Bashkiria: Echoes of History
Let me start first with pretty late Soviet history. It is where the resistance to the central government started. These days, Kazakhstan is independent of Russia. But this moment, a nationalist flare-up matters. Because it may be a guide towards the future.
No, history never repeats itself event for event, but the Russia of Vladimir Putin has many parallels to the Soviet Union of late Mikhail Gorbachev. First, let’s start with Kazakhstan. Today, we had a similar event:
Zheltoqsan means December in the Kazakh language. In December 1986, the leader of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), Dinmuhammaet Kunaev, was removed from office as part of Mikhail Gorbachev’s anticorruption campaign. Kunaev’s replacement was Gennady Kolbin, an ethnic Russian who had no previous connection to Kazakhstan. The move proved so unpopular that it drew a huge crowd into the streets of Almaty to protest.
Nazarbaev’s role has never been fully explained and the commission formed after independence to look into the causes and consequences of Zheltoqsan was dissolved before it could release any findings.
I recommend reading the entire piece at the link. Because there are parallels to today, although they are not the same. Here, this is through MO. Layer, I will add an actual Bashkiria voice. This is the 10,000-level overview: