ABSTRACT
The Bashkirs, who thanks to their army, secured for themselves an autonomous republic and its main political positions, endeavored to use the apparatus of the state to free themselves from the cultural domination of the Tatars, and to retrieve the vast lands lost to Russian colonists in the past. Much of the tragedy which accompanied the history of the Bashkirs during their three and a half centuries under Moscow's rule, could be ascribed to their unfortunate geographic location. The roots of the Bashkir national movement were predominantly economic in character, intimately connected with the land problem. In the meantime, the relations between the Bashkir and Russian masses of the population rapidly deteriorated as a result of struggles between the two nationalities over land. On May 19, 1920, the Soviet government published, without having first consulted the Bashkirs, a new decree of Bashkir autonomy. The Bashkirs were also deprived of control over the secret police on their territory.
