I would like to express my concern at the rapid growth of signs of the onset of a large-scale, systemic crisis in Russian politics in the North Caucasus. The situation inevitably leads to the fact that the region is splitting, its various parts are pushed out of the Russian state space, chronic subsidies and dependency of the subjects of the North Caucasus region increase, political demands on Russia appear and intensify, mono-ethnicity of power is increasing, interethnic hostility is deepening, de-Russification is proceeding at a rapid pace. population, religious and national extremism is growing, etc. Some of this has been observed before, but it has recently become very broad and truly structural.

In 2009 and especially in 2010, Russian President D. A. Medvedev and Prime Minister V. V. Putin in public speeches repeatedly pointed out that, in their opinion, the reason for this is Caucasian clannishness and corruption, and they promised to fight with all their might against these shameful phenomena of our life.

The desire of the top leadership of Russia to eradicate clannishness and corruption in the Caucasus can only be welcomed, because, in my opinion, these phenomena really lead to the above-described extremely dangerous processes, however, such statements made by the leaders and creators of the current vertical of power, at least, cause a lot questions and, in principle, are incomprehensible.

The fact is that reliance on the Caucasian clans is an integral element of the modern system of governance in the North Caucasus, a very important part of the current vertical of power, created, among other things, by V.V. Putin and D.A. Medvedev themselves. Without reliance on the Caucasian clans and without their strengthening, the modern system of administrative management of the North Caucasus is impossible, and corruption is a natural consequence of the increasing influence of clans. How, under these conditions, the federal center should fight those whom it has created to a significant extent, whom it supports and who supports it - it is not at all clear to me.

I believe that the main reason for the crisis is the automatic transfer to the Caucasus of the existing system of political and administrative governance in Russia.

Over the past 15 years, and especially in the last 10 years, a special type of bureaucratic-oligarchic capitalism has developed in Russia, characterized by the power of certain, artificially irreplaceable elites (clans) with support in broad layers of the untouchable and omnipotent bureaucracy, merged with big business and managing all financial flows country. At the same time, a political system was imposed on society, serving and supporting this type of capitalism and, as a result, removing the majority of the people from participation in government and from the possibility of free expression of their will by imitating freedom of political activity, creating a puppet official opposition and eradicating unofficial opposition, planting completely controlled by the authorities electoral system, artificial containment from above of the construction of civil society, etc.

Such a system is absolutely not ideal in itself, and moreover, it is extremely dangerous. If we compare the reasons and prerequisites for the bloody riot in Kyrgyzstan and the current Russian situation, we will see incredibly much in common. However, in the conditions inherent in the main part of the Russian state - a "long-running" and politically passive people, weak self-organization of society, the presence of certain natural and economic resources that make it possible to maintain the standard of living of citizens even with a very problematic and non-productive economy, the existence of a rudimentary system of civil society, all providing an imitation of some kind of political choice, etc. - it does not lead to a very rapid surge of popular discontent and resistance of the masses and, apparently, is still able to exist for some time.

The question is that the federal administrative-bureaucratic elite imposes this socio-economic system on the regions, including the North Caucasus - on the entire North Caucasus, regardless of whether its regions are Russian republics or formally independent states (Abkhazia and South Ossetia ). At the same time, a system that, at the very least, but operates on the main territory of Russia, refracting in the conditions of Caucasian society and Caucasian realities, turns into a terrible monster, which, with its external, ostentatious loyalty to the Russian state, begins to fully threaten the fundamental interests of Russia and the entire Russian people.

The problem is that the traditional North Caucasian society in the most radical way differs from the Russian one and its reaction to the existing system of governance is completely different. For a number of historical reasons, there are no serious foundations of statehood in mountain societies (states in these territories either never existed, or they existed for a very long time). During strong state rule, the mountain population of the North Caucasus accepts the conditions of the game of the state, but when this state weakens and begins to show weakness, it instantly returns to its own archaic forms of social self-organization, characterized by the dominance of clans and nationalities. It is its own nationality and its own clan within it that very quickly replace the state in the minds of an ordinary North Caucasian. We saw something similar after the collapse of the Russian Empire, this is what happened in the 1990s, when the North Caucasus, which had been holding for 70 years within the framework of statehood, instantly disintegrated into tens and hundreds of nationalities, ethnic groups, clans, sub-clans and families competing with each other in struggle for power and resources. Taking into account the fact that, unlike the rest of Russia, there are almost no own resources in the North Caucasus, and the industry collapsed very quickly after the collapse of the “damned” USSR, subsidies from the federal center became the main resource in the region, and it was for their possession that the main competition developed. Caucasian clans.

In these conditions, starting in 2000 (and much stronger since 2004, when Moscow began to appoint the heads of regions with its power), the federal elite offered the North Caucasus an unspoken social contract, according to which Moscow itself appointed the head of the region, which naturally was one of the leaders of the clans. His responsibility was to ensure the external loyalty of his region to Russia, external, demonstrative rejection of the course of separatism, as well as not external, but completely real support of the ruling Russian elite in the elections in his region. In exchange, Moscow gave him considerable (and in a couple of cases almost complete) freedom of action on his territory and provided him with large federal subsidies. That is, “I pay you money, what you do there with them and what you generally do in your republic does not concern me too much, but for this you guarantee the external absence of separatist aspirations and undertake to ensure the correct vote for me and my party in the elections” ...

It was after this decision that the current Caucasian clan system can be considered established. It was after this that various clans, like cuckoos sitting not in someone else's, but in their own nest, began to intensively saw the fantastic funds that regularly come from Moscow, pushing their rival brothers away from the trough with all their might and observing their obligations to the Moscow authorities. It is this factor that lies at the heart of the current crisis in the Caucasus.

A short digression can be made here. We are used to using the word "clan", "clan system" in a negative sense. This is not always true. What is a clan?

A clan is a rather closed group of people, united on any basis and in accordance with this feature, by combined efforts, achieving their goals inherent in all or almost all members of the clan. "Clannishness" can be a very broad concept, and the sign by which a clan unites can be anything - according to the leader (Luzhkov clan, Zyazikov clan), according to belonging to some territory (St. Petersburg clan), according to religion (I think it's understandable) , by family (Ismailov clan, Bakiyev clan), by ethnicity (Chechens, Karachais), etc.

You should not unnecessarily demonize this phenomenon - from the point of view of the clan, the unification of a group of people on the basis of some kind of community carries a lot of usefulness for themselves. In times of crisis, clannishness can help an ethnic group, unite and even save it. However, within the framework of the entire state as a group of peoples, the clan system cannot be progressive.

The reason for this is that a clan, by its very nature, cannot be a creator for ALL people. In the political economic sense, this phenomenon means the seizure, usurpation by a certain group of people of political, economic, natural and other resources that are jointly owned by the entire society. That is, for a narrow group of its members, a clan can bring prosperity and progress, but this is achieved by direct robbery of the entire people and the implementation of actions that hinder the development of the state in the interests, again, of a narrow group of leaders, people belonging to their clan or belonging to their nationality.

The activation of the clan function after the collapse of the USSR and after the weakening of Russia's position in the Caucasus was largely a defensive reaction for the highlanders - in the face of the weakening of Moscow's influence and the disorientation of the population, they were able to rally the people around their nations, clans, clans, reduce or destroy the attractiveness of the image of a common state in the minds of their supporters, to give them new, narrower goals, to set new tasks that are different from those of other members of society and to achieve the conclusion of a new social contract with clans similar to themselves, governing all of Russia. This became an excellent outlet for the ruling Caucasian clans, a kind of new economic model. If Russia in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods built an economy based on the sale of minerals abroad, then the Caucasian clans (in cooperation with the all-Russian ones) built an economy based on the sale of euphonious rhetoric and support for the irremovability of the Russian elite.

Thus, for the Caucasian clans and for the Russian bureaucracy, the stake on such a model looks quite justified and fully meets their narrow national and bureaucratic clan interests. Is it profitable for Russia?

It should be noted here that from a historical point of view, the current situation is far from the first example of cooperation between the Russian authorities and the North Caucasian clans - and each time such a support brought the country's interests enormous harm. Relying on the clan elite, modern Russia in the classical way repeated one of the biggest mistakes of the Caucasian War of the 18th-19th centuries - the stake on the clan. Then the clan was played by the Caucasian aristocracy, asking for help from the Russian aristocracy and offering them their services in return. Having received help from St. Petersburg, the Caucasian princes and nobles intensified the exploitation of mountain society, which led to a deep crisis in their relations with the common people and, in the eyes of a significant number of highlanders, made Russia, which helped them, as their enemy. Along with some other conditions, this seriously complicated the conquest of the Caucasus and unnecessarily prolonged the war. So, in the Western Caucasus, it lasted for 100 years.

After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks acted in the opposite way - proceeding from their class attitudes, in the Caucasus they made a bet not on clans and nationalities, but on the people. As a result, in general, the mountaineers either supported the Bolsheviks or treated them neutrally, but refused to support the whites and at the same time took advantage of the freedom of action given to them by the Bolsheviks against the Cossacks and cut out many Terek villages and farmsteads.

At the same time, it would be a delusion to think that the clan is the spokesman for the interests of the nation and that the clan struggle is always interethnic in nature. Clan borders do not necessarily coincide with the borders of nations, but in reality, as a rule, the North Caucasian nations themselves are divided into a considerable number of clans, competing, and sometimes mortally warring among themselves.

This is a traditional situation for the North Caucasus - this was also the case during the Caucasian War of the 18th-19th centuries, which was largely an internal civil war for the highlanders, waged by various clans and population groups among themselves, attracting external forces as allies - Russia, England , Turkey, etc. In our time, almost nothing has changed. Despite the apparent external unity, the North Caucasian nations themselves are divided into many clans, which are fiercely competing with each other and do not miss an opportunity to infringe on their rivals. So, until recently, in mono-national Ingushetia there was a very sharp rivalry of the Zyazikov clan against everyone; in Adygea, many Circassians are still seeking the punishment of A. Agirov - a person from the closest circle of President A. Tkhakushinov, his classmate, who held a high post in Adygea and was part-time secretary of the political council of the Adyghe branch of United Russia, who ran over a family of four; and in South Ossetia, probably already, the majority of the population quietly hates Kokoity for the fact that during the battles in Tskhinvali he cowardly sat in Java and for the fact that now he seeks not to restore the destroyed city, but to get rid of federal control over the distribution of funds, in while people are likely to enter the third winter without a roof over their heads.

In such conditions, the interests of Russia, as a country of equal nations, are not in supporting any one clan, but in protecting the interests of the entire people and all peoples on the basis of the principles of equality and unconditional observance of the laws. At the same time, within the framework of the established power vertical and the social contract with the elites, the bureaucracy from the federal center, as a rule, takes the side of just one clan and one leader.

