Tatarstan’s historical chances – what to do now, given the lessons of the past?

Now I am going to engage in a useless and pointless activity – repeating what has been said many times and repeated more than once, namely, telling adults not to try to hit themselves in the back of the head with the heel. It is very difficult, ridiculous, absurd and painful for the “acrobats” themselves. What do I have to say? And here’s the thing.

Tatarstan, as a vassal in russian state policy, should not follow the path its suzerain is currently pushing it on, the path of active participation in the russian-Ukrainian war. For this path is destructive for both the empire itself (threatens it with the imbalance of socio-economic processes within the country and its further disintegration), and Tatarstan (leads to squandering the gene pool and rolling back to the way of life of the 1990s).

Will the leadership of the RT hear me, will they be willing to heed my calls? No, they won’t listen and won’t heed my warnings. In fact, they are approved by their suzerain because they will not listen to critics from abroad (even if they are humanist Mahatma Gandhi and prophetess Cassandra in one person), they will listen to peremptory orders from the Kremlin, even if they lead ordinary Tatars from villages and towns of the “independent” Republic to the abyss.Its head does not care about the fate of these Tatars, and the members of the republican government do not care either! They do not associate their personal fate with the joys and troubles of their fellow countrymen; for them, Tatarstan is a territory from which they profit, where they make money. There is profit (gains, money) – you live among the Tatars, there is no money – you come to the suzerain: “I serve faithfully, but I have lost my source of income. Please give me board and lodgings!” Many Tatar “elders” have been doing like this for centuries. The algorithm is valid. It works! Lessons of the past confirm the indisputable truth that those Tatars won who served faithfully not the people, but the suzerain in the Kremlin. Examples abound: Khan Kasim in the 15th century, Simeon Bekbulatovich in the 16th century, the whole families of the Tatar nobility – the Mangits, the Argins, the Jalaiyrs, the Kipchaks. They went to the service of the Moscow tsar, received privileges, fought loyally and … became russians.

And what were ordinary Tatars to do? Which algorithm to apply, which road to take? We could take the path of the nobility, but the problem is that there’s not enough money, privileges and benefits for everyone. So the “elders” got a pass to a prosperous life, while everyone else was content with tales about duty, obligation, predestination from above and other nonsense designed to facilitate a slave-like existence. And so that the people would not complain, they were offered to receive crumbs from their master’s table for doing a good job, crumbs flavored with the same lofty phrases of paid mullahs and lured politicians that stability and order are better and more satisfying than freedom.

Today, the old deceitful formula is applied in exactly the same way: “Forget your people, give up your right to sovereignty, renounce your native language, call yourself a russian, serve Moscow, go kill at its behest – and everything will be iskitkeç (fine)!” And many Tatars and residents of Tatarstan swallow this bait! They flock to recruitment offices, queue to be mobilized, dance and sing songs at recruiting stations and in buses carrying them to the slaughter in a foreign war and in a foreign country which has done them no harm.

And what are the prospects for the people and the Republic of Tatarstan at the moment? Not very good, and to put it bluntly, crap. Some of the mobilized will die, while others will return home maimed. Whoever is lucky will return to their families with a scorched soul and bring home a looted refrigerator or washing machine. But we don’t know what country they will return to. Perhaps this will be a new Tatarstan. And will our servicemen not get prison sentences for war crimes instead of the promised benefits? Or will it be the same Tatarstan in the same, but even more calcified in its fascism russia, driven by international sanctions into the mode of the heaviest regression to the level of physiological survival?

I am not going to speculate, but I will say that one thing is indisputable: the current choice of the Tatar people and their elite to serve the White Czar in the Kremlin is a choice between bad and worse. And it will not lead to any improvement in the living standards of the republic population. Tartar men are being used like tarpaulin gauntlets, their families will be deceived. Moral and material responsibility for the wrong choice and for all the ensuing misfortune will not be borne at all by authorities. The burden of adversity will be shifted to “ordinary” Tatars. 

So let’s go, batirs! The bosses will tell you everything, just listen and obey!