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mature democracy. In this context, integration into NATO is a kind of preliminary and to a certain extent preparatory stage along the path to the EU. This is one more argument in favor of Georgia’s rapid entry into the North Atlantic Alliance.
C o n c l u s i o n
The severity of the military clash led to an actual breakdown in centuries-long ethnic contacts between the Abkhazians with their culturally closest southeastern neighbors, the Georgians. A thesis is put forward that the Abkhazians and Georgians are alien nations, and that the Adighes are the closest nation to the Abkhazians. Of course, this newly invented mythologeme is not entirely true, and everyone who knows how close the traditional and everyday culture of the Abkhazians and Georgians is understands this. These nations mainly differ in their language.14 Recently, the vector of economic, political, and ethnic ties of Abkhazian society has changed its course: now it is aimed toward Russia. It can be said that this is a new situation for Abkhazian society: the age-long ethnic contacts with Georgians have been rather abruptly and in general artificially broken, the restoration of which would be a victory of that historical justice we are very much in need of. An old saying has it that true love is not when two people look into each other’s eyes, but when they are both looking in the same direction. For the Georgians and Abkhazians, the Euro-Atlantic space, both in the geographical and the axiological sense, is the direction they should be moving in to reach a compromise.
14 See: L. Solovieva, “Traditions in the Globalization Era: Abkhazia in the Early 21st Century,” The Caucasus & Globalization, Vol. 1 (2), 2007.
Svetlana CHERVONNAYA
Professor, Department of Ethnology, Faculty of History, the Copernicus University
(Torun, Poland).
RUSSIAN POLICY TOWARD THE NORTH CAUCASIAN PEOPLES: ITS TRANSCAUCASIAN ADDRESS AND CONTEXT
Abstract
The author discusses the most important aspects of Russia’s Caucasian policy toward the separatist—or to use a different term and axiological interpreta-
tion—national liberation movements of the Caucasian peoples who want to restore or create national statehoods and withdraw from the state (the former Union republics)
on the territories of which they are now liv- Soviet power) autonomous regions or re-
ing and where they have (or had under publics.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
It is not my intention to cover all the sides of the problem, namely, Russia’s multi-vector
North Caucasian policy. I shall concentrate on the vectors directly related to Russia’s interests in the Transcaucasus and its intention to preserve its political influence there, exert unprecedented economic pressure on the Transcaucasian states, perpetuate its control over the local countries through blackmail, and undermine or, at least, postpone their drawing closer to the European Union and NATO. To visualize the extent of these efforts, we should bear in mind that according to independent experts, Russia’s stand-by troops or those directly involved in the fighting in the Caucasus amount to 150 thousand men; 80 to 100 thousand of them are deployed in Chechnia.1 Other regions of the Northern Caucasus, and Transcaucasus as well, are not free from Russia’s impressive military presence.2 Compared with these combat troops, the tiny group of American military experts invited to Georgia on the initiative of President Shevardnadze in April 2002 (there were 80 of them without any mandate to carry out military operations) cannot oppose Russia’s military presence, even though Russia nervously responds to these timid steps and has been denouncing them as a dangerous trend toward drawing closer to NATO. Russia’s hysterics began even before Georgia put the final touches on its pro-NATO orientation. I have undertaken to analyze various aspects of Russia’s Caucasian policy and its Transcaucasian context.
“Friend or Foe” in Russia’s Caucasian Policy
In the Caucasus Russia is obviously indulging in a double-standard policy. All the movements of independence-seeking peoples of the Northern Caucasus, which remains part of the Russian Federation, are suppressed as harshly as possible. Sufficient proof are the first (1994-1996) and the second (1999 until this day) Chechen wars Russia has been waging against the Chechen people and the cruel terror and criminal genocide it is carrying out before the civilized world, which is showing amazing indifference.3
1 For more detail, see: P. Felgenhauer, “Kremlin’s Risky PR Game,” The Moscow Times, 7 March, 2002, p. 9.
2 By 2003 there were up to 7 thousand Russian servicemen, up to 90 tanks, 200 missile launchers, 25 fighting planes, and up to 50 fighting helicopters deployed at the Russian military bases in Armenia (Gumri and Erevan). A 7-thousand-strong military group was deployed in Georgia (Batumi and Akhalkalaki) armed with up to 150 tanks, about 140 artillery pieces, and about 35 fighter planes. The so-called Russia’s peacekeeping armed forces in Abkhazia had about 1,700 servicemen, 7 tanks, 6 fighter helicopters, 16 artillery pieces, and up to 140 missile launchers. About half of this number and equipment was deployed in South Ossetia as “peacekeeping” forces (the figures appeared in the London edition of the Moscow Kommersant newspaper on 16 April, 2002, in the military supplement to Nezavisimaia gazeta on 13 September,
2002, and in Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (24), 2003, pp. 13-14).
3 Here are several of the publications, eyewitness accounts, and materials that appeared at exhibitions, as well as conclusions of independent experts and objective investigations (which appeared outside harsh Russian censorship and official falsifications) that testify to the wide-scale crimes perpetrated by the Russian military during these wars: S. Ciesiel-ski, Rosja-Czeczenia. Dwa stulecia konfliktu, Wroclaw, 2003; E. MaaB, B. Kubanek, Tschetschenien. Krieg und Ges-chichte. 400 Jahre koloniale Eroberung—400 Jahre Widerstand, Berlin, 2003; S. Reinke, “Vergessene Holle Tschetschenien,” Pogrom. Bedrohte Volker, Nr. 2, 2004, S. 14-17; M. Malek, “RuBlands Kriege in Tschetschenien: ‘Wiederher-stellung der vervassungsmaBigen Ordnung,’, ‘Antiterror-Operation’ oder Volkermord?” Zeitschriftfur Genozidforschung, Heft 1, 2004, S. 102-129; W. Feichtinger, M. Malek, “Tschetschenien. Ein vergessener Krieg,” IFK (Institut fur Friedens-
The Report by the International Helsinki Federation emphasizes that the second Chechen war Russia started in 1999 is going on amid mass violations of the regulations of military and humanitarian laws, while Russia’s actions can be described as crimes against humanity: bombardments and missile and artillery shelling, attacks on civilian assets, mass murders of civilians, tortures, plunder, and abductions are perpetrated by the federal troops.4
Polish historian S. Ciesielski has the following to say on this score: “These are police and punitive operations; suppression of guerrilla warfare is one of the tasks of the federal forces. Despite the official statements, the main aim is to break down the peoples’ will to resist by using terror.”5
“If we compare the number of dead and missing with the size of the republic’s total population,” writes Moscow human rights activist Alexander Cherkassov, “we can say with good reason that in the last decade Chechnia has lived through half of World War II and the whole of Stalin’s great terror.”6
When dealing with separatism or irredentism of the national movements in the Northern Caucasus, Russia sticks to the categorical imperative—its territorial integrity. This principle is registered in the December 1993 Constitution that does not tolerate the possibility of any federation subject withdrawing from the Russian Federation. This means that any independence movement is anti-constitutional and is a crime and that the sovereignty declarations of the republics within the RF are nothing more than a farce.
