The region between the Idel (AKA Volga) river and the Ural mountains was not always an easternmost periphery of Europe. A thousand years ago, it was a prosperous centre of Eurasian cultures, extending trade links to Scandinavia as well as Persia. The city of Bolgar could rival with any western European capital, and its splendour amazed Arab travellers like Ibn Fadlan, who was one of the first Muslim missionaries at the Bolgar court in 922. Bolgar had been founded by the descendants of the notorious Huns, who converted into Islam and balanced between the declining Khazar state and the ascending Viking federation that ultimately became Russia.

Thus the Middle Idel region remained mainly Islamic and non-Russian, and whenever there was a major revolt against Russian colonial rule, the Tatars were joined by the Chuvash, Bashkir, Cheremish (Mari), Mordva and other nations.

In 1917, these nations of the Idel-Ural region founded a common state called Idel-Ural with 14-15 million inhabitants, of whom less than a third part were ethnic Russians. They aspired for autonomy, but were suppressed by the Bolsheviks next year. Soviet Russia applied now the well-known strategy of "divide and rule": instead of a single entity, stretching all the way to the Caspian Sea and bordering to Turkestan, as would have been natural and justified, the region was split into half a dozen different autonomous republics.

The Idel-Ural State is a unique example of solving a national issue on the principles of democracy and human rights. When the national minorities and the autonomous republics of the Russian federation were allowed again to search for their identity and political interests, the idea of a common Idel-Ural federation was reborn!