The self-immolation of one of the public leaders of the Udmurt people, the scientist Albert Razin, as a protest against the policy of Russification and ethnocide of the Udmurt people, has, as expected, found wide resonance among the national intelligentsia of all the indigenous peoples of the country.
We have already written about our attitude to this act from Islamic positions (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=37163) and we will not repeat ourselves. Therefore, we will only note that, despite the different attitudes of people of different religious beliefs, almost all of them, belonging to peoples facing the same challenges as the Udmurts, could not help but perceive this tragedy as their own.
Naturally, representatives of national movements of peoples with common roots and traditions with the Udmurtians, such as the Komi, Erzhyan, Chuvash, and Yakut, expressed their condolences to Razin’s family and fellow tribesmen. But the representatives of the Muslim peoples did not stand aside either. Thus, the Milli Mejlis of the Tatar people, representatives of the Congress of the Karachay people, the Circassian Council «Adyghe Khasa» and the banned Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people officially addressed and expressed their condolences.
On the other hand, the official authorities of the Russian Federation tried to remain silent and downplay this tragedy, presenting it as the death of an individual without any societal dimension and without affecting the state’s policy towards the indigenous peoples. The authorities’ policy was exemplified by the evacuation of the spontaneously created memorial site where the self-immolation took place — flowers, photos and other objects brought by the people were removed yesterday.
However, not all fighters for the rights of Russia’s indigenous peoples are ready to bring such joy to their enemies as Razin, whose death was openly celebrated by prominent chauvinists in discussions about this news, and some expressed the desire to bring a can of gasoline or a bundle of firewood to the next person who is ready to repeat this act.
For example, yesterday in Kyiv, representatives of the related Erzyan people, who are one of the two main peoples of Mordovia alongside the Moksha, inaugurated their new leader — the inyazor, Bolayenya Syresya, at the Maidan Museum.
He received the baton and national symbols from the previous leader, who came from Russia, which is symbolic and indicative in the sense that the Erzyans prefer their leader to be in neighboring Ukraine, which Kremlin propaganda portrays as a breeding ground for Nazism, rather than in the country where they are one of the indigenous peoples and where such national leaders have already begun to self-immolate.
Besides a number of Ukrainian politicians, including the former speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Andriy Parubiy, representatives of Muslim peoples and organizations also came to the inauguration ceremony of the leader of the Erzyans — Eskender Baryev, representative of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars, and Said Ismagilov, Mufti of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Ukraine «Ummah».