At the same time, Russia is very tolerant of and very friendly with the separatist movements of smaller autochthonous peoples and national minorities designed to destroy the territorial integrity of the neighboring Transcaucasian states (Georgia and Azerbaijan). It not only supports them by diplomatic and propagandistic means, but also organizes them (secretly or not so secretly), maintains their combat-readiness and aggressiveness by means of Russian cadres, money, and supplies from military depots, and guides them, restraining them at times only to stir them up at critical moments and set the genie free.
When writing about Russia’s support of the separatist movements in neighboring countries, Martin Malek, an Austrian academic from the National Defense Academy of Austria, writes: “Without military support from Moscow, Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Karabakh relied mainly on Armenia) would hardly have been able to tear free from their central governments: Moscow rendered political support and made massive deliveries of arms. According to Alexei Arbatov, a member of the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament), it gave ‘direct military aid’ to the Abkhaz. The Russian army openly intervened in Abkhazia in 1992-1993 (together with Chechen “volunteers” under Shamil Bassaev, now one of Russia’s most wanted terrorists).
“Officials from Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Karabakh, and the Dnestr region (Moldova) come and go regularly to Moscow; they are received in parliament and the foreign ministry whenever they wish. Almost the entire adult population (and of course the political elite) of Abkhazia and
sicherung und Konfliktmanagement), Wien, August 2004, S. 1-12; Czeczenia: ostateczne rozwiqzanie... Warszawa, 2006; A. Politkowska, Druga wojna czeczenska, Krakow, 2006. The very narrow circle of Russian periodicals that published the truth about the Chechen wars included the Novaia gazeta that carried bold and honest accounts by Anna Politkovskaia, publications by the Memorial society (O.P. Orlov, A.V. Cherkasov, A.V. Sokolov, “Narushenie prav cheloveka i norm gumanitarnogo prava v khode vooruzhennogo konflikta v Chechenskoy respublike,” in: Rossia-Chechnia. Tsep oshibok i prestupleniy, Moscow 1998) as well as analytical publications of the Moscow Carnegie Center (see, for example: E. Pain, Vtoraia chechenskaia voyna i ee posledstvia, Moscow, 2001; A. Malashenko, D. Trenin, Vremia Iuga. Rossia v Chechne, Chenia v Rossii, Moscow, 2002).
4 See: International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, Human Rights in Russian Federation. The Human Rights Situation in the Chechen Republic, Report 2001, p. 77.
5 S. Ciesielski, op. cit., p. 369 (here and elsewhere the quotes are translated from the author’s Russian translations of Polish, German, and English texts).
6 Quoted from the catalogue of the exhibition held in Warsaw in May 2006 Czeczenia: ostateczne rozwiqzanie...
p. 36.
South Ossetia has long held Russian citizenship. Consequently, Moscow could intervene militari-ly—in the event that Tbilisi ever attempted to solve the conflict by force—under the pretext of protecting Russian citizens.
“Russia has repeatedly warned Tbilisi against a war against Abkhazia and/or South Ossetia. At the same time, however, Moscow is trying to solve its own problem with separatism in Chechnia by solely military means, i.e. to ‘exterminate’—to use the official term—the rebels there (officially referred to only as ‘bandits’ and ‘terrorists’).”7
Russia’s policy in the Caucasus is taking the road paved during the Soviet Union’s last years by those who sat in the KGB and C.C. C.P.S.U. offices and intended to use the national minorities themselves to deliver blows (under the pretext of defending their interests and allegedly violated rights) at the democratic forces, the active mobilization of which in all Union republics directly threatened the already shaky communist regime. The wave rolled across the entire country, however, it probably started in Georgia, which was the first to move against the Kremlin dictatorship and was the first to experience cruel and bloody retribution in Tbilisi in April 1989. This was not all: the retribution took the form of carefully prepared anti-Georgian reactionary riots in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which developed into many years of suffering for all those involved, the Ossets and Abkhazians included.8
Vadim Bakatin, the last Chairman of the KGB of the Soviet Union, who knew everything, wrote in this connection: “The KGB was a pioneer of the ‘international fronts’ in those Union republics that proved to be intractable in their relations with the Center. The flawed ‘divide and rule’ logic split societies in these republics into two hostile camps and increased social tension... The pattern was a simple one—‘those who disobeyed should have “interfronts” to deal with: they staged strikes, raised border issues, and doubted the legitimacy of the elected power structures.’ The State Security Committee presented all this as the ‘will of the people’.”9
The nationalist organizations Adamon Nykhas (People Talk) in South Ossetia and the Aydgy-lara (Unity) People’s Forum in Abkhazia were set up in 1988 under Moscow’s patronage to pass for “international fronts” to fight “recalcitrant” Georgia.
This was by far a unique situation: the Kremlin (still the communist Center until 1991, and today the headquarters of the Russian presidents) has always been on the lookout for national minorities in obstinate Union republics and suspicious newly independent states that rejected the role of Moscow’s obedient vassals. The Kremlin exploited the grudges (not always invented and not always unfounded) the minorities accumulated for years or even decades, as well as the ambitions of their elites, to set up fifth columns of sorts to fight the people’s fronts, democratic forces, and unfolding powerful national movements. The fifth columns were intended to justify Russia’s interference in the domestic affairs of the republics and Soviet-successor states. Russia wanted to pose as the defender of the national minorities against the “nationalist” ethnocratic regimes developing in these republics-states. Whether “nationalism” was invented or real, whether the term should be put in inverted commas or viewed with concern is another question. I am convinced that “nationalism” was not pure fantasy or a lie invented by the Kremlin. In fact, absolutely all the newly independent states (former Union republics) and absolutely all the titular nations or “national majority”
7 M. Martin, “Terms of Reference of Security Policy in the South Caucasus,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (24),
2003, pp. 12-13.
