who had identi�ed as Bashkir because ofpressure from local administrators or census workers to return to theirprevious ethnic identi�cation (Iskhakov 1993, p. 36). Both of thesegroups were people who had never truly changed their ethnic identity,merely changing their public ethnic label.

Finally, many people who considered themselves ethnically Bashkirbut who spoke the Tatar language were persuaded to switch because ofBashkir education policies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the late1970s, those Bashkir leaders who advocated the ‘one nation – one lan-guage’ conception of Bashkir identity took control of the education min-istry and other cultural policy-making government bodies from thepreviously dominant ‘self-consciousness’ faction, which had pursued thepolicy of maximizing Bashkir numbers described above. The one-language faction used their control over ethnic policy to remove Tatarfrom the list of the republic’s of�cial languages in the 1978 constitution(Khalim 1991, p. 171). Following this constitutional change, the govern-ment sought to institute the ‘one nation – one language’ policy by switch-ing schools in Tatar-speaking Bashkir villages to Bashkir languageinstruction. This policy was fostered by the belief that Bashkirs in thisarea were former Bashkir-speakers who had been assimilated into theTatar cultural and linguistic milieu. Bashkir leaders justi�ed the policy by


arguing that Bashkirs had an obligation to be �uent in their ‘native’ lan-guage and that the best way to achieve this �uency was through Bashkir-language education in the schools.22 The Bashkir language that was usedin this instruction was the literary language that was entirely foreign tonorthwestern Bashkirs (Kuzeev 1994, p. 122). As a result, the number ofstudents receiving Tatar language instruction decreased from 110,000 to21,000 between 1978 and 1987 (Khalim 1991, p. 175).

The introduction of Bashkir-language schooling fomented widespreadresistance among the inhabitants of the region. While a minority of theTatar-speaking Bashkirs accepted the ‘one language – one nation’ policy,changing their native language to correspond with their ethnic identi�-cation, the vast majority refused to accept Bashkir as their native lan-guage and began to re-identify as Tatar.23 Prior to the Bashkirization ofthe schools, local Tatar-speaking Bashkirs had arrived at a modus vivendiwith the Bashkir state. Since the 1920s they considered themselves to beethnically Bashkir, while speaking the Tatar language and subscribing tomuch of Tatar culture. This situation was made possible by the lack ofimpact of Bashkir public identity on private life.

Locals who spoke Tatar but considered themselves ethnically Bashkirgained the advantages of a titular ethnic identity while preserving thefreedom to speak Tatar and follow Tatar cultural practices at home.Bashkirization of the schools sought to force local inhabitants to maketheir cultural and linguistic identities coincide with their public ethnicidentities, thus violating the implicit compact. Local Tatar-speakingBashkirs responded with a mass campaign to restore Tatar education.This resistance was spearheaded by the schoolteachers, who made up asigni�cant part of the rural intelligentsia and played a key role in mould-ing local ethnic identity (Korostelev 1994, p. 82). The campaign waseventually successful, but only after the removal of the Bashkir Com-munist Party chief by Gorbachev in 1987.

The abortive Bashkirization campaign had a powerful effect on ethnicidenti�cation in the 1989 Census. By attempting to force Tatar-speakingBashkirs to switch to the Bashkir language, the government signi�cantlyincreased the cost of maintaining Bashkir ethnic identity for non-Bashkirspeakers. Tatar-speaking Bashkirs knew that Bashkirization hadoccurred only in Bashkir villages. Neighbouring Tatar villages kept theirTatar schools. In this context, many Tatar-speaking Bashkirs came tobelieve that only by changing their ethnic identity to match their linguis-tic identity could they be safe from future linguistic Bashkirizationcampaigns.

