Lomography

Republic of Bashkortostan (Ufa)
written by grad on August 14th, 2008 , one comment (3 votes)

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Republic of Bashkortostan is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). It is located between the Volga river and the Ural Mountains. Its capital is Ufa. Much of Bashkortostan’s economy depends on its oil processing industry, which is a left-over from Soviet times and has seen little investment since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most of the industry, nominally privatized, has in fact been granted to the factions close to the president’s family. More than half of Bashkortostan’s industry is based in Ufa, the republic’s capital.

Bashkortostan contains part of the southern Urals and the adjacent plains. There are over 13,000 rivers in the republic. Many rivers are parts of deep water transportation system of European Russia; they provide access to ports of the Baltic and the Black seas. There are 2,700 lakes and reservoirs in the republic.

The republic contains part of the southern Urals, which stretch from the northern to the southern border. According to the 2002 Census the ‘national composition’ was • Russian 36.32% • Bashkir 29.76% • Tatar 24.14% • Chuvash 2.86% • Mari 2.58% • Ukrainian 1.35% • Mordovian 0.63% • Udmurt 0.55% • Belarusians 0.42% • Armenian 0.21% • German 0.20% • Uzbek 0.13% • Azeri 0.12% • Kryashen 0.11% • Kazakh 0.10% • Tajik 0.07% • Jewish 0.06% • and various other groups of less than two thousand persons each. An additional 0.11% of the inhabitants declined to state their nationality on the census questionnaire. Spoken languages: Russian (~100%), Tatar (34%), Bashkir (26%).

It is believed by some Tatars that the 2002 Census misrepresented the numbers of Tatars and Bashkirs in favor of the latter ¹. The reality is that ethnic identity in northwestern Bashkortostan is extremely fluid, and many people in that region have changed their ethnic identification, usually under pressure from the authorities of Bashkortostan which are trying to artificially increase the ratio of ethnic Bashkirs within the population of the republic Adherants of Islam account about 72% of the population with the rest primarily Orthodox Christians.