8 The present author had the opportunity to trace the Abkhazian riot during her field studies in the summer of 1992 and from authentic documents and eyewitness accounts described in S.M. Chervonnaya, Abkhazia-1992: Postkommunis-ticheskaia gruzinskaia Vandeia, Moscow, 1993; S. Chervonnaya, “The Technology of the Abkhazian War,” Moscow News, 15 October, 1993, No. 42, pp. 1, 4; S. Chervonnaya, Conflict in the Caucasus: Georgia, Abkhazia and the Russian Shadow. Foreword by Eduard Shevardnadze. London, 1994; S. Chervonnaya, “Kholodnaia voyna: 1990-1992,” in: Rasp-iataia Gruzia, Compiled by B. Pipia, Z. Chikviladze, St. Petersburg, 1995, pp. 51-92.
9 V. Bakatin, Izbavlenie ot KGB, Moscow, 1992, p. 49.
groups (I know of no exceptions) lived through a short or long “infantile disorder” of nationalist extremist, nationalist agitation, ethnocratic complexes and ideas of the “Georgia for the Georgians,” “Ukraine for the Ukrainians,” and “Lithuania for the Lithuanians” type far removed from democratic thinking.
In fact, Moscow encouraged the separatist movements and mobilized the spontaneous discontent of the insulted and frightened “younger brothers” not to fight the nationalism of the titular nations or the so-called “middle brothers” (in the paradigm, “big brother” is the Russian nation, “middle brothers” are the titular nations of the former Union republics or the newly independent states, and “younger brothers” are the small autochthonous peoples and national minorities of the Union republics/newly independent states with or without autonomies). Moscow did not intend to fight nationalism, which at all times can be described as an evil no matter what historical regularities stirred it up: its true intention was the communist revenge undertaken in the hope of restoring the empire within its Soviet borders. When this hope was shattered (not completely and not in all minds) or at least lost its Soviet-communist hues, Moscow armed itself with various weapons: weakening or dividing the neighboring independent states and maintaining tension in them to trigger protracted domestic ethnic conflicts which allow it to blackmail these states. Blackmail is practiced in dramatic contexts when the newly independent states could not control their entire territories, parts of which are shaken by riots or in danger of riots (“Your noncompliancy will be rewarded with your Nagorno-Karabakh, your Abkhazia, or your Transdniestria Region”). This is the policy I have in mind when talking about the Transcaucasian address of Russia’s national policy with its double standards.
Russia does not want to have “its own” Chechnia though; it is suppressing it with its military might and is afraid of the “domino effect,” which means wider independence movements in the Northern Caucasus. While at the same time it courts “Your (Georgian) Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” “Your (Azeri) Nagorno-Karabakh,” and “Your (Moldavian) Transdniestria Region.” Not only that: Russia is protecting them with its military shield and extending economic aid. In the old Bolshevist traditions, it is fanning a “flame out of a spark” (this is easy—there are enough “sparks” and “powder kegs” along Russia’s borders) and is using it in its international policy as an effective tool of blackmail. Russian official science, which serves this policy, describes this as “Russia’s adequate position” in relation to the separatist movements in the Transcaucasus.
Nikolai Trapsh is one such academic. In an article that appeared in a collection of works from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations he did his best to undermine confidence in Georgia’s peace initiatives and the government of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia in exile (in Tbilisi) in an effort to create the impression that the separatist regime is stable enough: “M. Saakashvili’s well-known initiatives on gradually granting Abkhazia the widest autonomy on the condition that re-integration begins in earnest look suspicious. Indeed, all of a sudden I. Alasania, who heads the illegitimate government of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, was appointed as the Georgia president’s special representative at the talks, which the Abkhazian side finally agreed to resume. .It should be said, on the whole, that the new Abkhazian leaders clearly indicated that they would like to see wide-scale changes in socioeconomic and political relations, the objective results of which would become one of the factors of the unrecognized republic’s development. Russia’s adequate position determined by the immanent geopolitical interests in the region would serve as another factor. Constructive changes in the unrecognized republic should guarantee stability on an important stretch of Russia’s southern border, which means that Moscow’s active support of the new Abkhazian rulers is advisable (emphasis mine.—S.Ch.).”10
The Transcaucasus is not an exception in this respect: this is being done and was done everywhere where Russia, the Kremlin strategists, and Russia’s special services were presented with the
10 N. Trapsh, “Abkhazia posle prezidentskikh vyborov: perspektivy razvitia nepriznannoy respubliki,” in: Uroki krizisa v Abkhazii. Analiticheskie zapiski (MGIMO-Universitet), Moscow, 2005, p. 17.
slightest opportunity to meddle with the small autochthonous peoples and ethnic minorities. Former Soviet power totally ignored these groups, turned a deaf ear to their complaints and problems, and mercilessly exploited and subjected them to discrimination. There were plans to tempt the Poles of Lithuania with Polish Soviet autonomy in the Vilnius area to act against independent Lithuania; the same can be said about the Gagauzes of independent Moldova, the Hungarians of Trans-Carpathia, and the Rusins of the Carpathian area in independent Ukraine. These are but individual links in the long chain that reaches the Transcaucasus. Russians who settled in the Union republics during the ongoing colonization that began before the 1917 revolution and continued throughout the entire Soviet period were used as the fifth column in the newly independent states in which there were no “younger brothers” nursing their grudges or where their national movements and democratic forces rejected the roles imposed on them. They demonstrated their solidarity with the people and democratic governments of the newly independent states (the Crimean Tartars are one example). Today, the imperial and Soviet heritage must become the Trojan horse that will invite the Russian “forces of influence” ranging from tanks, the navy, and the riot police to diplomatic notes of the Russian Foreign Ministry, State Duma declarations, and actions of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. This role has been offered and, regrettably, accepted by the Russian communities of Latvia and Estonia and the Russian majority of the Crimea actively involved in the efforts to detach the peninsula from Ukraine.
The Russian authorities are paying particular attention to Russia’s presence in the Northern Caucasus. Under one of the edicts (found among the papers of a functionary engaged in nationality policy) that should have been kept confidential but was made public in 199211 through the negligence of the “young democrats” who came to power in the Russian Federation in the early 1990s, Russians should comprise no less than 45-50 percent of the total population in each of the RF constituents in the Northern Caucasus as well as in cities, towns, and districts to preserve Russia’s presence and ensure its influence. Much attention was paid to military mobilization of the local Russians, the creation of contemporary Cossack communities being one of its forms.
