A lot depends on whether Yagqub is right. Yet the homeland of the Volga Tatars offers a striking counterexample to that conventional wisdom. For Tatarstan is doing just fine, thank you. The killing fields of the northern Caucasus are worlds away from the capital of Kazan. The city, too far east to have been destroyed by invading Germans in World War II, is dominated by beautiful 19th-century buildings.
Crime is less palpable and the economic slump shallower than in the rest of Russia.
Tax policy toward international business is far more liberal than that which suffocates the rest of Russia. Tatarstan, in short, is a hotbed of stability. According to the standard model of competing civilizations, Tatarstan should have broken up long ago. Like Chechnya, Tatarstan has a powerful nationalist movement that once argued forcefully for total independence. The almost even split of its 4 million inhabitants between Christian Slavs and Muslim Tatars would seem an explosive mixture, and indeed mention of the conquest of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible in 1552, when he tore down the main mosque and built a cathedral in its place, can still ignite barroom brawls.