In the late 1980s-early 1990s separatist tendencies in Bashkortostan and also neighbouring Tatarstan - the two Muslim republics of the Russia’s Middle Volga region - have been causing great anxiety for the Kremlin. Since 1989 both Bashkirs and Tatars have followed closely in the footsteps of the Chechens in their desire for sovereignty and independence.  By the fall of 1990 both republics had proclaimed themselves sovereign states. In 1990-1991 Bashkortostan and Tatarstan intended to sign the new Union treaty independently of Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) both Republics desired to become members of the CIS in their own right. In April 1992 Bashkortostan was among the three of Russia’s Muslim republics (together with Chechnya and Tatarstan) that refused to sign the new Federal treaty. The Bashkir delegation only ratified the treaty after winning a number of ‘special’ concessions from Moscow (i.e.  won the right to maintain its own legal and taxation systems). Furthermore, the idea of a joint Bashkir-Tatar confederation independent of Russia has been present on the political scene of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan for almost a century - to the continued chagrin of Moscow.  Thus in the mid 1990’s, Russian policy makers - still reeling from the lessons of Chechnya - are faced with a Middle-Volga region controlled by nationalist and separatist minded elites, possessing a high degree of local autonomy, seemingly reading themselves towards the push for full-fledged independence.

    Both Bashkortostan and Tatarstan lie at the strategic juncture of European Russia, the Urals and Central Asia and possess an abundance of oil deposits and other mineral resources. Both are highly developed industrial regions of Russia (in the early 1980s Bashkortostan was the seventh largest of 73 industrial regions of RSFSR and today has one of the largest oil-refining capacities in the Commonwealth of Independent States ). Both contain a high ratio of Islamic Turkic peoples within their population (i.e. in Bashkortostan the Bashkirs and Tatars make up 50.8% of the populace .). This last issue is especially significant due to historical memories of the Bashkir and Tatar struggles against Russian colonisation and simultaneous Christianisation in the sixteenth-to-eighteenth centuries. Both Bashkirs and Tatars have had experience with their own autonomous governments in 1917-1921, further enhancing separatist tendencies during the contemporary period.