The Transcaucasian Context of Russia’s Policy in the Caucasus: “Allies” and “Foes”
The Russians of the Transcaucasus could not be used as a pretext or as a striking force against the titular nations (their mass movements, popular fronts, and democratic organizations) and the newly independent states for several reasons: their share in the three Transcaucasian republics was relatively small; as urban dwellers mainly engaged in intellectual and creative activities they were less inclined to political excesses and, unlike the Russians of the Crimea, they were disinclined to form separatist movements. They remained true to their traditional and deeply rooted loyalty to the peoples on whose lands they were living (Georgians and Azeris). The Kremlin strategists had to look elsewhere for separatist sentiments: the Armenians in Azerbaijan, the Ossets in Georgia, or autochthonous peoples such as the Abkhazians in Georgia or the Lezghians in Azerbaijan; some of them were divided by the state borders between Russia and the Transcaucasian states. In the 1990s, Moscow functionaries tried to exploit the Lezghian nationalist movement Sadval (Unity) to create a threat to Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity: the country might have lost part of its northern territory which potential separatists called Lezghistan.
11 See: “Kontseptia kolonizatsii Severnogo Kavkaza,” Uyge igilik (Peace to Your Home), No. 16, 1993, pp. 2-3.
There is another very important aspect that should be taken into account when discussing Russia’s policy in the Northern Caucasus in its Transcaucasian context. I have in mind Russia’s persistent efforts to sow dissent among the Caucasian peoples by forming all kinds of blocs and alliances to be used at opportune moments against the Transcaucasian region or to fan contradictions among the North Caucasian peoples. To some extent they are all equally victims of Russia’s expansion and colonial oppression. As a popular Russian saying goes, there are those “more equal” and “less equal” among them. This is, in fact, nothing more than the ancient “divide et impera” with its local specifics, which should be taken into account when analyzing the Caucasian developments.
The most obvious conclusion is that the dividing line runs along the religious gap in the Caucasian subcontinent (I have in mind not only the Northern Caucasus, but also the entire expanse between the Black and the Caspian seas on both sides of the Caucasian Range). The fact that there are two main religions—Islam and Christianity—it stands to reason that the watershed of Russia’s policy should follow this pattern: the Christian nations could have been regarded as outposts and vehicles of Russia’s Caucasian policy, while the Muslim peoples remain alien, highly suspicious, and potentially or actually hostile. There is every reason to expect that Russia would use the Christian nations, the conformity of which was allegedly predetermined by the shared or kindred religion, to keep these peoples in check.
In real life everything is much more complicated than the simple division of the Caucasian nations according to their confessions: there are “good” Christians to be protected and even encouraged and “bad” Muslims to be punished, preferably by the hands of the Caucasian Christians. Sometimes this pattern is applied (the Osset-Ingush conflict to be discussed below is one such example). More often, however, Russia’s policy designed to fan contradictions among the Caucasian nations is not that primitive. Indeed, for the past fifteen or twenty years Russia has been willingly supporting the anti-Georgian actions of the Abkhazians, the majority of whom are Muslim. It acted against the Christian Orthodox state (even though its autocephalous church had no real contradictions with the Russian Orthodox Church) and even dispatched Islamic “volunteers” from the North Caucasian Muslim regions (Chechnia in particular). The Russian authorities encouraged Shamil Bassaev and his detachments to fight on the side of mutinous Abkhazia. Russia supported the Georgian Muslims in Ajaria until the new leaders who came to power after the Rose Revolution triumphed over the local separatists. This was one of their first victories. Moscow offered asylum to Abashidze and his clan as well as to other active separatists from Ajaria, which might have become the third (after Abkhazia and South Ossetia) springboard aimed at weakening the independent Georgian state.12 The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and around it was prepared in the same way. While the war and bloodshed were far away, Moscow never sided with the Christian Armenians: the leaders of the Karabakh public movement were arrested; and Moscow did nothing to interfere into the bloody events in Sumgait in the winter of 1988 (who knows, it might have been instrumental in staging them). As soon as Azerbaijan freed itself from the communist dictatorship and, as an independent state, threatened Russia’s domination in the Transcaucasus,13 Moscow sanctioned Armenian occupation (to put it simply) of a large part of Azerbaijan (much larger than the debatable territory of Nagorno-Karabakh). This occupation could not have been possible without Russia’s support and its direct involvement on Armenia’s side.
12 “In the spring of 2004 the Rose Revolution reached the capital of Ajaria Batumi,” writes Uve Halbach in his Der Kaukasus in neuem Licht, “on 6 May the entire Abashidze clan fled to Moscow with the help of Russia. Ajaria was returned to the Georgian state” (U. Halbach, Der Kaukasus in neuem Licht. Die EU und Rufiland in ihrer schwierigsten Nachbarschaftsregion, SWP (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik)-Studie, Berlin, 2005, S. 8.
13 Much has been written on this subject in Azerbaijan, Europe, and America. See, for example: R. Badalow, “Die Demokratie in Aserbaidschan zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts,” in: Diaspora, 0l, Rosen, Hrsg. Walter Kaufmann, Berlin,
2004, S. 179-204; A. Babayev, “Demokratie-Test nicht bestanden. Parlamentswahlen in Azerbajdzan 2005,” Osteuropa, Heft 3, Marz 2006, S. 33-43; T. Swi^tochowski, Azerbejdzan, Warszawa, 2006.
It should be said that Russia’s Armenian policy is very complicated and far from ambiguous. Moscow analysts are somewhat baffled by the strange situation: “Armenia is the only country that receives weapons from Russia and money from America and cooperates with Iran.”14
The above demonstrates that the religious factor was not the main one when it came to dividing the Caucasian nations into Russia’s “allies” and “foes” as part of the “divide and rule” policy. This factor is but one of the factors of the very complicated strategy of identifying potential “friends” and “foes.” In fact the Caucasian Muslims find themselves suspected by Russia or even threatened by it more often than the Christians. The accents (the best, worse, or even worst allies) often shifted: the allies of yesterday are becoming the victims. This has already happened to those who Russia sent beyond the Caucasian Range in 1992 to fight Georgia and who later perished in the two Chechen wars. There are many subtle and very complicated overtones in the way Russia treats the local nations created by historical traditions, political heritage, foreign contacts, and many other things, religion being only one of them.