After gaining control over the system of administrative management and the distribution of assets, the Caucasian clan begins to act like any other clan in any other region - begins to appropriate funds available in the region and to eliminate any danger to itself in this role. He closes access to federal subsidies on himself and begins to distribute them almost exclusively among his members, is engaged in the redistribution of property, removes henchmen of previous clans and at the same time places his people everywhere, gives them huge preferences and administratively strangles their competitors. What is happening is what was very accurately described by one Adyg in a television interview with REN-TV about the situation in Karachay-Cherkessia: “The Khubievs come to power - all the Khubievs to the last man come to power, the Ebzeevs come to power - all the Ebzeevs are in power, the Batdyev-Batdyevs come to power ".

At the same time, the clan is trying to free itself from any kind of control over itself, and in this respect, on the one hand, it does not allow the development of civil society, one of the tasks of which is control over power, on the other hand, it creates the illusion of opposition and a democratic political system in in the form of pocket opposition parties of the all-Russian parliamentary spectrum, almost or completely controlled by parliaments and election commissions. It would seem that everything is the same as everywhere else in Russia. Nothing new. What is the difference between the Caucasus?

There are five differences in the Caucasus:

a) The average resident of the North Caucasus, as we have already said, feels much less of his belonging to the Russian state or to the state in general. This is natural, since historically many Caucasian peoples have never had states and their entire experience of life in a state lies in the last 150-200 years, when Russia came to the Caucasus.

b) In the conditions of limited resources of the Caucasus (in contrast to the all-Russian ones), the usurpation by one clan of most, if not all, economic, political, etc. assets means a very sharp stratification of society, when a narrow group of people has everything, and the broad masses - nothing. It turns out a situation in which representatives of one clan have access to the means of production and to the political assets serving them, and all the remaining citizens are deprived of them - they cannot find a good job or work in general, cannot climb the career ladder, cannot get an education. they cannot take a real part in political or public life, they cannot receive compensation, infrastructure does not develop in their villages, they do not build houses, they cannot obtain the truth in the courts, law enforcement agencies "pressurize" them, etc. Whole communities, groups people, entire nationalities are simply thrown to the sidelines of life. In a similar situation, for example, in Ingushetia for several years there were all people who did not have the surname Zyazikov, in the same situation are now the Circassians in Karachay-Cherkessia, Balkars in Kabardino-Balkaria, all non-Abkhazians in Abkhazia, Russians everywhere in the North Caucasian republics.

c) The mentality of a Caucasian, especially in such republics as Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, is vastly different from the mentality of a Russian. Where a Russian will go to court and write letter after letter to the “dear editorial office”, trying to get the truth from the state, the Chechen will either not go to court at all, or, if he goes and does not get satisfaction, or if he goes and sees the weakness of the state machine, then will resolve the issue in its own way, illegal from the point of view of Russian legislation.

d) Caucasian corruption, huge in itself, is superimposed on the federal level of corruption - after all, you have to share with officials in Moscow! - as a result, the whole system is one huge tool for carving up the pie, and practically nothing reaches people.

e) In the presence of a different type of clan community, Caucasian clanism is largely based on the ethnic component and is overwhelmingly ethnic.

In these conditions, the concentration of a significant amount of goods belonging to the entire people in the hands of one clan, its omnipotence, corruption, illegality and lack of accountability to the people leads to social discontent or even a social explosion. Society is disintegrating. Part of him, not seeing for himself the possibility of a normal existence in the region, leaves him, as happened, in particular, with many residents of South Ossetia, the other part is trying with all his might to join the ruling clan and gain access to the feeding trough, someone is just trying to what to arrange their life in a way, not paying attention to anything, and someone gets angry, goes to the mountains or starts an active struggle with the existing authorities - what we now call terrorism.

Another important consequence of the spread of such a system of relations in the Caucasus is the enormous degradation of the economy and the permanently dependent status of the Caucasian republics within the Russian state. Why does this happen? Why does Russia spend huge amounts of money on the North Caucasus from year to year? Why is the money earned by taxpayers in Tula and Surgut not spent on Tula and Surgut grandmothers, but goes to provide for the Caucasian republics?

As you know, the subsidization of the North Caucasian territories ranges from 49% (KBR) to 92% (Chechnya and Ingushetia). Recently, it has only intensified. If for one average Russian citizen there are 5 thousand rubles of federal subsidies per year, then for a resident of North Ossetia - Alania and Kabardino-Balkaria - 12 thousand rubles each, Karachay-Cherkessia - 13 thousand rubles, Dagestan - 14 thousand rubles, Ingushetia - 27 thousand rubles. The unconditional record holder here is the region, whose leader, R. Kadyrov, declares that Moscow owes them a terrible debt - Chechnya, whose inhabitants spend 48.2 thousand rubles earned in Russia. In general, the federal center allocates 22% of all funds allocated to subsidies to the regions for the republics of the North Caucasus, in which 6.3% of the population of Russia lives. In addition, huge sums are regularly allocated to Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

As we have already seen, the provision of subsidies to the region, distributed by the local part of the all-Russian "vertical of power", is one of the conditions of the social agreement between Moscow and the Caucasian elites. This is a very important condition; without it, no external loyalty of the North Caucasus is possible. Therefore, what the people call “to fill up the Caucasus with money”, “to pay dues to the Caucasus” and “receive tribute from Moscow” is beginning to happen.

On the one hand, huge federal transfers play a positive function, since they allow people in totally unearning republics and de jure countries to maintain certain minimum living standards, on the other hand, in the most paradoxical way, this crazy, easy money does not play a positive, and to an extreme degree negative role - they deprive the Caucasian territories of incentives for development and further spin the flywheel of corruption and clannishness.

The problem is that in the conditions of super-high clannishness and corruption, these huge funds do not reach those who really need them - to honest entrepreneurs and manufacturers and settle in the hands of the upper layer of people who govern the regions and take part in a social contract with the all-Russian elite and, therefore, having access to the distribution of grants. So, for example, in the case of South Ossetia, according to Varvara Pakhomenko, a consultant to the International Group for Crisis Prevention, which refers to the results of the audit of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, in 2008 $ 55 million was allocated for the restoration of this republic, of which only $ 15 million, and only $ 1.4 million was spent directly on the restoration.

Lack of funds prevents some from developing the economy at the same time when flows of easy money destroy all incentives for others to work. This system distorts the very foundations of economic relations and makes the most profitable business not economic activity, but access to state resources. It turns out a paradoxical picture that is impossible in a normal society - for the development of the North Caucasus region Russia directs huge state funds, much larger than in other regions, but in the conditions of the omnipotence and corruption of the Caucasian elite, built into the all-Russian vertical of power, these huge funds not only do not reach people and up to real production, but they also kill the very possibility of economic development! A surprisingly ugly situation. Under her, money does not bring money, as Marx believed, but takes it away, but within the framework of the clan-bureaucratic approach, everything is absolutely correct and logical - look at the trends of recent years - federal subsidies to the Caucasus have increased, and local budget revenues have decreased. Why make money when Moscow will give as much as necessary?

A similar dependence is observed in relation to the social system built in the Caucasus under the conditions of a corrupt bureaucratic and clan authorities. Caucasian clans, like any others, act in their own interests, and not in the interests of society, therefore, they will always and under any conditions seek to avoid public control over their actions. The clan and the free society are diametrically opposed phenomena. Coexistence of one with the other is impossible - either the people live freely, democratically and through the election of power and control over it, they exercise their constitutional function as the “only source of power”, or this source will be a corrupt clan elite elected from Moscow and making all decisions individually for everyone members of society.

On the one hand, we can say that in this respect, the authorities of the North Caucasian republics, willingly or unwillingly, repeat the all-Russian model, which is very far from perfect, on the other hand, the effect of using such a system in the Caucasus doubles and triples because, in accordance with the social contract with the Caucasian elites, the Russian authorities turn a blind eye to almost all their "pranks" and fundamentally do not intervene even in moments of very acute confrontation between the authorities and the people and, with rare exceptions, do not respond to signals about the blatant permissiveness of local princelings and their suppression of timid manifestations of civil society.

Accordingly, as in the issue of the economy, the more the current bureaucratic-clan system develops, the less chances and opportunities there will be for creating a free civil society in the Caucasus.

The issues of control within the framework of the existing system are generally very, very acute. So sharp that for the sake of lack of control over their actions and over the expenditure of federal funds, representatives of the Caucasian elites, without hesitation, go into conflict with Moscow, and in this confrontation they are often ready to go to the end. The reason for this is understandable - any control poses a threat to the leadership and well-being of the clan, while openness and transparency will demonstrate to both Moscow “curators” and their own people that the new Caucasian nobility is acting not in the interests of Russia, but in the interests of only their own clan.

You don't have to look far for examples of this. One can recall E. Kokoity's permanent attempts not so much to restore the republic as to get rid of the Moscow “controllers” watching how Russian money is spent. One can recall the harassment arranged by the President of Dagestan Mukhu Aliyev of the central government in February 2009, when he rudely expelled the head of the tax department of Dagestan, Vladimir Radchenko, appointed from Moscow. Moreover, this was done in an extremely offensive and defiant tone - "No Radchenko will work here!" I very much doubt that any of the leaders of the non-Caucasian regions could do this.

A separate mention should be made of Dmitry Kozak's attempt in 2005 to strengthen control over the North Caucasian regions and limit the powers of their leaders, as well as the degree of their influence on the distribution of federal transfers, depending on the degree of subsidization of their republics. This plan provoked enormous resistance from the Caucasian elites, who united and were able to insist in Moscow on its abolition. It should be understood that D. Kozak was then a much more influential person in Moscow and the Caucasus than A. Khloponin is now. Even if he did not manage to change the system, what is now expected of Khloponin is not very clear to me personally.

Another similarity with the economic situation is that in the field of social and interethnic relations, the current system creates an absolutely ugly situation in which there is no dialogue in society on very important issues. There is simply no need for it. If decisions about the fate of the region are made only by Moscow and the titular nation or clan, then why talk to someone else, such as some people? Accordingly, the titular nation or clan resolves all issues directly with their partners in Moscow and arrogantly does not consider it necessary to talk with other nationalities subordinate to them or clans that they have driven out of political life.

There are many examples of this. Thus, the national leaders of the Circassian people consider one of their priorities the return to the Caucasus of the foreign Adygeyan diaspora, numbering, according to various estimates, up to 5 million people. It is clear that the return of such (and even 10 times less) number of people will radically change interethnic relations in the North Caucasus, which, no doubt, will affect the interests of representatives of all peoples living there. Despite this, the Adyghe leaders consider the issue of the return of the diaspora purely Adyghe and under no circumstances wish to enter into a dialogue on this topic with other nationalities. Some time ago, the head of a well-known Circassian organization told me: “Why should we talk to Russians or Karachai-Balkars? We will come to an agreement with Moscow, she will give orders and everything here will be saluted. "

Another extremely important and completely natural result of the activity of the existing system is Caucasian separatism, which has already spread its metastases to a large extent across the North Caucasus and which inevitably follows from the current tacit agreement of the bureaucratic elites.

