Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 1 – In the past ten
days, the peoples of the Caucasus have been marking with varying degrees of intensity
the centenaries of the establishment of independent states following the collapse of the Russian Empire
in 1917 – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Mountaineer Republic of the
North Caucasus.
For the first three, these
anniversary provide both a source of pride and a comparison with the current
situation to the past (jam-news.net/?p=104486&lang=ru, kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/320982/, and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/320969/);
for the fourth, it is a chance to consider
both past and future (profile.ru/politika/item/125752-zakavkaze-sto-let-spustya).
Because
each of these republics was very different from the situation that obtains now,
because they did not last long before being suppressed and supplanted by the Red
Army, and because the Soviet government did what it could to blacken their
reputations, these anniversaries also have been occasions for the continuation
of national rebirth.
In
none of them has that process been entirely easy, but it is critically
important not only because an honest assessment of the past is a requirement
for building a better future but also because it is now common ground that
those former Soviet states which had a past to recover and build on generally have
done far better than those lacking such a past.
Because
Armenia is currently going through its own political turmoil, the May 28th
centenary of the republic attracted less attention than might otherwise have
been the case. But the attention it did gain stressed both the threats Armenia
was able to counter in 1918 and the ways in which some of those very same
threats continue (realtribune.ru/news/world/881).
The commemoration of the anniversary
of the formation of the Republic of Azerbaijan was the most complicated. On the
one hand, there was enormous pride both in government circles and in the
population that Azerbaijan in 1918 was the first secular republic in the Muslim
world, thus setting the country on a course it resumed in 1991.
(For that aspect, see onkavkaz.com/news/2265-sto-let-nazad-kavkaz-sozdal-pervye-demokraticheskie-respubliki-v-islamskom-mire-no-oni-ne-vysto.html,
qha.com.ua/ru/obschestvo/v-azerbaidjane-otmechayut-100letie-provozglasheniya-respubliki/192757/and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/320969/.)
On the other hand, demonstrators
appeared calling for the restoration of the democratic principles which
informed Azerbaijan in the first republic, principles they very much feel are
being violated now. Not surprisingly,
the authorities arrested many of those involved (russian.eurasianet.org/node/65265 and
kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/320982/).
In Georgia, the anniversary passed with
less controversy but with a quiet pride. Numerous Georgians and Georgian
historians told journalists that the first republic more than anything else
defined Georgia’s identity and continues to guide its policies despite everything
that has changed in the world.
(On that, see ekhokavkaza.com/a/vizualizacia-asi-clis-chemdeg-sapartvelos-pirveli-damoukidebeli-respublika/29250578.html, kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/320905/,
ekhokavkaza.com/a/29254938.html and
kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/320942/.)
And in the North
Caucasus, where the Mountaineer Republic was suppressed and has not been restored,
the centenary passed almost unnoticed. The officials of the non-Russian
republics have little interest in talking about regional regimes; and the
population has little knowledge of the time when the non-Russian “mountaineers”
cooperated against Moscow.
But it is entirely
possible that if the Putin regime suppresses the non-Russian republics as it
seems on course to do, the experience of the Mountaineer Republic will become
more relevant – and a greater threat to Moscow’s control of the region than any
of the constituent non-Russian republics currently is.
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