What happens after Russia falls

Photo of Kazan: Nikiforaw77 / Shutterstock

Held together by force

After illegally annexing Sevastopol and Crimea in 2014, the Russian Federation’s constitution stated that the country had 85 territories. On October 5th 2022, this number expanded to 89 after Russia held sham referendums at gunpoint in four Ukrainian regions. Even as Putin was signing annexation decrees, the Ukrainian army was freeing Ukrainian territory in the annexed regions. The point is that there is nothing natural or inevitable, or indeed even Russian, about Russia’s borders. Kaliningrad is a former Prussian city, an exclave isolated from mainland Russia surrounded by Lithuania and Poland. Many other territories are ethnic enclaves with their own languages and cultures, like Tatarstan.

In 1990, Boris Yeltsin visited Tatarstan, then at the vanguard of a confederation of autonomy movements. There, he famously declared that regional leaders should “take as much sovereignty as you can swallow”. In March 1992 Tatarstan held a referendum in which 62 per cent of a population that was 48.5 per cent ethnic Tatar voted in favour of sovereignty. Then in 2000, Putin visited Tatarstan, officially to celebrate the Tatar holiday of Sabantuy. He then locked himself away for 24 hours with the presidents of Tatarstan and neighbouring Bashkortostan. Behind closed doors, he threatened to unearth Islamic terrorists and turn both republics into Chechnya if they did not conform to his demands. Since then, Russia has been held together by force.

But that no longer has to be the case. Ex-Solidarity leader and former Polish President Lech Wałęsa advocates for freeing the 60 nations that Russia has annexed, bringing its population down from 144 to 50 million and dividing the country into ten or 20 states. Independent scholar Kamil Galeev supports letting the empire collapse so that ethnic Russians finally have the opportunity for enfranchisement in their own political system. Analyst Paul Goble notes that Russian Muslims, now up to one-fifth of the population, increasingly embrace secession.

After Yeltsin appointed Putin prime minister in 1999, Russia’s social contract became one of creature comforts in exchange for an apolitical outlook. Conscription significantly decreased, with draftees serving for one year instead of two. Meanwhile, Putin dismantled democracy and consolidated his power. He strengthened the police state and started appointing previously elected regional officials, effectively making it impossible to run the country without his decision-making. He controls the courts, the media and the Duma. He jails, murders and exiles his rivals. He robs the provinces of material resources to keep the standard of living high in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He created a strongman cult of personality which no one else has the charisma to fill. Now Putin looks weak, the population’s creature comforts are eroding and conscription is widespread. It now looks like he can no longer retain power.

What might a post-Russia future look?

Examining the current situation in Tatarstan 32 years after the republic declared sovereignty may give us an idea as to how such a future might look. Since Tatarstan’s federal power-sharing agreement with Moscow was in effect until 2017, Moscow exerted more political pressure on it than on other parts of the Russian Federation. For instance, Tatarstan’s constitution, ratified in 1992 before Russia had one, specifies that Tatarstan’s people must elect its president, and that Tatar and Russian are both state languages.

Putin first appointed Tatarstan’s president in 2005, although he only signed the law on appointing governors in 2013. Appointment meant that Tatarstan’s president, Mintimer Shaimiev, who promoted Tatar interests while being careful not to upset Russians, no longer had any wiggle room to negotiate with Moscow. In 2010, Rustam Minnikhanov, previously Tatarstan’s prime minister, rose to power. Minnikhanov continued Shaimiev’s post-2000 policy of slowly, reluctantly conceding authority to Moscow.

In 2017 Moscow forced Tatarstan to change its law requiring the study of the Tatar language in schools. This roused well-founded fears that the language, so closely tied to Tatar ethnicity and identity, might die out. By 2018 there was only one Tatar school in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan. While it has little political autonomy, Tatarstan’s government financially supports Tatar language initiatives that appeal to tech-savvy young Tatars. This includes Urban Tatar, which broadcasts lectures and alternative music; the Mon Experimental Theatre in Kazan; Ana Tele, a Tatar learning portal; and Achyk Universitet (Open University). On Tatarstan Republic Day on August 30th, the popular Tatar rapper Usal performed in the Kazan Kremlin, the seat of Tatarstan’s government. In 2021 (and probably in 2022 too), Usal chanted Azatka Azat! (Freedom for Azat!) from the stage in support of Tatar political prisoner Azat Miftakhov.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, despite the ethos of peace so central to Tatar nationalism, the Tatarstan government heartily supported Moscow. The Tatar World Congress passed a resolution in favour of the so-called “special military operation”. Among the ethnic minorities sent to Ukraine to fight were Tatars, who are dying in higher numbers than ethnic Russians.

