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