Orientation

Identification

The Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (BASSR) was one of the sixteen autonomous republics and other autonomous areas that comprised the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Today Bashkirstan is one of the eighteen republics that form Russia. About two-thirds of the almost 1 million who call themselves Bashkirs live in the national republic. The rest live mostly in neighboring areas. Another 90,000 live in the Central Asian republics.


Location

Bashkiria is situated between 51°31 and 56°30 N and 53°30 and 60° E,astride the southern part of the Ural Mountains. The country has a variety of land forms: wooded steppe and steppe west of the Urals and forested mountains in the core region, which slope off to the east and southeast into steppe. The republic extends over 144,151 square kilometers, 80 percent of which lies in the valleys of the Belaya and Ufa rivers, which are part of the Kama River Basin, and 20 percent in the upper Sakmara and Ural river valleys. The soils are 35 percent chernozem and the remainder a variety of floodplain, mountain, and podzolic soils. The climate is continental, with relatively warm to hot summers and cold winters. Temperatures differ considerably from north to south and from west to east. Temperatures may reach +40° C in summer and descend to -40° to -50° C in winter. Average January temperatures range from -14 to -17.5° C and July temperatures from 16.5 to 20.5° C. Precipitation is at least 55 to 60 centimeters in the north and 30 to 40 centimeters in the southern steppe. The growing season in the lowlands is about 120 to 135 days.


Demography

According to the 1987 census, the total population of the BASSR was 3,895,000, of which about 24 percent, or just under one million were Bashkirs. The rest of the population in the republic included Russians, 38 percent of the total population; Tatars, 30 percent; Chuvash, 2.9 percent; Maris, 2.5 percent; Ukrainians, 2.3 percent; Mordvinians, 1.4 percent; Udmurt,.6 percent; and others. Counting those residing outside the republic who identified themselves as Bashkirs, the total for the Soviet Union was 1,371,000 in 1979. Censuses between 1926 and 1970 show that a significant number of Bashkirs steadily turned to Tatar as a spoken and literary language. Since 1970 this process seems to have slowed or even reversed. Those who live outside the republic, however, are being absorbed by Russian or Turkic groups. Some 80.3 percent of Bashkirs are rural dwellers; in Chelyabinsk Oblast, 66.3 percent; in Perm Oblast, 77 percent; in Orenburg Oblast, 76.7 percent; in Kurgan Oblast, 95 percent; in Kuibyshev Oblast, 63 percent. In rural settings they have been resistant to assimilation. Ufa, the capital of the republic, had a population of 1,092,000 in 1987, of which just under 20 percent were Bashkirs. The other seventeen towns and urban-type settlements were mostly inhabited by non-Bashkirs.


Linguistic Affiliation

Bashkir belongs to the Kipchak, or West Turkic, Language Group. There are two dialects today--the southern (Yurmata) and the eastern (Kuvakan). The major differences are phonetic. Bashkir is close to the Tatar language, and more than one-third of present-day Bashkirs claim that language as their native tongue. Arabic script was used until 1929, when a Latin alphabet was introduced. In 1939 a Cyrillic alphabet replaced the Latin.


History and Cultural Relations

The question of the ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs is still unsettled. There is a long-standing quarrel between the Turkologists and the Finn-Ugrists. Although Turks have played a major role, the Bashkirs exhibit both Europeanoid and Mongoloid features. The first written notice of their existence was that of Ibn-Fadlan, the secretary of the embassy of Baghdad to Great Bulgar, near the juncture of the Volga and Kama rivers, in A.D. 922. This mission introduced Islam to the mid-Volga peoples and it spread into Bashkiria. A group of Kipchaks (Polovtsy or Cumans) settled along the lower Belaya River and remained part of the Kipchak federation from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, when the Mongols assumed control. This period was decisive in the formation of language and culture. The Golden Horde (Mongols) in the fifteenth century broke up into several successor states. The Bashkirs were divided among the khanates of Kazan and Siberia and the Nogay Horde. After Ivan IV conquered Kazan in 1552, Muscovy claimed suzerainty; but the Bashkirs vigorously resisted Russian encroachments over a period of two centuries. Only with the suppression of the Pugachev Rebellion (1773-1775), in which they played an important part, were the Bashkirs finally subdued. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Russians and the non-Russian peoples of the mid-Volga region fled into Bashkiria to escape serfdom. Moscow sent governors and troops to maintain control and churchmen to minister to the Russians and to convert the non-Russians to Orthodoxy. During the reign of Peter the Great, significant development of the mining and smelting industries took place in Bashkir lands, bringing in additional Russians. The influx of large numbers of Russian, Tatar, Chuvash, Mari, Mordovian, and Udmurt peasants seriously disturbed the economy of the Bashkir pastoral nomads, who were gradually forced to turn to animal husbandry and to the growing of hay and grain. The seizure of their land, the heavy burden of tribute payments, the forced recruitment of soldiers for Russian armies, and the corrupt colonial administration led to the great frontier wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Continued buying of Bashkir land eliminated pastoral nomadism by the middle of the nineteenth century. Many Bashkirs, unable to adjust, perished; others sought work in industries in the Urals. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, fully 90 percent of Bashkirs were engaged in agriculture. According to the 1897 census, Bashkirs comprised less than 1 percent of the town population. Russian officials considered the Bashkirs a "light-minded" people and blamed Islam for their backwardness. Islam remained strong and served as a rallying cry in the anti-Russian wars. In the 1905 Revolution a soviet of workers' deputies was formed in Ufa. Although it was almost exclusively Russian in composition, some Bashkirs were reported to have participated. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917 another soviet formed in Ufa. During the civil war that followed the Bolshevik seizure of power in late 1917, the Whites controlled Bashkiria for a short period, but on 23 March 1919, the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed; it has retained its present borders since 1922. Throughout the 1930s--the period of the first five-year plans and the collectivization of agriculture--schools, youth clubs, medical clinics, hospitals, and administrative buildings were constructed in the larger towns. Present-day towns are typical Soviet settlements with multistoried apartment buildings, stores, theaters, libraries, museums, and radio and television stations. According to official statements, illiteracy was eliminated in the 1930s. The Bashkirs, for the most part, live in a world apart--on collective farms in primitive villages with few of the advantages of town life. Some have moved to cities and industrial settlements, where they work in a variety of industries and occupations.

