Bashkortostan map, Russia - Overview & Location Details

Bashkiria or the Republic of Bashkortostan is an independent republic in the Russian Federation. It is set up between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains and has an area of about 143,600 square kilometres, equivalent to Nepal. It is the most populous republic in Russia and populous one with more than 4 million residents. The capital, Ufa, is an economic, scientific, and cultural centre, which accommodates a population of more than 1 million.

History

Historical evidence indicates that humans lived in modern-day Bashkortostan at least the Lower Palaeolithic (more than 100,000 years ago). Hunter-gatherer cultures are witnessed by stone tools and cave art from the Shulgan-Tash (Kapova) Cave. The Bronze Age metalworking of the Abashevo culture (c. 20001500 BCE) was more developed, building fortified settlements on the Ural slopes and farming horses and grain.

Since the 7th century, the Bashkirs have been noted in historical records by such historians as al-Biruni and Mahmud al-Kashgari as a specific Turko-speaking nation living in the southern Urals. They existed in clan communities with a seasonal migration between pastures on mountains and valleys along rivers. By the 10th to 13th centuries, these tribes were united in loose confederations, commonly discussed in Arabic and Persian literature as al-Bashgird or Bashqurt.

Military groups of Mongols under Jochi invaded the region at the beginning of the 13th century. On the one hand, it included Bashkir clans that put up fierce resistance; on the other hand, some of them discussed the conditions of the alliance with the Golden Horde and kept local leaders (khans) and some powers to govern themselves in exchange for tribute. This structure enabled the Bashkir society to maintain a lot of its traditions and incorporate the features of the Mongolian military system and law.

Following the conquest of the Kazan Khanate in 1552, western tribes of Bashkirs wanted protection from the Muscovites against attacks by Nogai and Kalmyk horsemen. In 1557--58, charters were granted by the envoys of Ivan IV acknowledging Bashkir land rights and traditional privileges on condition of loyalty and supply of troops. This is depicted by Russian chronicles as a negotiated accession, but other recent historians observe that it too was supported by military pressure. During the following century, legal land conflicts, heavy taxation, and involuntary repopulation gave birth to significant revolts (1662-1664, 1704-1711), which were eventually crushed but led to the periodic conclusions of the Bashkir privileges.

Bashkir leaders got an opportunity through the revolution that took place in 1917. November 28, 1917: the Bashkir Regional Shuro proclaimed Autonomy; based on negotiations with the Bolsheviks, the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created officially on March 23, 1919, becoming the first autonomous republic of Soviet Russia. During the Soviet years, Bashkortostan managed to retain wide cultural and administrative rights, and Bashkortostan developed universities and publications in Bashkir, as well as folk arts.

Following the fall of the USSR, on October 11, 1990, Bashkortostan declared sovereignty, and in the year 1993, it made use of the republican constitution. This was followed by a set of treaties in the 1990s in which power-sharing was given to Moscow, providing wide fiscal and legislative autonomy. Despite the federal reforms which cut those privileges by some part in 2005, Bashkortostan still enjoys administering its natural resources, cultural establishments, and language policies as part of the federal system in Russia.

Culture

There are about 38 per cent Russians, 32 per cent Bashkirs, 24 per cent Tatars, and some Mari, Chuvash and Udmurt in the Bashkortostan population. Such a mix of cultures has created a vibrant religious scenery: Sunni Islam is the most popular religion among Bashkirs and Tatars, with most of the ethnic Russians being Russian Orthodox. There are also a few of the Old Believers, Catholics and evangelical Christians who have places of worship.

Bashkir culture continues to centre on folk traditions. The distinguishing pentatonic melodies are played on the kurai, a flute fashioned out of the hollow stem of the reeds associated with weddings and festivals. Vocal epics about heroic deeds are accompanied by dombra (two-stringed lute) and the qyl-qobyz (bowed instrument). Well-known tropes like the Faizi Gaskarov State Academic Folk Dance Company translate Bashkir dances into a mixture of rapid footwork and broad arches of the arm.

Artisans still practice century-old techniques of wood carving, stone engraving and felt-making. Bashkir carpenters in richly carved spoons, chests, and cradle-boards, in Ufa, silversmiths make filigree jewellery with coral and amber ornaments. Handicrafts by touch -rural crafts-the fabrics dyed with madder and beetroot are still highly valued in communities.

