Two Turkic Nations Stalin Divided and Deported Come Together in Central Asian Exile

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, April 5 – The Karachays and Balkars, two closely related Turkic speaking peoples whom Stalin worked hard to separate and deported to Central Asia at the end of World War II, are recovering their mutual ties as part of a common diaspora in that region, according to a detailed study of the community.

 

            That matters not only because it highlights the ways in which Stalin played with ethnic identities in order to solidify Soviet rule in the periphery but also and more immediately because of the ways in which his successors, Soviet and Russian, have kept them divided and used them to divide the Circassians.

 

            When Moscow allowed most Karachays and Balkars to return to their North Caucasian homeland in 1957, it transformed two Circassian national formations, the Kabardinian ASSR and the Cherkessk Autonomous Oblast into the Kabardino-Balkaria ASSR and the Karachayevo-Cherkess Autonomous Oblast respectively.

 

            With only a slight change in names, those two binational formations continue to exist, blocking the formation of both a unified Circassian republic and a unified Turkic (Karachay and Balkar) one. If the Karachays and Balkars in the diaspora are increasingly conscious of their unity, that could lead to a reordering of political arrangements in the North Caucasus.

 

            According to the 2010 census, in the Republic of Kabardino-Balkar Republic the Kabards, a subgroup of Circassians, form 57 percent of the population and the Turkic Balkars form 13 percent, while in the adjoining Republic Karachay-Cherkessia, the Turkic Karachays make up 41 percent of the population, while the Circassian Cherkess form 11 percent.

 

            Many in the Circassian nation would like to see a common Circassian Republic established, and many in the Turkic nation of Karachays and Balkars would also like to form one of their own in which they could be dominant. But Moscow has actively opposed moves in both directions.

 

            In a “Voprosy istorii” article posted online today, Alim Tetuyev, a senior scholar at the Kabardino-Balkarian Scientific Center in Nalchik, discusses the Karachay-Balkar diaspora in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and why its member see themselves as one nation not two (kavkazoved.info/news/2015/04/05/karachaevo-balkarskaja-diaspora-v-stranah-centralnoj-azii.html).

 

            The first Karachays and Balkars arrived in Central Asia before World War II as part of Stalin’s de-kulakization campaign. But the numbers of these special settlers as they were known were small. The major influx came when the two Turkic peoples were deported by Stalin at the end of 1944 for supposed collaboration with the Germans.

 

            There, they remained until 1957-1959 when most but far from all of them returned to the North Caucasus. According to the 1989 Soviet census, there were 5098 Balkars and 4743 Karachays outside of the Russian Federation, most of whom were in Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan to which they had been deported.

 

            After the collapse of the USSR, many more left, and by 2009, there were only 3100 Balkars and 2726 Karachays left in the two Central Asian republics. Polls showed that these overwhelmingly wanted to return to their homelands but could not for financial or personal reasons, including partial assimilation to the Turkic peoples among whom they lived.

 

            Both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have been supportive, Tetuyev says. Kazakhstan was the second republic after Russia to adopt programs for the rehabilitation of representatives of peoples deported in Soviet times. And Kyrgyzstan has been tolerant of its Turkic minorities, including the Karachays and Balkars.

 

            But what is most important in terms of the possible future impact of this diaspora is the fact that members of the two groups who speak languages so close that most people would describe them as dialects currently study them as a single language in Sunday schools which have opened in both countries in places of compact settlement of the two.

 

            On the one hand, that reflects a pattern often found among members of small and closely related peoples who find themselves abroad to cooperate in order to survive. But on the other, cooperation in this case reinforces the sense of Turkic unity not only in the diaspora but in their co-ethnics in their homelands.

 

            Thus, it is not surprising that the authorities in Karachay-Cherkessia where the Turkic group is predominant have done more to reach out to the diaspora in Central Asia than have those in Kabardino-Balkaria where it is not. Tetuyev calls for both to do more and to put pressure on Moscow for help to bring this diaspora home.