Türkçe TercümeWhile Denikin’s Volunteer Army, which attacked the North Caucasus with the support of money, all kinds of heavy artillery and warplanes received from the British, was defeated by the armed forces of the North Caucasus Republic without receiving any help from anywhere and was withdrawing from the Caucasus in a hurry, the lobbying activities initiated by Haydar Bammat in France for the recognition of the North Caucasus Republic and the diplomatic contacts he had in Tbilisi did not go completely unrewarded. French Social Democrat, Anatole de Monzie brought the issue of the recognition of the independence of the North Caucasus Republic to the agenda of the French Senate in a message sent to the Senate President on February 27, 1920, he asked what the French Government’s stance would be regarding the recognition of the independence of the North Caucasus Republic:
Paris, 28 February 1920,
Head Of the Cabinet
Mr. Minister,
I have the honor to inform you that the Official Journal inserts after the verbatim report of the session of 27 February the following written question which is put to you:
The written question, submitted to the Presidency of the Senate, on 27 February 1921, by Mr. de Monzie, Senator, asking the Minister of Foreign Affairs what attitude the Government intends to take concerning the Republic of the North Caucasus and whether it intends to further delay its recognition by France.
Attached is a note from Mr. de Monzie.
I believe I should add that Article 80 of the Rules of the Senate, amended by the resolution of 7 December 1911, contains the following provisions:
"Written questions, summarily drafted, shall be submitted to the President of the Senate. Within eight days of their submission, they shall be printed with the answers given by the Ministers. Ministers may declare in writing that the public interest prohibits them from responding or, exceptionally, that they request a period to gather the elements of their response."
Please accept, Mr. Minister, the assurance of my highest consideration.
The President of the Senate for the President of the Senate and by authorization
The Secretary General of the Presidency.
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Indeed, the Foreign Minister immediately appointed one of the prominent diplomats, Damien de Martel as the French High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs to the Caucasus and sent him to Tbilisi in March. De Martel prepared a comprehensive report on the North Caucasus in a relatively short time and sent it to Foreign Minister Alexandre Millerand on April 8. De Martel’s historic report contained some very striking assessments:
Tiflis April 6, 1920,
Russian Affairs
Damien de Martel, the French Government's emissary to the Caucasus to His Excellency M. Millerand President of the Council, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Note on the Republic of the Mountaineers
During March, in reply to a question from Monsieur [Anatole] de Monzie, Member of Parliament, Your Excellency made it known that he was waiting to decide on the question of recognition of the Mountaineer Republic until he had received the necessary information from me.
Wishing to inform the Department as soon as possible on the subject, I have drafted a note which Your Excellency will find enclosed.
Damien de Martel
Note on the Mountaineers’ Republic.
The term “Mountaineers” is commonly used to designate all the tribes settled on the 2 slopes of the Great Caucasus range, occupying the region stretching from the Caspian to the Black Sea, east from the Apsheron peninsula to the mouth of the Terek, west from Suhum to the Kerch Strait.
The total population is around 3 million, divided into the following groups from east to west. In Dagestan, the Dagestanis and Lezgins, numbering around 500,000 souls, are Sunni Muslims and therefore likely to be used for Turkish propaganda; the Mongolian Muslim Kalmyks and Kumuks populate the steppes north of Dagestan but play a little political role; then there are the Chechens, numbering 400. 000, Muslims who live by brigandage and were the center of resistance to the Russian conquest; the Ingush, a hundred thousand looters who come along the Georgian military route; the Ossetians, 400,000 in number, 90% of whom are Christians and the bitter enemies of the Ingush, who have a much higher proportion of educated people than their neighbors and are naturally allied politically with either the Cossacks or the Georgians. This Christian enclave clearly divides the strip of Muslim territory stretching from the Caspian to the Black Sea into two parts. Then come the Kabardians and Balkars, 500,000 strong, who stretch from the Terek river to the Kuban, loyalist Muslims who have always provided the Russian army with a large number of officers; the Circassians, fairly mixed with the Cossack populations, whose numbers are difficult to give, and who populate the country as far as Yekaterinodar; finally, the Abkhazians along the sea, 100,000 or so, mixed with deported Ukrainian Cossacks and Russian settlers. To the north of these turbulent populations, Russia has placed Cossacks whose territories sink to the foot of the mountains in indentations that leave the mountain populations with nothing but forests or barren expanses, depriving them of all the surface area necessary not only for their development but even for their very existence. While the Cossacks of Kuban have 14 desiatins of arable land per head, those of Terek 16 and those of Astrakhan 30, the Circassians have only 10, the Kabardians-Balkars and Ossetians 8, the Ingush 3, the Chechens 4.5 and the Dagestanis 6 to 7.
