KBR Officials Struggle to Damp Down Ethnic Passions in One of Russia’s Last Officially Bi-National Republics

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 20 – There are only two remaining officially binational republics in the Russian Federation, Karachayevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. In the first, the Turkic Karachays outnumber of the Circassian Cherkess and in the second, the Kabards, another Circassian subgroup, outnumber the Turkic Balkars.

            Managing these binational republics is difficult because any move by the authorities against a member or group from one ethnic community resonates not only within the republic given that the other can be expected to respond but across the North Caucasus and thus threatens ethnic stability in an already troubled region.

            Increasingly, this struggle requires officials to follow attacks against one group for its supposed extremism with attacks on the other for the same thing. But such attacks only exacerbate ethnic feelings because the nation with the plurality expects better treatment and the minority nationality fears that any attacks will presage a whole diminution of rights.

            KBR, where the Circassian Kabards form roughly 55 percent of the republic’s population and Turkic Balkars, where the latter form 13 percent, is now ground zero for such conflicts. Moscow has insisted that the republic authorities crack down on the Circassians given their increasing nationalism, and the authorities have done so.

            Most recently, they have moved to detain participants in unauthorized demonstrations in support of Circassian national goals such as recognition of Russia’s deportation of Circassians in 1864 as an act of genocide and permission for some of the seven million Circassians in the diaspora to return home.

            But in taking steps like these against the Circassians, the KBR powers have also focused expanded attention on the Turkic Balkars, charging and convicting a Balkar radical historian with fanning ethnic hatred with his attacks on Circassians (kavkazr.com/a/nikakaya-storona-ne-imeet-prava-govoritj-balkarskogo-istorika-nakazali-za-razzhiganie-nenavisti-k-cherkesam/33560596.html).

            The problem for the KBR leadership is that what the Balkar historian has been saying is little different from what the Kremlin in its evaluation of the Circassian national movement has said. And so while winning points in Moscow by this action, the KBR regime is losing support at home among the majority Circassians there.

            Moscow clearly wants the KBR authorities to keep things quiet; but its requirement that they balance attacks on one nation with attacks on the other almost certainly guarantees that the result will be exactly the opposite of what it seeks. Both Circassian and Turkic groups are likely to become ever more angry and radical.

            And if that is what happens, the formerly relatively quiescent western portion of the North Caucasus will join the central and eastern portions, which include Chechnya and Ingushetia, in the former, and Dagestan in the latter, as a renewed hotbed of nationalism in a place the Kremlin had believed things were completely under its control.