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On 8 September, Kabardino-Balkaria cel­e­brat­ed the ‘460th anniver­sary of its voluntary entry’ into Russia. While the Northwest Caucasus  —  including what is now Kabardino-Balkaria  —  was conquered by Russia in the 19th century, this false narrative now serves as a loyalty test for local political elites.

Conflicting narratives

There are two important anniver­saries Kabardino-Balkaria marks every year. One is a huge cel­e­bra­tion with extensive state funding, while the second is marked more quietly, with a silent mourning pro­ces­sion, exhi­bi­tions at the National Museum and the National Library, and TV and radio inter­views with researchers.

The first cel­e­bra­tion is to mark the anniver­sary of Kabardino-Balkaria’s ‘voluntary entry’ into the Russian state, cel­e­brat­ed on 8 September, while the second is known as the Day of Remem­brance of the Cir­cass­ian Victims of the Caucasian War, 1817–1864, observed on 21 May.

In other words, in May, the Cir­cass­ian people mourn their ancestors who were conquered by Russia in the 19th century — labeled by many Cir­cas­sians in Russia and abroad as the Cir­cass­ian Genocide — while in the beginning of September they celebrate the merging of their country with the state which their ancestors fought against.

[Read also: Caucasus com­mem­o­rates victims of the 19th century Russian conquest]

Cel­e­bra­tions of the ‘voluntary entry’ of Kabardino-Balkaria into Russia were first held in the Soviet era as an example of ‘friend­ship between peoples’ and the ‘centuries-old aspi­ra­tion of the Caucasian high­landers to join pro­gres­sive Russia’. Similar obser­vances were estab­lished in North Ossetia and even in Chechnya–Ingushetia — the very same Chechnya which was conquered by Russia as late as in 1859 following a 25-year struggle under Imam Shamil’s command, and which was in a state of almost constant rebellion until the estab­lish­ment of Soviet power in the 1920s.

In turn, the Day of Remem­brance of the Cir­cass­ian Victims of the Caucasian War was pro­claimed in 1992 during the lib­er­al­i­sa­tion period of Boris Yeltsin’s term as Russia’s president. There were no dis­agree­ments between the lead­er­ship and activists of the Cir­cass­ian national movement on this matter. In 1992, during Valery Kokov’s time as head of Kabardino-Balkaria, a decree On the recog­ni­tion of the Cir­cass­ian genocide in the Russo-Caucasian War was issued. Nowadays, the author­i­ties in the region try not to remember this. The decree was offi­cial­ly sealed and signed by the highest political figures of the three Cir­cass­ian-populated republics of the North Caucasus: Adygea, Karachay–Cherkessia, and Kabardino-Balkaria.

Zaurbek Kozhev, a doctor of history and head of the Depart­ment of Mediaeval History of Kabarda at the Kabardino-Balkarian Institute of Human­i­ties told OC Media that 21 May, which in 1992 was declared by Kabardino-Balkaria’s Par­lia­ment a day of mourning, used to be a holiday estab­lished more than a hundred years earlier by an imperial decree to mark the Russian conquest of the Northwest Caucasus.

Partnership between Kabarda and Russia

According to Kozhev, Russian–Kabardian relations from the 16th to mid-18th century were mostly on equal footing. The current cel­e­bra­tion of ‘voluntary entry’ is directly linked to the opening of the first embassy of Kabarda in 1557 in Moscow. According to Russian chron­i­cles, the ambas­sadors — rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the noblest estates of Kabarda — asked Ivan the Terrible to ‘take them as serfs and protect them from enemies’. However, the original text of the treaty itself was not preserved, and the embassy of 1557 was hardly the first ini­tia­tive of this kind.

‘Certainly, those Kabardian princes who approached Moscow acted as junior partners, since the disparity in territory and human resources was too obvious. In the diplo­mat­ic vocab­u­lary of feudal Russia, there was a formula “to come under the arm” of a senior partner. Russia itself treated its relations with Kabarda as a rela­tion­ship with an inde­pen­dent country. Proof of this is the fact that the official cor­re­spon­dence with Kabarda went through the Ambassador’s Order, the analogue of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of that time’, Zaurbek Kozhev told OC Media.

Promising loyalty and support to all Russian under­tak­ings in the region, the Kabardian princes did not even think of attaching their lands to Russia. For a long time, there were no sig­nif­i­cant relations between Kabarda and Russia. Contacts were again activated only with the beginning of Russia’s expansion into the southern seas under Peter the Great. According to Kozhev, Russia treated its relations with Kabarda arbi­trar­i­ly, aban­don­ing them in the early 18th century while they fought off the Crimean Khanate, despite earlier pledges of support. In 1739, Russia and the Ottomans recog­nised Kabarda as an inde­pen­dent buffer state between their empires.