One of the primary consequences of this treaty is the destruction of a single community of peoples, the desacralization of such concepts as “loyalty”, “friendship”, “allied relations”, “common history” and their transfer to the status of an ordinary commodity. This system, even purely theoretically, already by its structure, calls into question the very foundations of the joint coexistence of the family of Russian peoples and conditions this process with a number of circumstances that must be fulfilled in exchange not even for real, but only for external loyalty.

One of the favorite terms of President D.A. Medvedev is the phrase "facade democracy", which means the presence of an outward appearance of democracy in the absence of real democracy within the system. So, the loyalty achieved within the framework of the existing agreement of the elites is precisely the facade loyalty, which in the short and medium-short period can seem real, but which inevitably undermines the system from within and pushes the North Caucasian republics away from Russia.

At present, in almost all North Caucasian republics (almost!), A bunch of regional and Moscow bureaucratic elites operate at the level of economic relations and economic demands, but the logic of its development clearly indicates that it will not stop at economic demands and will inevitably turn to political demands. The transition to the political stage under current conditions is only a matter of time.

This is based on a banal and eternal difference of interests - the interests of Russia as a state of many nationalities, where 140 million people live and the interests of clans that strive for the sole exploitation of assets belonging to all Russians. If at some point the current federal government offers the clans money in exchange for loyalty, this does not mean at all that they are really becoming loyal to Russia - this is façade loyalty. With ostentatious, external loyalty to the system, completely different processes take place inside it, differing in the opposite sign. Under the conditions of Moscow's policy of non-intervention, this period is used by the clans for their own strengthening, for building up their own economic, political and social base, for creating alternative ideologies and history, often hostile to Russia, for the fantastic indoctrination of a large mass of people. All this has been going on in the Caucasus for many years and is in full swing now, meeting absolutely no resistance from the federal authorities. Practice shows that as soon as clans begin to feel strong and when the external situation contributes to this, they immediately isolate themselves from Russia, put forward political conditions for it, begin to strive for separatism, or threaten Russia with separatist and military actions, demanding to increase payments to themselves from the federal budget , or weaken control over its use. This is a law, and it cannot be otherwise, even theoretically.

In this regard, one can give an example of the Abkhaz, who for many years lived dreaming of entering Russia, and now, after recognition from Russia, they are intensively building their own state with Russian money and under Russian protection and are striving at full steam to move away from Russia. Roughly the same situation is developing with a narrow stratum of the South Ossetian elite, admitted to governing the republic and to carve-up the sweet pie of federal subsidies - at a time when the whole people wants to reunite with Russia and with North Ossetia in particular, this stratum, admitted to the "bins", dreams of building an independent state. Similar processes are taking place with the Circassians. If 10 years ago it was impossible to hear political demands from them, now they are actively demanding from Russia to recognize the so-called genocide of the Circassians, which allegedly took place during the Caucasian War, to return to the Caucasus the descendants of the Circassians who moved to Turkey as a result of that war, and to those who do not want to come, give out Russian passports. And, interestingly, at the same time, representatives of the Circassian diaspora (the one that is being demanded to be resettled in Russia) declares that the true goal of the Circassians is to create an independent state in the Russian Caucasus. (A certain exception to this rule is the requirements of the KGNK (Committee of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus), when in the early 1990s, during the half-life of Russia and the complete paralysis of state power, some hotheads in the Caucasus spoke of the need to create a Caucasian state from the Black to the Caspian Sea.

Separatist sentiments in the Caucasus are currently distributed to varying degrees. Somewhere there are more of them, as in Ingushetia and Dagestan, somewhere there are very few of them, as in Adygea, but one must be aware that they exist, the elites gradually incite them and gradually escalate the political situation, which, in the end, in The existing coordinate system is simply beneficial to them - the more tense the situation appears, the more the Moscow elite will pay them in order to supposedly keep the situation in a normal course.

Neither here, nor further in the series of examples, I deliberately almost did not cite and will try not to cite Chechnya, since this republic constitutes a special case. Most likely, we have already lost Chechnya. The extension of the above-described administrative and bureaucratic system to Chechnya, coupled with the granting of incredible powers of power and incredibly large financial subsidies to the Chechen tsar, led to its logical end - to the fact that Chechnya has actually left the Russian field, is an independent state, and Russia pays tribute to it in in the form of huge subsidies, the largest in the Russian Federation per capita.

So many funds are directed to the Chechen Republic from Moscow, and the level of authority of Ramzan Kadyrov is so great that it arouses jealousy and envy even among the leaders of other Caucasian republics, who are also completely not deprived of powers and subsidies. A special term even appeared among them - "Vainakhisation". In the state that developed during the "Vainakhisation", Sharia dominates, and not the Russian constitution (which R. Kadyrov himself recently recognized), Sharia courts operate there, the principle of blood feud is officially applied, polygamy exists, and so on. A mono-ethnic society has developed there, where people point fingers at a non-Chechen walking down the street as if it’s a curiosity, where women walking the streets with their heads uncovered are shot with paintball guns. This is not Russia.

Behind the outer facade of victorious reports and threatening phrases, we did not notice how Khasavyurt No. 2 happened. What Ramzan Kadyrov now has is much more than what Dudayev, Maskhadov and Basayev wanted. The current situation, when, according to the London inmate Akhmed Zakayev, "Moscow lies near Chechnya", they could not even dream of!

The existing “front loyalty” of Chechnya may end at any second - as soon as the system changes, the frenzied flow of subsidies decreases, or an attempt is made to reduce the powers of the Chechen ruling clan. In this situation, I do not really understand why we should continue to deceive ourselves and believe that Chechnya is still a part of Russia. Given the fact that there are no Russians in Chechnya anymore, why should we keep it at all, pay for the Chechen construction miracle, pay salaries to Sharia judges who officially hold the posts of deputy district leaders for ideology, or pay military camps for 13-14-year-old Chechen children from our taxes that we can spend on medicines for pensioners or on solving the housing problem for refugees from Chechnya - people who were expelled from this republic by those whose houses we have already built at the expense of the Russian budget?

IDEOLOGY

There is another very serious reason why Russia is losing the North Caucasus. This is ideology.

All recent times, the Russian authorities have offered Caucasians either war, or flooded them with money. For some reason, they had the impression that Caucasians could either be killed or bought. Moreover, if 6-7 years ago they believed that it was better to kill them, now they are inclined to buy, for which, by and large, Khloponin was sent to the Caucasus. This is an unforgivable mistake. There is a huge gap in this formula - guns or money - which, under any circumstances, will not allow it to be successful. The name for this space will be RUSSIAN STATE IDEOLOGY.

With ideology in the Caucasus, everything is extremely bad, perhaps even worse than with the grave consequences of the national-clan bureaucratic vertical of power. Ideologically, at the beginning of the 1990s, Russia withdrew from the Caucasus. That was the time when it became somehow indecent in our country to defend the state point of view, to convince people of our values, to promote the interests of Russia.

There is such a proverb - "If you leave the border, then the border follows you." Ideologically, we left the Caucasus and the border followed us - the liberated information space was instantly filled with various kinds of nationalist, religious and other ideological platforms and theories, which the new Caucasian elite, who had gained power, often holding socially archaic and essentially anti-Russian positions, began to intensively propagandize their own to the people.

Aggressive propaganda of ethnic and religious exclusivity, primordial rights to land and the theory of the new arrival of neighboring peoples began. The history of the North Caucasus has been rewritten to an incredible, astounding extent by national historians. On some incomprehensible, unprovable and often falsified factual basis in this history, the titular peoples turned out, on the one hand, to be represented as extremely great and simply of fundamental importance for the entire multi-thousand-year history of mankind, on the other hand, in all their historical defeats and modern problems, they were guilty other peoples were declared, which now, according to modern ethnoideologists, must repent to the descendants of the indigenous ethnic groups and constantly pay them.

In parallel with this, in almost all the North Caucasian republics there was an active process of administrative squeezing out of public life all the debatable and ideologically oppositional "the only correct point of view" of the ruling ethnic clans. Anything that did not correspond to the "nationally correct" position was declared false and offending the national feelings of entire peoples. Such is the situation, for example, with the same alleged genocide of the Circassians during the Caucasian War. For example, literature about the genocide is on the list of materials for out-of-class reading in secondary schools, and the local authorities do not allow to include books about the fact that there was no genocide in this list. A few months ago, in general, there was an egregious case when, according to the Israeli political scientist-Caucasian expert A. Shmulevich, the President of Adygea A. K. Tkhakushinov personally expelled the young Maikop scientist S. Ostapenko from graduate school for a report in which he dared to disagree with the theory of genocide.

How did Russia respond all this time to an ideological attack on its interests? No way. How is he responding now? Similar. Moreover, in this respect the situation is the same both in relation to the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. One of the main lessons of the five-day military conflict with Georgia was that in terms of information, we lost this war and we need to revive information and propaganda influence in the Caucasus. Since then, informational and ideological pressure on Russia's interests in the Caucasus has increased enormously, but we have everything as before - we cannot learn anything. Apparently, what really needs to be done is that first the thunder breaks out - and only then will we begin to be baptized.

Despite the huge number of Caucasian challenges, there is no scientific institution in Russia that, following the example of the Institute of the USA and Canada, the Institute of the Far East, etc., would purposefully, professionally and in the interests of the state analyze what is happening in this region. Experts who are not superficial and biased, but really highly professional and from a statist point of view, would analyze the Caucasian problems can be counted on one hand, their knowledge is not in demand in the decision-making system and will never be in demand under the current vertical. There is no single Caucasian information policy, just as there is no state all-Caucasian media that would convey the Russian position, defend Russian interests and neutralize information threats to our country.

Based on the actions and statements of our leaders, it is clear that they either do not have an understanding of what is happening in this region, or the picture of this is significantly distorted. So, recently the plenipotentiary representative in the North Caucasus Federal District A. Khloponin attributed the unwinding of the pendulum of the Circassian "genocide" to the intrigues of some foreign anti-Russian forces - "Now they have already started talking about the Circassian genocide. And there are entire scientific institutes that are working on different strategies for different republics. " Alexander Gennadievich does not understand that the issue of "genocide" was raised not by foreign subversive elements, but by their own, native Caucasian ethnic elites - the very ones on which Moscow once made a bet and continues to do so now. Those people who, 10-15 years ago, raised the issue of genocide that never existed in history, are now sitting in the presidency, are leaders of public associations, high-ranking officials, deputies, etc. These are holders of high state awards of Russia, laureates of state prizes of the North Caucasian republics, received, among other things, for books in which they declared Russia the "executioner" of the Caucasian peoples, and the people who collaborated with her were "traitors." These are representatives of the very Caucasian clans that form the basis of modern Russian power in this region, the very ones with whom President Dmitry Medvedev threatens to fight mercilessly and those with whom Alexander Khloponin himself works and meets every day.

