ABSTRACT
The Republic of Bashkortostan is situated on the slopes of the Southern Urals. There are borders with Perm Krai to the north, the Udmurt Republic in the north-west, the Republic of Tatarstan in the west, and with the Oblasts of Orenburg in the south, Chelyabinsk in the east and Sverdlovsk to the north. The north of the Republic is forested, while the southern part is steppe. The Republic occupies 142,947 sq km (55,192 sq miles). At January 2014 it had an estimated population of 4,069,698 and a population density of 28.5 per sq km. Some 61.4% of the population lived in urban areas. The Republic’s capital is Ufa, with an estimated population of 1,096,702. Other major cities include Sterlitamak (277,048), Salavat (154,593), Neftekamsk (124,005) and Oktyabrskii (112,249). Of those residents who stated their ethnicity at the 2010 census, 36.1% were Russian, 29.5% were Bashkir, 25.4% Tatar, 2.7% Chuvash, 2.6% Mari and 1.0% Ukrainian. Bashkir, spoken by the majority of ethnic Bashkirs, is a Kipchak language closely related to Tatar, and has two distinct dialects: Kuvakan, spoken in the north of the Republic; andYurmatin, current in the south. Themajority of Bashkirs and Tatars are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school, although some Bashkirs, the Nagaibak, are Orthodox Christians. Bashkortostan is in the time zone GMT+5.
The Bashkirs were thought to have originated as a distinct ethnic group during the 16th century, out of the Tatar, Mongol, Volga, Bulgar, Oguz, Pecheneg and Kipchak peoples. The territory was annexed by Russia in 1557, during the reign of Ivan IV ‘the Terrible’, and many Bashkirs subsequently lost their land and were forced into servitude. Rebellions against Russian control, most notably that led by Salavat Yulai in 1773, were unsuccessful, and the identity and survival of the Bashkir community came under increasing threat. A large migration of ethnic Russians to the region in the late 19th century resulted in their outnumbering the Bashkir population. A Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed on 23 March 1919. The territory declared its sovereignty, as the Bashkir Autonomous Republic, on
11October 1990. On 12December 1993, whenMurtaza Rakhimov (hitherto President of the republican Supreme Soviet) was elected to the new post of President, a republican majority voted against acceptance of the new federal Constitution. On 24 December the republican Supreme Soviet adopted a new Constitution, stating that its own laws had supremacy over federal laws. The name of Bashkortostan was adopted and a bicameral legislature, the Kurultai, established. Further autonomy was granted under treaties signed in 1994 and in 1995. The administration of the Republic remained highly centralized, and the executive retained extensive controls over the petroleum sector. Rakhimov was re-elected as President in June 1998. In the federal legislative elections of December 1999, the candidates of Rakhimov’s favoured grouping, Otechestvo-Vsya Rossiya (OVR-Fatherland-All Russia), were successful in the Republic; prior to the elections, Rakhimov was rebuked by the federal premier, Vladimir Putin, for blocking the transmission of two television channels opposed to the grouping. Commentators also observed the absence of any opposition press in Bashkortostan and the removal from electoral lists of most of Rakhimov’s opponents on the basis of alleged electoral violations. In May 2000 Putin, now the federal President, ordered that Bashkortostan’s
Constitution be altered to conform with Russia’s basic law. A new Constitution was introduced in November. In January 2001 a provision in the new document that republican legislation should take precedence over federal law was rescinded. In June 2002, however, the federal Supreme Court ruled that some 37 articles of Bashkortostan’s Constitution still failed to comply with federal law. On 3 December 2002 a further republican Constitution was adopted, which
transferred several powers from the Prime Minister to the President and referred to the ‘statehood’, rather than the ‘sovereignty’, of the Republic. The power-sharing treaties signed between the republican and federal authorities were annulled. At elections to the new, unicameral Kurultai, held on 16 March 2003, the successor
to OVR, YeO-YeR (which later renamed itself YeR) obtained control of 91 of the 120 seats. In the first round of the republican presidential election, held on 7 December, no candidate received an absolute majority of the votes cast. Rakhimov (who received 42.6% of the votes cast) and the second placed candidate, Sergei Veremeyenko (with 23.0%), who had been initially favoured by the federal authorities, duly proceeded to a second round of voting on 21 December. Prior to the ‘run-off’ election, Veremeyenko announced that he had ceased campaigning. This effective lack of opposition, now combinedwith public support fromPutin, enabledRakhimov to secure re-election for a third term, with some 78.0% of the votes cast. Putin’s change of position was seen partly to be the result of Rakhimov’s highly effective campaigning on behalf of YeR in the federal legislative elections, also held on 7 December.
