August 30: Does Tatarstan Remember?

Today at Union Square in the center of New York, the flags of Tatarstan, the Oirat-Kalmyk people and Buryatia flew side by side. Today marks the 36th anniversary of Tatarstan’s Declaration of State Sovereignty.

The day before, my friend Batyr Boromangaev, founder and chairman of the Congress of the Oirat-Kalmyk People, invited me. The rally was held under the slogan Freedom for Russia's Captive Nations — freedom for the peoples Russia holds within its borders, against colonial domination and for self-determination. Those who came held signs protesting colonialism, political repression and the destruction of their national identity. I represented Tatarstan as Ambassador of the Government of Independent Tatarstan in Exile in the United States.

I was given the floor, and I said two things.

First: this is a matter of rights, not culture

The question of Tatarstan is not only a question of language, national holidays, festivals and preserving traditions. Yet for decades we have been offered exactly this framework: celebrate Sabantuy, sing and dance at concerts, eat chak-chak — that is enough.

No, it is not enough. This is a question of the political right of a people to decide its own fate. Such a right is not awarded as a prize for good behavior — it either exists or it has been taken away.

And it belongs not only to Tatarstan.

Kalmyks, Buryats, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Mari, Udmurts, Erzya and Moksha, Chechens, Ingush, Yakuts — all the peoples who found themselves within the Russian Federation have exactly the same right: to speak about their future, defend their identity and demand real, rather than merely decorative, self-determination. We have different histories, different languages, different faiths and different ideas of what our states should be. But the principle is the same for everyone: neither Moscow nor any other capital has an eternal and unconditional right to decide the fate of another people.

Second: Tatarstan’s freedom is being decided in Ukraine today

I said it directly, and I repeat it here: Ukraine must be supported in this war — with weapons, money, sanctions against Russia, diplomatic pressure and every form of public advocacy. With everything available to free states and the people who live in them.

Not only because Ukraine is defending its own land, although that alone would be enough.

But also because the empire holds our peoples only for as long as it has enough strength to do so. For 300 years it has subjugated peoples through war, and today it still holds them through war: it mobilizes our villages, burns through our budgets and puts our cities at risk. Every military defeat of Russia weakens the very hand that holds Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Buryatia and the others.

That is why the question of when the Russian Empire will begin to disintegrate is not being decided in Kazan or New York. It is being decided at the front.

I will also say what is unpleasant to say. While this war continues, our own people are dying too: Tatarstan ranks second in Russia by the number of confirmed dead, with more than nine and a half thousand names. Moscow sent them there, not Kyiv. The sooner the war ends in the defeat of the empire, the shorter this list will be.

How they kept us divided

Now to the main reason we gathered on this square at all.

The empire never fought everyone at once. Its strength was always elsewhere — in its ability to speak with each people separately, behind closed doors, on its own terms.

Look at how this worked in the 1990s. Moscow signed power-sharing treaties not with the republics as a group, but with each republic separately: Tatarstan separately, Bashkortostan separately, Yakutia separately — dozens of agreements with different terms and different content. Everyone received their own package, their own date, their own illusions. And when the time came to take those powers back, Moscow took them back separately too, one after another, so that each nation experienced the loss as its own private failure. Tatarstan’s treaty was not renewed in 2017. Who took to the streets in Ulan-Ude at that moment? No one. And that is not a reproach to Buryatia — that was the design.

For centuries, the empire taught us to believe that each of us had a separate misfortune. A Tatar problem separately, a Buryat problem separately, a Kalmyk problem separately. Each gets its own reservation, its own ensemble, its own local-history museum and the confidence that everything is arranged differently beyond the neighboring river.

Same playbook, different addresses

Stand side by side, and that illusion falls apart in a minute.

The order that reduced native-language hours and renamed the school subject to “Language of a People of the Russian Federation” was not written against Tatars alone. It was written against everyone at once — against Tatar, Buryat, Kalmyk, Chuvash and Mari. One document, from one office.

Mobilization is not decimating Moscow or St. Petersburg. Journalistic counts show the same thing year after year: national republics and remote regions pay the highest price. Buryatia, Tuva, Kalmykia, Tatarstan — the arithmetic in these cemeteries is shared.

The destruction of political agency follows a single template: treaties are not renewed, offices are renamed, elections become procedures of consent, and federalism turns into an empty legal shell.

Memory is pushed aside in the same way. The Kalmyks were deported as an entire people in December 1943. Tatar statehood — the Idel-Ural State — was crushed in 1918. Different decades, different methods, the same pattern: first take away the ability to decide, then take away the right to remember that you once decided for yourselves.

These are not coincidences. This is a system functioning exactly as intended.

Where we may disagree — and where we must agree

Solidarity among our peoples is not a polite gesture at a rally. It is a condition for each of us to survive.

At the same time, I am categorically against pretending that we are all the same. We are not. We have different ideas about the future political order, different economies, different religions, different attitudes toward borders and toward what form independence should take. To demand unanimity is to repeat the empire’s mistake: throughout its history, it built unity through coercion.

We need to agree on exactly two things.

First: the future of each people is determined by that people itself. Without permission from Moscow and without permission from any other capital.

Second — and this is discussed less often: free peoples do not treat one another the way the empire treated us. An independent Tatarstan will not decide for Bashkortostan who lives there or what language they speak. Future neighbors must agree on this now, before any of us has a state border — and the temptation to move it.

What solidarity means in practice

Conversations in public squares matter, but they are not enough. Here is what we can and should already be doing together.

Keep a common record. Lists of the dead, political-prisoner cases, incidents of pressure on language and religion — separately for every people, but in one format and in one place. The empire can live with scattered numbers. A consolidated record is harder to dismiss.

Defend people together. Petitions for those fleeing persecution, supporting statements for asylum cases, efforts to have people removed from wanted lists. We have already been doing this for years: over five years, about 350 appeals have been submitted on behalf of our government and the Tatar Public Center. This work is more effective when movements help one another’s applicants, rather than only their own.

Speak to the world in a common language. Captive nations, decolonization, the right to self-determination — these are terms understood in parliaments and universities. When each people arrives with its own terminology, it is heard as an exotic curiosity. When we arrive with a common vocabulary, we are heard as a political question.

And be there for one another on our commemorative days. Today, August 30, is Tatarstan’s day. Kalmyks and Buryats have their own days of remembrance, and we must stand there just as they stood today beside our flag.

There are fireworks in Kazan today

Back in Tatarstan, August 30 is being carefully turned into simply “Republic Day” — with concerts and fireworks. Its meaning is being washed away, carefully and year after year, without formally banning anything.

Here is the fact: no act has repealed the Declaration on State Sovereignty. It was dismantled piece by piece — the treaty was not renewed, the office of president was renamed, Tatar-language hours were cut, the petrochemical industry was sold off. None of those decisions was made in Kazan. But the document itself lives, and so does the day on which it was adopted.

As long as Tatarstan’s flag is raised in squares where the freedom of peoples is being discussed, sovereignty remains a political question rather than a line in the program of a holiday concert.

August 30. Tatarstan remembers.

Kamil Sukaev,
Ambassador of the Government of Independent Tatarstan in Exile in the United States