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Commenting on the events in Baimak on January 15 and 17, Bashkortostan's head, Radiy Khabirov, invoked separatism, which alludes to historical facts. These facts also influenced the development of the Bashkir leaders whom Khabirov, in his own words, took on—Fail Alsynov, a graduate of the history department.* and Ruslana Gabbasova**.

The Tsardom of Russia acquired Bashkir lands in the mid-16th century. The territory where the ethnic group settled during this period now encompasses the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Orenburg and Chelyabinsk regions, and border areas of neighboring regions (Tatarstan, Udmurtia, Perm Krai, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Samara, and Saratov regions). Historically, Bashkortostan was part of the Nogai Horde and three khanates: Astrakhan, Kazan, and Siberia, but the Bashkirs were mere vassals in each of these states.

Having conquered the Kazan Khanate in 1552, Tsar Ivan the Terrible addressed the Bashkirs with a letter, offering them voluntary acceptance of Moscow citizenship. One Russian chronicle describes this offer as follows: "And the Tsar himself sent charters granting yasak to all the black people of the uluses, so that they would come to the Tsar without fear... and the Tsar would grant them yasak, and they would pay yasak, as they had to the previous Kazan tsars." And the people, tired of civil strife, perishing from hunger and plague, saw the possibility of a peaceful existence.

Negotiations with ambassadors from numerous Bashkir tribes continued until 1557 and culminated in the presentation of charters from Ivan IV. Under the terms of the treaty, the Bashkirs pledged to supply the tsar with warriors and yasak (a tax in kind in the form of furs and honey), and in return, they were guaranteed a peaceful life, freedom of religion, patrimonial rights to land, local self-government, and, in general, non-interference in their domestic affairs.

The conditions for voluntary annexation to the future empire were initially observed. But tsars and dynasties came and went, and the Russian kingdom grew stronger, transforming into an empire. And no charters could hinder the colonization of rich lands, inhabited, moreover, by people with an alien culture.

"The Bashkirs respect and cherish nothing more than their ancient patrimonial lands. Respecting them, they often rebelled and died for them," wrote historian Pavel Rychkov (18th century) in his regional studies.

Attempts to forcibly impose Christianity and seize patrimonial lands repeatedly provoked uprisings, which, from the time of Anna Ioannovna onward, were suppressed with unfailing brutality; villages were burned, sometimes with their people inside. It is no coincidence that Bashkiria became one of the main centers of the uprising during the Pugachev Rebellion.

The republic's modern borders were established after the October Revolution of 1917, during the establishment of Soviet power. Bashkiria (or Bashkurdistan, as the self-proclaimed autonomous region was then called) became the first autonomous region within the RSFSR and the only one. formed on contractual terms. 

According to open sources, 87% of all Bashkirs lived in the region in 1922. By 1926, the population of the Bashkir ASSR was nearly 2,67 million, with the indigenous population accounting for 23,48% (slightly less than 626). By 1989, the republic's total population had grown to 3,94 million, while the Bashkir share had decreased to 21,91% (less than 864). According to the 2020 census, the republic's population is 4,03 million, with the indigenous ethnic group accounting for 31,5% (almost 1,27 million Bashkirs).

During the Soviet era, the culture of the original ethnic group was preserved in the hinterlands. In the 1980s, hearing Bashkir spoken in the republic's capital, Ufa, was almost impossible, and if it was heard, it was, in the minds of city dwellers, exclusively from the mouths of villagers. 

The collapse of the USSR turned the situation upside down. All regional policy focused on formalizing the status of a federal subject; the most daring even hoped to restore the full range of rights granted to the Bashkirs by Ivan the Terrible (with adjustments to modern borders). Murtaza Rakhimov led the republic from the spring of 1990. He is credited with "fathering" the nationalist movements. 

The practice of studying the Bashkir language existed even in the Soviet Union, but in the 1990s, attempts were made to make it mandatory and universal. Implementation of the plans proved difficult: there were not enough teachers, and resistance from parents of students of non-Bashkir descent was abundant. There was also no well-developed curriculum, and as a result, the curriculum often boiled down to students learning the alphabet throughout the course, and, in the best-case scenario, a few dozen words as well.

Debates between supporters and opponents of mandatory language learning continued until the mid-2010s, sometimes sparking rallies and demonstrations. Against this backdrop, the Kuk-Bure organization emerged in Bashkortostan, initially bringing together primarily members of the Union of Bashkir Youth (a public organization founded in 1990).

According to the testimony of Kuk-bure participant Ramil Rakhmatov (publicist, collaborates with the publication Proofs.rf), the movement was organized by young men dissatisfied with the policies of the SBM leadership, which was loyal to the then-regional government. These ardent youths wanted more active action. 