This treatment has created at least five main groups in the Northern Caucasus that experience different degrees of Russia’s patronage, encouragement of ambitious leaders, support or, on the contrary, neglect, suppression, and, most important, the expectation of exploiting these groups to put pressure on the Transcaucasian states. We arrange these groups according to the degree of Russia’s negative attitude from complete political alliance to the most acute contradictions that exclude the possibility of using such groups and that make them an object of the severest discrimination intended to teach other nations a lesson.
The Russians who dominate in the Northern Caucasus (the populations of the Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories included) form one of the poles. I have already written that Moscow has not yet managed to make use of the Russian syndrome in the Transcaucasus (in the way it did in the Baltic counties, Ukraine, and other countries of Near Abroad where it organized separatist movements). The small and deeply integrated Russian communities of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan refused to become the fifth column and remained traditionally loyal to the titular nations and governments. The Russians’ involvement in the political conflicts and wars in the Northern Caucasus, encouragement of lawlessness among the armed and half-armed Cossack formations, and the Russians’ contribution to the xenophobia and violence against “people of Caucasian nationality” (both Muslims and Christians) have reached outrageous dimensions.
Ossetia, which comes second after the local Russians among Russia’s allies (seen as active reserves of its Caucasian policy), is represented by two Ossetias: the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania (which called itself the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Russian Federation longer than the others) and the former South-Ossetian Autonomy of Georgia.
A chain of historical reminiscences, ethnopsychological and cultural specifics, and factors of regional and international politics made the Ossets Russia’s “most loyal ally” in the Caucasus and imposed on them a far from honorable role. Here are several circumstances that individually could have been dismissed but as a sum-total moved the situation in the desired direction. First, there was a certain inertia that associated Russia’s Caucasian policy with its Soviet and pre-Soviet past. Ossetia joined Russia in 1774, much earlier than the other national regions and peoples of the Northern Caucasus and, as distinct from them (they frantically fought Russia), mainly of its own free will. This was amply testified by the prevailing feelings and conduct of an overwhelming number of Ossets and confirmed by documents, diplomatic missions, and statements of the rulers who spoke in the name of the people. The Ossets were the only autochthonous North Caucasian people not involved in the Caucasian War; they merely helped the Russian colonizers negotiate the mountain passes, supplied them with valuable information about the developments in other regions, or even sent volunteers to fight
14 A. Gadzhizade, “Dve initsiativy,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 18 December, 1999, p. 5. M. Malek quotes the phrase in English (M. Malek, op. cit., p. 10).
together with the Russians against the recalcitrant North Caucasian mountain dwellers. The shadow of this historical guilt (as perceived by most of the Ossets’ neighbors) or historical merit (as perceived by Russia’s central power) can still be seen. It remained with the Ossets under Soviet power. It comes as no surprise that the ideological decisions of the C.C. All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (about Vano Muradeli’s opera The Great Friendship, for example) and Zhdanov’s speeches, which justified the decisions, never missed the chance to point out that the Ossets demonstrated loyalty during the Civil War, supported Soviet power, and deserved complete trust, in contrast to the Ingushes who had misbehaved and, therefore, could not be trusted.15
These declarations had nothing to do with the facts and, in particular, with the true history of the Civil War in the Northern Caucasus, in which the Ingushes were much “redder” than the Ossets, the nobility of which sided with the White movement. Nobody wanted the truth: the repeated statements about the “reliable” and “loyal” people contributed to the squabbles among the Caucasian nations and taught the Ossets to regard themselves as chosen people who had served Russia well. This added zeal to their service, while their neighbors regarded them as betrayers of the common North Caucasian interests, which was not totally justified. The Ossets gave democratic Russia the bright names of poet and enlightener Kosta Hetagurov, famous artist Makharbek Tuganov, and our contemporary Shalva Bedoev.
The religious factor played a certain role in identifying the Ossets as Russia’s closest ally (the Ossets, three quarters of whom are Christians, were “friends” in the “friend-foe” paradigm; the Muslim mountaineers and peoples of the steppes were “foes”) together with the fact that they belonged to the Iranian linguistic and cultural community. This made it easier to set the Ossets against the peoples that belonged to different linguistic families and groups (Caucasian, Vainakh, Turkic) and to develop far-reaching international speculations. Russia (czarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet) has been too often seeking political alliances with Persia/Iran (advantageous for its traditional anti-Turkic and its recent anti-American orientation) to ignore the Iranian-speaking groups within its own frontiers. The Ossets, together with the Tajiks and other Central Asian peoples, were one such group that could be used to build a bridge from the Caucasus, on the one hand, and the Pamirs, on the other, to Tehran in order to enclose the vast Asian territory.16 The alliance between Moscow and the spiritual heirs of Ayatollah Homeini who, under the cover of peaceful nuclear projects, are working on nuclear weapons is close to the hearts of the Russian communists and nationalists. Spearheaded against the “Anglo-American imperialists,” it was perfected through the myths of “Iranian Alania,” which the extremely biased Ossetian academia claimed as its ethnic territory (even before presenting archaeological evidence) and even as part of Greater Iran—the antipode to Turan—the historical home and zone of the Turkic nations.
15 The decision of the C.C. A.U.C.P. (B.) said in its clumsy way: “The plot of the opera is historically false and artificial even though it claims to represent the struggle for Soviet power and peoples’ friendship in the Northern Caucasus in 1918-1920. The opera has drawn the wrong picture that such Caucasian peoples as the Georgians and the Ossets were enemies of the Russians. This is false: it was the Ingushes and Chechens who were the main obstacle to achieving friendship among peoples at that time in the Northern Caucasus” (“About the Zvezda and Leningrad Journals, Decision by the C.C. A.U.C.P. (B.) of 14 August, 1946;” “About the Repertoire of Drama Theaters and the Methods of its Improvement, Decision by the C.C. A.U.C.P. (B.) of 26 August, 1946;” “On the Film The Great Life, Decision by the C.C. A.U.C.P. (B.) of
4 September, 1946;” “On the Opera The Great Friendship by V. Muradeli, Decision by the C.C. A.U.C.P. (B.) of 10 February, 1948,” Moscow 1952, p. 25).
