Chuvash scholars opinions were summed up in The Bulghars and the Chu-vash, a collection of papers published in 1984. The authors stressed the continu-ity between the Bulghars and the Chuvash in a variety of aspects, claiming that the Kazan khanate did not have a direct relationship to Volga Bulgharia, deny-ing a mass Turkification in the pre-Bulghar period, advocating the Inner-Asianorigin of the Chuvash, and denouncing autochtonous approaches. It seems that the autochtonous line of the 1950 conference that minimized the role of the Bulghars in the Chuvash ethnic history inspired a deep hatred of autochtonism among Chuvash scholars. Meanwhile, this books authors included not only Chuvash scholars but also Kuzeev, who emphasized the need to study the eth-nic history of historical-ethnographic regions rather than one specific ethnos, and suggested that there were ancient relationships between the Chuvash and the Bashkirs.
Prior to The Bulghars and the Chuvash, Kuzeev published a fundamental work of 571 pages on Bashkir ethnogenesis. He closely examined the history of tribes in various localities, using oral and written sources as well as the marks (tamgas) of tribes. Further developing the propositions he wrote in the Outlines of the History of Bashkir ASSR, he described how the Bashkirs were formed in stages, from various ethnic communities. Generally, Bashkir ethnic history was not so politicized as Tatar and Chuvash ones. It was clear to everyone that Bulghar elements existed but were not decisive in Bashkir ethnic history. Al-though Tatars have often challenged the existence of the Bashkir nation on the level of daily conversation (northern Bashkirs are similar to the Tatars in many ways because of the latters cultural influence as well as intermarriage), Bash-kir scholars have had no serious contentious issues with scholars of neighbor-ing peoples in the field of ethnogenetics.