The understanding of this is not visible. The reason for this situation, perhaps, lies in the fact that such a situation fully complies with the conditions of an informal contract between the federal bureaucratic elite and the Caucasian regional leaders, within the framework of which the regional authorities are given freedom of action on the ground. This meets the interests of the bureaucratic clans, but sharply, in the most cardinal way contradicts the interests of Russia.

In the current state of affairs, the situation will deteriorate, and will deteriorate rather sharply. We must not forget that now the first generation of North Caucasians has emerged into a big life, who grew up in the conditions of the undivided domination of this ideology and the absence of a statist ideology. It no longer perceives Russia as some kind of indisputable unifying center and, on the contrary, puts the "historical interests" of its people above the all-Russian state interests. If now this generation is perceived simply as a radical youth, largely without a tsar in its head, then in another 10 years it will be this generation that will determine the policy of the republics of the North Caucasus.

Without an ideological component, the formula "war or money" is doomed to failure BY DEFINITION. The task set for Khloponin to flood the Caucasus with money, provided that it is controlled over its use, is important, but without ideological content, it is dead and impracticable. The Caucasus can neither be killed nor bought. Cannons cannot destroy ideas - and in the same way money cannot buy these ideas. A Wahhabite blowing up in the subway or a group of Caucasian conscripts establishing their own order in a military unit does not do it for money. Regardless of how many military units will be stationed in the North Caucasus and how many factories or tourist complexes will be built there, people, into whose heads their own elite has hammered the ideas of the superiority of one nation over another and Russia's historical guilt before them, will not be able to ensure peace and economic prosperity of your region.

In the North Caucasus, there is an urgent need for a nationwide unifying ideology, for active efforts to promote it and to neutralize the already firmly rooted theories of ethnic superiority. In the conditions of the dominance of the current agreement of the federal elites with the Caucasian ones, this is impossible in principle, since ideological issues in it are unconditionally at the mercy of local clans, whose interests, by definition, will always contradict the state interests of Russia. The current vertical of power in an ideological sense will inevitably tear the Caucasus away from Russia and tear off relations within the Caucasian peoples themselves, promoting the pseudo-greatness of some ethnic groups along with the lack of rights and historical guilt of others.

Where such an ideology will inevitably lead the state, we see in the example of Kyrgyzstan and Georgia. One country for a long time swelled from megalomania and ethnic narcissism under the slogan that its people allegedly gave the world a wheel and a tamed horse, the other - from what gave the world wine, and both together opposed the titular people to the “alien nations” - Uzbeks, Abkhazians, Ossetians, Armenians, etc. To a great extent, the same is happening now with the titular nations of the North Caucasian republics. We are witnessing the planting of the same narcissism and ethnocentrism due to the fact that these peoples gave mankind a Circassian, a saber, a Karachai breed of horses and a symbol of Caucasian resistance - Imam Shamil, and exactly the same talk about autochthonousness and alienation is heard now in almost all North Caucasian republics.

How long can we wait for the Kyrgyz scenario and the Georgian exodus? Something tells me that not very long.

RUSSIAN QUESTION

Another reason that Russia is losing the North Caucasus is the de-Russification of the region.

This process began almost immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the weakening of the state's position in the Caucasus, and by now it has acquired a very impressive size and a clearly pronounced trend. It is believed that from 1992 to the present day, Russians left Chechnya, Ingushetia and in significant numbers by almost 100%, but in different proportions they left all the other republics of the North Caucasus, where their share, according to official, most likely overstated data, has generally declined. from 26% to 15%.

The departure of representatives of any nationality from the Caucasus is evil, and the purpose of this article is not at all to exalt the Russian ethnos along with the infringement of any others. At the same time, it must be recognized that in the light of state building and Russian interests, it is the Russians who are of particular importance and are the key to strengthening Russian statehood in the Caucasus. Without the presence of a large and close-knit Russian population in the North Caucasus, the very presence of Russia in this region loses its meaning, and in this case, sooner or later, these territories will be lost for Russia.

The presence of a strong and necessarily supported by the state Russian population plays a huge role for the Caucasian peoples themselves - in the conditions of the traditional, historical instability of the region, it is the Russians who are (at least they were before) a factor of stability and peace in the region. Somewhere, in my opinion, in one of Stratfor's reports I came across a very interesting and accurate phrase that sounded something like this: “The Caucasus and the peoples inhabiting it are like a piece of beautiful amber with spiders frozen inside. Amber is the Russians, if they leave, the spiders will immediately grab each other's throats! "

It is the Russians who make up the most educated and qualified part of the population of the North Caucasus, and if they leave it, this will put a big cross on the revival of the economy of this region and on its, at least theoretical, modernization. We see an example of this already now in the situation with the economy of Dagestan, which previously consisted to a large extent of high-tech and science-intensive industries of the military-industrial complex, which are now standing, including because after the departure of the Russians there is no one to work for them.

At the same time, it should be noted that, despite the fact that both Russians and representatives of the North Caucasian peoples are citizens of the same state, they have huge and very important differences in the degree and order of self-organization. The North Caucasian political scientist Oleg Tsvetkov has extremely interesting research on this topic.

The highest and practically the only degree of social organization of the Russian nation is now the state. For a thousand years of Russian statehood, the Russian ethnos has atrophied, practically at the genetic level, a sense of national unity and the ability to organize along ethnic lines. Certain tendencies towards national self-organization remained with the Cossacks, although at the present time this is also felt far from always and not in the prevailing plan. Practically the only clan forms that Russians can form are clans according to their professional characteristics and the degree of belonging to power structures, but even in this case, on the scale of the entire people, we are talking only about hundredths of a percent of the total number of the ethnic group.

On the other hand, stable statehood, as we said, has never been a strong feature of the Caucasian peoples. They simply could not develop the ability to rally on a state basis, but they have a pronounced ability to organize according to clan and national principles.

Feeling the support of the state, feeling themselves members of a single state machine, Russians can do great things, show miracles of courage, ingenuity, and enterprise. On the contrary, when the state weakens, when it abandons the Russians, or when it starts playing against them, the modern Russian ethnos demonstrates a tremendous incapacity for self-organization and displays the worst traits of the Russian people. Among the representatives of the Caucasian peoples, a completely inverse relationship is observed - in those periods when a strong state power dominates in the Caucasus, the Caucasians obey it, respect it and live by its laws. If the power is weak, then they very quickly, in the most natural way, return to the pre-state methods of ethnic organization - clans and rally tightly on the basis of national or other clan affiliation. That is, in the conditions of the weakness of the Russian state in the Caucasus and the substitution of its fundamental interests by the interests of the clan officials that gained power, the Russian ethnos, by definition, cannot be competitive with the Caucasian ethnic groups and will always lose rivalry with them.

Moreover, in accordance with the nature of ethnocratic, clan power, the titular clans will always squeeze the Russians out of the territories that they consider to be theirs. Firstly, this will happen because they need to distribute limited resources in their favor, secondly, because it is the Russians who pose a particular danger to them by their natural gravitation towards Russia and the strong state-grave digger of clannishness, and thirdly, they will do this because they have the right - they have received carte blanche and freedom of action from the Moscow clans of the federal level.

Thus, the existing formula of the social contract and the current vertical of power even purely theoretically exclude any possibility of a strong and cohesive Russian population in the Caucasus. All that we can come to under current conditions is a weak state and the substitution of common Russian values ​​for the interests of federal and Caucasian bureaucratic clans that have found a common language, which will automatically lead to a natural weakening of the Russian population, the dominance of ethnic clans and corruption. Under these conditions, the Russian ethnos cannot and will not be able to compete with the Caucasian clans, and in some regions faster, in others slower, but it will inevitably leave the North Caucasus.

This is the main reason for the inevitability of the process of de-Russification of the Caucasian region, and only after this reason, it is worth considering all other factors that also affect the outflow of the Russian population, such as deindustrialization, military conflicts, ethnic oppression, unequal access to economic resources, to administrative management, etc. Without eliminating the main reason, there can be no return of Russians to the Caucasus and no slowdown in their departure from there. All programs designed for this are manilovism and self-deception, and some - such as the return of Russians to Chechnya - also pose a clear danger to the lives of our fellow citizens.

At present, the Russians in the Caucasus are weakened, humiliated and disoriented. They have been abandoned by their own state, represented by officials from Moscow, pursuing their own interests and relying on local ethnic clans. The presence of the "Russian question" is ignored and carefully concealed, while numerous cases of clashes and oppression of Russians on ethnic grounds are almost always translated into the status of domestic and administrative. Russian Caucasians know that in the event of any conflict, the Russian authorities will immediately surrender them, without hesitation, as not so long ago they surrendered the Russians in Chechnya and how they are now surrendering Russians in Abkhazia, indifferently watching how their homes are taken away from them and apartments.

The Russians are disunited and disorganized. Despite the fact that in the North Caucasus there are many public organizations of titular nationalities, there are practically no Russian organizations - they are dispersed, ruined and decomposed. At present, practically the only such structure remains - the Union of Slavs of Adygea, and even against it the authorities constantly either bring forward criminal cases or issue prosecutorial warnings.

A paradoxical, but completely logical situation is developing - the more the current vertical of power is strengthened in the Caucasus, the more unbearable conditions are created for the Russian population to live there, but leaving the Caucasus, the Russians, by the very fact of their departure, push them out of the Russian state space and thereby put an end to the influence of the federal bureaucratic elites there and their collusion with the local elites.

Recently, there have been very weak signals that the Russian elite is ready, at least declaratively, to recognize the existence of the Russian question in the North Caucasus. This topic, in particular, on May 19, was raised by President D. Medvedev at a meeting with human rights activists and representatives of the intelligentsia. But the bitter tragicomicism of the current situation lies in the fact that the president is also going to solve the Russian question within the framework of the existing pool of trustworthy clan-bureaucratic verticals and within the boundaries of the existing agreement of elites who are simply by their nature killing the Russian population of the Caucasus!