It is important to note that available statistical data cannot prove thatthe identity change that occurred among Tatar-speaking Bashkirs in the1980s was substantively different from previous instances of purelypublic identity change. I have reached this conclusion on the basis ofinterviews and other non-quantitative data. For example, Marat


Ramazanov, one of the leaders of the Tatar nationalist movement,described himself as a Tatar-speaker of Bashkir ethnicity who re-identi-�ed as a Tatar and joined the Tatar nationalist movement becauseBashkirs insisted that he change his language while Tatars were willingto accept him as he was.24 This sort of claim is substantively differentfrom the argument made by some Tatars in earlier periods who notedthat they always considered themselves Tatar despite their identity docu-ments, which showed them to be Bashkir (Khalim 1990, p. 7). Based onthis difference, we can hypothesize that two separate processes of iden-tity change, one public and one private, were occurring simultaneouslyin northwestern Bashkortostan in the 1980s.

Statistical proof for this claim may come from the coming 1999 Census.With the restoration of pro-Bashkir favouritism in the 1990s, we shouldexpect a return to Tatar-speaking Bashkir identity if the shift away fromit in the 1980s was simply a reaction to the end of incentives for Bashkiridenti�cation by people who always considered themselves Tatar. If, onthe other hand, Tatar-speaking Bashkir identity continues to declinedespite the re-emergence of previously existing incentives to identify asBashkir, this will show that the 1980s saw a change in private ethnicidenti�cation that cannot be reversed simply through a return to the oldincentives structure.

* * *

We have seen from census data that a signi�cant number of Bashkirsre-identi�ed as Tatars between the 1979 and 1989 Censuses. Many ofthese people had not actually changed their ethnic identity, having pre-viously switched ethnic labels for instrumental reasons. Their re-identi�-cation was similar to the mass re-identi�cation from Bashkir to Tataridentity that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century.

What made the 1989 identity change different from previous masschanges of identity in this area was the presence of a second group ofpeople, comprised primarily of Tatar-speaking Bashkirs, who actuallychanged their personal identity, rather than merely taking on a differentpublic identity that would improve their economic or political status.Unlike the �rst group, these people had never previously consideredthemselves Tatar, having maintained Bashkir as their ethnic identity con-tinuously since before the communist revolution. By attempting to makeindividuals ’ linguistic identities match their ethnic identities, Bashkirleaders raised the costs of maintaining the ethnic identity for thesepeople to unacceptable levels. This change, especially in combinationwith a decline in the economic and political bene�ts of Bashkir ethnicidentity, led over 100,000 Tatar-speaking Bashkirs to change their ethnicidentity from Bashkir to Tatar. By trying to force linguistic identity tomatch ethnic identity, Bashkir leaders unwittingly brought about the


opposite outcome, wherein local inhabitants changed their ethnic iden-tity to match their linguistic identity.

Such an identity change was possible partially because the cultural dis-tance between Tatar and Bashkir ethnic identities was small. It was alsopossible because local inhabitants had become used to neighbours chang-ing their public ethnic identity in order to ful�l government targets forethnic distribution or to maximize their utility. Throughout the twenti-eth century many inhabitants of northwestern Bashkortostan frequentlychanged their ethnic label without actually changing their behaviour orsocial interactions in any way. However, the frequency of this change inlabel made ethnic identity as a whole seem more mutable even for thosewho did not change their public identity, making it signi�cantly easier forthem to change their ethnic identity when conditions warranted.

Conclusions

Throughout the twentieth century, changes in ethnic identity in north-western Bashkortostan followed changes in state policies towards ethnicgroups. Before the 1917 revolution the elimination of estate-basedrestrictions on land-ownership led many Tatars and Mishars who hadidenti�ed as Bashkirs in order to gain the right to own land to return totheir previous identities. In the 1920s the establishment of ethnicrepublics which were allowed to favour titular ethnic groups led manyBashkirs who found themselves in Tatarstan after the division of Ufaprovince to re-identify as Tatars. At the same time, government policieson the creation of a Bashkir literary language led many Bashkirs todeclare Tatar as their native language. Throughout the post-war period,preferences for members of the titular ethnic group led many Tatars inBashkortostan to declare themselves Bashkir in of�cial documents. Theend of such privileges in the mid-1980s led many of these individuals toreclaim the Tatar identity in the 1989 Census. Finally, the forced con-version of Tatar-language schools in Bashkir villages to literary Bashkirpersuaded many Tatar-speaking Bashkirs to re-identify as Tatars in orderto allow their children to attend Tatar-language schools. The instabilityof ethnic identity in this region is thus the result of multiple changes ingovernment policy towards minority ethnic groups.