16 It should be said, in this connection, that as a rule Armenia supports the plans of Caucasian-Iranian cooperation, while Azerbaijan’s principled position is the only obstacle to these plans (and probably the only hope that the Transcaucasian region will escape Iranian domination). This position came to the fore in the spring of 2003 when Foreign Minister of Iran Kamal Kharrazi, during a visit to Armenia, announced that there were plans to set up a regional organization that would include Iran, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. The Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan resolutely stated that integration into NATO was the only reliable guarantee of South Caucasian security and that “any serious security system in the region is impossible without the participation of Euro-Atlantic structures” (“Azerbaijan Opposes Iranian Regional Security Proposal,” Azerbaijan Daily Digest, 5 May, 2003, available at [http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/az-erbaijan/hypermail/200305/0012.shtml]).
The Ossets were involved in a policy aimed against the Caucasian Muslims and Georgia not because of vague historical associations or doubtful pan-Iranian theories. It was enemy blood and cover-up that bound the Ossets, a nation involved in the crimes of the ruling regime, to Russia.
Deportation of peoples accused of collaborating with the enemy and high treason was one such crime. The territories of their liquidated autonomies were divided among their neighbors. It was not only Ossetia that profited from the mass deportations, which reached their peak in 1943-1944: the Russian Federation acquired the Grozny Region and the Crimea (the latter first belonged to the Russian Federation; in 1954 it was “presented as a gift” to Ukraine). The territories and regions of the Russian Federation as well as of the autonomous and Union republics received bits and pieces of the liquidated autonomies. Georgia obtained part of mountainous Karachai: for fourteen years (until 1957) Karachaevsk (Mikoyan-Shakhar), the former capital of the Karachai Autonomous Region liquidated in 1943, had the Georgian name of Klukhori. During the Khrushchev “thaw” when the repressed peoples were rehabilitated and returned to their restored autonomies, their neighbors gave back the lands they acquired in the past. Receiving instructions from the Center, the local administrations restored the old administrative borders without a murmur; the local people who had moved into the homes of the repressed, who had tilled their lands and used their grazing pastures greeted the former owners, offered them a place at their tables, and returned everything they managed to save.17 The Georgians (Svans) left Karachai without claiming any of what they had built in the past fourteen years. No one knows why Ossetia was granted a special status: either because of intrigues by its political elite and the feelings of the common people on whom the elite relied, or because of Moscow’s deliberate intention to sow discord between the Ossets and the rehabilitated Ingushes and Chechens over the Prigorodniy District.18 North Ossetia flatly refused to evacuate the Prigorodniy District; the Ingushes, for whom it was the heart of their historical homeland, refused to accept this loss. In 1992 the smoldering conflict developed into open clashes; the Center responded with a military operation against the Ingushes to oust them from their historical homeland, while the Ossets sided with the Russian military.19 This created a huge wave of refugees and an exodus of Ingushes from North Ossetia. These people have not returned to their homes.
The South Ossetian Region opened the “second front” in Georgia, in the very heart of the Caucasus, in an effort to undermine the all-Georgian movement aimed at withdrawal from the Soviet Union, liquidation of the communist dictatorship, and restoration of the Georgian statehood. The
17 During the integrated academic expeditions in Karachaevo-Cherkessia in 1998 and 1999, we registered reminiscences of moving episodes between the Georgians and those who returned from exile. (Projects 98-01-18011e and 99-01-18029e within the “Turkic World of the South of Russia of the Late 20th Century: the Main Parameters of the Ethnocultural Community and Differentiations” project implemented by the present author with the help of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation; the present author’s individual research project “The Turkic-Islamic Group of the Repressed Peoples of the Former U.S.S.R.” was implemented with the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation).
18 For more detail related to the story of the Prigorodniy District and other factors of the Osset-Ingush conflict, see my articles: S. Tscherwonnaja, “Der ossetisch-inguschischer Konflikt im Nordkaukasus. I. Ausbruch und Verlauf des kriegerischen Konflikts 1992,”Osteuropa, Nr. 8, 1995, S. 737-754; S. Tscherwonnaja, “Konflikte im Nordkaukasus: Os-seten und Inguschen. II. Ohne klare politische Motive,” Osteuropa, Nr. 9, 1995, S. 825-832; S. Tscherwonnaja, “Der os-setisch-inguschischer Konflikt: eine Fallstudie,” Krisenherd Kaukasus, Hrsg. Uwe Halbach, Andreas Kappeler, Baden-Baden, 1995, S. 245-262.
19 See: Ingushskiy “Memorial.” Doklad o massovykh narusheniiakh prav grazhdan ingushskoy natsional’nosti v Rossiiskoy Federatsii 1992-1995 godov, Nazran, Moscow, 1996. Some of the materials are kept in the author’s personal archive (expedition diaries, audio interviews with Ingush refugees, and photo albums) collected during the Integrated Scientific Expeditions (sociological and political studies) organized in 2002 by the Institute of Sociology, RAS, in the Republic of Ingushetia within the program “Forced Migrants and Refugees in the Republic of Ingushetia in the 10 years of its Existence (1992-2000): formation of migration flows, policy in relation to them, problems of their temporary settlement and return to their homeland, conflict and peacekeeping potential” (headed by G.M. Denisovskiy, grant of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation 02-03-18001e) and work in Ingushetia carried out within the mission of the Federal Union of the Peoples of Europe with a consultative status under the European Council and the U.N. in January-Febru-ary 2002 (FUEV Fact-Finding Mission in der Republik Inguschetia).
wound is still bleeding, even though much has changed since the tragedy of 23 November, 1989 that took place in Tskhinvali. The leaders of South Ossetia had to abandon and forget their Soviet rhetoric, which sounded wrong in the new Caucasian context: it was not they, they allege, who wanted the “great Soviet Union” restored. Many of the Osset families had to flee Kartveli to settle in the Prigor-odniy District of North Ossetia. After the Rose Revolution, which brought Mikhail Saakashvili to power, Georgia has become a very different country from the one it was under Zviad Gamsakhurdia; the international community, too, will never accept division of the country. I regret to say that the Osset population of Georgia preferred to ignore these lessons of history; they refuse to accept the legal status of a national minority in a democratic country. They willingly participated in the political farce called the independence referendum carried out under the benevolent patronage of Russian observers in the fall of 2006 and unanimously (like in the old good Soviet days: over 90 percent turnout and over 90 percent positive answers) approved the absurd and criminal decisions that will bring nothing but more suffering for the Ossets and Georgians.