Let's see with whom Medvedev discussed the problems of the Russians, from whom he asked for support in this matter. A third of those who gathered at the meeting with the President represented public organizations of the titular peoples of the Caucasus, which, quite naturally, defended the interests of their ethnic groups; another third were human rights activists who for decades stubbornly close their eyes to all manifestations of discrimination against Russians on ethnic grounds, but instantly raise unspeakable crying at the slightest violation of the rights of all other ethnic groups; the rest of the invitees were public and state figures, half of whom have no idea about the Caucasus and the problems of local Russians at all, and the other half in the course of their activities communicates exclusively with the titular peoples of the Caucasus, stubbornly does not notice the Russians and has nothing to do with them.

One of these guests was the well-known Ella Pamfilova, who right there at the meeting called the Russians the non-indigenous population of the Caucasus, which did not cause any protest from the audience (it’s strange why that contingent didn’t applaud her after such words!). Another person invested with the confidence of the authorities and a person whom Medvedev asked about the fate of the Russians was Maxim Shevchenko - a TV presenter, journalist, a well-known Islamist, an active supporter of Hamas, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, dealing with Caucasian issues there, a man who, until the last moment, probably and did not know that hundreds of thousands of Russians live in the Caucasus. For at least a couple of years, he devoted his numerous visits to the Caucasus to the problems of, probably, all Caucasian peoples, except for the Russians.

Relying on such people, you can get exactly what we have today - the de-Russification of the region, the strengthening of the ethnocentric clan power there and the weakening of Russian statehood. These are not the same people - they have different experience, different goals and other interests, which, based on their previous activities, most likely do not coincide with the interests of the Russian people in the Caucasus.

Of course, none of the people who work among the Caucasian Russians, who enjoy authority among them, who are doing something to improve their situation, who have the right to speak on their behalf, were not invited to the meeting. It is quite natural that, despite the president's attitude to the Russian question, all those present spoke about the absolutely unbearable situation of the Caucasian peoples, but no one ever remembered that Russians also live in the Caucasus, who also have some problems.

The continuation of such a discriminatory policy will lead to the ousting of the Russian ethnos from the North Caucasus, and all the statements of the creators of this policy, no matter from what high tribunes they sound, about their own concern about this issue and about the desire to return Russians to the Caucasus are either a game to the public, or a manifestation of complete misunderstanding of the situation in this region. It is this kind of policy, which is part of the state governance structure, that leads to the de-Russification of the region, to a decrease in Russian influence in it, and in the future can lead to the loss of the North Caucasus.

STRATEGY

Another important reason why Russia is losing the North Caucasus is the absence of a strategy for the development of this region and the strengthening of the Russian presence in it.

The absence of a comprehensive strategy for Russia's actions in the North Caucasus, along with the implementation of the “war or money” policy, is a classic repetition of the mistakes of the Caucasian war of the 18th-19th centuries. From the 1760s to the 1820s, Russia did not have a clear strategy in this region and rushed from one extreme to another - either it chose not to pay attention to the raids of the highlanders, calling them "pranks" and often punishing the Cossacks if they violated such a thing. rule and gave the mountaineers a rebuff, or arranged brutal punitive expeditions, when such raids became simply intolerable. Only with the arrival of A.P. Ermolov did the situation change and Russia acquired a comprehensive strategy, which in one way or another covered all issues - from military and economic to religious and national. It was this that made a decisive turning point in the protracted incomprehensible confrontation and made it possible to extend the Russian statehood to the territory of the North Caucasus.

The absence of a development strategy is a hackneyed topic, which, when speaking about the Caucasus, is not touched upon only by the lazy. Why is strategy so important?

An integrated strategy is the rules of the game and certainty. Only knowing the ultimate, major goals and understanding how you will achieve these goals, it is possible to build a long-term policy in the region and engage in long-term planning. The idea of ​​the strategy will give all the political forces in the region clear information about what Moscow wants from the Caucasus, what ambitions and strategic aspirations it has here, what it will definitely go for, and what it will not dare to under any circumstances. The absence of such a strategy to a great extent harms the very Russian interests - not being able to build a long-term policy, Russia is forced to constantly lag behind, losing initiative and only reacting to the changes that have already taken place.

Imagine a football team that plays only on the defensive, does not know the game plan, and plays out of order. Can she win? I doubt. This is the kind of team our state is without a strategy for the Caucasus.

Moreover, the main problem, in my opinion, is not that there is no such strategy now, the situation looks much worse - with the current vertical of power and in the conditions of modern collusion of clans, a comprehensive and comprehensive strategy for the development of the North Caucasus simply cannot be created.

There are several reasons for this.

A) The Russian government does not have a single approach to the North Caucasus. The system of interaction with this region and its administration does not presuppose the presence of one federal clan, which develops common approaches and a single policy. Quite the opposite - the process of governing the Caucasus involves several federal clans with different goals, competing with each other, pursuing different policies in their own clan interests. This is a classic example of a swan, crayfish, and pike. How, in such conditions, it is possible to develop a common strategy aimed at meeting the interests of not the clans, but the state, is absolutely incomprehensible to me personally.

B) in the conditions of the modern Russian bureaucratic-clan state, officials involved in the North Caucasus, regardless of which department they serve, most naturally approach the matter from the point of view of not a state, but a narrow-proprietary, bureaucratic, temporalist approach. With rare exceptions, these are people who do not know and do not understand the Caucasus and pursue their personal and departmental goals in a short time period - one, two years, several years. They simply do not sit in their chairs for as many years as the strategy is designed for, which means that they are not interested in developing it, they have different interests and other tasks.

C) On the other hand, our expert community is separated from the decision-making system. Our management system is not interested in attracting specialists - it is not interested in the opinion of experts and it simply pushes such people out. In conditions when decisions are made behind the scenes, on the basis of an agreement between one clan and another, and when they are based not on the interests of the state, but on the interests of clans, the opinions of specialists are simply not needed. A paradoxical, but very logical and explainable situation has developed - that stratum of society that does not understand the specifics of the Caucasus has never dealt with the Caucasus and, like Ilf and Petrov, believes that “jackals are not poisonous in the Caucasus” makes decisions on managing the Caucasus and neither with whom in these matters is not consulted. On the other hand, the expert community professionally dealing with the issue is not involved in the decision-making system and its opinion is not taken into account in any way.

In such conditions, the development of a general and comprehensive concept of the Russian presence in the North Caucasus is essentially impossible.

In this regard, attention is drawn to the Comprehensive Strategy for the Socio-Economic Development of the North Caucasus Federal District until 2025, recently presented by the Ministry of Regional Development and A. Khloponin. The very attempt to give such a strategy is extremely commendable and carries with it signs that my conclusions given above are incorrect (God forbid!). At the same time, the content of this document is extremely alarming and, in my opinion, is doomed to failure.

Abstracting from the stream of cheap praise that has already poured into this program, it must be admitted that this document considers only economic issues and for this reason does not and cannot carry a complex character, as stated in its title. This is just a part, albeit a very important part of the general set of problems in the development of the North Caucasus. The emphasis solely on the economy, in isolation from the solution of all the other extremely complex and super-interconnected topics of the region, once again demonstrates the lack of understanding of the situation by our government officials and their adherence to the policy of “either war or money flooding”. Khloponin was sent to the Caucasus to flood him with money, so he is developing a strategy on how to do it better!

A huge mistake! No super-good and thrice-ingenious strategy of inundating the Caucasus with money will lead to success without solving all the issues described in this article above. A simple, linear solution of issues, which certainly has the right to exist in Ryazan and Kazan, is unacceptable in the Caucasus and will certainly lead to failure, to another “sawing the dough” and loud victorious reports against the background of deepening crisis of Russian statehood in the North Caucasus.

You can build any kind of factories in Chechnya, but the local population, no longer feeling part of Russia, accustomed to dependence, to ethnic business in the form of demands on Russia and to receiving enormous subsidies that are unconditional, will not go to work at these factories. You can build a luxurious tourist complex in Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria or Karachay-Cherkessia, but who will go there to rest if Dagestan is rapidly Islamizing, and not in the mainstream of the traditional tarikatist movement, but goes into extremist Salafism, if people who throw shops go to Kabarda where alcohol is sold in Molotov cocktails, and in Cherkessk, mass fights between Karachais and Circassians regularly take place, in which more than a hundred people take part.

Without a comprehensive development strategy for the region, covering all aspects of its life, any economic undertakings are doomed to failure, and I would very much like Alexander Gennadievich Khloponin to hear this.

All of the above leads to sad thoughts. If the current policy is maintained, the prospects for a Russian presence in the North Caucasus are not obvious, and we have already lost one territory of this region. If nothing changes, the speed of the split of the North Caucasus and its exit from the Russian state field will increase. There are several reasons for this - over the past 20 years, a lot has been done in this direction, Russia's enemies are constantly increasing their influence in the region, while Russia itself does not react to this fact in any way, the Russian population is leaving, the factor of Chechnya, poisoning the region, is increasing, etc. ...

We must gradually start thinking about what to do with Chechnya. Its current state of alternative statehood, frontally loyal to Russia, makes it not just incomprehensible to be part of the Russian Federation, but expensive and harmful, corrupting other territories where the Russian Constitution is still in circulation. A military campaign will not help in this matter, just as the two previous ones did not. Under the conditions of the agreement of the elites, the war in Chechnya is simply meaningless, since even if we imagine that the campaign will take place and will be successful, then according to its results the federal clans will still offer the Chechen clans an existing treaty, which means that nothing will fundamentally change.

What should this and other solutions be? I don’t know that yet. In any case, the answer can be given only within the framework of strengthening the Russian statehood in this region, unconditional compliance with the legislation of the Russian Federation and in following the truly Russian national interests, instead of the interests of elites and clans. There is no alternative to strengthening Russia's position in the North Caucasus, for any alternative would mean squeezing Russia out. You need to understand this and stop voluntarily closing your eyes to problems that have already risen to their full height.

Can we?

Andrey Epifantsev

200 years ago, in October 1817, the Russian fortress Pregradny Stan (now the village of Sernovodskoe in the Chechen Republic) was built on the Sunzha River. This event is considered the beginning of the Caucasian War, which lasted until 1864.

Why did the mountaineers of Chechnya and Dagestan declare jihad to Russia in the 19th century? Can the resettlement of the Circassians after the Caucasian War be considered genocide? Was the conquest of the Caucasus a colonial war by the Russian Empire? This was told by Vladimir Bobrovnikov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Atypical conquest

"Lenta.ru": How did it happen that first the Russian Empire annexed the Transcaucasia and only then the North Caucasus?

Bobrovnikov: Transcaucasia was of great geopolitical importance, therefore it was conquered earlier. The princedoms and kingdoms of Georgia, the khanates on the territory of Azerbaijan and Armenia became part of Russia at the end of the 18th - first quarter of the 19th century. The Caucasian war was largely caused by the need to establish communications with the Transcaucasia, which had already become part of the Russian Empire. Shortly before its start, the Georgian Military Highway was laid, connecting Tiflis (the name of the city of Tbilisi until 1936 - approx. "Lenta.ru") with a fortress built by the Russians in Vladikavkaz.