Summer festivals, Sabantuy, a plough festival that was celebrated by both Bashkirs and Tatars, mark the conclusion of spring sowing. People of the villages come out to watch horse races, wrestling matches (koreras), sack races and culinary competitions involving chak-chak (fried-dough balls soaked in honey). Such inclusivity (games, music, collective festivities), as well as the overall size of the festival, has led to the festival becoming one of the largest ethnocultural holidays in Russia.

Bashkir food is pastoral and agricultural. There are dishes such as Bishbarmaq (boiled meat usually lamb or beef, and served over flat noodles) and qazy (sausage made of horse meat), as well as Slavic favourites like borscht and pelmeni. Pride of place is accorded to dairy: locally fermented mare milk, kumis, and clotted cream, kaymak, are locally fermented in ceramic pots.

Language

Bashkir is a part of the Kipchak group of the Turkic language family; it is strongly connected to Tatar and Kazakh. The language is spoken by approximately 1.2 million people, and its three major dialects, the eastern (mountain), western (forest-steppe), and southern (steppe) varieties, have phonology and vocabulary differences. Standard literary Bashkir is based on Eastern and Southern dialects, along with the inclusion of the classical form of Turkic, the tradition that had remained in the medieval texts.

The Soviet period was the flowering of Bashkir literature. There were lyric poets, such as Mazhit Gafuri (1880-1934), who filled their poems with nature and social change. Heroic ballads were written by prose writers, including Musa Calomel (1906- 1944), who was killed in World War II. Modern writers Ravilya Fazletdinova and Iskander Galeyev deal with the present identity and urbanisation, and the contradiction between the past and future.

Bashkir language is co-official and used in kindergartens, secondary schools, and universities along with Russian. Bashkir is commonly applied in use as a medium of instruction in rural schools in early grades and then up to them switching to Russian in later stages. Research and training of teachers is conducted in the departments of Bashkir philology at Ufa State Petroleum Technological University and Bashkir State University.

The media environment in the republic includes 70 regional Bashkir language newspapers, several radio channels with news and music daily broadcasts, and two television stations with cultural and educational shows. Online journals, e-libraries, and social media groups are possibilities of digital initiatives which facilitate a further increase in language use by the younger generation, and theatre companies perform classic and modern drama in Bashkir, which fosters dramatic arts in the native language.

Geography

With its north-to-south range of about 550 km and an east-to-west distance of approximately 430 km, the district where European Russia and Siberia converge is covered by the republic of Bashkortostan. It borders Perm Krai to the north, Sverdlovsk Oblast to the northeast, and Chelyabinsk and Orenburg Oblasts to the east and south, and Tatarstan and Udmurtia to the west.

The eastern third of the republic ascends into the Southern Ural Mountains, heavily forested and with peaks at Mount Yamantau, 1,640 m. West of the main ridge, there are undulating foothills as well as the far-flung West Siberian Plain. The republic is bisected by the Belaya River, a 1,430 km tributary of the Kama and the dense drainage pattern is captured by the Ufa, Sakmara, and Bystry Tanyp. More than 13,000 streams and rivers and a few thousand lakes and reservoirs supply water to agriculture, industry and municipal water supply.

Biodiversity found in the region consists of Eurasian Lynx, brown bear, the roe deer, red deer, elk, and the wild boar. Moist forest undergrowth, in which endemic plants, e.g. the Ural liverwort, and rare orchids flourish, is found on the humid soils, with steppe species, e.g. feather grass, Stipa spp., predominant in the plains. Bashkortostan is blessed with enormous resources in nature. It has oilfields (their development started in the 1930s) which yield high-grade crude; complexes of refining and petrochemical enterprises are concentrated in Ufa. A mineral-processing industry is based on natural gas, coal, lignite, iron ore, manganese, copper, chromite and rock salt. These raw materials are utilised in machine, chemical and power-generation industries, as well as in forestry and agriculture (grain production, sugar beets, sunflowers and dairy).

One will find that Ufa is located literally at the heart of a logistics complex. Its northern border borders the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the M5 Ural highway goes west of Moscow, to the city of Chelyabinsk. Radiating outwards, fan-shaped, is now a dense network of federal and regional roads which connects everything, including the city centre, to far-away villages. Flying high, Ufa International Airport provides regular connections not only with Moscow and St. Petersburg but also a list of seasonal flights to other cities abroad, which is evidence that Bashkortostan is a real bridge between two continents.

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