Hand Pulled Noodles: How To Make Classic Uyghur Laghman From Scratch | Beef Edition
Laghman noodle recipe: all purpose flour 250 gr • two pinches of salt • water 110ml
Laghman sauce: beef 237 gr • sunflower/corn oil 110ml • onion 1x • long green paprika 3x • sweet red paprika 1/2 • tomato 2x, 218 gr • ginger powder 1/2 tsp • ground Szichuan pepper 1 tsp • salt 1tsp • soy sauce 1tbsp • water 110ml
Source: Dolan Chick (YouTube), 20 December 2020
On Wednesday, a local court in the Orenburg region handed out prison sentences to four participants of peaceful rallies in support of Indigenous activist Fayil Alsynov.
Up to 5,000 people gathered in Bashkortostan’s southeastern Baymak district in January last year to protest the imprisonment of Alsynov, a prominent Indigenous rights and environmental campaigner. The protests were followed by sweeping arrests.
Aydar Yusupov, Ilnaz Makhmutov, Zaki Ilyasov and Vallyam Mutallapov, who will spend from three to four years in a penal colony, are among more than 80 men and women facing criminal prosecution in the “Baymak case,” the largest political trial in Russia’s history.
To mark the first anniversary of the Baymak events, Kremlin-installed authorities in Bashkortostan released a propaganda film “The Anatomy of Bashkir Nationalism. The Baymak Tragedy” produced by state-aligned journalist Timur Valitov.
In her piece for From the Republics, Bashkort social researcher Iliuza Mukhamedianova considers why regional authorities invested in the film and aired it during prime time, as well as how carefully crafted smear campaign against the protesters could impact Bashkortostan’s civil society.
Kremlin-Funded Propaganda Fuels Destabilization in Bashkortostan
By Iliuza Mukhamedianova
25 minutes. That’s how much time the creators of “The Anatomy of Bashkir Nationalism” dedicate to speaking about the local national organization “Bashqort.” This is almost a third of the entire movie.
But why pay such close attention to an organization dismantled back in 2020, long before the protests in Baymak?
Perhaps, that’s the easiest way to construct an image of an almighty enemy.
In the film, “Bashqort” — an organization that aimed to reinstate Bashkortostan’s sovereignty and preserve the Bashkort language and culture — is portrayed as the ultimate evil. The filmmakers place sole responsibility for the Baymak protests on “Bashqort” members, accusing them of “extremism” and collaboration with “foreign enemy states.”
Demonizing an organization that no longer exists helps to absolve Bashkortostan’s authorities of responsibility, legitimizes their actions, and justifies their brutal response to the protests.
The film also glances over the fact that protests in Baymak were not organized by a single group like “Bashqort” or one individual but were instead a grassroots action, an organic reaction to the sentencing of activist Fayil Alsynov.
Neither does the film mention who killed protester Rifat Dautov or who tortured the many Baymak detainees. And that’s truly a shame because these are the questions we, the people of Baymak, would like to have answered.
The Baymak protests would not have gained momentum without extensive media coverage — the authorities understand this well.
So in addition to “Bashqort,” the film also singles out journalists and bloggers who covered the Baymak events on social media as “enemies.” By discrediting these people — who have large social media audiences — the filmmakers aim to undermine the trust of their followers and tighten their grip on information space by instilling fear.
However, these attempts are doomed to fail.
Bashkort society is deeply interconnected — everyone has a family member, a friend, or a friend of a friend who participated in the protests.
The true causes and consequences of Baymak events are clear to the majority of the population, especially to speakers of the Indigenous Bashkort language.
Of course, the large number of arrests in the “Baymak case” has had a significant impact on civil society. Most have stopped speaking openly about regional politics out of fear of further repression. Most are unlikely to take to the streets for another protest.
But that doesn’t mean conversations about the protests have disappeared entirely. Behind closed doors, people continue to discuss news and exchange opinions.
Along with fear, anger is building up. This film only catalyzes that feeling.
For the authorities, the policy of instilling fear could backfire. The most talented young individuals are leaving the republic at the first opportunity, while an array of social issues remains unresolved due to the lack of open discussion, and trust in local institutions has been irreversibly undermined.
