The Sochi Olympics: A Circassian View
I first wrote about the symbolic meaning of the Sochi Winter Olympics for the Adyghe when they were still in the planning stage. Four years, and hundreds of articles and numerous protests later, many people are still wondering why the Adyghe, better known to the outside world as Circassians, are unhappy about what should be a stirring, inspirational event. On the day of the official opening some 50 Circassian nationalist activists were arrested in Nalchik, capital of the Kabardino- Balkaria Republic of the Russian Federation, and the Circassian diaspora organized demonstrations outside Russian diplomatic missions in Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Georgia, Germany and the United States.
The opening ceremony of the XXII Winter Olympics in Sochi provided a splendid and lavish spectacle. But as the pageantry came to an end and the thunder of the fireworks died away, any illusions remaining among the Adyghe community that the Russian organizing committee might deliver on its promise of a “Caucasus component” in the event had evaporated like the mist in a mountain valley. We can now assume that when children read the Putin-sponsored textbook on national history, obligatory in all Russia’s schools, they will learn that when Jason and his Argonauts arrived in the far wilds of Colchis they were met by the Volga boatmen. At least, that is how it appeared from the ceremony. So let us look at the historical context from a rather different perspective and, with the roar of Tsarist artillery in the gorges and the pyrotechnics over the Fisht stadium still echoing in our ears, try to hear the quiet voice of a humiliated and exiled people.
Truth does not need to be demonstrated and proven. It must, however, be repeated over and over, because even prayer stops being effective if not practiced continually.
For Russia the expansion of its territory is an expansion of weakness. A.M. Gorchakov, Chancellor of the Russian Empire
Here in Russia there is a passion in the highest circles for conquest or, more accurately, seizing anything which, in the opinion of its government, is up for grabs. S.Yu. Witte, Chairman of the Council of Ministers
My version of the Russians meeting the Greeks in the shadow of the Caucasus is a bit different. I have to go back into history, though not as far as the Argonauts.
Though standing at the head of the world’s biggest continental power, the Empress of All the Russias, Catherine II, remained at heart a member of the eastern German gentry, and her unrestrained obsession with Poland led her to push the borders of the empire more than half a thousand kilometers westwards. Nevertheless, it must be said there were sober voices who pointed out that taking a chunk of Poland would strengthen centrifugal forces inside the Empire, and Little Russia did, indeed, become the focal point of regional separatism.
One of the consequences of swallowing Poland was Russia’s excessive and profitless involvement in the affairs of Europe. Besides the Napoleonic Wars (Napoleon’s march on Moscow was officially referred to as “The Second Polish War”), which cost hundreds of thousands of Russian lives, the country found itself in the role of “gendarme of Europe”, especially after Russian troops crushed the revolutions of 1848. (Hungarians have never forgotten that their national poet Sandor Petofi died at the hands of Paskevich’s cossacks. His previous assignment had been as Commander-in-Chief in the Caucasus.) This particular role did Russia no good. At the end of his own not-so-glorious reign, Nikolai I noted bitterly, that he knew of two really stupid monarchs – himself and the Polish king John III Sobieski. Both saved Austria. Sobieski saved Vienna from the Turks in 1683, which did not, however, prevent the Hapsburgs taking an active part in the First Partition of Poland which followed not so long after. Nikolai suppressed the revolts that broke out in Austria’s vassals with Russian bayonets, but the mightiest ruling house in Europe failed to return the favor during the Crimean War. Austria supported the Anglo-Turkish-French coalition, Russia lost Sevastopol, and Nikolai, according to some accounts, killed himself.
Catherine, the “Mother Empress”, also revived the “southern vector” of Russian expansion towards the Ottoman Empire, which Peter the Great began in his Azov and Prut campaigns. Paradoxical as it may seem, Peter’s ambitions in the south were supported by the British. Russia was firmly built into British policy following the murder of Catherine’s son, Paul I, in 1801. This was organized by the British envoy, Whitworth, to put a stop to Paul’s drive, instigated by Napoleon, for India. It succeeded, for a time at least.
British intrigues aside, the “southern vector” was fed by the ambitions of the Tsars to establish themselves as rulers of Constantinople, to “return” it to the rightful ownership of the Russian autocracy. Their descent from the long-extinct Ryurikoviches and Byzantine Emperors (here come our Greeks at last!) allegedly justified Russia’s claims to be the Third Rome. A century-long struggle that exhausted the treasure and human potential of the Russian people was undertaken purely so that Catherine’s half-German heirs could assume the purple and crown of the Paleologues, last Emperors of Byzantium.
But between Russia and Constantinople lay the indomitable, savage Caucasus. The trap laid by George III’s Prime Minister William Pitt snapped shut when the Tsar’s soldiers began building fortresses along the line of the Caucasus mountains.
The idea of taking Constantinople remained alive until the very last days of the monarchy. Under an Anglo-Franco-Russian agreement of 1915, the capital of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Straits were to go to Russia after the war. There were some in Russia far-sighted enough to warn of the consequences of mindlessly pursuing the southern gambit. Among them was P.N. Durnovo, Interior Minister from1905 to1906, who appealed in vain to the Tsar six months before the beginning of the world war to abandon such a policy. Pyotr Nikolaevich, a former naval officer, was appalled by the plan to take control of the Straits. This was one of the main goals of Russia’s participation in the European slaughter, along with the annexation of western Ukraine and western Poland. He wrote: “The Straits will not give us access to the open sea, because on the far side the Aegean comprises what are mostly territorial waters. It is a sea dotted with innumerable islands, where the British fleet, for example, would have little difficulty in closing entry and exit to us for all our control of the Straits”. (Why several generations of Russia’s finest strategic minds failed to notice so simple a geopolitical fact remains a mystery.)