It is from this situation that the irreducible opposition of the Terek Cossacks and the mountain people settled east of the Vladikavkaz meridian results, and it is therefore among these tribes that the most ardent nationalism is to be found. The western tribes, on the other hand, which are more mixed with Orthodox elements, are on good terms with the Cossacks, who are more or less on an equal footing when it comes to land division.
These different populations are only loosely linked. The Ingush, Chechens, Chechens, and Dagestanis are even in opposition to each other. Very jealous of their independence, and very conservative politically, the tribes still live under the patriarchal system, led by the village elder or priest. On the other hand, Czarist Russia did not attempt to colonize them; it merely isolated them with a Cossack wall, without even subjecting them to mobilization, which would have brought them closer together and gradually suppressed their particularist tendencies. As a result, at the very start of the revolution, these populations, feeling that central power had been weakened and aware of the need to organize themselves to ensure their economic life, tended towards autonomy and began nationalist agitation. At the end of 1917, conferences were held in Yekaterinodar between the Mountaineers, the Cossacks, and the Transcaucasian Government, to create a southeastern federation that would have pooled economic wealth, with each member free to administer itself as it saw fit. But political events in rapid succession prevented this from happening. (Constitution of the Alexeev volunteer army, establishment of the Soviets in the Stavropol and Terek governments, constitution of a Bolshevik front in the North Caucasus, dissolution of the Transcaucasian Government, and proclamation of independence for the 3 republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; arrival of the Germans in Georgia, conquest of Baku and occupation of part of Dagestan and most of Armenia by the Turks, etc.). It was only after the Armistice that the Mountaineer Republic was formed, with a Menshevik social-democratic government presided over by Tchermoev and materially supported by Georgia and Azerbaijan. This republic comprised only Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia; the other western tribes had joined the volunteer army to fight against the Bolsheviks.
Throughout its existence until July 1919, this republic remained no more than a political fiction; Once Denikin had conquered the territories of the North Caucasus, extending as far as the Caspian, he drew up a special statute for the Mountaineers based on a broad internal autonomy, but the British command removed the whole of Dagestan from his zone of action (i.e. the demarcation zone of May 1919). Meanwhile, the Mountaineer Republic continued to exist, while Dagestan remained outside the struggle. When Denikin prepared the defection of General Halilov, the Minister of War and provisional head of the government, the Mountaineer Republic disappeared, and Dagestan became part of the territory of the Volunteer Army (2nd English Demarcation Line August 1919).
Without wishing to settle the agrarian question, Denikin imposed mobilization in Dagestan (September 1919). This measure sparked an uprising in the region that also spread to Chechnya and Ingushetia. A committee for the defense of Dagestan was born out of this hostility. By its very origin, it must have been sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, not so much because of shared aspirations as out of simple opposition to the volunteer army.
Moreover, it received help and specialists from Moscow, who for a long time refrained from any political agitation. After the Allies recognized the de facto government of Transcaucasia, this defense committee, dreaming of re-establishing Mountaineer unity, asked to be recognized by the Allies and to receive arms on an equal footing with the other republics.
At present, due to the rapid advance of the Reds in the North Caucasus and the lack of resources, it declares at the same time that it will welcome the Bolsheviks as friends, but that it will not admit the organization of soviets or the sending of Russian commissars.
In December and January of this year, the Bolsheviks twice recognized the Mountaineer Republic through their radios. This decision can be explained as follows:
1) the commissars can't contemplate reducing by force of arms this region that Russia took 50 years to conquer; such an expedition would immobilize at least 100,000 men and would encounter multiple difficulties.
2) To conciliate the Mountaineers would mean tearing down the wall protecting Transcaucasia; on the other hand, it would be necessary to try to set the Mountaineers against the Cossacks to break the reactionary tendencies of the latter.
As for the northeastern highlanders, they have no confidence in Bolshevism in general; they are convinced that order will be re-established in Russia from the periphery to the center, and they are strangers to Moscow's political dogma; however, they do not want to place themselves in opposition to the only real force in existence, which will provide them with the grain and ammunition they need. They also want to reclaim the land that was taken from them, but fear that the Bolsheviks will use both them and the Cossacks, and thus only partially satisfy them, repeating the experience of 1918. For these reasons, they will welcome the Bolsheviks with friendly greetings, but at the same time insist on European support and agitate to strengthen the national idea.
In any case, they are called upon to play an important role in Bolshevik policy in the Transcaucasus. At present, Vladikavkaz, Grozny, and Derbend are occupied by them. The defense committee is operating in Temir-Khan-Shura; it intends to set up a regular government in Vladikavkaz. Only the Dagestani, Chechen, and Ingush groups are united. The Ossetians, for fear of their Muslim neighbors, have loudly rallied to Bolshevism. In Kabarda, the Defense Committee is taking advantage of the unrest to gain a foothold in the country.