Why did Russia need Transcaucasia so much?

This region was very important from a geopolitical point of view, so Persia, the Ottoman and Russian empires fought for it. As a result, Russia won this rivalry, but after the annexation of the Transcaucasia, the uncompromising, as they said at the time, the North Caucasus, prevented the establishment of communications with the region. Therefore, we had to conquer him too.

Painting by Franz Roubaud

A well-known publicist of the 19th century justified the conquest of the Caucasus by the fact that its inhabitants are "natural predators and robbers who never left and cannot leave their neighbors alone." What do you think - was it a typical colonial war or a forced pacification of "wild and aggressive" mountain tribes?

Danilevsky's opinion is not unique. Similarly, they described their new colonial subjects in Great Britain, France and other European colonial powers. Already in late Soviet times and in the 1990s, the historian from North Ossetia Mark Bliev tried to revive the rationale for the Caucasian War by fighting the raids of the mountaineers and created an original theory of the raid system, due to which, in his opinion, mountain society lived. However, his point of view was not accepted in science. It does not stand up to criticism from the point of view of sources indicating that the mountaineers earned their livelihood from cattle breeding and agriculture. The Caucasian war for Russia was a colonial war, but not quite typical.

What does it mean?

It was a colonial war with all its attendant atrocities. It can be compared to the conquest of India by the British Empire or the conquest of Algeria by France, which also dragged on for decades, if not half a century. The participation in the war on the side of Russia of the Christian and partly Muslim elites of Transcaucasia was atypical. Famous Russian political figures emerged from them - for example, Mikhail Tarielovich Loris-Melikov from the Armenians of Tiflis, who rose to the post of head of the Terek region, later appointed as the Kharkov governor-general and, finally, the head of the Russian Empire.

After the end of the Caucasian War, a regime was established in the region, which cannot always be described as colonial. Transcaucasia received an all-Russian provincial system of government, and various regimes of military and indirect government were created in the North Caucasus.

The concept of "Caucasian War" is very conditional. In fact, it was a series of military campaigns of the Russian Empire against the highlanders, between which there were periods of armistice, sometimes long. The term "Caucasian War", coined by the pre-revolutionary military historian Rostislav Andreevich Fadeev, who wrote the book "Sixty Years of the Caucasian War" by the order of the Caucasian governorship in 1860, was found only in late Soviet literature. Until the middle of the twentieth century, historians wrote about the "Caucasian wars".

From adat to sharia

Was the Sharia movement in Chechnya and Dagestan a reaction of the highlanders to the onslaught of the Russian Empire and the policy of General Yermolov? Or vice versa - Imam Shamil and his murids only spurred Russia to more decisive actions in the Caucasus?

The Sharia movement in the North-Eastern Caucasus began long before the penetration of Russia into the region and was associated with the Islamization of public life, way of life and the rights of the highlanders in the 17th-18th centuries. Rural communities were more and more inclined to replace the mountain customs (adats) with the legal and everyday norms of Sharia. The Russian invasion of the Caucasus was initially perceived by the mountaineers loyally. Only the construction of the Caucasian line across the entire North Caucasus, which began from its northwestern part in the last third of the 18th century, led to the displacement of the highlanders from their lands, retaliatory resistance and a protracted war.

Resistance to the Russian conquest soon took the form of jihad. Under his slogans, at the end of the 18th century, an uprising of the Chechen sheikh Mansur (Ushurma) took place, which the Russian Empire suppressed with difficulty. The construction of the Caucasian line in Chechnya and Dagestan contributed to the start of a new jihad, on the wave of which the imamate was created, who had resisted the empire for more than a quarter of a century. Its most famous leader was Imam Shamil, who ruled the jihad state from 1834 to 1859.

Why did the war in the north-east of the Caucasus end earlier than in the north-west?

In the North-Eastern Caucasus, where the center of Russian resistance (mountainous Chechnya and Dagestan) was for a long time, the war ended thanks to the successful policy of the governor of the Caucasian prince, who blocked and captured Shamil in 1859 in the Dagestan village of Gunib. After that, the imamate of Dagestan and Chechnya ceased to exist. But the highlanders of the Northwestern Caucasus (Trans-Kuban Circassia) practically did not obey Shamil and continued to wage a partisan struggle against the Caucasian army until 1864. They lived in remote mountain gorges near the Black Sea coast, through which they received help from the Ottoman Empire and the Western powers.

Painting by Alexei Kivshenko "The Surrender of Imam Shamil"

Tell us about Circassian muhajirism. Was it a voluntary resettlement of the highlanders or their forced deportation?

The resettlement of the Circassians (or Circassians) from the Russian Caucasus to the territory of the Ottoman Empire was voluntary. No wonder they likened themselves to the first Muslims, who in 622 voluntarily left with the Prophet Muhammad from pagan Mecca to Yathrib, where they built the first Muslim state. Both those and others called themselves muhajirs who carried out the resettlement (hijra).

No one deported the Circassians inside Russia, although entire families were exiled there for criminal offenses and disobedience to the authorities. But at the same time, Muhajirism itself was a forcible expulsion from the homeland, since its main reason was the drive from the mountains to the plain at the end of the Caucasian War and after it. The military authorities of the northwestern part of the Caucasian line saw the Circassians as elements harmful to the Russian government and pushed them to emigrate.

Didn't the Circassians-Circassians originally live on the plain, around the Kuban River?

During the Russian conquest, which lasted from the end of the 18th century to the mid-1860s, the place of residence of the Circassians and other indigenous inhabitants of the Northwestern and Central Caucasus changed more than once. The hostilities forced them to seek refuge in the mountains, from where they, in turn, were evicted by the Russian authorities, forming large settlements of the Circassians on the plain and in the foothills within the Caucasian line.

Caucasian muhajirs

But there were plans to evict the highlanders from the Caucasus? Let us recall, for example, the project of "Russian Truth" by Pavel Pestel, one of the leaders of the Decembrists.

The first mass migrations took place during the Caucasian War, but they were limited to the North Caucasus and Ciscaucasia. The Russian military authorities in whole villages resettled the conciliated mountaineers within the boundaries of the Caucasian line. A similar policy was pursued by the imams of Dagestan and Chechnya, creating villages in the mountains for their supporters from the plain and resettling rebellious villages. The exodus of the highlanders from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire began at the end of the war and went on until the fall of the tsarist regime, mainly in the second third of the 19th century. It especially strongly affected the North-Western Caucasus, the overwhelming majority of the indigenous population of which left for Turkey. The impetus for muhajirism was the forcible resettlement from the mountains to the plain, surrounded by Cossack villages.

Why did Russia drive only the Circassians to the plains, and pursued a completely different policy in Chechnya and Dagestan?

There were also Chechens and Dagestanis among the muhajirs. There are many documents about this, and I personally know their descendants. But the overwhelming majority of emigrants were from Circassia. This is due to disagreements in the military administration of the region. Supporters of the eviction of the highlanders to the plain and further, to the Ottoman Empire, prevailed in the Kuban region, created in 1861 on the territory of the present-day Krasnodar Territory. The authorities of the Dagestan region opposed the resettlement of highlanders to Turkey. The chiefs of the units of the Caucasian line, reorganized after the war in the region, had broad powers. Supporters of the eviction of the Circassians were able to convince the Caucasian governor in Tiflis of their correctness.

The resettlements later affected the North-Eastern Caucasus: Chechens were deported from the Caucasus by Stalin in 1944, a massive resettlement of Dagestanis to the plain occurred in the 1950s-1990s. But this is a completely different story that has nothing to do with muhajirism.

Why was the policy of the Russian Empire regarding the resettlement of the highlanders so inconsistent? At first, she encouraged the resettlement of highlanders to Turkey, and then suddenly decided to limit it.

This was due to changes in the Russian administration of the Caucasian Territory. At the end of the 19th century, opponents of muhajirism came to power here, who considered it inexpedient. But by this time, most of the highlanders of the Northwestern Caucasus had already left for the Ottoman Empire, and their lands were occupied by Cossacks and colonists from Russia. Similar changes in colonization policy can be found in other European powers, in particular France in Algeria.

The tragedy of the Circassians

How many Circassians died when resettling to Turkey?

Nobody exactly counted. Historians from the Circassian diaspora talk about the extermination of entire nations. This point of view appeared even among the contemporaries of Muhajirism. The expression of the pre-revolutionary Caucasian expert Adolphe Berger that "the Circassians ... were laid in the cemetery of peoples" became a winged expression. But not everyone agrees with this, and the size of emigration is assessed differently. The famous Turkish explorer Kemal Karpat numbers up to two million muhajirs, and Russian historians speak of several hundred thousand emigrants.

Where does this difference in numbers come from?

No statistics were kept in the North Caucasus before its Russian conquest. The Ottoman side recorded only legal immigrants, but there were still many illegal immigrants. No one really counted those who died on the way from mountain villages to the coast or on ships. And there were also muhajirs who died during quarantine in the ports of the Ottoman Empire.

Painting "Storming the village of Gimry" by Franz Roubaud

In addition, Russia and the Ottoman Empire were not immediately able to agree on joint actions to organize resettlement. When muhajirism became history, its study in the USSR was tacitly prohibited until late Soviet times. During the Cold War, cooperation between Turkish and Soviet historians in this area was virtually impossible. Serious study of muhajirism in the North Caucasus began only at the end of the 20th century.

That is, this issue is still poorly understood?

No, quite a lot has already been written about this and seriously over the past quarter of a century. But there is still a field for a comparative study of archival data on the muhajirs in the Russian and Ottoman empires - no one has ever done such research on purpose. Any figures on the number of muhajirs and deaths during emigration that appear in the press and on the Internet should be treated with caution: they are either strongly underestimated, since they do not take into account illegal emigration, or are very overestimated. A small part of the Circassians then returned to the Caucasus, but the Caucasian War and the Muhajir movement completely changed the confessional and ethnic map of the region. Muhajirs also largely shaped the population of the modern Middle East and Turkey.

Before the Olympics in Sochi, they tried to use this topic for political purposes. For example, in 2011 Georgia officially recognized "the mass destruction of the Circassians (Adygs) during the Russian-Caucasian War and their forcible expulsion from their historical homeland as an act of genocide."

Genocide is an anachronistic for the 19th century and, most importantly, an overly politicized term associated primarily with the Holocaust. Behind him is the demand for the political rehabilitation of the nation and financial compensation from the successors of the perpetrators of the genocide, as was done for the Jewish diaspora in Germany. This, probably, was the reason for the popularity of this term among activists from the Circassian diaspora and the Circassians of the North Caucasus. On the other hand, the organizers of the Sochi Olympics unforgivably forgot that the place and date of the Olympics are associated in the historical memory of the Circassians with the end of the Caucasian War.