These ethnic identity shifts demonstrate the crucial role of the state inprovoking ethnic change. In fact, changes in state policy and the creationof new state institutions are the link between accounts of ethnic changethat focus on identity change for instrumental reasons and accounts ofethnic change that focus on changes in the cultural content of ethnic iden-tity. Government action can modify the cost-bene�t calculus that leadsto identity shift for instrumental reasons by introducing new policies thatbene�t or penalize the members of a particular group. The state can alsochannel the cultural content of ethnic identity in new directions by such


actions as the creation of a new literary language or the merging ofseveral ethnic groups into a new, compound identity. By focusing on theimmediate causes of ethnic identity change, much of the theoreticalliterature has missed the role of state action as the crucial precursor tosuch change.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Pauline Jones Luong, Stephen Shen�eld, Henry Hale,Timothy Colton, Ida Gorenburg, and an anonymous reviewer for helpfulcomments on this article. Particular thanks must also go to the membersof the Sawyer Seminar on Democratic Performance and the Post-Communist Politics Workshop at Harvard University, who assessed anearlier version of this work, and the International Research ExchangeBoard (IREX), which provided funding for the �eld research on whichthe article is based.


Appendix 1. Population and native language by CountyNorthwestern Bashkortostan

Population percentage Native language %—————————————————————— ————————

Bashkir Tatar Bashkir Tatar—————————————————————— ————– ———

County 1939 1959 1970 1979 1989 1939 1959 1970 1979 1989 1959 1989 1989

Alsheevsky 19 20 23 26 27 33 34 38 39 41 85 95 4Askinsky 42 50 58 61 63 17 19 20 21 24 13 41 59Bakalinsky 12 13 13 17 8 42 49 54 52 62 2 9 90Baltachevsky 24 62 75 74 22 53 17 6 6 59 0 7 93Belebeevsky 4 3 3 4 4 15 17 21 22 24 15 46 46Bizhbuliaksky 3 7 8 11 10 14 29 31 33 35 86 91 6Birsky 4 3 5 13 4 10 11 12 5 14 13 39 56Blagovarsky 10 35 46 45 8 47 28 21 23 60 2 35 60Buzdiaksky 21 45 35 33 26 61 42 53 59 65 13 29 71Buraevsky 49 59 62 73 40 35 27 26 16 51 1 4 96Davlekanovsky 18 21 25 27 27 21 21 23 23 23 97 95 1Diurtiulinsky 30 35 34 39 24 46 41 44 42 59 2 26 73Ermekeevsky 21 27 24 40 11 30 31 38 25 54 2 15 84Ilishevsky 54 63 71 79 63 33 27 21 13 30 5 3 96Kaltasinsky 11 8 12 5 3 12 18 17 19 21 6 47 45Karaidelsky/Baikibashevsky 21 23 30 33 35 32 36 36 37 37 55 78 20Krasnokamsky 39 40 31 32 24 9 13 18 23 39 2 24 73Kushanrenkovsky 14 23 28 38 6 52 50 51 44 78 2 35 62Mishkinsky 6 6 5 8 5 24 22 23 19 19 5 48 50Miakinsky 27 29 27 32 26 36 40 46 44 55 65 90 9Tatyshlinsky 57 64 61 67 54 13 8 13 7 21 N/A 12 88Tuimazinsky 32 28 51 62 31 38 36 34 25 56 5 13 86Chekmagushevsky 30 37 30 34 19 62 54 62 56 76 3 7 92Sharansky 13 13 14 27 6 34 37 39 28 51 2 13 86Yanaulsky 38 39 42 45 17 21 20 23 19 29 37 22 77

Notes

1. Banks (1996) provides a helpful summary and analysis of these and other debatesamong anthropologists who study ethnicity. I am indebted to this journal’s anonymousreviewer for this reference.

