On 30th Anniversary of Ingush Republic, One of Its Founders Says It Remains Territorially ‘Crippled’ with Few Prospects for Redress

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 3 – Thirty years ago this week, Boris Yeltsin signed a decree on the formation of the Ingush Republic, but this action did not correspond to the goals Ingush leaders have always had. And as a result, Khazat Fargiyev says, Ingushetia remains “a crippled republic,” with one part torn off for North Ossetia and another taken by Chechnya.

            Because that is so, one of the leaders of the early Ingush movement says, “the republic we sought does not at all correspond to the one we have” and so the future of the Ingush is even bleaker than most imagine (fortanga.org/2022/06/po-sledam-bylogo-vospominaniya-hamzata-fargieva-o-politicheskoj-borbe-za-vozrozhdenie-ingushskoj-gosudarstvennosti/).

            In 1992, he says, we were young and hopeful that Yeltsin’s action was only the first step toward the achievement of our goals. Now, we must bitterly recognize that what he did then put Ingushetia on the road toward an ever more diminished place in the world and thus threatens its survival and that of the Ingush people.

            Fargiyev’s lament sums up the feelings of many Ingush that exploded first at the time of the war with North Ossetia over the Prigorodny district in 1992 and later after former republic head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov gave away ten percent of the republic’s territory to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

            Obviously, he still hopes for better – empires have fallen, after all; but with the passing of time, the optimism he had 30 years ago has almost completely dissipated, something likely true of others as well and an explanation for why after the wave of repression that the Putin regime has visited on the republic there has not been the explosion that many expected.