The annexation of Kabarda

Relations between Russia and Kabarda began to dete­ri­o­rate markedly after Russia con­struct­ed the Caucasus cordon line, a series of strong­holds along Russia’s southern flank in the Caucasus in the 1760s.

‘The erection of the Mozdok fortress [in modern-day North Ossetia] in 1763’, says Zaurbek Kozhev, ‘was unequiv­o­cal­ly regarded by Kabarda as an unfriend­ly act, because the fortress was erected on land that the Kabar­dians con­sid­ered their own, while five Cossack villages were erected on the left bank of the River Terek [marking the border between Kabarda from Russia].’

By the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, the problem had not been solved by diplomacy, and the Kabar­dians stood up against Russia and Mozdok. The war ended in Turkish defeat and the Ottoman Empire recog­nised Russia’s rights to Kabarda.

According to Kozhev, later, ‘Russian general Yakobi, trying to subjugate Kabarda, reminded Kabardian princes and nobles that they had become subjects of the Russian tsar vol­un­tar­i­ly two centuries ago. Kabardian rep­re­sen­ta­tives answered that they had agreed to become “not serfs, but kunaks”, that is, not subjects, but friends, allies.’

During the Russian military expe­di­tions to Kabarda at the turn of the 18th century, dozens of Kabardian villages were exter­mi­nat­ed, and the final conquest of Kabarda happened in 1822. A sure sign of the annex­a­tion of the new territory to the empire was the estab­lish­ment of the Russian military admin­is­tra­tive system in Kabarda.

Aslan Boriyev, head of the Depart­ment of Theory and History of State and Law at the North Caucasus Academy of Man­age­ment, told OC Media that ‘such a situation with official holidays and mourning dates in Kabardino-Balkaria and, more broadly, in Russia, is likely because […] the state cannot offer a con­struc­tive ideology. Therefore, it sees the proven Soviet way as the only way out of the situation: “friend­ship of the peoples” and “the Russian elder brother” ’.

Proof of devotion

In order to balance out the mourning day on 21 May, in 2014, the local author­i­ties estab­lished the Day of Cir­cas­sians, to be cel­e­brat­ed annually on 20 September. There is also the Day of the Cir­cass­ian Flag, which was first cel­e­brat­ed on 25 April 2010.

As one of the founders of the holiday, assistant to the member of the Fed­er­a­tion Council (the upper house of Russia’s par­lia­ment) from Adygea, Asfar Kuyek said in an interview to Caucasian Knot, the date of 25 April was chosen arbi­trar­i­ly. ‘I wanted to hold a holiday in spring, because this time of year sym­bol­is­es birth’, Kuyek said. But neither this nor any other new holiday — such as the anniver­sary of the ‘voluntary entry of Kabardino-Balkaria into Russia’ — is popular among the people.

Even the author­i­ties them­selves feel a certain awk­ward­ness at these cel­e­bra­tions. The landslide in Kabardino-Balkaria earlier this year was a good excuse to abandon extensive cel­e­bra­tions to which the republic had been preparing for several months.

The head of the republic, Yury Kokov, made changes to the cel­e­bra­tions of the anniver­sary of the ‘entry’, removing a gala concert, a reception, and a big fireworks display from the programme. Frequent changes of the official name of the cel­e­bra­tions are indica­tive of this awk­ward­ness as well. In 1957, cel­e­bra­tions were held in honour of the ‘voluntary accession of Kabarda’, in 2007 — ‘voluntary entry of Kabardino-Balkaria into Russia’, today — ‘voluntary entry of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria into Russia’.

Now the name sounds more inclusive towards the Balkar pop­u­la­tion of Kabardino-Balkaria — the second largest ethnic group of the republic — although the incon­ve­nient ‘entry’ still persists. Nev­er­the­less, the official media of the republic tire­less­ly reiterate the ‘pro­gres­sive sig­nif­i­cance’ of this event, using the marriage between Kabardian princess Goshaney (later baptised as Mariya) and Tsar Ivan the Terrible in 1561 as a proof of the lasting ‘love between Kabarda and Russia’.

[See the photo gallery on Kavkaz.Realii: Kabarda–Russia, 460 years together]

‘The so-called “voluntary entry of Kabardino-Balkaria into Russia” ’, says Aslan Boriyev, ‘is a kind of a “symbol of faith” [in Russia] for the republic’s political elite, a sort of “mantra” that must be repeated in order to demon­strate their devotion to the federal centre, receiving in return a share of the Russian pie. Therefore, any idea, even on the basis of his­tor­i­cal facts, which will con­tra­dict this position, will be con­sid­ered a personal threat to those in power.’

[Read on OC Media: Unam­bi­tious state-backed Cir­cass­ian groups hide a growing nation­al­ism in young Cir­cas­sians]