Patriotic Unity and Ethnic Diversity at Odds: The Example of Tatar Organisations in Moscow

Abstract

The Russian Federation's policy of promoting patriotism, in place since the early 2000s, raises the issue of how the country's non-Russian ethnic groups receive this policy. To answer this question, this essay studies the reception of Russian state-promoted patriotism in the 2000s among the Tatar community in Moscow. Looking at the activities of Tatar associations (especially the Regional Tatar National-Cultural Autonomy organisation), it shows the syntheses and compromises negotiated by activists between patriotism and ethno-cultural belonging in the capital. Paradoxically, their attempts at synthesis strengthen an essentialist representation of the Tatar community, leading ultimately, on the one hand, to criticism of state nationality policy, and on the other, to the discontent of Tatar independent activists who criticised the undemocratic rules and personal domination in the Regional Tatar National—Cultural Autonomy organisation supported by state authorities. These criticisms echo the tensions in the Russian political agenda at the beginning of the 2010s.