What is wrong with Tatar nationalists?

According to the UN, there are about 5,000 nations in the world who speak 7,100 languages. But there are only 195 states. Why could some nations manage to create their own states and later they lost them? Others managed to protect their national home and defend their independence. For the third, independence fell on their heads. Some nations have never had and will never have their own state. There are a lot of answers, and each situation is unique in its own way. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that freedom and independence are a luxury available to few nations. 

This is what the Tatar Scout thinks.

Tatar elites love to talk about “who is luckier than us” and “how fate is unfavorable to the Tatars.” What is wrong with the Tatars? After all, it seems we have everything we need for our own state. Except for the external border. But with the external border, not everything is so crucial – this is far from being the main, and not even a secondary condition for the state building.

The most important ferment that turns a nation into a state nation, and ethnographic circles into a national movement is people who are ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of their idea. 

We do not have such people today.

Well, there are writers, scientists and even political emigrants. Fauzia Bayramova, Kashapov brothers, intellectuals like Ruslan Aisin. The problem is that none of them is ready to do anything for the independence of Tatarstan. To do anything literally. And if there are no such people among the Tatars, it means that our nation does not really need independence. We can do without it somehow.

And the point here is not that the Tatars are cowards. No. Many Tatars bravely fight for the expansion of Russia somewhere in the Kherson region and die for the right to posthumously become complete Russians. The problem is another. There are no those who would become the living embodiment of the Tatar dream of independence. There is no person who is ready for anything, for any adventure that could bring the dream of his own state closer. And since there are no such people, it means that the national movement is turning into a club of pensioners and emigration bloggers. No one will believe in an idea for which its leaders are not ready to give their lives.