Defender Of Dagestan

A Legendary Hero Embodies a Nation's Quest for Freedom.

Ruth Daniloff is a free-lance writer based in Massachusetts. She spent nine years working and writing in the Soviet Union. Eduard Gladkov is a Russian free-lance photographer based in Moscow. Daniloff and Gladkov engaged in filed research in Dagestan in the spring of 1991.

As Dagestanis try to find their way in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet empire, they idealize Shamil, a nineteenth-century warrior imam. In the 1830s, as Czar Nicholas the First pushed his enormous empire eastward, he found his way to Asia barred by the Caucasian Mountains and local tribespeople united under the banner of Islam. The czar tried to bring the tribes to their knees, burning their villages and crops.

In retaliation, Shamil, a prophet and warrior, called for the gazavat, a holy war against the Russians, in 1834. For almost thirty years, he and his followers waged a relentless guerrilla struggle against the Russian army. The imam became a legend. Dressed in a tight-fitting tunic fastened with a double row of silver cartridge cases, black boots made of paper-thin leather, his beard and hands stained with madder root, his saber in hand and the reins of his horse clenched between his teeth, Shamil would gallop down from the Caucasian peaks to slaughter the infidel soldiers as they struggled up the steep mountain paths with their heavy artillery.

The czar became so frustrated with his generals' inability to defeat or capture Shamil that he resorted to kidnapping the imam's young son, taking the child to St. Petersburg. Infuriated, Shamil retaliated by capturing two Georgian princesses and their French governess. He held the women hostage in his mountain stronghold until an exchange was negotiated.

Eventually, in 1859, the legendary holy warrior was forced to surrender. But his long confrontation with Russia is viewed as one of Dagestan's proudest moments, and the memory of his example is inspiring Dagestanis to a new life after seventy-one years of Soviet rule. Somewhat surprisingly, Dagestanis are today learning the truth about Shamil as an outcome of Mikhail Gornbachev's policy of openness. Previously, their view of this remarkable hero was unjustly colored by Communist Party propaganda. At first, communists tried to embrace Shamil as a revolutionary and progressive figure, but after 1950 Shamil's memory was denounced for its reactionary anti-Russian nationalism.

"When I was growing up we were told that Shamil was a Turkish spy and a reactionary, a bad person. We didn't know what to think," says Achmed Daglarov, a young schoolteacher in Acti, a mountain village near the Azerbaijan border. Daglarov points out a large oil painting hanging in the museum depicting the Russian army laving siege to the village in 1848. "We don't know whether Shamil took part in defending our village against the siege, but now we are going to find out."

Indeed, not only are Dagestanis finding out about their history, they are also discovering facts about the present, with some unforeseen negative consequences. Under the new press freedom, all the ills of society are exposed and criticized with the result that people are angry and disillusioned. Old rules are collapsing, and there are no new ones to take their place.

A new sense of national identity

I traveled throughout Dagestan last year. Everywhere, in dusty village squares, old men sat around complaining about the empty shelves in the stores, rising crime, Moscow bureaucrats, and the breakdown of authority. In Acti, where czarist soldiers used to enjoy hot mineral baths after battling with the local tribes, one old man spat on the ground in contempt at the mention of Gorbachev. "Glasnost, perestroika … don't talk to me about it," he scoffed. "Go and look at our shops. Things have never been so bad."

Complaints over shortages were part of a larger discussion of change. Debates also ensured over political and economic reforms, and over whether Dagestan should become an independent democratic state or an Islamic state, join up with Turkey, or remain within the sixteen autonomous republics of Boris Yeltsin's Russian Federation. (The Dagestan Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic is the only ASSR named after a territory rather than an ethnic group.) Two equally serious problems were being discussed: what to do about the disintegration of society as the Soviet Union falls apart, and how to bring about a new sense of national identity, the old one having been so heartlessly undermined by Moscow's policies.

Pride in the past. Most Dagestanis feel that the only way to combat the malaise is through embracing Islam, gaining a knowledge of history, and preserving traditions rooted in family, village, and mosque. Only by taking pride in the past, such as the life of Shamil, can people go forward into the future. Ramazan Khappalaev, director of museums in Dagestan, explained: "Take alcoholism. Drunkenness has reached epidemic proportions in European Russia. But in Dagestan, even though we produce one-fifth of all the wine in the USSR, it never used to be a problem because of our Islamic traditions. But now," and he shrugs his shoulders, "in the cities there is crime and lawlessness, even in the villages."