As for Georgia and Azerbaijan, for fear of Bolshevik reprisals, they refrain from encouraging nationalist agitation among the highlanders. The Georgian officers sent to Dagestan have been recalled, and the missions prepared in Tiflis to organize national committees in Ingushetia and Chechnya have been dissolved.
The nationalist idea is the only element likely to encourage the Mountaineers to put up, if not open, at least passive resistance to the Bolsheviks. In this vein, Dagestan has just tried to free itself from militant Bolsheviks and Turkish agitators by arresting Nouri Pacha and massacring a few local Communists.
All in all, as in 1918, the Bolsheviks were facing major difficulties in the North Caucasus and were anticipating them by adopting a policy of prudence, which the Mountaineers themselves were observing on their side, as both sides realized the advantages and disadvantages of their respective positions.
For vital economic reasons, the orientation of the Caucasian highlanders was inevitably Russian. They received grain and manufactured goods from either Rostov or Astrakhan. Consequently, the Turcophile tendencies observed in the northeast are merely the result of a temporary, but negligible, agitation. The highlanders rightly feel that Turkey is too far away to provide them with anything, as they have no direct access to their country.
On the other hand, Cossacks have strong particularist tendencies that they will seek to develop no matter what. If they find themselves in the presence of a central socialist government whose action is weakened on the periphery, they will tend through regionalism to loosen the links, attaching them to Moscow or Petrograd; in the race for an autocratic regime which they will no doubt have helped to establish, they will also take care to make their contribution pay.
As a consequence of this proximity, and to defend themselves against an organization partly directed against them, the Mountaineers are bound to a group and seek a large measure of autonomy.
This situation is likely to be used for allied politics. At present, it is probably too late to use the strip of territory occupied by the Muslim peoples as a bulwark against the expansion of the Bolsheviks, who have already penetrated the lower parts of the country. To do so, we would have to give them the land they demand, arms, equipment, and training. The outcome would be too uncertain to attempt such an effort. Communism can never develop among them, but the highlanders are likely to constitute a more or less tight filter, depending on the extent to which their nationalism is helped.
It is not impossible to bring Cossacks and Mountaineers into agreement through a compromise that the Bolshevik danger would undoubtedly make both sides accept. As for the partisans of Russian unity, they should understand that the Mountaineers will inevitably return to the Russian orbit later on and help in good faith to conclude such an agreement. It is in Paris, where these various groups currently have delegations, that this work of conciliation should be pursued.
To ensure their economic survival, the mountain people are demanding the Tuapse-Armavir-Vladikavkaz-Grozny-Petrovsk-Derbend railroad, the Terek cereals, the Caspian fisheries, the oil products of Grozny and Maykop, and the mineral waters of Pyatigorsk.
The Bolsheviks cannot wish to encourage such an expansion but given their current situation and their desire to live in peace with the non-native populations, despite their more distant ambitions, they too might be willing to accept a compromise, which their allies in the Moscow talks might find necessary. Regarding the most immediate measures, the Mountaineers should now consider the possibility of rapid de facto recognition. The French government's delegate should also have as his main objective to study the development of our particular economic interests in the region. In the Caucasus, we have been overtaken by the English, whose influence, despite a few setbacks, has been seriously established in the most important centers, notably Batum and Baku. On the other hand, since the Italians, alone or in secret association with the Germans, are keeping more than 25,000 colonizers in Georgia alone, and are likely to provide us with formidable competition in the north, we will have more freedom in the highland zone to attempt the fruitful development of a country whose riches have yet to be fully exploited. In place of Baku naphtha, which must limit our imports in the face of foreign competition, we will be able to substitute naphtha from the Grozny basin, where we already have an interest in the form of a financial stake in operating companies; a stake that could be extended.
By sending specialists to the region, we will also be in a position to take a serious lead in developing the country's as yet untapped mining resources. Finally, thanks to the business relations maintained by our most important exporting companies, which come to take wheat from the Kuban and Ukraine for our reconstituted industrial establishments in the Donetsk basin for coal and Krivoi-Rog for iron products, we could easily set up a French economic expansion zone sufficiently armed to stand up to our potential competitors. Here, as elsewhere, the transport issue will be the first to be resolved; first and foremost, we'll need to be able to supply rolling stock and traction equipment. We need to start thinking about this now if we don't want to be left behind by the British, Italians, and even Belgians, who had accepted major contracts to supply locomotives and wagons for the regions liberated by Denikin, equipment which is now complete and ready for delivery.
The advantages that we could derive from a forthcoming initiative are sufficient to encourage us to make every effort in this direction.
Tiflis, April 8, 1920.
Damien de Martel
Cem Kumuk
Istanbul, 24 October 2024