SRC Winter Symposium Socio-Cultural Dimensions of the Changes in the Slavic-Eurasian World ( English / Japanese )

Sergei Arutiunov
(Institute of Ethnography, RAS)

Copyright (c) 1996 by the Slavic Research Center( English / Japanese ) All rights reserved.

4. The Eastern part of the North Caucasus - the Republic of Daghestan.

The Republic of Daghestan, with its more than 2 mln population, is the largest republic in the North Caucasus. There are at least thirty quite distinct ethnic groups which are endemic for Daghestan, i.e. their languages belong to the Daghestanic sub-family, they live here since times immemorial and only recently some of their members began to settle outside from Daghestan. There are also several Turkic-speaking groups - Kumyk, Nogai, Terekemeh, Derbend Turks (usually considered Azeris) and some other groups, originating from other areas but residing here for centuries,

None of these groups can be regarded as having attained the level of development, sufficient to call it a nation. Avars are the largest and one of the most economically and culturally developed entities among them, but there is no Avaristan in the proper sense of the word, there are only several districts, not even forming a completely continuous territory, with relatively or, more rarely, absolutely predominant Avar population. There are newspapers and broadcasting in Avar, as well as in Dargin, Lezghin, and a dozen of other languages, but there is no Avar school network (though there are schools with teaching Avar), there are no Avar cultural institutions, only all-Daghestani cultural institutions, where in many cases Avars may predominate, but in other cases they do not. The same can be said about any of some thirty-odd wholly aboriginal and endemic ethnic groups of Daghestan ranging from 1 thousand (Archins) to nearly 700 thousands (Avars), to which one may also add many thousands of people belonging to non-aboriginal entities, like Russians, Azeris etc., who live there however, already for centuries and consider Daghestan their home. The Highlander Jews, who speak the Tat language (a kind of archaic Persian), for example, consider themselves completely aboriginal and view the Southern Daghestan (as well as Northern Azebaidjan) as their ethnic homeland.

Prior to Sovietization the overwhelming majority of these people lived as compact groups on their own ethnic territories, in one secluded mountain valley or a number of adjacent valleys, sometimes, like the Avars of Unkratl', separated from the rest of their ethnic mass by the territories of other tribes, but nevertheless maintaining their general integrity. It was a mosaic, but basically an orderly mosaic, with its definite pattern and structure. At least everybody knew where his homeland was, even if he currently lived in a different place, and nobody would think to claim a territory of another tribe as his own ethnic territory. Nevertheless even then the mosaic was so complicated, and the relations between tribes and nationalities, clans and lineages, feudal ruling dynasties and self-governed democratic communities were so peculiarly intertwined, that many Caucasologists were inclined to consider Daghestan as the third separate constituent part of the whole Caucasus area, alongside the Northern Caucasus extending from Krasnodar (former Ekaterinodar) to Chechenia, and Transcaucasia, ranging from Abkhazia to Baku.

The Soviet regime disturbed this relative balance and harmony and transformed it into the worst state of ethnic chaos more, than in any other part of Russia. Voluntaristically minded Communist authorities exiled some groups (like Akkin-Chechens) and later allowed to them to return to Daghestan, not, however, to their former territories, but to territories, already occupied for centuries by other tribes. They resettled from the hills many other groups of people, allegedly suffering from a lack of arable lands, like most of the Laks from the Kazi-Kumukh district, as well as a considerable part of Dargins, Tsezy and many others, and placed them in the lowlands, to provide manpower for newly developed plantations of commercial technical crops. Not only did these resettled groups suffer from mass epidemic diseases, possessing no immunity against them in an alien environment, but they also suffered from alienation and a hostile attitude to newcomers among an ethnically alien population.

The new Communist rulers had designed the place for the capital city of Daghestan (Makhach-Kala) in the heart of the ethnic territory of Turkic speaking lowland Kumyks and invited thousands of Avars, Dargins and others to come here and get administrative and industrial jobs. Initially, and still in the 1920's, Kumyks were the most advanced national group in Daghestan, and their language served as the 'lingua franca' for all highlanders, so that to be fluent in Kumyk meant to be sophisticated, advantaged and prepared for social mobility. In the 1920's, of all newspapers, Kumyk newspapers formed about 70 %. However, later the Russian language took the position of 'lingua franca,' and Avars and partly Dargins had more representation at the decision-making levels and in key positions.

As a result, now Kumyks feel like a deprived minority in their own homeland. Similar shifts, displacements, change of hands in power happened in other places throughout Daghestan.

The results were overall tensions and claims by everybody on everybody. If a blood-shedding conflict ever starts in Daghestan it will expand like a prairie fire and will not stop for decades. But so far it has not started and there is some hope that it never will start, because people seem to understand this danger.

The Gordian knot of Daghestan mutual claims, grievances, memories and pretensions is so big and so complex, that nobody dares to start to pull out its threads, let alone to try to cut it with a sword.