2. The data on Bashkir and Tatar identity are drawn primarily from Russian andSoviet censuses. The Russian empire conducted a full census in 1897 and a rural census in1913. The Soviet government conducted censuses in 1920, 1926, 1939, 1959, 1970, 1979, and


Other Counties of Bashkortostan

Population percentage Native language%—————————————————————— ————————

Bashkir Tatar Bashkir Tatar—————————————————————— ————– ———

County 1939 1959 1970 1979 1989 1939 1959 1970 1979 1989 1959 1989 1989

Abzelilovsky 69 71 76 82 85 4 4 4 3 3 100 100 0Arkhangelsky 24 29 35 38 41 8 9 10 10 11 99 97 1Aurgazinsky 9 8 9 11 11 17 46 47 46 48 94 93 6Baimaksky 50 61 71 76 80 8 7 6 5 5 99 99 0Belokataisky 28 32 38 39 40 3 5 5 5 5 99 98 0Beloretsky 23 31 48 54 58 3 4 4 4 4 99 98 0Blagoveshchensky/Pokrovsky 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 15 16 18 46 76 17Burziansky 83 81 89 92 95 3 6 3 2 2 100 100 0Gafuriisky 30 36 37 42 42 21 19 24 24 24 87 97 2Duvansky 2 11 14 16 18 9 11 13 14 14 96 92 5Zianchurinsky 41 51 57 61 66 10 11 13 13 13 99 99 0Zilairsky/Matraevsky 22 26 36 42 48 3 5 5 4 4 99 99 0Iglinsky 6 13 15 17 18 14 16 18 19 19 95 92 2Ishimbaisky/Makarovsky 33 60 64 69 70 17 10 7 6 7 84 97 2Karmaskalinsky/Buzoviazovsky 14 19 21 22 23 48 42 45 46 48 95 94 5Kiginsky 33 29 34 37 36 42 53 55 54 57 93 93 6Kugarchinsky/Yumaguzinsky 30 38 42 46 48 12 14 14 15 16 99 99 0Kumertaunsky/Kuiurgazinsky 21 24 29 32 36 12 13 14 15 17 99 98 1Meleuzovsky/Voskresensky 9 11 29 32 35 6 9 10 12 15 97 98 1Mechetlinsky 49 48 49 51 51 27 29 31 29 30 87 95 4Nurimanovsky 21 24 28 32 29 31 33 37 36 38 83 91 7Salavatsky/Maloiazovsky 43 45 52 55 59 30 31 30 30 29 99 97 1Sterlibashevsky 18 22 24 27 27 49 56 60 61 62 87 94 5Sterlitamaksky 4 5 8 12 14 13 23 27 23 27 92 91 4U�msky 2 2 3 6 8 8 16 20 23 29 73 74 17Uchalinsky 40 55 73 78 75 31 18 16 12 15 96 99 1Fedorovsky 6 9 11 13 14 20 27 33 34 35 97 95 4Khaibullinsky 42 44 53 59 66 3 4 5 6 4 99 98 1Chishminsky 9 10 11 12 13 53 55 58 60 61 76 86 12

Sources: Yuldashbaev, table 18 (1939), calculated from table 19 (1959), table 20 (1970, 1989), table 21(1989 native language). 1979 data provided by Ildar Gabdra�kov. Some counties changed names ormerged during this period. Both names are provided .

1989. From 1897 to 1920, the census did not ask a direct question about ethnic identity,de�ning ethnicity purely on the basis of native language. In the context of an undifferenti-ated linguistic environment where Bashkir and Tatar blended together in an intermediatedialect, peoples’ perceptions of their linguistic identity depended to a large degree on theirethnic identity. After 1926 the census asked separate questions about ethnic identity andnative language.