Khappalaev's mission is to promote a knowledge of national history, a subject the population learned little about during the Soviet period. But although Soviet propaganda, post-glasnost Western-style television, higher education for women, and technology have clearly undermined traditional values, they are surprisingly strong in Dagestan, particularly when compared to other regions of the Soviet Union. This resilience can be partly explained by Dagestan's geographic isolation, the toughness of the region's people, and the struggles of the nationalities who reside within Dagestan's borders to maintain their own identities.

Ethnic diversity. In all, some 120 nationalities composed the Soviet Union of 1990. Thirty-three of those groups, a population of 1.8 million, lived in Dagestan, a country the size of Scotland. Seventy-five percent of the inhabitants still live in remote, often inaccessible mountain villages. The largest nationalities are the 52,000 Avars, who live in the south and the west of the country; the 38,000 Dargins in the central regional and the 22,000 Lezghins, who live in the south. The smallest ethnic group (only 4,000) is the Ratuls, who spread over four alpine villages in the south. In addition to the indigenous Dagestanis, there are some 200,000 Russians, most of whom live in the capital, Makhachkala, and the other large cities.

Although the majority of Dagestanis are Sunni Muslims, none of the nationalities have assimilated. Marriage outside tribal or ethnic groups is generally discouraged, but intermarriage is becoming more common among urban dwellers and between members of certain villages. Mogamedkhan Mogamedkhanov, an ethnographer at the Dagestan Branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences who has made a study of tribal marriage patterns, says that marriage to a Russian, though frowned upon, does occur: "It's possible for a Dagestani man to marry a Russian woman, and some do in government circles because it's a way to advance their political careers. But it's not acceptable for a Dagestani woman to marry a Russian man." The antipathy is mutual: "I could never marry a Dagestani man," admitted Nina, a Russian student at the University or Makhachkala. "I don't like the way they treat women, not letting them eat with guests and being so protective."

A mountain of tongues

Dagestanis, like most mountain people, are a hardy breed. Both women and men are small, slight, and wiry, with narrow hands and feet and chiseled features. Their quick movements and expressive faces distinguish them from the more easygoing Russians. The greatest sign of beauty and status is acknowledged to be a mouthful of glittering gold teeth.

Dagestani men have long been famous for their traditional leather boots and wasp-waisted, tight-fitting tunics. To make their waists even smaller, they bound their tunics with the still-warm skin of a freshly slaughtered sheep. The bourka, a shaggy, full-length cape made with so many layers of felt that it resists rain - and, allegedly, bullets - is the traditional all-purpose mountaineer's outfit.

Rural women wear long-sleeved floral dresses over full pantaloons. As required by Islamic tradition, they cover their heads with a scarf. The veil was never worn in Dagestan, but in the company of men, women lower their eyes. In the towns, younger women are discarding the head scarf and cutting their hair short, much to the distress of the more conservative Muslim clerics.

Customs and languages. Today, Dagestanis raise sheep and cattle, weave carpets and produce wine, and are employed in metal working industries. Particular crafts are associated with different ethnic groups and even villages. For example, from the thirteenth century and maybe even before, the 3,000 Koubachi, who live in an isolated village in the high mountains of central Dagestan, have worked with silver. "We don't know how to do anything else," says Razul Immaev, mayor of the village and father of ten sons, all of whom are silversmiths. "We have no tradition for agriculture and had to rely on the surrounding villages to feed us, which make it difficult for us now with the food shortages."

