Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 4 – Deputies of
the Kabardino-Balkarian parliament have appealed to Russian Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev to include the Ubykhs, a subgroup of the Circassian nation, on
the official list of numerically small indigenous peoples of the Russian
Federation and thus take the first step to the revival of a language which has
been considered dead since 1992.
For many, this action is quixotic –
there are after all only 33 people in Russia who identified themselves as
Ubykhs in the 2010 census and none of them claimed to speak their native
language, but Circassian activists like Ruslan Berzekov have been seeking for
15 years (kavpolit.com/articles/ubyhi_voinstvennoe_i_predpriimchivoe_plemja-10022/).
Whether a
language no longer spoken but felt to be the national language of a community
of such a small size can be revived is an open question, but the pursuit of
this goal, given the history of the Ubykhs who were among those deported by
Russia in the 19th century, will help to energize the Circassian national
movement as a whole after its post-Sochi Olympiad letdown.
In 2002, Berzekov says he was
inspired to focus on the fate of the Ubykh language after reading an article by
Khasan Yakhtanigov in “Gazeta Yuga” entitled “The Circassian Washington” about
the Ubykh family of the Berzeks and then reading Magomed Kishmakhov’s book on “The
Family from the Holy Valley of the Ubykhs” about the same group.
As a result, he says, he formed an
NGO, the Family Union of the Ubykhs-Berzeks, has made numerous trips to Turkey
to meet with surviving Ubykhs there and studied the ways in which the Ubykhs
have assimilated and combined with other peoples of the Caucasus both in their
homeland and abroad.
In Soviet times, people were
actively discouraged from identifying as Ubykhs, he continues, but now, having
won suits in Russian courts, a small number of people who trace their ancestry
back to the once numerous national group have done so. According to the 2010 census, there are 33
Ubykhs in Russia, 16 of whom are in the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic.
Two centuries ago, Berzekov says,
the Ubykhs dominated the population in the Western Caucasus “from the river
Vokonka (which was earlier called the Godlik) to Adler. They bordered Abkhazia
on one side and the Jigets and Sadzi (indigenous peoples of the Black Sea coast
of the Caucasus, who were part of the Adygey-Abkhaz group), on the other.”
The Ubykhs were among the most militant
in resisting the advance of the Russian imperial forces and promoted unity with
other groups because they knew, Berzekov says, that “without unification they
would not be able to defend their freedom and the right to live on their own territory.”
When Russian forces defeated them in
1864, the Ubykh were given a choice: they could either accept Russian
citizenship and be resettled in the Kuban or leave for the Ottoman Empire. The
Ubykhs chose Turkey, and an estimated 75,000 of them left their homeland where
they were able to maintain their distinctive nationality for several
generations.
One of the reasons for that was
their continuing attachment to pagan divinities, even after most had formally
accepted Islam. But another was their language, one of the most complex in the
world in terms of sound. Berzekov notes
that the Ubykh language has 84 sounds, far more than most languages.
The last native speaker of the
language, Tefik Esenc, died on October 7,1992, and many scholars viewed his
passing as the final demise of the Ubykh language and at the same time of the
Ubykh nation. (See, for example, Asya Pereltsvaig, “Obituary: The Ubykh Language,”
at languagesoftheworld.info/geolinguistics/obituary-the-ubykh-language.html.)
But Ruslan Berzekov is “certain”
that he will be able to revive the language. Many Ubykhs now call themselves
Kabardinians, Bzhedugs, Abazas or Abkhazians, but if the language can be restored,
they will return to their ancient identity.
“The Ubykh ethnos has deep
historical roots,” he says. “It had its own code of life, of behavior in the
family and society, which was based on centuries-long traditions. The people
grew up in accordance with these laws … Now it is important to restore the
balance,” although he says it would be “too pathetic” to “speak about justice.”
In his view, Berzekov says, those
who seek Russian recognition of the Circassian genocide of 1864 are unlikely to
achieve their goals. “But the recognition of the Ubykhs as an indigenous people
of Russia eliminated many sharp questions, including those which arose during
the conduct of the Sochi Olympiad.”
“No one can argue with history,” he
continues. “One must simply respect it, analyze mistakes and draw conclusions.”
What is necessary is to create the conditions for the revival of the Ubykhs in
the future, and a good first step in that direction is their being given the
status of an officially recognized people within the Russian Federation.
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