ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the titular ethnic groups' attitudes and witnesses a drop in the levels of civic activism. It explores that under conditions of monoethnic authoritarian rule, public life in an ethnically divided republic can be peaceful, with a low level of protest activity bordering on apathy, if the minority ethnic group is part of a federation majority. In Tatarstan, various groups of citizens engaged in demonstrations which were mainly centred on single issues which were socio-economic in nature. Individual episodes of the protest movement took the form of lengthy and dramatic battles. Bashkortostan and Tatarstan have witnessed the rise of extremist nationalist organisations whose members have made secessionist demands and vociferous protests against attempts by the Kremlin to reign in the Republic's constitutional powers. There have been no social surveys of citizens' attitudes to the three primary issues: electoral fraud, ethnic discrimination and the teaching or Russian and Tatar in the republic's schools.