Certain characteristics are attributed to different nationalities. The Laks, for example, are considered the intellectuals, the Lezghins the dancers, and the Avars the warriors. Shamil was an Avar, which makes the descendants of those who fought with him the aristocrats of Dagestan. An entire Avar lore surrounded weapons. When the elders agreed a boy had earned the title of Djigit, or warrior, the village celebrated. His family presented him with the most expensive weapons they could afford. Saber and daggers, passed down from generation to generation, were works of art, their handles inlaid with gold, silver, and precious stones, their blades inscribed with poems, the name of the armor maker, and the original owner. Avar men were famous for acrobatic feats of horsemanship, and their horses for endurance, speed, and surefootedness along the ledges and tracks in the mountains. Avarian women, who are believed to have descended from Amazons, wore daggers beneath their veils during Shamil's fight against the czar. In 1837, when the Russians besieged their mountain stronghold, the women fought beside their men. When the ammunition was gone, they rained rocks down on the infidel troops.

Each ethnic group prides itself on its customs. These range from colorful native costumes to the shape of water pitchers and the way of preparing khingal, the Dagestan national dish of small dumplings boiled in ram's broth. Depending on the cook's nationality, the dumplings can be oval or round, filled with meat or cheese, and served with a garlic or sour cream sauce.

Each of Dagestan's thirty-three nationalities its own distinct language. The Arabs, who brought Islam to the Caucasus in the eighth century, referred to Dagestan as the Mountain of Tongues. According to legend, a horseman was distributing the languages when he tripped over Dagestan, and they all fell out of his basket. For linguists, Dagestan is a paradise. The three main groups are Turkic, Persian, and aboriginal Caucasian. The last is a complicated language, leading specialists to believe that its speakers always lived there. The people practice what linguists call vertical polylingualism, in which the ethnic group inhabiting the village at the top of the mountain speaks its own language or dialect, plus the language of the village below. Russian is the lingua franca, though before the 1917 revolution it was Arabic, at least among the educated people in the cities. In 1938 the alphabets of all Dagestani nations with a written language were converted to Cyrillic.

Soviet repression of Islam

Apart from a common language that allowed the tribes to communicate, Russian has given little to Dagestan. After the Caucasus became part of the Russian empire, the czar allowed the mosques to remain open, though he didn't give Muslims the same privileges as he did Christians. But it wasn't until 1917, when the communists came to power, that religious repression began in earnest.

The communist authorities, like their czarist predecessors, understood that if the Muslims united they could become a serious threat to Kremlin power. Today, with an estimated 60-65 million faithful, the Soviet Union has the fifth-largest Muslim population, after Indonesia, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. By the year 2020, demographers believe that the majority population of the Soviet Union will be Muslim - a prospect Russians view with alarm. After quelling two uprisings in 1923, the Soviet authorities attempted to destroy Muslim unity by creating republics, the so-called modern states.

Once Soviet power was consolidated, communists embarked on a violent campaign to eradicate religious practices and to eliminate clerics and their mosques. At the beginning of the century, more than two thousand mosques and eight hundred Koranic schools were active in Dagestan. By the end of the communist persecution, only twenty-eight mosques remained.

Persistence of faith. During the crackdown, Islam went underground. However, largely because of Sufism, a fundamentalist mystical sect operating outside the mosques that played an active part of anticzarist resistance in Shamil's time, the faith remained comparatively strong. Although religious practice was banned, the general public continued such rites as marriage, burial, and circumcision in the Islamic way. Young urban parents, for example, regard their son's circumcision as a social duty rather than a religious tradition. Furthermore, the secret Sufi brotherhoods criticized the Soviet war in Afghanistan and encouraged young men to avoid the draft and turn their backs on the Komsomol, the communist youth organization. The KGB has had great difficulty penetrating the brotherhoods.

Soon after Gorbachev came to power he introduced his policy of glasnost, and religious repression ceased in the state. No sooner had the Dagestanis received the freedom of worship than they began raising money to rebuild the mosques. By the late eighties, more than two hundred mosques had been replaced, and the reconstruction continues. In Makhachkala, a spot has been selected for a grand mosque. Koranic schools are opening, and there is a demand for lessons in Arabic so the Koran can be read in the original. Russian translations exist, but people want the original language.

Bunyamin Bagdaev, newly appointed director of the Khiv Carpet Factory, says the reason he doesn't attend the mosque is because he doesn't know Arabic and can't understand the prayers. "Unfortunately, I was raised as a communist. I know my own language and I know Russian, but I don't know how to say prayers," he says.