On September 21st 2022, Putin announced partial mobilisation, which in reality was only partial for ethnic Russians as indigenous peoples and non-ethnic Russians were disproportionately selected to fight. Through private channels, the authors of this text received what may (or may not) be the list of Tatarstan draftees for the second wave of mobilisation on October 1st, which Putin cancelled most likely because the first wave was a disaster. Tatarstan’s population is 53 per cent Tatar. Yet at least 95 per cent of the names on the list were Tatar ones. In some Tatar villages, sources told us, the military took all the men.

New unity as a nation

Like the ethnic Russians, indigenous peoples voted with their feet. Many crossed the nearest international border where they do not need a visa, into Kazakhstan. Tatars in the European diaspora organised a social media channel to share information about the safest, cheapest ways to travel, how to avoid Russian military officials, what to say to border guards, what their rights are, where to find a place to sleep and how to rent an apartment. The channel has around 600 members.

This outmigration has had three notable social effects. First, communication on the channel occurs primarily in Tatar. This makes the language, which many associate with what they consider unsophisticated village life, both exciting and essential to survival. Second, the Kazakh and Tatar languages are very close. This means that when Tatars speak Tatar in Kazakhstan, they differentiate themselves from the hordes of Russian men massing on the streets of every city. These groups are generally unwelcome, though tolerated by people, including Kazakh Russians. By differentiating themselves, Tatars receive friendly treatment and hospitality and bond with other speakers of Turkic languages on an emotional level. Third, Tatar diaspora communities in Kazakhstan have come forward to welcome their co-ethnics, feeding them, housing them, advising them on how to obtain legal status to work and posting job opportunities. Many of the men have never travelled outside Russia’s borders – evidenced by their questions about how to apply for passports – but now see themselves as part of an international community of Tatars.

Outside of Russia’s borders, Tatars, previously pressured to assimilate linguistically and culturally, are finding new unity as a nation. By starting the post-Maidan war in Ukraine in 2014, Putin inadvertently elevated the status of the Ukrainian language and unified Ukrainians as a people. He is currently doing something similar for the Tatars – pro-government and opposition cultural leaders on the Telegram channel collaborate with the common goals of escape, survival and coming together as a community. The social capital of the Tatar language, ethnicity and culture has risen.

What does this mean for the future?

Tatarstan’s political elite has succumbed to Moscow, but has also nurtured voluntary language learning and cultural identity. As when the Soviet Union collapsed, that elite will make as few changes to the political structures as possible in an effort to maintain power. Meanwhile, the majority of Tatar men who have left their families will return home, like the Tatars who emigrated from Central Asia to Tatarstan after the USSR collapsed, with a fresh sense of their culture’s value. Old structures attempting to maintain stability will encounter vibrant ideas about how to organise society generated outside the Russian police state.

Certainly, the chance for violence is real. All the soldiers in Ukraine, the perpetrators of war crimes and those simply traumatised by the experience, will presumably return to Russia. Putin’s siloviki, the security forces, are also a factor. With political instability, increased poverty is certain. State collapse is inevitably traumatic, as we know from the Soviet Union’s disintegration.

However, if we lift the sanctions that apply to Russia from potential future breakaway states and offer economic development packages without Jeffrey Sachs’s corrupt neoliberalism, we may be able to mitigate many of these horrors and reverse the impact of brain drain. We may be able to further encourage the flicker of imaginative, inclusive, communal-minded thinking observed on Tatar social media, allowing what is now Russian territory to develop into ten to 20 new states, just as Wałęsa suggests.

Helen Faller is an anthropologist with 30 years of experience in the former Soviet Union. She has conducted long-term ethnographic research in Tatarstan (Nation, Language, Islam: Tatarstan’s Sovereignty Movement) and Kazakhstan and is currently finishing a memoir about travelling to Central Asia to study dumplings.

Nick Gluzdov grew up in Kyiv and lived in St. Petersburg before moving to Philadelphia in 1999. Half Ukrainian and half Russian, he built an IT company from the ground up. Half of his 80 employees live in Ukraine, and this has given him insights into systems analysis, which he scales to analyse political organisations.

Putin, Russia, Russian collapse, Russian Federation, Russian war with Ukraine