Nail Fadretdinov and Azat Salmanov are considered the founders of Kuk-Bure. The movement made a name for itself in 2007, with rallies and pickets against the abolition of compulsory language study widely covered in local media.

According to Rakhmatov, during the first years, the activists were supported (including financially) and used in their political intrigues by members of Radiy Khabirov's team. There is even allegedly a video recording of the transfer of money.

The current head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, entered politics in the early 2000s. A lawyer by training, he briefly remained in academia. From 1992 to 1994, he completed his master's degree at Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey), then returned to the law faculty at Bashkir State University as a senior lecturer. In 1998, he received his PhD in law, defending his dissertation, "The Formation and Development of the Right to a Favorable Environment in the Russian Federation." He then became deputy dean, and from 2002 to 2003, he served as the head of his alma mater.

In 2003, Khabirov became head of the administration of Bashkortostan President Murtaza Rakhimov. His resignation and departure from Bashkortostan in 2008 are linked to a criminal case against him. The investigation, however, was closed, and Khabirov continued his political career in Moscow. Until 2016, he was deputy head of the Presidential Directorate for Domestic Policy, and from 2017 to 2018, he headed the Krasnogorsk city administration. 

Fail Alsynov joined Kuk-Bure in early 2008. Almost three years later, he was elected first deputy chairman. Ruslan Gabbasov became deputy chairman in 2011. In 2014, a split occurred within the movement. According to Rakhmatov, the reason for this was a divergence of views.

All Kuk-Bure events were organized around the national component of education. There were also localized brawls, often characterized as "our people are being beaten," when a domestic conflict escalated into confrontations between Bashkir groups and representatives of other ethnicities, such as those from the Caucasus. Alsynov and Gabbasov believed this was insufficient to preserve the Bashkir ethnicity. They left Kuk-Bure and formed the Bashkir public organization "Bashkort."

In 2018, Salmanov announced the dissolution and demise of Kuk-Bure. By then, Bashkort had already eclipsed its predecessor's fame, choosing a broader focus: Alsynov and Gabbasov focused on environmental issues. 

There were once four shikhans in Bashkiria. Detailed exploration of Shakhtau, with extensive drilling, began in the 1950s. By 1975, 35% of the mountain had been cleared; in 2010, it was stated that the remaining raw material would last for six years. In 2011, Bashkir Chemistry JSC (Bashkir Soda Company JSC is a subsidiary) applied for permission to begin developing Toratau and Yurak-Tau. Hearings on the development of Toratau began in 2014.

The newly formed "Bashkort" movement rose to the defense of the shikhan. Protests continued until 2018, when Radiy Khabirov (then acting governor) signed a decree establishing the Toratau Geopark. Kushtau immediately found itself under threat.

Bashkort also made its presence felt in other hot spots in Bashkortostan. Activists invariably appeared wherever the population expressed dissatisfaction with the actions of subsoil developers and natural resource extractors. According to Rakhmatov, this tactic allowed the social movement to expand its ranks at an accelerated pace—in each new locality, the activists established contacts with local activists, who became a kind of "branch."

Alsynov and Gabbasov achieved a level of familiarity with nearly every police station, and arrests eventually became preventative, with activists falling into the hands of law enforcement officers before they could even reach their destination.

_{Fail Alsynov, after another court hearing on another case, 2020; Photo: Proofy.rf}

In May 2020, the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan declared the Bashkort public organization an extremist organization, and its activities were banned at the request of the prosecutor's office.

The events of August and September 2020 shook not only the republic but the entire country. Back in late July, residents of a village at the foot of Kushtau Shikhan noticed equipment. They set up a small camp on the slope. During the first few days, guard duty was mainly carried out by local elders and women with children. They thwarted an attempt to bring equipment carrying loggers up the mountain, and the next day, August 5, private security guards hired by BSK and police arrived and began detaining those gathered. First, fellow villagers flocked to the defenders of the shikhan, then help arrived from nearby towns, and soon people from across the republic and neighboring regions began arriving. By the peak of the events, no one on the slope cared about geography anymore; they knew that practically the entire country was on their side.

When titushki (titushki) arrived to disperse the camp on the night of August 10, Alsynov and his men were there. In the morning, news of the attack on the camp spread across social media. The camp not only held firm, but also grew; by mid-August, the number of people defending the shikhan numbered in the thousands. National Guard forces were deployed to the site, but this didn't stop the activists from tearing down the fence erected by the Bashkir Soviet Union around the shikhan.

Those dissatisfied with the Bashkortostan leader's policies call the standoff over the shikhan a disgrace to Khabirov. For months, he insisted that Kushtau would be developed.