Today there is a widespread call to abandon Russian and restore Arabic as the common language. Television and radio are including an increasing number of programs in the languages of the nationalities, and at least twelve ethnic groups are publishing their own newspapers, some of which include teach-yourself-Arabic supplements.

National and Islamic renaissance

The Islamic renaissance in Dagestan is accompanied by rising nationalism, largely focused on the figure of Shamil. At Gimri, Shamil's birthplace, a plaque hands over the house where he was born. Local guides point out the narrow mountain ledge and cave where he hid from the Russian soldiers. Tour buses struggle up the steep twisting roads through the mountain to visit Gunib, a fortified village cut into rock where Shamil and his murids (followers) made their last stand. Along the narrow dirt road leading to the spot where the murids surrendered to the czar's general, the Dagestan tourist authorities have built a hotel to attract foreign tourists and foreign currency. I saw postcards of the bearded prophet-warrior displayed next to images of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, in a shop window in Makhachkala, pictures of Shamil and Jesus Christ were on sale for fifteen rubles.

Probably the most important event in the growing Shamil mystique was the renaming of a mountain village constructed for workers at a new hydroelectric plant. Amid great fanfare, speeches, reenactment of battles, and prayer, the Stalinist name Svetagorsk, meaning "Light of the Mountain," was changed to Shamilka, meaning "Shamil's Fortress."

Digging into the past. Local museums are replacing space previously devoted to atheistic and communist propaganda with exhibits related to Dagestan history. In the museum in Makhachkala, an exhibit on the Caucasian wars displays Russian and tribal banners along with Shamil's embroidered holsters, sword, saddle, and stirrups. Across town at the fine arts museum is a collection of the carpets and flat weaves for which Dagestan is famous, along with several nineteenth-century oil paintings depicting Shamil's encounters with the Russians. "Not everything Soviet should be removed, because that is part of our history," says Khappalaev, "but now the people and cultural organization are demanding that we examine everything."

Two years ago the Shamil Foundation was established to raise money and coordinate research. Already, two international Shamil conferences have taken place, attracting scholars from all over the world. So far, a plan to erect a statue of Shamil has encountered opposition from religious conservatives, who point to Islam's prohibition against statuary. "But we are not planning a statue of Shamil as a holy figure," says the local historian at Gimri. "It will be of Shamil as a national hero and warrior."

As Dagestanis dig into the past, they are becoming increasingly aware of how little they know about their history. "We know much more about Soviet history than we do about our own," says Daglarov. "We were taught that the Russians were our big brothers and that they had a superior culture." When the city of Derbent recently celebrated five thousand years of history, it came as a surprise to many to discover the legacy left by the successive invasions of Scythians, Romans, Persians, and Arabs. "Dagestan used to be a great center of learning," says Mogamedkhanov with pride. "We used to have all these old manuscripts going from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, more than ten thousand of them, but the Soviets took them out and burned them. Only about 10 percent remain."

Not surprisingly, as people become aware of the past, there is resentment. The Soviet destruction of Dagestani culture was mindless, counterproductive, and cruel, striking as the heart of the nation's identity. As significant as book burning and the demolition of mosques was the decimation of Dagestan's horses, once famed throughout the Caucasus for their breeding. Under Khrushchev's agricultural policy, peasants had to choose between owning a cow or a horse, and whole villages were forcibly evacuated from the mountains and resettled in the lowland valleys.

Then, as a consequence of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign (since abandoned), Dagestan's vineyards were destroyed, thus ruining one of the region's prized industries. I saw firsthand evidence of efforts to recover from these failed and destructive policies when driving along the Caspian coast from Makhachkala to Derbent: Peasants were returning to the abandoned houses of their native villages and tending rows of young vines, planted to replace those which were destroyed.

One nation but many homelands

Dagestanis take pride in the fact that they have avoided the bloodshed that has plagued neighboring Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It is indeed surprising, especially when you consider that the Caucasus is a hotbed of recurrent territorial disputes. Soviet administrative regions and borders were drawn up arbitrarily under Stalin, and many ethnic groups found themselves divided. Furthermore, Stalin deported whole nationalities, more than 600,000 people, from the Caucasus to Central Asia and Siberia in the 1940s, because he considered them troublemakers. Now, as a result of glasnost, many want to return to their homelands.