The Adighe-Kabardinian ethnoses who live in the extensive, but not compact, stretches in the west and center of the Caucasus on both sides of the Caucasian Range between Sukhumi and Nalchik form the third group of the vehicle of Russia’s influence in the Caucasus. Even if they cannot be described as “chosen” peoples, they are “more equal” than the others and enjoy more privileges. They are Abkhazians, Adighes, Kabardins, Cherkesses, Abazins, and Shapsugs. Their consolidation and ethnic mobilization under Russia’s supervision was much more complicated than the process that had made the Ossets a pillar of the Russian throne or the present Russia’s “vertical of power.” It was much more complicated, first, because they lived on both sides of the Georgian-Russian border and in different constituents of the Russian Federation (Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Adigey, and the Krasnodar Territory). They lived in different conditions, and their size and economic and cultural levels differed greatly. The peoples of the Adighe linguistic group form a loose heterogeneous community with no common ethnic self-awareness and shared identity comparable to those of the Ossets. Second, the Adighe-Kabardinian peoples cannot be described as Russia’s “eternal friends” or more or less reliable partners: many of them were actively involved in the Caucasian War of the 19th century; many of them suffered from Russia’s colonial policy that dramatically reduced their numbers and put them on the brink of extinction. After the Caucasian War, many of them found themselves beyond Russia’s southern borders; the multiethnic Muslim diaspora of emigrants from Russia in the Middle East (in Turkey and the Arab countries) is very large and normally described as Circassian, in keeping with the name of one of the ethnic groups. Third, the Russians cannot treat these peoples as “religious brothers”—nearly all of them are Muslims, even though part of this community (the Kab-ardinian nobles who allied with the Russian autocracy under Ivan the Terrible, who was married to Kabardinian princess Maria Temnaia) is more inclined than the others toward Christianity and assimilation.
No matter how hard it was for Russia to find supporters in the Adighe-Kabardinian community and no matter what unpleasant surprises it had to endure (the so-called Assembly of Mountain Dwellers of the Caucasus under Kabardinian Musa/Yuri Shanibov and the uncontrolled spontaneous riots in Nalchik in the fall of 1992 were the latest, but not the last among such surprises), Russia treated them differently from the peoples of Daghestan, Checheno-Ingushetia, and the Turkic world of the Northern Caucasus. In response it received loyalty incomparable to what the Daghestanians, Chechens, and Ingushes could offer.
Our sociological and public opinion studies in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia revealed negative stereotypes determining the relations and the recurrent conflicts among the Turkic peoples (Karachais and Balkars), on the one hand, and the Kabardinian-Adighe peoples, on the other.20
20 The results are published in S.M. Chervonnaya, Tiurkskiy mir v tsentre Severnogo Kavkaza. Paradoksy et-nicheskoy mobilizatsii, ed. by M.N. Guboglo, Moscow, 1999; S. Tscherwonnaja, “Die Karatschaier und Balkaren im Nor-
Not infrequently the Karachais and Balkars blame their social misfortunes on their closest neighbors, who belong to different groups (Kabardins and Cherkesses) with whom they were “unnaturally paired” (from their point of view) in Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. They are especially concerned about the plans of Greater Cherkessia nurtured by the Adighe Khase and Aydgylara national movements, which infringe on the national interests of the Karachais and Balkars. Russia, in turn, supports these plans: it sanctioned an Interparliamentary Assembly of three republics (Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, and Adigey) and went even further to support the intention of the Abkhazian Aydgylara National Forum to make Sukhumi the capital of Greater Cherkessia and join nearly the entire stretch of Georgia’s Black Sea coast to it. No matter how preposterous, these plans perfectly fit the anti-Georgian nature of Russia’s policy.21
Significantly, the leaders of the national movements of the Ossets and the peoples of the Adighe-Kabardinian group, who are pursuing an anti-Georgian policy, invariably find a common tongue despite their different languages, cultural distinctions, and the large, by Caucasian standards, distances that separate them. They act together on the political scene as two key performers in the Kremlin’s anti-Georgian plot.
In the future, Sukhumi and Tskhinvali will coordinate their anti-Georgian actions under Moscow’s supervision. Russian-Georgian relations, which worsened after the Rose Revolution, immediately stirred the Abkhazian and Osset separatists into action. They were obviously encouraged by Moscow to carry out the illegal (from the point of view of international law) referendum on independence on territory that is part of Georgia from which the main (Georgian) population had been evicted, which, by the way, can be described as apartheid.
The Pan-Turkic Map of Russia’s Caucasian Policy
In the context of Russia’s policy, the North Caucasian peoples are not regarded as potential allies and the pillars of Russia’s presence in the Caucasus even though Russia tried to draw their members onto its side. The Congress of the Turkic Peoples held in Moscow in 1995 was one such effort. Russia repeats these efforts from time to time with little hope of enlisting the North Caucasian peoples as the striking force in the Transcaucasus. These groups include the Caucasian Turkic peoples (the Karachais, Balkars, Nogais, Kumyks, as well as the Turkic minorities and the diasporas scattered across the North Caucasian republics and territories, such as the Azeris, Turkmen, Crimean Tartars, and Meskhetian Turks), the peoples of the Vainakh group (Chechens, Ingushes, and Akintsy), and the spiritually kindred mountain peoples of Daghestan that share their mentality and historical traditions. Seen from Russia, this is the most unreliable region fraught with unpleasant surprises: it is no accident that it was these peoples of the East North Caucasian region that received the severest blows from Russia: conquest (Russian imperial diplomacy failed to convince them to join Russia peacefully or at
dkaukasus. Konflikte und ungeloste Probleme,” Berichte des Bundesinstituts fur ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien, Nr. 32, Koln, 1999; S.M. Chervonnaya, Tiurkskiy mir iugo-vostochnoy Evropy: Krym-Severny Kavkaz, Published by Barbara Kellner-Heinkele, Institute of Turkology of Free Berlin University, Berlin, 2000.
21 Official political science of Russia is diligently planting the idea of an integral Western Caucasus (from Abkhazia to Kabardino-Balkaria) under Russia’s firm control in people’s minds. The Moscow Center of Political Information, which published its Informational-Analytical Bulletin (Issue 14, 2004) Regiony Zapadnogo Kavkaza. Abkhazia, Adygeya, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, and Kabardino-Balkaria. Realii Situatsii (The West Caucasian Regions. Abkhazia, Adigey, Ka-rachaevo-Cherkessia, and Kabardino-Balkaria. The Local Realities), has supplied the most glaring example of this by placing Abkhazia alongside RF constituents. The “local realities” do not include the Krasnodar Territory for the obvious reason that they were selected by ethnic rather than geographical principles. The Moscow analysts are obviously interested in the Adighe peoples (Abkhazians, Adighes, Kabardins, Cherkesses).
least show their token compliance) and punitive expeditions during the Caucasian War. In the 20th century the Chechens, Ingushes, Karachais, and Balkars were deported; in the 1990s they suffered from the cruel wars that were officially described as “anti-terrorist operations.” The process is still going on.