"Because I will never agree to leave thousands of people without work. There's no point in trying to break me, twist me, or bribe journalists or nationalists"—that's just one quote.

Those in power accused the activists of being paid, calling them Wahhabis and extremists. The attempts to discredit the Kushtau residents culminated in Khabirov personally arriving at the shikhan on August 16.

"The BSK is leaving the mountain today, and so are you. I give you my word that no one will reenter the mountain until there's a compromise solution for Kushtau," he declared, standing in the pouring rain. "I'm against extremism and I ask everyone to stop. We all need to stop. I ask the most active to sit down with us at the negotiating table. We're ready to sort out the situation piece by piece. Enough fighting, we won't allow anyone else to do it."

On August 26, Putin commented on the Kushtau situation. He stated that the privatization of BSC had been carried out improperly. By the end of the year, the company's assets had been seized in favor of the state.

The smearing of the defenders continued even after the agreement was reached. In the pro-government public group "Khabirov's Texas," the activists continued to be branded Wahhabis. To prove that they were paid, they claimed that one of Fail Alsynov's associates had paid off a large loan for a foreign car in one day. Many people believed the version of the conflict spread by Khabirov's media outlets. They claimed that the protest played into the Kremlin's hands, and therefore, was orchestrated and sponsored by them.

There's no evidence that the activists were controlled by Moscow. There's only one fact: Khabirov, who insisted until the very end that Kushtau would be taken over by the army, was forced to make a complete about-face. Whether the defenders' determination or orders from above broke him is questionable. It's plausible to assume that the defenders' stubbornness forced Moscow to intervene in the conflict. But Khabirov isn't one to change his tune; he's the type to slam his fist on the table.

In December 2021, Ruslan Gabbasov emigrated to Lithuania. He explained that the decisive factor was the arrest of Liliya Chanysheva, the former head of Navalny's Ufa headquarters (November 2021). Furthermore, the police were investigating the so-called Karmaskaly case (a conflict in the village of Karmaskaly in 2020 that began between a resident and a newcomer, but escalated into a mass interethnic clash; there were mass arrests).

Fail Alsynov remained in Bashkortostan, but appeared less frequently at public events, focusing on his family. On April 28, 2023, Fail arrived in the village of Ishmurzino in the Baimaksky District, where a local gathering, approved by the authorities, was held to discuss the commencement of geological exploration work. The license for this work had been issued a year earlier to a company owned by Vladimir Vardanyan, a businessman from Chelyabinsk.

Alsynov later admitted that he hadn't intended to address the crowd, hadn't prepared, and was literally pushed onto the stage to the microphone, forced to deliver a speech. He spoke in Bashkir.

"I'm glad that the people have begun to wake up, I'm glad that they've begun to fight for their rights," is how the opening part can be translated. Alsynov then lamented that young Bashkirs are dying in someone else's war, leaving only the elderly, women, and children to defend their native land.

Fail called on his fellow tribesmen to give up their alcoholic lifestyle, follow the precepts of Islam, start families, and have children. He also noted that newcomers always have the opportunity to return to their homeland, but the Bashkirs have nowhere to return to; they live in their own land.

Alsynov spoke of "residents of the Caucasus or Central Asia," "Armenians," and "kara halyk." Khabirov interpreted these words as insults. His team spent almost a month preparing the translation, which, as native speakers note, clearly distorted the meaning. Kara halyk literally translates as "black people," but has a broad meaning. This expression can be used to describe laborers or ordinary people.

The translation from Bashkir into Russian initially formed the basis of a denunciation written personally by Khabirov to Bashkortostan Prosecutor Igor Pantyushin, and was later used for linguistic analysis during the preliminary investigation.

The criminal case was opened in August 2023, and Alsynov was charged in October. He shared everything important that happened up until the verdict on his social media. Khabirov's denunciation was also published.

The trial took place in the Baimaksky District. The verdict is scheduled for January 15. 

Did anyone expect around 5 people to gather in support of the accused? Probably not, because, according to eyewitnesses, there were few police officers present. Why the judge didn't read the verdict that day remains unknown; the announcement was postponed until Wednesday, January 17. 

Within two days, security forces had coordinated their efforts, and, according to some estimates, around 2 soldiers from the Internal Army, armed with batons, body armor, smoke bombs, and stun grenades, were sent to court.

Over the same two days, support for the defendant doubled. Alsynov, listening to the verdict, looked out the window. There were many people there he didn't know, had never met, or even met.

We already reported on what happened immediately after the verdict was announced. Law enforcement classified the clashes as mass riots involving violence against government officials.

The number of people detained on administrative charges is currently rapidly approaching 200, with approximately 50 people facing criminal charges. These are only the known cases. Arrests are still ongoing.