How Bashkortostan Became The Seedbed Of Russia’s Indigenous-Led Protests – JP

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This August marks five years since protests in defense of the Kushtau mountain in the republic of Bashkortostan, one of the few successful grassroots protests in Russia’s modern history. 

The Moscow Times is marking the anniversary with a two-part series exploring the political context that set the stage for the protests and how they unfolded. 

This is part one of the series. Part two will be published Saturday.

“He was never actually building a politically independent Bashkortostan,” said Rostislav Murzagulov, an exiled government official from the republic of Bashkortostan, when asked about his former boss Murtaza Rakhimov, the region’s first post-Soviet president.

“Behind the scenes, he used to say, ‘How can we be independent when we don’t have borders with any other state? We are surrounded only by Russia,” Murzagulov recalled. 

Bashkortostan, a Turkic-majority republic in Russia, made global headlines last year when thousands of people protested in support of prominent environmental and Indigenous rights activist Fayil Alsynov. The activist was sentenced to four years in prison on charges linked to a campaign against gold mining in the southeastern part of the republic. 

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