In addition, Durnovo pointed out that war made no economic sense, because it would cost far more than any projected gains, and, most importantly, it would inevitably engender a social revolution that would be fatal to so fragile a political entity as the Russian Empire.
The position of Bulgaria is noteworthy in this context. Bulgaria had come into existence thanks to a series of wars between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, but nevertheless declared its support for Austria, in the hope of winning new territories in the Balkans. While Serbia showed its gratitude for Russian intervention on its behalf (the immediate cause of the world war) by refusing to join Russia’s security system in this part of the continent even after the Soviet triumph in 1945.
But Russia’s fate was already sealed and nothing could save it. It seems Nikolai never did read Durnovo’s letter. Ahead lay the collapse of Empire, the murder of the Tsar and his family, chaos and a brutal civil war.
The inglorious end of this dynasty is all too well known. The Russian flag did, indeed, fly over the Bosphorus, but not in the way that advocates of the “southern vector” had imagined.
The Russian tricolor fluttered over the carousel. Concertinas struck up a strident march. “M’sieurs, m’dames! Starter’s orders. Never before seen outside the court of Saint Petersburg. Cockroach racing! Course de cafards! The favorite pastime of the late Tsarina!” M. Bulgakov, Flight
Meanwhile, the Circassians, the principle victims of these tragic manipulations, were not the footloose, merry band of horsemen as so often portrayed in Russian historical literature. War was their trade, and they were much in demand in the Middle East as well as Russia itself. They understood the latest developments in military science and the balance of power in the world. They knew that daggers and flintlocks were useless against regiments armed with howitzers and carbines. They knew they could not effectively resist the forces sent against their homes. But resist they did, if only so that we, their heirs, could not be ashamed of them. So that no one could say that they laid down their weapons as soon as they saw the enemy was stronger.
There is another related lesson from this period, worth remembering when faced with huge expenditures on projects associated with state prestige. The vast material, human and organizational resources swallowed by the Caucasus campaigns could only be afforded by giving up something that was incomparably more valuable in terms of economic and political potential – Alaska. Alexander II, Conqueror of the Caucasus, sold this part of Russia to the Americans in 1867, just three years after the end of hostilities in the western Caucasus. Though bled white by its own Civil war, the United States had enough sense to understand the worth of the acquisition, for a price no more than a reasonably fancy residence on Manhattan. But the Russian state had not the strength to develop or even simply hold a territory stuffed with gold, oil and other wealth. In a few years the Klondike gold rush was in full swing, and a little later oil was discovered. What would Russia have looked like had it decided to use its resources rationally and develop the wealth of an almost uninhabited, and therefore totally submissive, Alaska, rather than subdue the warlike peoples of the Caucasus?
There is a grim, dismal truth behind this history of absurd foreign adventures, which lacked even the logic of the other colonial powers (Russia spent far more on its expansion than it ever got back, unlike Spain, Britain, Portugal or Holland). The country was ruled, and continues to be ruled, by a military bureaucratic caste for whom war (and in a wider sense all forms of social mobilization which call for huge sums of money to be spent on ‘special projects’) was both a source of profit and their raison d’être. This caste used all means at its disposal to launch a campaign, expand it and, if possible, drag it out. This is what many Russians (and our fellow countrymen, too) with their primitive, patriarchal mindset failed to understand: what was the need for all this senseless violence – the burning of houses, the punitive raids against villages that had been subdued long ago, the execution of hostages, the destruction of an ancient way of life and the environment? The need was simple: to drag this macabre dance of death out a few years longer, to drain a few million (billion, these days) rubles more from the bottomless public purse to “pacify the savage tribes”, to pin on some more medals, etc., etc., etc. And the deportation of the Circassians was essential to conceal the evidence, to make sure there were no witnesses left to report the crime.
Has anything changed in the last century and a half? What makes the Adyghe community so angry is the way the Sochi games repeat the cynical brutality of those events which have never been erased from the nation’s memory. The logic and methods of the authors have not changed in the least. We see the same expulsions (this time of a different set of locals, but still in the name of “higher state interests”), the same outrageous looting of national resources justified by the prospect of victories, albeit sporting, and the same barely concealed contempt of the official class for ordinary people.
So we have a duty to respect those who decided that exile was better than life under a regime that could sense it was doomed and thus was doubly destructive. They really had no choice, just as the people of Sochi who lost their homes to the Olympic construction projects were forced out. Though perhaps they should be grateful, because this time they were not herded together and left to starve.
We should have no less respect for those for whom the call of native hearth and ancestral burial grounds would not let them leave. So they submitted. They were stripped of their livelihood, robbed and humiliated, and left to eke out a precarious existence. Yet despite everything, they were able to derive some sustenance from their ancient roots.
We must respect their choice, whichever way it went. But our duty to the future is to reunite our divided house. Because a house divided against itself will fall. We believe: History gives us a chance not to perish at the wayside of the historical process and to pass on the message of those who150 years ago did not bow their heads before brute force and went into exile, and of those who stayed for our sake and endured the unbearable oppression of the most inhuman dictatorship of its time. And we can repeat the words Martin Luther King addressed to his fellow black Americans, but which speak to all of us who continue to believe in the possibility of justice in a world filled with injustice:
“With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.“
The article was written for Adyge Heku – www.aheku.net – an independent website devoted to all things Circassian published from Moscow, after watching the opening festivities of the Sochi Winter Olympics on television. The site was attacked by hackers and visitors in Russia who tried to open articles, including Murat’s, were greeted with a message saying the material was infected by a virus and could not be opened.
