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Bashkirs
The Bashkirs (their own name for themselves is Bashkort) is a Turkic-speaking people inhabiting predominantly the western slopes and foothills of the Urals and the adjoining plains; it is the indigenous people of the Republic of Bashkortostan. In keeping with the 1989 census, there are 1,345,300 Bashkirs living in the Russian Federation, or 92.8% of the Bashkir population of the former USSR. Bashkortostan has a population of 863,100 or 59.6% of the total number of Bashkirs. Rather numerous Bashkir groups reside in Chelyabinsk Region (161,300), Orenburg Region (53,300), Perm Region (52,300), Sverdlovsk Region (41,500), Tyumen Region (41,100), and Kurgan Region (17,500), and in the Republic of Tatarstan (19,100). There are also Bashkirs living in the territory of some CIS countries: Kazakhstan (41,800), Uzbekistan (34,800), Ukraine (7,400), Tajikistan (6,800), Turkmenia (4,700), and Kirghizia (4,000).
The Bashkirs speak the Bashkir language belonging to the Kipchak (north-western) division of the Turkic family. A part of the Bashkirs speak Russian and Tatar. The majority of them are Sunni Moslems. Islam proliferated in the territory of Western Bashkortostan in the early 10th century. In the 14th century, it became the dominant religion in the Golden Horde, which included the Bashkir lands.
The core of the Bashkir race was formed by ancient Turkic tribes originally hailing from the Sayan-Altai table-land, Central Asia, South Siberia and Middle Asia. From the 10th to the early 13th century, the Bashkirs were under the political influence of Volga Bulgaria and had as their neighbors the Kuman-Kipchaks.In 1236, the Bashkirs joined the Golden Horde. After the fall of Kazan (1552), the Bashkirs became Russian subjects. Russia recognized their right to own their lands on the allodial principle and to obey their customs and religion. Later, when the Russian authorities came to breach the terms of the contract, the Bashkirts repeatedly rose in revolt.
In the 19th century, the Bashkirs significantly grew in number, exceeding one million people in 1897. By 1922, however, their numbers decreased almost by half. Towards the end of 1926 (following the demographically favorable 1923-1926 period), their total number in the country added up to 714,000, of whom 584,800 lived in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within its present borders. The Bashkir people was again decimated by the drought and famine that struck in 1932 - 1933 and then again by the Great Patriotic War, reaching its pre-revolution level only in 1989. The post-war decades saw some substantial changes in the social and demographic fabric of Bashkir society. The proportion of urban dwellers, which was 1.8% in 1926 and 5.8% in 1938, rose to 14.5% by 1989.
In the administrative respect, the bulk of the Bashkirs were in the Ufa uyezd before the 1730s, in the Government of Orenburg between 1744 and the mid-19th century, and the Government of Ufa thereafter. The Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was established in 1919, the Bashkir Soviet Socialist Republic in 1990, and the Republic of Bashkortostan in 1992.
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