Many nationalities believe that to survive as a people they must unite, irrespective of imposed boundaries. Such is the case of the Ossetians, who live both in Georgia and the Russian Federation. An equally explosive situation exists in northern Dagestan where the Chechen people are trying to return and reclaim their lands. However, Mogamedkhanov believes that the high number of ethnic groups actually helps keep the peace. "Over the years, a regulated system governing relations between family members, between villages, and between the different nationalities has developed," he says. Islamic hospitality - the way in which people treat strangers - is highly ritualized. After home and family, peoples' first loyalty is to their native village. City dwellers retain a house in the place where they were born and return regularly on vacations and holidays. "It would really be quite ridiculous for one of our ethnic groups to fight to take control of the others," says Regina Yukova, a foreign languages student at Makhachkala University. "We would all tear ourselves apart."

Progress of women. While the ethnic situation is comparatively peaceful in Dagestan, a potential struggle is forming along religious lines. Growing numbers of religious fundamentalists would like Dagestan to become an Islamic state. But the idea of living under Koranic law is distressing to those who hope for a move toward a democratic form of government. Ironically, women, who are frequently the guardians of tradition, would suffer the most and enjoy even fewer freedoms than they do now if the trend toward religious conservatism continues. "Traditionally, the woman must be educated in domestic matters," says Mogamedkhanov. "At home, even if she has twenty degrees, her diploma is of no interest to anyone."

Even now Dagestani women have little say about whom they marry. "My family wants me to marry an Avar from my village," says Regina, who would like to finish her degree before she gets married. "If I didn't like him, they wouldn't force me, but they would be very upset and put pressure on me."

Regina's father has a higher education and has worked in North Vietnam and Cuba as an engineer. "He has started learning Arabic because he wants to read the Koran in the original," she says. "It's not so much because he is religious, but he believes it is the only thing that can save Dagestan." Her father disapproves of her wearing jeans and makeup. "He has become very strict, and we have lots of fights. I wait until he leaves the house before I put on any makeup and wipe it off before he comes home."

Regina's friend Zaira, also a foreign language student, has a different problem. After her father died six years ago, her mother was unable to raise the money to buy the items necessary for the dowry of a young Dargin bride: three carpets for the wall and two for the floor, four pillows with embroidered covers, two tablecloths, bed linen, bedroom furniture, curtains, and a good ring to be presented to the sister of the man her family has chosen for her to marry. "I would like to be a lawyer," she says. But I don't know if that's possible, because after I graduate I must earn money for my dowry." She hopes that her brother will form a partnership with a foreign business firm and make some money. "It is our tradition that if the father dies, the other men in the family must raise to dowry."

An uncertain future. Another concern of democratically minded Dagestanis is that the current economic, political, and social disorder will cause people to gravitate toward a dictator. As evidence, they point to the rising nostalgia for Stalin. Vagid, a young driver with the Dagestan state Tourist Bureau, is a typical Stalin fan. In the cabin of his bus, along with pictures of a pinup girl, his wife, and five children, he has a large poster of his hero, which he has covered with a piece of protective plastic. He believes that reports of Stalin's crimes are "malicious gossip." Vagid puts in long hours driving tourists up steep mountain roads. Each evening he washes the day's dust off the inside and outside of the bus, making sure the glass is clean so the tourists can see. He is hardworking, conscientious, and never late. And he is angry. He is angry about fellow drivers who don't turn up for work or leave the buses dirty and the bosses who do nothing about it. He is angry because women go around "dressed up like dolls" and there is no food in the shops. "Things weren't like that under Stalin," he says.

There are even those who say that the growing cult of Shamil is unhealthy. While Mogamedkhanov is proud that his forebears fought under Shamil, he hopes that the growing interest in the imam will not turn into a Stalin-style personality cult. But it is clear that years fighting a common enemy have taught the people of Dagestan to value what they were struggling to preserve. In the past, one's enemies were the czarist soldiers marching through the mountain passes, or the commissars with their orders to destroy the mosques. Today, though the people have their freedom, the enemy is the social disorientation caused by the very freedom for which they have struggled so long.