Russia is very much concerned about two major issues. First, the Turkic peoples’ orientation toward an alliance with Turkey in the paradigm of the traditional and liberal Turkism revived in the late 20th century along the democratic lines first formulated by Crimean Tartar Ismail of Gaspra, a great enlightener.22 And, second, the spread of the most radical trends of political Islam (uncontrolled by the official muftiats), ranging from the Sufi brotherhoods to Wahhabi sects and movements for setting up an Islamic state based on the Shari‘a.23 The Russian leaders have no sympathy with these sentiments, while the Russian “stick and carrot” in the Eastern Caucasus (in Chechnia in particular) turns out to be the “stick” policy without the carrot. The fact that there are no potentially reliable allies among these peoples forces Russia to resort to varied, carefully prepared, and skillfully implemented anti-Transcaucasian manipulations. I have already written about the Chechen fighters who were dispatched in the early 1990s to Abkhazia to fight independent Georgia. In the new context, early in the 21st century, Russia is exploiting the myth about the Chechen fighters allegedly camping in the Pan-kissi Gorge, on Georgian territory, to put pressure on Georgia and to justify the violations of its borders by Russian aircraft.24 There were other subjects and intrigues best of all described as “black political mythology” that used the bogey of so-called pan-Turkism in the Northern Caucasus. It was invented primarily to scare the Armenians and, regrettably, proved effective. It is enough to mention the thick volume of falsifications authored by a certain Alexander Svarants entitled Pantiurkism v geostrategii Turtsii na Kavkaze (Pan-Turkism in Turkish Geostrategy in the Caucasus) published in 2002 by the Alliance of Armenians of Russia, the Armenian Institute of International Law and Political Science.25 This is a product of Armenian science (or rather vulgar pseudo-science). The book, which slanders the democratic organizations and movements of the Turkic peoples of the Transcau-casus and the Northern Caucasus, is tangible proof of how the Russian invention was put into circulation to brainwash the Armenians. The nation is being taught to live in the constant fear of its southern (Turkey), eastern (Azerbaijan), and northern neighbor (the Turkic peoples of the Northern Caucasus). This makes Russia the only patron and only natural ally. Russia has demonstrated inordinate skill in playing with marked cards. The scandalous behavior of the Georgia’s Armenian community, which borders on mass psychosis and which mars the Armenian community’s national and civil dignity, is ample evidence of Russia’s mastery. The local Armenian community categorically refused to let the repressed and deported Meskhetian Turks return to the former Akhaltsikhe pashalak, their historical homeland.26
22 This issue is discussed in publications that appeared in the last decade: J.M. Landau, Pan-Turkism. From Irre-dentism to Cooperation, London, 1995; R.F. Mukhammetdinov, Zarozhdenie i evoliutsia tiurkizma (Iz istorii po-liticheskoy mysli i ideologii tiurkskikh narodov: Osmanskaia i Rossiiskaia imperia, Turtsia, SSSR, SNG. 70-e gg. XIX v.-90-e gg. XX v.), Kazan, 1996; N.P. Goroshkov, Protsess stanovlenia i razvitia pantiurkizma (istoriko-politologicheskiy analiz), PhD thesis, Voronezh, 1997; S. Tscherwonnaja, “Die Ruckkehr des ‘Panturkismus’?—Absichten, Mythen, Real-itat,” Orient (Hamburg), Nr. 4, 2000, S. 593-615; S.M. Chervonnaya, I.A. Giliazov, N.P. Goroshkov, “Tiurkizm i panti-urkizm v original’nykh istochnikakh i mirovoy istoriografii: iskhodnye smysly i tseli, paradoksy interpretatsiy, tendentsii razvitia,” As-Alan (Moscow), No. 1 (10) 2003, pp. 3-478.
23 The author participated as executive manager in the 2003-2005 project headed by A.V. Malashenko “Wahhabism in Contemporary Russia: Political and Ethnocultural Field of the Northern Caucasus” (Project 03-01-00013a supported by the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation); the reports were prepared for publication in 2006.
24 The events in the Pankissi Gorge, the autochthonous population of which (about 7 thousand Chechens) helped the Chechen refugees from the Chechen Republic, are discussed in a book in the series Bewaffnete Konflikte nach dem Ende des Ost-West-Konfliktes (Armed Conflicts after the End of the East-West Conflict) J. Rau, Russland-Georgien-Ts-chetschenien. Der Konflikt um das Pankisi-Tal (1997-2003), Berlin, 2005.
25 See: A. Svarants, Pantiurkism v geostrategii Turtsii na Kavkaze, Moscow, 2002.
26 This situation and the sad position of the Meskhetian Turks, who cannot return to their homeland, have been discussed by the present author in reports on the studies carried out within the mission of the Federal Union of the Peoples of
C o n c l u s i o n
Today, the traditional division of the Caucasian peoples into groups, some of them more and some of them less loyal to Russia, has become even more complicated than before. First, there is no continuity, the roles are changing and the accents are shifting. Second, Russia is constantly on the lookout within each of the groups for loyal elites, which can be better described as marginalized groups, to set up puppet regimes. Moscow is not alien to reviving the old communist party nomenklatura and to finding a common language with the new criminal clans, which have already mastered the art of dealing with Moscow and using it as their patron. This naturally complicates the general picture and constantly upsets the balance of political forces in the Northern Caucasus. Russia’s main aim, however, remains the same: the North Caucasian peoples should be divided so that the energy of their national movements can be used to put pressure on the Transcaucasian states.
Europe in Georgia in the fall of 1998 (see: S. Chervonnaya, “The Problem of the Repatriation of the Meskhet-Turks,” Fact-Finding-Mission of FUEV-Delegation, Flensburg, November 1998, pp. 18-27) and in the article based on these materials: S.M. Tscherwonnaja, “Die Turk-Mes’cheten. Ein Volk ohne Land. Probleme der Repatriierung,” Ethnos-Nation, Nr. 1, Koln, 1999, S. 27-40.
