Paul Goble
Staunton, Sept. 20 – To counter the national feelings of ethnic minorities, Moscow and its agents in the non-Russian republics have often created holidays nominally boosting those groups but in fact intended to undermine commemorations that are important for them, an approach that sometimes succeeds but more often backfires.
The latest example of this concerns the creation by Moscow-appointed officials in Kabardino-Balkaria to celebrate on September 20 the Day of the Adyg [the self-designator of Circassian] in place of the traditional Circassian commemoration on May 21 of the anniversary of the Russian expulsion of the Circassians at the end of the Russian advance into their land.
KBR officials poured enormous sums into marking the September 20 holiday after using their police powers to largely suppression Circassian efforts to mark the May 21 anniversary. But the hopes of Moscow and the KBR that they would change Circassian attitudes have been dashed (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/415587 and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/415655).
Independent Circassian activists both in the North Caucasus homeland where some 700,000 Circassians live and in the diaspora where more than seven million do were nearly unanimous in their declarations that the new holiday was fraudulent because Moscow has left the Circassians with “nothing to celebrate.”
The Russian authorities have not been willing to meet Circassian demands even half way, they said; and they called for Circassians at home and abroad to consolidate into a single organization capable of standing up to and forcing the Russian authorities and their minions to change course.
Consequently what Moscow and Nalchik hoped would win Circassians over has further alienated them and radicalized national feelings, something both the Russian authorities and their hand-picked agents in place will be hard-pressed to counter given how transparent their anti-Circassian policies are.
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