BASHKIRIA
Since the tenth century Bashkirs are recorded inhabiting the forested steppe east of
the Volga; their traditional lands were bounded by rivers: the Volga on the west, the
Tobol east of the Urals, the Kama to the northwest, and the Iaik (later Ural) to the
south. They were Turkic-speaking steppe nomads who were Muslim since before
being incorporated into the Golden Horde (itself Muslim since the fourteenth
century) and used sharia law and customary law. In the forested northern part of
their ancestral lands, Bashkirs were semi-nomadic hunters, trappers,fishers, and
bee-keepers; some even farmed. But the majority of Bashkirs were nomadic
pastoralists in the wooded and grassy steppe to the south; they raised horses,
sheep, and goats. After the demise of Mongol authority, those in the northwest
paid tribute to the Kazan khanate, those in the southwest to the Nogais of the lower
Volga, and those east of the Urals to the Siberian khanate.
After Russia’s conquest of Kazan in 1552, some northern and western Bashkirs
swore loyalty to Russia (1557), but they regarded the relationship, in typical steppe
fashion, as one of equals in which rebellion was always possible if their Russian
partners crossed their interests. Conflict soon arose. Russian landlord and peasant
settlement moved steadily eastwards into the more fertile Bashkir lands as Middle
Volgaiasakpeople—Tatars, Mordva, Chuvash, Cheremis—and runaway East
Slavic peasantsfled Russian control. Russia founded a fortress at Ufa in 1586,
inviting continued colonization and forcibly transferring exiles and servitors. The
state forcibly moved in serfs to staff new mines and metallurgical works in the
Urals. Groups of Bashkirs revolted regularly: against Stroganov towns and fortresses
on the upper Kama in the 1570s and 1580s and against the fortification of Ufa in
- Bashkirs joined Middle Volga peoples in mass uprisings against Russia in the
Time of Troubles (1605–13). Russia responded brutally and decisively, steadily
tightening control in the seventeenth century.
Bashkirs also had reason to cooperate with Russia, since they themselves were
harassed from the steppe by Nogais and their steppe successors the Kalmyks. To
protect against such attacks in the 1650s Russia constructed the Trans-Kama
fortress line south of the Kama River and paralleling it from the Volga (at Belyi
Iar south of Simbirsk) east to Menzelinsk in the Urals. Russia recruited local
Bashkirs to defend the line; these, and other Bashkir elites who rendered service
to Russia, came to be called the“loyal Bashkirs,”splintering such unity that
Bashkiria might have had and providing valuable military support to Russia.
Other ways in which Russia tried to co-opt the Bashkirs involved social privileges
as an ethnic group and to their elites. Russia allowed Bashkirs to maintain lands
and privileges: asiasakpayers, Bashkirs did not pay the direct taxation due
from Russians or participate in conscription; none were enserfed. As landholders,
Bashkirs subjugated immigrant Middle Volgaiasakpeople, creating a group of
dependent laborers calledteptiars. Nevertheless, revolts broke out. In 1662, when
Russia raised theiasakas part of measures to increase income across the empire
(coinage devaluation in the center sparked massive“copper riots”), Bashkirs revolted,
motivated also by illegal Russian seizures of their grazing lands and by the
Assembling Empire 69