Besides, again, within one ethnic group, discrepancies in interests may often be stronger than between groups. People may be angry with municipal housing provided to members of another ethnic group, newcomers in town, or against an unfair distribution of subsidies for a certain purpose (oddly enough, recently there was a distribution of subsidized voyages for a Hadjj to the Saudi Arabia) or against the appointment of a person of undesirable ethnicity to some key position (a judge, or a chief of local police). They may rally, shout, demonstrate, write petitions, but very rarely will there be some minor kind of violence, like a beating, and almost never, a killing.

In all republics of North Caucasus (except Chechenia and Ingushetia) the power is in the hands of former communist functionaries, but this is especially typical and ubiquitous in Daghestan. People support their leaders (mayors, magistrates etc.) not because they are communists, but because they are known as leaders, because they have some experience in leadership, and mainly because the leaders are their relatives, kinsmen, clansmen, tribesmen, former teachers and just traditionally respected people.

The privatization of arable land in Daghestan is among the things that the current pro-Communist authorities would like to avoid at any cost, and this is guite understandable. Apart from the fact that privatization of land would undermine the very basis of their power, it would be a really very dangerous undertaking.

Given the terrible scarcity of arable lands, and an enormous agrarian overpopulation, it would be impossible to provide even a microscopic parcel of land to everybody entitled to get it. There would be innumerable protests against giving land to 'newcomers,' even when they are settled in a particular village since the 1930's, and there would be innumerable claims to property that belonged to a particular family hundreds of years ago.

In many areas, tiny parcels of land, plots with three or four apple trees standing on them, were efficiently incorporated into the collective property of large state controlled farms. But even when they were technically and practically considered, managed, cultivated and harvested as a collective or state property, they still were remembered as initially belonging to a certain family, and as such, used to be symbolically declared as a token part of a dowry or a bride price, and there have been invariably some witnesses to these declarations. However, opinions of witnesses may differ, and there are no written documents, so as the result, every parcel of privatized land would have today scores of claimants.

It seems that the only viable social, political and economic system, able to operate in the urban, industrial part of Daghestan, can be only the current quasi-Soviet system, just as the sole lingua franca for people speaking 30 different languages can be only Russian. But local dialects and local cultural traditions will long persist in the countryside, especially in the remote mountain valleys.

The economic situation currently in Daghestan is rather grave. It is true, that in no region of the Russian Federation it is particularly good today, but Daghestan is among the poorest, most overpopulated, unemployment-stricken republics of the Caucasus. The major part of industry in the urban areas is connected with the military-industrial complex, and there is not much hope that it may soon recover. So in Daghestan, just as in the territories immediately West of it, it may be expected that the cleavage between the multi-ethnic, detribalized, partly de-ethnicized urban areas and the tradition-oriented, largely self-supporting, agricultural and pastoral communities in the isolated highlands will be aggrevated in the future.

Formerly, under the Communist regime, small-numbered tribes and nationalities were forced at least technically to merge with larger groups. Andi, Tsezi, Botlikhs, Godoberis, Bagwalals, Chamalals, and many other tribes, with distinct languages of their own, numbering 5-8 thousands each, were declared to be local groups of Avars, a one-village nationality of Kubachis (Urbugans), a 'nation' of goldsmiths and artisans, were considered to be a sub-group of Dargins, etc. Today there is no such pressure and it can be expected that local craftsmen or agricultural specialization, combined with a revival of local festivals, customs, popular beliefs, will continue to produce in the highland areas a more and more diversified cultural pattern.

On the other hand, in many lowland and urban areas, where an extreme ethnic mosaicity had been created artificially by the Soviet regime, it will hardly be reduced. There are reasons to believe, that, with the agrarian overpopulation in the highlands and the growing desire among young people to find employment in the cities, it is going to increase even more. It would be premature to expect that in a not too distant future there is going to be a merging of all national groups and a formation of something like a Russian-speaking 'Lowland Daghestani nation,' but a certain levelling of national specificities in the urban context will probably be inevitable.

The various peoples of the Caucasus, even the largest of them, stand at various levels of ethnic consolidation and assertion of their identity. While Chechenians are a practically accomplished nation, and some other groups, like Kabardins, Ossetes, Ingushes, are very close to this level, others, like Balkars, obviously are in a transitionary stage and cannot so far act as self-sufficient nations, even if the right to do this would be granted to them.

The less a certain nationality has developed the emerging prerequisites for nationhood, the less developed is the literary standard of the local vernacular, or the smaller the number and circulation of books and newspapers published in this language, the less the ethnic group in question tends to display a tendency towards separatism and formation of an independent or semi-independent state. Rather, they would prefer, under certain conditions, in many cases, as the above-mentioned cases of Abkhazia or South Ossetia, a change of patronage, i.e. with which larger nation they prefer to associated. Even the Karabaghtsi Armenians in the seceded autonomous province of Azerbaidjan, later declared as a self-styled Republic of Karabagh, initially only demanded not to be in subordination to Azerbaidjan. The Karabaghtsis did not insist initially either on independence, or even on merging with Armenia, and would be happy to be accepted as one of the constituent parts of the Russian Federation.

