“Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant!”

This is what all empires have done at all times: they sucked the juices out of the colonies to maintain a luxurious life in the metropolis. This applies to all resources, from food and fuel to people. In the Ottoman Empire, as we know, there was the practice of “devshirme”, when the strongest, bravest and smartest boys aged 4-5 to 14-15 were regularly taken from the conquered peoples. They were escorted to the capital, where in military schools they prepared reinforcements for the Janissary regiments. Several centuries of such a policy led to the fact that the Janissaries, mentally attached not to their families and ethnic homeland, but to the military communities within the army units, became a serious political force. The tail began to twirl the dog – the Janissaries made palace coups, put their proteges on the throne, dictated state-political decisions in the interests of the guards-Janissaries groups. It became almost impossible for the native Turks to break into politics. First of all, the Great Port suffered from this.

But this is an example of the violent use of human resources in a single country. A much more universal way of pumping out the best representatives of the conquered peoples was to provide an opportunity for a foreigner to make a career.

So, for example, many noble families of Russia had Tatar roots. The descendants of these families were considered Russian, and many were close associates of the Russian kings. The nobles Ermolovs, for example, where General Alexei Petrovich Ermolov came from, begin their ancestry like this, “The ancestor of this family Arslan-Murza-Yermola, and baptised as John, as shown in the presented ancestry, in 1506 went to Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich from the Golden Horde.” I think, there is no need to remind what the descendant of this character is remembered for the peoples of the Caucasus. But the career was “successful”! Many have also heard about Admiral Ushakov, and only a few know that he is a Turk from the family of the Horde Khan Redeg.

Among the Russian nobility there are more than 120 famous Tatar families. In the XVI century, Tatars dominated in number among the nobles. Even by the end of the nineteenth century in Russia, there were approximately 70 thousand nobles with Tatar roots. This amounted to more than 5% of the total number of nobles throughout the Russian empire. Suvorovs, Apraksins (from Salakhmir), Yusupovs, Arakcheevs, Golenishchev-Kutuzovs, Kochubeys, Aksakovs (“aksak” means “lame”), Musins-Pushkins, Berdyaevs, Turgenevs … “The ancestor of the Turgenev family was Murza Lev Turgen, and baptised as John, went to the Grand Duke Vasily Ioannovich from the Golden Horde …” This family belonged to the aristocratic Horde tukhum. Karamzins (from Kara-Murza, Crimean), Tukhachevskyys (their ancestor in Russia was Indris, a native of the Golden Horde).

Who got better from such dizzying movements in space and in the political worldview, it is clear without explanation. If you pull out mushrooms without measure, then the mycelium is depleted and begins to die. And so it continued and continues to this day: the famous Soviet hero Alexander Matrosov (Shakiryan Yunusovich Mukhamedyanov), General Karbyshev, whose name was given to the streets throughout the USSR, the singer Alsou and the notorious champion Alina Kabaeva – they are all, by and large, children of the empire, and not their homeland – Tatarstan.

It’s the same with the Bashkorts. Ask who Zemfira and Albert Nureyev are for them. It seems to me that they are rather Soviet-Russian stars of the stage than Bashkort talents. The Russians, of course, call both of them nothing more than “Russian artists.”

And Stepan Nefyodov – “a Russian sculptor with a difficult fate” – this is how Russian reference books present him! Meanwhile, under the pseudonym “Erzya”, the sculptor positions himself as the son of the Finno-Ugric people. But, alas, the Russians have irrevocably took Erzya under them. Another name in the false treasury of imperial greatness.

There are hundreds of such examples of the usurpation of the biographies of foreign celebrities, the theft of great names in Russian historiography. If any name can be saved from theft, then this is either the fruit of the titanic efforts of the diaspora and the opposition, or this particular biography, according to some canons, does not fit into the general scheme. For example, Bashkort Zaki Validi, Imam Shamil or Ukrainian Mazepa.

Muscovites always stole all the best from us, appropriated and attributed to themselves, and then they laughed at us when we tried to prove that it was ours! In Yeysk there is a monument to the Russian hero Ivan Poddubnyy. This is despite the fact that Poddubnyy, by the simplicity of his soul,corrected “Russian” in his passport to “Ukrainian”, because he never considered himself Russian and never was Russian. For this, he was summoned to the Soviet police department and severely beaten. Similarly, with the Tatars, and with the Bashkorts, and with the Erzya, and all other indigenous peoples. “All yours is ours, and all ours is all mine!”

The policy of exploiting the names of celebrities is aimed at glorifying the Russian Millennium Reich, glorifying its successes, luring prominent representatives of conquered peoples into the network of the empire and using them as the empire props, thus maintaining the colonial status quo.

An indicative illustration for our research rises before our eyes, just in time for the topic of the day. At the recruiting station, a well-fed professional singer with a well-known name in the republic, with an accordion, sings “Shaimuratov General” for the mobilized, already dressed in army uniform, with a beautiful and loud voice. Poor mobilized have mesmerized smiles – a republican celebrity descended to them. The fact that the “Russian-imperial” singer will go to a restaurant after the event, and the poor mobilized will go to the trenches, the enchanted poor fellows are simply not able to realize. But it’s okay, it’s even good! Now they will be put in line, they will get command “attention”, they will be given the necessary orders, and in response they will chant in unison, “Long live Caesar! Those who are about to die greet you!”