The multiethnic nature of Bashkiria renders cultural relations complex. Eight different ethnic groups live in significant numbers in the republic, and there are two major religions--Islam and Christianity. This offers grounds for ethnic and religious conflict, but such conflicts are apparently nonexistent, or are not reported. The nature of the settlement pattern no doubt contributes to the harmony. Most rural people live in separate, isolated communities. Mixed settlements are rare. Towns are places of contact, but they are heavily populated by Russians and non-Bashkirs.


Kinship, Marriage, and Family


Kinship

The original patriarchal-clan society for the most part died out in the nineteenth century, except in the more remote regions to the east and southeast. During the collectivization of agriculture in the 1930s the Bashkirs were gathered into some 600 collective farms or employed on another 150 state farms. Despite the impact of this revolutionary economic and social reorganization on Bashkir society, the old patriarchal-clan organization still survives to some degree.


Marriage

Marriage is strongly exogamous, allowed within the clan but no closer than the fifth or sixth generation. In the past marriage was contracted very early, sometimes while the prospective spouses were still in the cradle; today Bashkirs do not usually marry before the age of 18. A mullah formerly participated in the marriage agreement, although the marriage itself was a secular ceremony performed in the home. Upper-caste males used to have two or three wives; ordinary persons had only one unless the first wife was unable to carry out her traditional responsibilities. Under Soviet law polygamy was outlawed and marriages had to be registered according to Soviet practice.


Domestic Unit

After marriage the young Bashkir couple lived with the husband's parents for a while before separating to form a nuclear family.


Sociopolitical Organization

Until the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, Bashkiria was constitutionally an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR); following the pattern of the Soviet Union, the Communist party permeated and controlled all institutions and organizations except the family.


Social Organization

Class structure in Bashkiria among the Bashkirs is occupational. The great bulk of the population lives and works on collective farms. The small percentage in towns serve as workers.


Political Organization

Prior to the Russian Revolution, czarist government policy was to leave local affairs in the hands of local leaders. The province (guberniia) had a governor and an administrative apparatus to ensure the payment of taxes, an adequate supply of recruits for the army, and the fulfillment of other requirements. After the Revolution, local authority was exercised by soviets of peoples' deputies, at least in theory. Stalin virtually eliminated soviet power, but Gorbachev's administration called for the revitalization of the soviets. The republic had a constitution patterned after that of the Soviet Union, which gave it the appearance of an autonomous entity without any of the reality. Every aspect of government was under the tight control of the central authorities.


Social Control

Until recently, the usual Soviet instruments of control existed (i.e., the party, which permeated all organizations, and the KGB--the State Security Agency). The majority of Bashkirs had limited contact with Soviet government officials, mostly through schools and collective and state farms, Soviet schools, and government officials.


Religion and Expressive Culture


Religious Beliefs and Practices

The Bashkirs are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school. Ufa, the capital of Bashkiria, became the center of the Muslim Spiritual Assembly in the late eighteenth century. The assembly established a number of elementary and secondary schools that enrolled over 100,000 pupils by 1914. Another 15,000 were enrolled in Orenburg Oblast. Although these schools helped the Bashkirs retain their Muslim identity, educated Bashkir leaders were relatively more secular and frequently gravitated to the Tatar intelligentsia. There is a tiny minority of Christians, the Nagaibaks, who trace their ancestry to Bashkirs baptized in the eighteenth century; they numbered 26,000 in 1926 but have since been mostly assimilated.


Arts

The Bashkirs still engage in the traditional folk arts of wood carving, embroidery, folk songs, and dances. These exhibit both Finno-Ugric and Turkic characteristics, the latter predominating. Since the Revolution, especially since the early 1930s, the Bashkirs have been subjected to Sovietization. Schools, the press, movie theaters, radio, and television all exert incalculable influences. Although the villages are less affected, the towns and cities have theaters for producing Russian-style opera, ballet, and plays. The degree to which Bashkirs take part is difficult to determine, but there are known participants. A Bashkir Academy of Sciences exists in affiliation with the National Academy of Sciences and encourages scholarship in all realms of learning.


Medicine

Folk remedies are still common, but Soviet-style clinics and medicine are the rule today virtually everywhere in Bashkiria. Services are free and funded from general tax revenues. Patients pay for drug prescriptions. Public-health measures have led to improved health as reflected in the average age at death and in infancy-death rates. The crude birth rate is about 30 per 1,000.


-- Donnelly, Alton S.


FURTHER READINGS

Bibliography

Bennigsen, Alexandre, and S. Enders Wimbush (1986). Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kozlov, Viktor (1988). The Peoples of the Soviet Union. London, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg, Bloomington, and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Kuzeev, R. G., and S. N. Shchitova (1963). "Bashkiry." In Istoriko-etnograficheskii ocherk. Ufa: Bashkirskoeknizhnoe Izd-vo.

Rudenko, S. I. (1955). "Bashkiry." In Istoriko-etnograficheskie ocherki (Historical-ethnographic studies). Moscow and Leningrad.