Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 25 – Valery Khatazhukov,
the head of the Kabardino-Balkaria regional human rights defense center, says
that Moscow’s support for Cossack units is prompting some in the North Caucasus
to think about forming their own ethnically or religiously based police or
military units.
“We consider,” he declared earlier
this month in Pyatigorsk “that in Russia there must not be any armed formations
and police forces formed on a national or ethnic principle” because “this
contradicts the Russian Constitution and really can threaten its territorial
integrity” (zapravakbr.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=696%3A2013-07-19-10-08-33).
Khatazhukov said that he and his
human rights colleagues “consider the Cossacks a historically evolved community
with its own original subculture, traditions, and customs. And they have the
right to count on state support on issues like the preservation of culture and
traditions just as does any people of the North Caucasus.”
“But we categorically do not agree
with the rebirth of the Cossacks as a military stratum and the giving to it of
police functions,” the activist says, adding that on this he is certain that he
is reflecting not only his own view but that “of many residents of Kabardino-Balkaria
and indeed the entire North Caucasus.”
Prior to 1917, he pointed out, “the
Cossacks were a privileged military stratum which had special rights and
authority in carrying out the colonial policy of tsarist Russia” and in this regard
served as a unique “set of bosses over the mountaineers” of the North Caucasus.
The revival of the Cossacks in the
way that it is taking pace, Khatakhurov said, is prompting many in the North
Caucasus to ask a dangerous question: “is the leadership of present-day Russia
planning to reject traditional methods of resolving problems in the Caucasus in
favor of using the military and punitive methods of tsarist generals?”
And the raising of that question has
prompted others, he continued. “Recently,
among those speaking out against arming the Cossacks one can hear ever more
often calls like ‘and why shouldn’t we too restore ‘the savage division’ in
which practically all of the peoples of the North Caucasus has their own armed
formations?”
The term ‘savage divisions’ refers to
the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division which the Russian Imperial Army created
in 1914 to support St. Petersburg’s war effort. Ninety percent of the soldiers
were Muslims from various ethnic groups in the North Caucasus, although the
officers were in almost all cases ethnic Russians or highly Russified North
Caucasians.
The division’s units were famed for
their military prowess and for the fact that unlike many units in the Russian
Army, the Savage Division as it was known informally remained loyal to the Provisional
Government. Later some of its component
units backed the anti-Bolshevik cause.
For those reasons, the Bolsheviks disbanded it in 1918.
Discussions about the Savage
Division have been appearing in the North Caucasus in recent years,
particularly in 2014 when the centenary of that military formation was marked
in various cities in that region. (On these discussions and those celebrations,
see vestnikkavkaza.net/articles/society/62369.html).
For background see the colorful
memoirs of Sergey Kournakoff (Savage
Squadrons (Boston, 1935) and the even more colorful novel of Yekaterina
Breshko-Breshkovskaya (Dikaya diviziya
(Riga, n.d. (1920s)). A complete text of the latter is available online at
No comments:
Post a Comment