Although Daghestan is much bigger than any other North-Caucasian republic, and does possess some cultural institutions, which are absent in other republics, (i.e. a Daghestan Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), the level of national development and the feeling of identity here is considerably less strong than among Chechenians, Ossetians, Kabardins or even Karachais. The feeling of identity as an Avar, or Dargin, or Tabassaran etc. is always diluted and combined with a certain feeling of general Daghestani identity, and at the same time with the identity of a local group or even village.

No ethnic group in Daghestan today can be considered as a real candidate for nationhood; even the largest of them, Avars, or the second largest group, Dargins, are no exception. Two other large ethnic groups, Kumyks and Lezgins, can be placed into the category of nationalities which are developing certain features of nations, like Abkhazians or Balkars. They probably could in a rather short time make a transition to the level of nations, if their basic current demands could be satisfied.

But these demands, as is natural for an ethnic group which is on the verge of becoming a nation, consist of the proposed creation of not independent, but separate, republics of Kumykistan and Lezgistan, separated from the rest of Daghestan. This, however, is hardly possible and anyway would be extremely dangerous for many reasons. Avars, on the other hand, would have all the opportunities for becoming a full-scale nation, should they not be sticking to the idea of their dominant position in Daghestan, and drawing to them a dozen different ethnic entities, mostly of the so-called Ando-Didoic group.

In other words they would be a perfectly well-defined nation in a separate and ethnically homogeneous Avaristan, but today, due to the perverted national policy of the Bolshevik era, the majority of their national intelligentsia is concentrated in the capital of Daghestan, Makhach-Kala, in the heart of the Kumyk ethnic territory. Many Avars are scattered in the rest of Daghestan, as a result of getting appointments to some administrative position. Apart from the bulk of their ethnic territory, they are also settled in some pockets which are ethnically homogeneous by themselves, but territorially separated from the core of Avar lands.

Though Avars implicitely claim the position of undisputed leader of Daghestan, all other nationalities in Daghestan are not associated with them either culturally or linguistically, i.e. their bilingualism is in most cases not Native-Avar, but rather Native -Russian, their children go to Russian schools, not Avar schools, and so on.

All this means that smaller ethnic groups of Daghestan, like Tsezy or Bezhti, are in fact more associated not with Avars, but with Russians - over the head of Avars. The same situation exists with Cherkess in Karachai-Cherkessia, with Balkars in Kabardin-Balkaria, and it was so in the joint republic of Chechen-Ingushetia. Only with the formation of an ethnically homogeneous Ingushetia, separated from Chechenia, was the beginning of formation of the Ingush nation possible.

And it is not accidental, that while Chechens are rather stubbornly demanding complete independence, Ingushes, who are as closely related to Chechens, as for example, as Belarussians to Russians, or Catalans to Spaniards, in spite of some sympathies to Chechens, still preferred to sign the Federal Treaty, to abstain from openly helping the fighting in Chechenia and to remain basically loyal to the Federal Government.

The question remains, whether one can speak today about tribes as an ethnic reality of modern Russia. Of course, there are no tribes in Russia which retain tribal organization, like tribal chiefs, counsils, and so on. In the majority of cases, they have never been such tribes, either. I think that at least ethnic entities without a script of their own, or only with a mostly nominal script, like Entsy, Kets, Mansi or Koriaks in Siberia, or like Archins, Bezhtins, Tsezy, Khvarshins in Daghestan, can be regarded as tribes. They are tribal in the sense that ethnic identity effectively remains with their members only while they live on their 'tribal' territory and continue to pursue their traditional occupations. As soon as they enter any industrial activity, they become rapidly de-ethnicized. A person in Highland Daghestan would call himself Inkhoqwari in his own or neighborly village, a Khvarshin in a more remoted village, would probably prefer to pretend to be an Avar in Makhach-Kala (the capital of Daghestan), and just say 'I am a Daghestani' when he comes to Moscow.

If there are some poets, composers, scholars from among these people, they do not form a stratum of a national intelligentsia, but are rather regarded as tribal heroes.

Of course, there are also a number of transitional cases between tribes and nationalities, like Tsakhurs or Rutuls in Daghestan, or Dolgans in Siberia, but transitional cases are practically everywhere and in everything, especially when we are dealing with so diffuse and fluid a subject as ethnicity.

It is easy to observe that the political demands of tribes differ from those of nationalities. Usually they are limited to cultural issues such as providing a script, revival of native language, freedom and resuscitation of traditional religion etc. Important too, are demands of an ecological nature (against oil prospectors, wood cutters etc.) and claims to communal territories and the sovereignty of communes over them.

So far tribal voices have not been very audible in Daghestan. But there are more and more indications that tribes which were earlier considered as parts of the Avar 'nation,' are insisting on a complete and official recognition of their separate identity, that elementary school text books are compiled and published in their languages, and there hardly may be any doubt, that an already very complicated mosaic of ethnic relations in Daghestan may in the future become even more complicated.