Painting by Peter Gruzinsky "Abandonment of the aul by the mountaineers"

The trauma inflicted on the Circassians during muhajirism cannot be hushed up. I cannot forgive the bureaucrats in charge of organizing the Olympics for this. At the same time, the concept of genocide also disgusts me - it is inconvenient for a historian to work with it, it limits the freedom of research and does not correspond well to the realities of the 19th century - by the way, no less cruel attitude of Europeans towards the inhabitants of the colonies. After all, the natives were simply not considered people, which justified any atrocities of conquest and colonial rule. In this respect, Russia behaved in the North Caucasus no worse than the French in Algeria or the Belgians in the Congo. Therefore, the term "muhajirism" seems to me much more adequate.

Our Caucasus

Sometimes one hears that the Caucasus has never completely reconciled and has always remained hostile to Russia. It is known, for example, that even under Soviet rule in the post-war years it was not always calm there, and the last abrek of Chechnya was shot dead only in 1976. What do you think about this?

The age-old Russian-Caucasian confrontation is not a historical fact, but an anachronistic propaganda cliché, again in demand during the two Russian-Chechen campaigns of the 1990s-2000s. Yes, the Caucasus survived the conquest of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Then the Bolsheviks conquered him a second time and no less bloody in 1918-1921. However, the work of historians today shows that conquest and resistance did not determine the situation in the region. Interaction with Russian society was of much greater importance here. Even chronologically, the periods of peaceful coexistence were longer.

The modern Caucasus is largely a product of imperial and Soviet history. As a region, it was formed precisely at this time. Already in the Soviet era, its modernization and Russification took place.

It is significant that even Islamic and other radicals who oppose Russia often publish their materials in Russian. It seems to me that the words that the North Caucasus voluntarily did not become part of Russia and will not leave Russia voluntarily seem to me to be more true to the truth.

Recently, materials have often appeared in the Western press on the topic that the Caucasus is not a part of Russia, but its colony and other garbage. Various analysts, including "Russian" ones, are trying to convince the public in unison that the Caucasus and Russia are completely alien parts of the planet to each other. The desire of the West and the Arab East is understandable. They want to get their hands on this unique territory. We have three seas here - Black, Azov, Caspian. The Caucasus has huge reserves of fresh water and oil. There are many minerals - gold, tungsten, molybdenum, lead. And an ecologically clean natural complex generally has a special status.

Naturally, it is worth saying that the Caucasus, in addition to the listed advantages, has a global geopolitical and strategic importance - here Europe and Asia intersect. What this means, I will not say, since hundreds of articles have already been written about this, and my topic is about something else. I will only note that the Caucasus at all times has been a bone of contention for world powers - from ancient Greece and Persia to the Roman and Mongol conquests. All famous tyrants, up to Adolf Hitler, left their bloody notches here.

The last open war for the region took place between the Ottoman and Russian empires not so long ago. In the 19th century, there were five such wars. As a result, Russia received not only the Caucasus, but also the Crimea. To say that the Russian army achieved these territories only with the help of military force would be wrong. For the most part, Russia gained the Caucasus through diplomacy. The tsar managed to convince the Caucasian elite that it would be more profitable and more comfortable for the peoples of the Caucasus to live within the Russian Empire than with the Ottomans. And later this was confirmed by the fact that the aborigines of the Caucasus never raised uprisings against their stay in Russia. Except in recent history, the Chechen campaign provoked by the enemies of the Russian Federation.

The transition of the Caucasus to the possession of the Russian Empire resulted in major changes. In the second half of the 19th century, Russia built the first European-style urban settlements in the Caucasus. For example, the Nalchik settlement developed as a cultural and economic city. Russia invested money in the construction of the first real school named after Alexander III, a railway station and a railway line, the first medical centers. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Resort Society was created, which was engaged in the design of the Nalchik resort. Specialists were invited from Switzerland for these purposes, who built the first water supply system on the territory of the resort Dolinsk. To this day, in the area of ​​the Bochka restaurant, where the first water intake zone is, oak pipes of the very same Swiss craftsmen have been preserved.

Teachers, doctors, artisans came from Russia. Moreover, a theater was organized by the visiting Russian aristocracy. In this institution, it was not the artists who played, but the nobles themselves. The Russians created the Romanovsky Square in the area of ​​the present-day Ballroom, and built the first secular court. The building of the Rostov merchant Mikhail Dutikov, where Comrade Stalin lived later in the 1920s, has survived at the end of Tolstoy Street. The house of the engineer Dolinsky has been perfectly preserved in the resort area. Now there is a branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The first doctors, poets, lawyers, economists appeared among the Balkars and Kabardians. Life was changing before our eyes. But there were also sad moments in the new life. Those who did not accept the new way of life left the Caucasus, and forever. The princes, loyal to Turkey, loaded onto ships with their auls and left their homeland. Muslims, who did not see any prospects for themselves under the shadow of a Christian state, also left the Caucasus. They settled well in Turkey and Syria. After the collapse of the USSR, the descendants of the Caucasian settlers had the opportunity to visit the Caucasus and even study here. New Russia contributes to this, allocates special quotas and money.

With the change in the state system in the Russian Empire and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, the dynamics of the development of the Caucasus increased tenfold. Hundreds of large and small factories and factories, hundreds of schools, kindergartens, hospitals and clinics were built in Kabardino-Balkaria. There appeared their own higher educational institutions. The mere fact that in Nalchik at the end of the 80s the Telemekhanika plant produced computer elements, and at the SKEP plant they assembled the control panel for the Buran spacecraft, speaks of the technical level of the republic, which it reached in some 50 60 years.

And everything would be fine if the Western partners, as VVP calls them, did not excite the sick imagination of Caucasian patriots. As I wrote above, there are people in the West and the Middle East who want to get hold of the Caucasus. But, what is worse, there are people who want to help them in this in the localities. And they help. We are all witnesses to how history repeats itself. Along the line of the Adyghe peoples, the idea of ​​re-creating a certain Circassia is developing. The idea of ​​the revival of a certain Turan is being launched along the line of the Turkic-speaking peoples. At the same time, they do not hesitate to use all possible options. For this purpose, special people are selected from among the locals, who are ready for the necessary actions and launch false ideologemes among the people.

Within the framework of this trend, public organizations, websites, groups in social networks are being created, through which anti-state ideas and schemes of action are broadcast by the enemies of Russia. Among the consultants of these "patriots" there is even an Israeli rabbi by the name of Shmulevich. This one is so busy with questions of the Circassians that one involuntarily asks questions - why would a Jewish rabbi fall in love with Circassians so much? Is there a grain of rationality in his love, or is his love insane? Conclusions suggest themselves - if Shmulevich's love is insanity, often inherent in love in general, then the rabbi is insane. But, judging by all his articles, Rabbi Shmulevich is very smart, which means that his love for the Circassians has a selfish meaning.

Do I condemn the enemies of my homeland? Still no! The process of biting off the pie in world history did not stop even for a day. And the desires of the Westerners are understandable. I want more than I have. Such tendencies can be traced even in the simplest human life. The one who has a smaller house is jealous of the one who has a larger and more comfortable one. And people who have a very small house are doing everything to stir up the revolution and take over the big house of their neighbor. This is the essence of freeloaders who, like penicillin mushrooms, entangle a piece of bread.

Who is to blame for the fact that our life is not entirely comfortable in a big house? Putin? This is how the enemies of Russia are trying to instill in us. Everything, in my opinion, is extremely clear - as long as we have like-minded people in our Fatherland on the part of separating the Caucasus from the country, we will not have peace! What card will be played further in the West, I do not know. But I am sure of one thing - the Americans and Europeans want to strip the country and pocket our wealth. The stakes are so high that the West is spending huge amounts of money in grants to create an army of traitors inside the Caucasus. And they know that if successful, the investment will pay off with interest. Nothing personal, just business, so to speak!

2

200 years ago, in October 1817, the Russian fortress Pregradny Stan (now the village of Sernovodskoe in the Chechen Republic) was built on the Sunzha River. This event is considered the beginning of the Caucasian War, which lasted until 1864.

Why did the mountaineers of Chechnya and Dagestan declare jihad to Russia in the 19th century? Can the resettlement of the Circassians after the Caucasian War be considered genocide? Was the conquest of the Caucasus a colonial war by the Russian Empire? Vladimir Bobrovnikov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, spoke about this to Lente.ru.

How did it happen that first the Russian Empire annexed the Transcaucasia and only then the North Caucasus?

Bobrovnikov: Transcaucasia was of great geopolitical importance, therefore it was conquered earlier. The princedoms and kingdoms of Georgia, the khanates on the territory of Azerbaijan and Armenia became part of Russia at the end of the 18th - first quarter of the 19th century. The Caucasian war was largely caused by the need to establish communications with the Transcaucasia, which had already become part of the Russian Empire. Shortly before its start, the Georgian Military Road was laid, connecting Tiflis (the name of the city of Tbilisi before 1936 - approx. "Lenta.ru") with a fortress built by the Russians in Vladikavkaz.

Why did Russia need Transcaucasia so much?

This region was very important from a geopolitical point of view, so Persia, the Ottoman and Russian empires fought for it. As a result, Russia won this rivalry, but after the annexation of the Transcaucasia, the uncompromising, as they said at the time, the North Caucasus, prevented the establishment of communications with the region. Therefore, we had to conquer him too.

The well-known publicist of the 19th century Nikolai Danilevsky justified the conquest of the Caucasus by the fact that its inhabitants are "natural predators and robbers who never left and cannot leave their neighbors alone." What do you think - was it a typical colonial war or a forced pacification of "wild and aggressive" mountain tribes?

Danilevsky's opinion is not unique. Similarly, they described their new colonial subjects in Great Britain, France and other European colonial powers. Already in late Soviet times and in the 1990s, the historian from North Ossetia Mark Bliev tried to revive the rationale for the Caucasian War by fighting the raids of the mountaineers and created an original theory of the raid system, due to which, in his opinion, mountain society lived. However, his point of view was not accepted in science. It does not stand up to criticism from the point of view of sources indicating that the mountaineers earned their livelihood from cattle breeding and agriculture. The Caucasian war for Russia was a colonial war, but not quite typical.

What does it mean?

It was a colonial war with all its attendant atrocities. It can be compared to the conquest of India by the British Empire or the conquest of Algeria by France, which also dragged on for decades, if not half a century. The participation in the war on the side of Russia of the Christian and partly Muslim elites of Transcaucasia was atypical. Well-known Russian political figures emerged from them - for example, Mikhail Tarielovich Loris-Melikov from the Armenians of Tiflis, who rose to the post of head of the Terek region, later appointed the Kharkov governor-general and, finally, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire.

