Tatarstan legislators recommend rejecting bill that would make 1480 end of Tatar-Mongol yoke a national Russian holiday

The State Council of Tatarstan will send a negative review to Russia’s federal State Duma regarding a newly proposed national holiday. The holiday would be scheduled for November 11 to mark the end of the Great Stand on the Ugra River, a 1480 standoff between the Muscovite prince Ivan III and Akhmat Khan. Russian historians consider Ivan’s victory in the Great Stand to have signaled the end of Tatar-Mongol rule in Muscovy, a regime commonly known as the Tatar-Mongol yoke.

According to Kommersant, a joint hearing of Tatarstan’s state construction committee and its Committee on Education, Culture, Science, and National Issues voted unanimously to recommend that the State Duma reject the new holiday. A formal absentee vote on the matter for Tatarstan’s entire State Council will be held on August 28.

The republic’s legislators and scholars have argued that celebrating the Great Stand on the Ugra River would only divide Russians and Tatars, sowing “interethnic discord, hatred, and prejudice.” One group of State Council deputies said the proposal for the holiday included “elements of extremism,” Kommersant reported.

The bill was first introduced to the State Duma by the government of Russia’s Kaluga region, whose officials argued that the holiday would “strengthen the patriotic consciousness of our citizens and popularize domestic history.” The Russian federal executive branch has supported the initiative. The State Duma will collect comments on the bill until September 2 and hold its first vote on the issue this fall.