Let Our Fame Be Great

Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus by Oliver Bullough, Basic Books, 2012.

Summary

This is a book about the history of the Caucasus. The native people of the Caucasus have been victimized by both the expansion of the Russian empire during the 19th century, and Stalin’s paranoia during the 20th century. The reason whites are called Caucasians is that some eighteenth-century European intellectuals believed (mistakenly) that the white race originated in the Caucasus.

The Nogai Horde and Catherine the Great

Russia’s first move towards the Caucasus occurred in 1783, against the Nogai Horde.  The Nogai Horde were the remnants of the armies of Genghis Khan. The Nogais were a mixture of Mongol and Turkish people living near the Yeya river, near the Sea of Azov, between the Caucasus and Russia. The Nogai were nomads, herding horses, cattle, and sheep. The Nogai were nominally under the rule of the Crimean Khanate, which was part of the Ottoman Empire. The Russians wanted the land for agriculture.

Deportation

Russian General Alexander Suvorov made the Nogais swear allegiance to Catherine the Great at Yeya Fortress in 1783. Sheikh Mansur, born Ushurma in Chechnya was a  Sufi preacher. Sheikh Mansur and his men won an early battle at Aldy in 1785 against Catherine the Great’s expansion into the Caucasus, but eventually the Russians won the war. Suvorov deported many Nogais to the Volga River and Ural Mountains.

Cossacks

The Nogai were replaced by Cossacks. Catherine the Great had given the lands beyond the Kuban river to the Cossacks, in gratitude for their military service. Some Nogais went to the Crimea and the Circassian lands. The people south of the Nogais were now vulnerable to Russian expansion.

The Russian Viewpoint

The Russians did not see themselves as the bad guys. Their point of view was that: (a) the Russian peasants need more land, (b) Caucasian Muslim peoples were bandits and slave raiders, © Caucasian Muslim peoples fought on the side of the Ottoman Turks, and (d) Russians were civilizing the Caucasian people by abolishing slavery.

The Circassian Genocide

Russia gained Circassia from Turkey by the 1829 Treaty. The Circassians lived by a code of conduct called habze. They spoke Adyge, Abadzekh, Shapsug, Kabardian, and Ubykh dialects. Their land was on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea. The Circassians were Muslims, but they gave their women more freedom than did the Arabs. Circassians sold their own children into slavery in the Ottoman Empire. Many of the young Circassian women became part of the Sultan’s harem. Interestingly, Ivan the Terrible married a Circassian woman! The Abkhaz are neighbors along the Black Sea to the southeast who speak a similar language. The Russians built a series of forts on the Black Sea Coast in the 1830s. The Circassians attacked these forts in the 1840s. Russia blockaded the coast of the Black Sea to prevent the Circassians from trading with the Turks, to force the Circassians to trade with the Russians. In 1864, Russia, under Tsar Alexander II, performed ethnic cleansing on the Circassians. This is sometimes called the Circassian Genocide, because 300-400 thousand Circassians died during their expulsion from their homeland. The number of Circassians evicted from Caucasus was about 1.0-1.2 million. The Russians gave the Circassians a choice: either, (a) leave the mountains and become farmers under Russian rule, or (b) be deported to a foreign country. One tenth of the Circassians agreed to live on the plains. The remainder fled in Turkish ships in 1864, to refugee camps on the southern coast of the Black Sea in Turkey, and also to Varna, Bulgaria, and to Cyprus. Many Circassians settled in the Uzunyayla plateau in Turkey. Many Circassians refugees died of typhus.