The conversion to Orthodoxy of the pro-Kremlin Tatars

The Russian religious authorities are aiming to reconcile Tatar identity with national orthodoxy to dampen latent separatist urges. The 'Ukraine' factor. The Tatar conference seems to be a "special spiritual operation" in Crimea and Tatarstan.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The 8th Orthodox Conference on the "Mission among Turkic-speaking peoples" was held in Moscow, described by various commentators as an "assembly of Orthodox Tatars loyal to the Kremlin", writes Idel.Realii observer Kharun Sidorov, a Tatar activist and jurist who emigrated to the Czech Republic. There were hardly any Tatar speakers at the conference, underlining the propagandistic nature of the initiative.

The religious aspect was in fact secondary, although the possibility of ethnic Tatars converting to Orthodoxy, although guaranteed by the Russian Constitution, appears to be a poor proselytising initiative. Rather, the topic was the possibility of reconciling Tatar identity with Russian Orthodoxy, for a verification of the roots of ethnic patriotism against the backdrop of latent separatist urges.

The conference was organised by the Missionary Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, under the chairmanship of Archbishop Kallistrat (Romanenko), head of the Siberian eparchy of Gornoaltaj, and animated by Deacon Konstantin Gavlo and laywoman Dinara Bukharova (see photo), the only ethnic Tatar. The 'Tatar Orthodox' group has officially met for seven years, but remains in the hands of ethnic Russian clergymen.

Kallistrat himself is a Moscow bishop leading an ethnically Mongolian territory, and represents the traditional model of 'Orthodox colonisation' of Asian peoples on the territory of the Russian Federation.

The conference was opened by the greeting of the Metropolitan of Kazan, capital of Tatarstan, Kirill (Nakonečnyj), read by his secretary, the hieromonk Kirill (Korytko). A paradoxical concept resonated in the text, according to which the parallel group of 'Russian Muslims', organised in the 'Norm' association, must always be reported in inverted commas, both because 'a Russian cannot be a Muslim', and because almost only people with Ukrainian surnames head this formation.

Moreover, even the speakers at the Orthodox conference were almost all of Ukrainian origin, as is often the case at gatherings of the Russian Church, which has its broadest and deepest roots in Ukraine. This suggests, says Sidorov, that 'although in the ideology of the 'Russian World' Ukrainians and Russians are one people, on this occasion it seemed that Ukrainians were related to Turks'.

Among the participants were the vice-president of the National Congress of Tatars, Aleksandr Sokurov, and the leader of a fictional 'Community of Tatars, Bashkars, Kazakhs and other Turkic-speaking peoples' of the Orthodox eparchy of Buzuluk, Oleg Bykov, also of Ukrainian-Russian origin.

These and similar speakers emphasised the importance of preserving the original Tatar names at the Orthodox baptism, as protoierej Maksim Obukhov argued: 'Ildar should be baptised as Ildar, and Mukhamed as Mukhamed, one cannot deny the newly baptised the right to keep the name given to them by their parents'. Yet the few ethnic Tatar conference participants all had their names Russified.

Bukharova herself addressed her Tatar compatriots, urging them to 'preserve the traditions of our fathers even in the Orthodox variant, calling Jesus Christ by the Turkish name Gaysja Mjasikha, without taking off the "tjubetejka", the Muslim headdress, even if you wear the cross'. No tjubetejka was noticeable among those present at the conference.

Bukharova also supported the idea of celebrating the Orthodox liturgies in the Tatar language, to "pray to the Lord in one's own language", an element excluded from the Church's own doctrine, which rigidly maintains Slavonic-Ecclesiastical in the celebrations, without making room for Russian.

As Sidorov observes, alongside the absence of ethnic Tatar personalities, the abundance of the 'imperial hawks' of Russian Orthodoxy, such as the well-known priest Andrej Tkačev and the head of the Union of Orthodox Citizens, Kirill Frolov, was noticeable at the conference, one of the propagandists since the 1990s of the 'deconstruction of Ukraine in the Russian World', dividing it into the two regions of 'Novorossija' and 'Malorossija', so much so that the Tatar conference is actually a 'special spiritual operation' in Crimea and Tatarstan.

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