3. For purposes of clarity, I focus exclusively on shifts between Bashkir and Tatar iden-tities Throughout the Soviet period, some Bashkirs and Tatars became Russi�ed anddeclared Russian to be their native language. By 1989 5 per cent of Bashkirs consideredRussian to be their native language (Yuldashbaev 1995, p. 25). Furthermore, the childrenof mixed marriages between Russians and minorities tended to identify themselves asRussian. However, this study focuses on identity change among rural inhabitants while thevast majority of both mixed marriages and cases of linguistic Russi�cation occur in urbanareas. Most non-Russian inhabitants of rural areas do not have the possibility of switchingto Russian identity. For this reason, in this study I do not discuss changes of identity fromBashkir or Tatar to Russian.

4. This section provides a schematic account of identity change in northwesternBashkortostan during this period in order to assist in the explanatory process. For �nedetailed accounts of the processes described here see Ganeeva (1992); Korostelev (1994);Rodnov (1995); Yakupov (1992).

5. Throughout this article, references to Tatars should be understood to includeMishars unless explicitly stated otherwise. The groups were not distinguished by Sovietcensuses after 1926.

6. The Cossacks are the best known example of an estate in Imperial Russia.7. In the Birsk region, for example, Bashkirs owned 61 per cent of all land in 1917

(Kuzeev, Moiseeva and Babenko 1987, p. 37; Rodnov 1995, pp. 69 and 77).8. Calculated from Khismatullin (1992, Table 1); Korostelev (1994, p. 80); and

Yuldashbaev (1995, Tables 6–8).9. A distinct Bashkir culture and language did exist, but was concentrated in areas to

the south and east.10. The Tatar migration did not reach the eastern regions (Ganeeva 1992, pp. 60–1).11. Like the 1897 Census, both these censuses asked respondents about their nativelanguage, rather than their ethnicity.12. Out of 114,000 Teptiars in 1926, 60,000 were reassigned as Tatars, 29,000 as Bashkirsand 23,000 insisted on Teptiar (Bikbulatov 1992, p. 43).13. Unfortunately, canton-level data for the 1920 Census are unavailable .14. Local ethnographers note that this re-identi�cation cannot be explained bymigration or other natural causes. The 1921 famine, while causing great loss of life, affectedTatars and Bashkirs equally (Kuzeev 1990, p. 38; Iskhakov 1993, p. 122).15. Appendix 1 shows the changes in the proportion of Tatar and Bashkir populationin each district from 1939 to 1989.16. It is important to note that both this database and district-level census results areaggregate data and cannot show individual identity change. The village database, forexample, shows the predominant ethnic identity of each village, within which identitychange in multiple directions may be occurring. This article seeks to analyse broad trendsin individual identity change on the basis of personal incentives, rather than attempting toexplain speci�c cases of identity change. The latter task cannot be performed withaggregate data because of the ecological inference problem (but see King 1997).17. Stalin de�ned nationality as a society of people based on common language,territory, economic life, and culture (Stalin 1994, p. 20).18. Vasil Babenko, Researcher at Bashkortostan State Assembly, interview, November1995.19. 18 per cent of the respondents declared their self-identi�cation as Bashkir; 66 percent stated that they were Tatar.


20. Zufar Enikeev, Member of Bashkortostan State Assembly, interview, November1995.21. Sergei Kabashov, Deputy Department Administrator, Bashkortostan Cabinet ofMinisters, interview, December 1995.22. For an example of Bashkir nationalist rhetoric on this issue, see ‘How it happened’,Zamandash, 28 December 1990. For a Tatar response, see Khalim (1991, pp. 168–77).23. Ildar Gabdra�kov, Assistant Director, Department of Ural Peoples at Ufa ScienceCentre, Russian Academy of Science, interview, November 1995.24. Interview, November 1995.

References

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DMITRY GORENBURG is Research Associate in the Project on ColdWar Studies at the Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University.ADDRESS: Davis Center for Russian Studies, Coolidge Hall, HarvardUniversity, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.


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