After the end of the Caucasian War, a regime was established in the region, which cannot always be described as colonial. Transcaucasia received an all-Russian provincial system of government, and various regimes of military and indirect government were created in the North Caucasus.

The concept of "Caucasian War" is very conditional. In fact, it was a series of military campaigns of the Russian Empire against the highlanders, between which there were periods of armistice, sometimes long. The term "Caucasian War", coined by the pre-revolutionary military historian Rostislav Andreevich Fadeev, who wrote the book "Sixty Years of the Caucasian War" by the order of the Caucasian governorship in 1860, was found only in late Soviet literature. Until the middle of the twentieth century, historians wrote about the "Caucasian wars".

Was the Sharia movement in Chechnya and Dagestan a reaction of the highlanders to the onslaught of the Russian Empire and the policy of General Yermolov? Or vice versa - Imam Shamil and his murids only spurred Russia to more decisive actions in the Caucasus?

The Sharia movement in the North-Eastern Caucasus began long before the penetration of Russia into the region and was associated with the Islamization of public life, way of life and the rights of the highlanders at the end of the 17th-18th centuries. Rural communities were more and more inclined to replace the mountain customs (adats) with the legal and everyday norms of Sharia. The Russian invasion of the Caucasus was initially perceived by the mountaineers loyally. Only the construction of the Caucasian line across the entire North Caucasus, which began from its northwestern part in the last third of the 18th century, led to the displacement of the highlanders from their lands, retaliatory resistance and a protracted war.

Resistance to the Russian conquest soon took the form of jihad. Under his slogans, at the end of the 18th century, an uprising of the Chechen sheikh Mansur (Ushurma) took place, which the Russian Empire suppressed with difficulty. The construction of the Caucasian line in Chechnya and Dagestan contributed to the start of a new jihad, on the wave of which the imamate was created, who had resisted the empire for more than a quarter of a century. Its most famous leader was Imam Shamil, who ruled the jihad state from 1834 to 1859.

Why did the war in the north-east of the Caucasus end earlier than in the north-west?

In the North-Eastern Caucasus, where the center of resistance of Russia (mountainous Chechnya and Dagestan) was for a long time, the war ended thanks to the successful policy of the governor of the Caucasian prince Alexander Ivanovich Baryatinsky, who blockaded and captured Shamil in the Dagestan village of Gunib in 1859. After that, the imamate of Dagestan and Chechnya ceased to exist. But the highlanders of the Northwestern Caucasus (Trans-Kuban Circassia) practically did not obey Shamil and continued to wage a partisan struggle against the Caucasian army until 1864. They lived in remote mountain gorges near the Black Sea coast, through which they received help from the Ottoman Empire and the Western powers.

Tell us about Circassian muhajirism. Was it a voluntary resettlement of the highlanders or their forced deportation?

The resettlement of the Circassians (or Circassians) from the Russian Caucasus to the territory of the Ottoman Empire was voluntary. No wonder they likened themselves to the first Muslims, who in 622 voluntarily left with the Prophet Muhammad from pagan Mecca to Yathrib, where they built the first Muslim state. Both those and others called themselves muhajirs who carried out the resettlement (hijra).

No one deported the Circassians inside Russia, although entire families were exiled there for criminal offenses and disobedience to the authorities. But at the same time, Muhajirism itself was a forcible expulsion from the homeland, since its main reason was the drive from the mountains to the plain at the end of the Caucasian War and after it. The military authorities of the northwestern part of the Caucasian line saw the Circassians as elements harmful to the Russian government and pushed them to emigrate.

Didn't the Circassians-Circassians originally live on the plain, around the Kuban River?

During the Russian conquest, which lasted from the end of the 18th century to the mid-1860s, the place of residence of the Circassians and other indigenous inhabitants of the Northwestern and Central Caucasus changed more than once. The hostilities forced them to seek refuge in the mountains, from where they, in turn, were evicted by the Russian authorities, forming large settlements of the Circassians on the plain and in the foothills within the Caucasian line.

But there were plans to evict the highlanders from the Caucasus? Let us recall, for example, the project of "Russian Truth" by Pavel Pestel, one of the leaders of the Decembrists.

The first mass migrations took place during the Caucasian War, but they were limited to the North Caucasus and Ciscaucasia. The Russian military authorities in whole villages resettled the conciliated mountaineers within the boundaries of the Caucasian line. A similar policy was pursued by the imams of Dagestan and Chechnya, creating villages in the mountains for their supporters from the plain and resettling rebellious villages. The exodus of the highlanders from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire began at the end of the war and went on until the fall of the tsarist regime, mainly in the second third of the 19th century. It especially strongly affected the North-Western Caucasus, the overwhelming majority of the indigenous population of which left for Turkey. The impetus for muhajirism was the forcible resettlement from the mountains to the plain, surrounded by Cossack villages.

Why did Russia drive only the Circassians to the plains, and pursued a completely different policy in Chechnya and Dagestan?

There were also Chechens and Dagestanis among the muhajirs. There are many documents about this, and I personally know their descendants. But the overwhelming majority of emigrants were from Circassia. This is due to disagreements in the military administration of the region. Supporters of the eviction of the highlanders to the plain and further, to the Ottoman Empire, prevailed in the Kuban region, created in 1861 on the territory of the present-day Krasnodar Territory. The authorities of the Dagestan region opposed the resettlement of highlanders to Turkey. The chiefs of the units of the Caucasian line, reorganized after the war in the region, had broad powers. Supporters of the eviction of the Circassians were able to convince the Caucasian governor in Tiflis of their correctness.

The resettlements later affected the North-Eastern Caucasus: Chechens were deported from the Caucasus by Stalin in 1944, a massive resettlement of Dagestanis to the plain occurred in the 1950s-1990s. But this is a completely different story that has nothing to do with muhajirism.

Why was the policy of the Russian Empire regarding the resettlement of the highlanders so inconsistent? At first, she encouraged the resettlement of highlanders to Turkey, and then suddenly decided to limit it.

This was due to changes in the Russian administration of the Caucasian Territory. At the end of the 19th century, opponents of muhajirism came to power here, who considered it inexpedient. But by this time, most of the highlanders of the Northwestern Caucasus had already left for the Ottoman Empire, and their lands were occupied by Cossacks and colonists from Russia. Similar changes in colonization policy can be found in other European powers, in particular France in Algeria.

How many Circassians died when resettling to Turkey?

Nobody exactly counted. Historians from the Circassian diaspora talk about the extermination of entire nations. This point of view appeared even among the contemporaries of Muhajirism. The expression of the pre-revolutionary Caucasian expert Adolphe Berger that "the Circassians ... were laid in the cemetery of peoples" became a winged expression. But not everyone agrees with this, and the size of emigration is assessed differently. The famous Turkish explorer Kemal Karpat numbers up to two million muhajirs, and Russian historians speak of several hundred thousand emigrants.

Where does this difference in numbers come from?

No statistics were kept in the North Caucasus before its Russian conquest. The Ottoman side recorded only legal immigrants, but there were still many illegal immigrants. No one really counted those who died on the way from mountain villages to the coast or on ships. And there were also muhajirs who died during quarantine in the ports of the Ottoman Empire.

In addition, Russia and the Ottoman Empire were not immediately able to agree on joint actions to organize resettlement. When muhajirism became history, its study in the USSR was tacitly prohibited until late Soviet times. During the Cold War, cooperation between Turkish and Soviet historians in this area was virtually impossible. Serious study of muhajirism in the North Caucasus began only at the end of the 20th century.

That is, this issue is still poorly understood?

No, quite a lot has already been written about this and seriously over the past quarter of a century. But there is still a field for a comparative study of archival data on the muhajirs in the Russian and Ottoman empires - no one has ever done such research on purpose. Any figures on the number of muhajirs and deaths during emigration that appear in the press and on the Internet should be treated with caution: they are either strongly underestimated, since they do not take into account illegal emigration, or are very overestimated. A small part of the Circassians then returned to the Caucasus, but the Caucasian War and the Muhajir movement completely changed the confessional and ethnic map of the region. Muhajirs also largely shaped the population of the modern Middle East and Turkey.

Before the Olympics in Sochi, they tried to use this topic for political purposes. For example, in 2011 Georgia officially recognized "the mass destruction of the Circassians (Adygs) during the Russian-Caucasian War and their forcible expulsion from their historical homeland as an act of genocide."

Genocide is an anachronistic for the 19th century and, most importantly, an overly politicized term associated primarily with the Holocaust. Behind him is the demand for the political rehabilitation of the nation and financial compensation from the successors of the perpetrators of the genocide, as was done for the Jewish diaspora in Germany. This, probably, was the reason for the popularity of this term among activists from the Circassian diaspora and the Circassians of the North Caucasus. On the other hand, the organizers of the Sochi Olympics unforgivably forgot that the place and date of the Olympics are associated in the historical memory of the Circassians with the end of the Caucasian War.

The trauma inflicted on the Circassians during muhajirism cannot be hushed up. I cannot forgive the bureaucrats in charge of organizing the Olympics for this. At the same time, the concept of genocide also disgusts me - it is inconvenient for a historian to work with it, it limits the freedom of research and does not correspond well to the realities of the 19th century - by the way, no less cruel attitude of Europeans towards the inhabitants of the colonies. After all, the natives were simply not considered people, which justified any atrocities of conquest and colonial rule. In this respect, Russia behaved in the North Caucasus no worse than the French in Algeria or the Belgians in the Congo. Therefore, the term "muhajirism" seems to me much more adequate.

Sometimes one hears that the Caucasus has never completely reconciled and has always remained hostile to Russia. It is known, for example, that even under Soviet rule in the post-war years it was not always calm there, and the last abrek of Chechnya was shot dead only in 1976. What do you think about this?

The age-old Russian-Caucasian confrontation is not a historical fact, but an anachronistic propaganda cliché, again in demand during the two Russian-Chechen campaigns of the 1990s-2000s. Yes, the Caucasus survived the conquest of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Then the Bolsheviks conquered him a second time and no less bloody in 1918-1921. However, the work of historians today shows that conquest and resistance did not determine the situation in the region. Interaction with Russian society was of much greater importance here. Even chronologically, the periods of peaceful coexistence were longer.

The modern Caucasus is largely a product of imperial and Soviet history. As a region, it was formed precisely at this time. Already in the Soviet era, its modernization and Russification took place.

It is significant that even Islamic and other radicals who oppose Russia often publish their materials in Russian. The words of Rasul Gamzatov that the North Caucasus voluntarily did not become part of Russia and will not leave Russia voluntarily seem to me to be more true to the truth.