People in Bashkortostan no longer have an outlet for expressing their opinions. And this could lead to the most extreme outcome — radicalization charged by militarization of the society.
“The Anatomy of Bashkir Nationalism” tries to sell viewers a certain image of “stability” by emphasizing how important it is to live in peace and harmony within and with the Russian Federation and to fight for its interests.
But the authorities likely do not realize that films like this only polarize the society further and, in doing so, destabilize Bashkortostan.
Source: From the Republics: Weekly, 21 March 2025. From the Republics: Weekly describes itself as “the first-ever English-language newsletter spotlighting Russia’s ethnic republics and minoritized communities.” You can sign up for the newsletter and donate money to support it at From the Republics.
[…]
Russia’s most populous ethnic republic, Bashkortostan is located between the Volga River to the west and the Ural Mountains to the east. Bashkorts, the region’s Indigenous Kipchak Turkic ethnic group conquered by Russians in the 16th century, make up 31.5 percent of the republic’s population. Russians (37.5 percent) and Volga Tatars (24.2 percent) are the two other largest groups, followed by Mari, Chuvash, and Udmurt people.
The first autonomous republic of the Soviet Union, Bashkortostan issued a declaration of state sovereignty in October 1990, though soon went on to sign a federal power-sharing agreement with Moscow. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin took office in 2000, the region has been gradually stripped of nearly all its sovereign rights.
For several days in January [2024], thousands of residents of Bashkortostan came together to protest the imprisonment of Bashkort activist Fayil Alsynov, one of the region’s most vocal advocates for Indigenous rights and a fierce critic of the extractivist colonial policies of the Kremlin and its local cronies.
Up to 5,000 people gathered outside a courthouse in the region’s southeastern town of Baymak on Jan. 15, the day of Alsynov’s expected sentencing on charges of “inciting interethnic hatred.” Likely startled by the size of the crowd outside, Judge Elina Tagirova then postponed the final hearing to Jan. 17.
On Jan. 17, a far larger crowd gathered at the scene again, defying an official warning from regional police, preemptive arrests of activists, and temperatures of minus 21 degrees Celsius in the frozen Urals. Some had made early morning journeys for several hours through snowy roads of southeastern Bashkortostan.
Alsynov’s main supporters are his fellow Bashkorts but others, including ethnic Russians and Volga Tatars, were among the protesters. So were men and women of all ages, white-collar workers, farmers, students, school teachers, opposition politicians, business owners, bloggers, veteran activists, and many others.
Though many of them hoped for a suspended sentence for Alsynov, the activist was eventually sentenced to four years in a penal colony. When the protesters refused to leave the scene following the verdict, riot police used smoke grenades, tear gas, and batons to disperse the crowd. As many as 40 people were forced to seek medical attention following clashes with the police.
At least one of the people detained sustained life-threatening injuries in custody, and two men facing criminal investigation, 37-year-old Rifat Dautov and 65-year-old Minniyar Bayguskarov, died under unclear circumstances.
Russian commentators in both pro-Kremlin and anti-Putin liberal camps were quick to label the protests in Bashkortostan as “riots” with “ethnic nationalist” and “separatist” undertones that seemingly flared up out of the blue. Some even likened the events to the antisemitic riots that swept the capital of Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan last October.
But the recent protests—as I can say through my years of research there and intimate familiarity with the region’s politics—were neither of these things. Instead of being “nationalistic,” the protests ignited by Alsynov’s imprisonment were a manifestation of deeply rooted discontent with the ruthless exploitation of Bashkortostan’s resources by the Kremlin and its local cronies.
[…]
Source: Leyla Latypova, “Russia’s Democratic Future Won’t Start in Moscow,” Foreign Policy, 21 February 2024. You can read this important article in its entirety at the link.
The power of words and language should never be underestimated. As peaceful protests go, the evening of poetry organised by the local CND branch at Chelsea Town Hall on 15 April 1981 seems both civilised and moving. Poetry proves a great medium to communicate the anger, fears, questions and absurdities that arise under the threatening shadow of mass destruction.
Among the performers are Ivor Cutler, Adrian Henri, Ruth Fainlight and Harold Pinter.
Source: BFI (YouTube), 19 December 2017
