Commemorating Vassan-Girey Dzabagy on the 62nd anniversary of his death.

Today, we commemorate Vassan-Girey Dzabagy, one of the unforgettable names of the Caucasian struggle for freedom and independence, with respect and gratitude on the 62nd anniversary of his death.

Born in 1882 in the town of Nasser-Kort (Izhi-Yurt) in Ingushetia as the youngest male of six children of the Dzabagy family, Vassan-Girey had a very good education, and like many other North Caucasian intellectuals of the time, graduated from the Vladikavkaz high school.  After studying Agricultural Engineering at the Dorpat Polytechnic Institute and the Jena Agricultural Institute, he worked for the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. 

Vassan-Girey, who was able to speak many foreign languages very well, took active roles in the mechanisms in which agricultural and land policies were determined during the Zemstvo period of the Russian Empire.   During the revolutionary period, he took an active part in community activities and was elected chairman of the Petrograd Society for the Dissemination of Education among Muslims. A large number of his articles were published in St. Petersburg newspapers.  During this period, Dzabagy, who emerged as an intellectual who struggled for social modernization and a democratic Russia, took an active role in the Committee of the North Caucasus Mountaineers in Petrograd after the February Revolution of 1917. Dzabagy, who was later appointed as the people's commissar in the Terek region, also participated in the 1st Caucasus Mountain Peoples Congress in Vladikavkaz in May 1917 and he was elected as a member of the North Caucasus Central Committee.  He was chairman of the Financial Affairs Committee of the Central Committee, and minister of finance and chairman of parliament in the government of Pshemakho Kotse.  During his duty in the Mountaineers' government, he was among the group who advocated unification with the Transcaucasian Republics in a confederation model.

When General Denikin's Volunteer Army invaded the North Caucasus, he, like other members of parliament, settled in Tbilisi.  In those days, in the intelligence reports of the French High Military Commissariat in Tbilisi, Vassan-Girey's political orientation was listed as "Radical".

After the occupation of the Caucasus by the Bolsheviks, he settled in Turkey.  He worked as an active member of the Caucasus Liberation Committee (Komitet' Osvobodzdeniya Kavkaza), which was established in Istanbul with the participation of North Caucasian political immigrants as well as Georgian and Azerbaijani politicians.  He attended the negotiations during the Peace Talks in Paris together with the other North Caucasian Statesmen.

Dzabagy, who we see as one of the members of the Prometheus front established by Soviet Opposition groups in France, moved to Poland in 1924, where his wife Halima (Loli) was a citizen.  While working as a journalist in Warsaw, he was also the editor of the magazine Przeglad Islamski. 

In 1938, he came to Istanbul as the representative of the Polish State Press Agency. While he was in Istanbul World War II broke out and he was unable to return to Poland.  Although he did not take part in the Adlon negotiations with Nazi Germany during the war, he reported to the German Embassy in Ankara on the strategic issues about the North Caucasus.  He made efforts to ensure that Germany pursued policies in the interests of the North Caucasus during the war. 

When volunteer units were formed among Caucasian-origin Soviet prisoners of war and the Caucasus Committee was established in Berlin, he immediately moved to Germany and took an active part in the work of the committee. He lived in Berlin from July 3, 1942 to February 20, 1944. Towards the end of the war, he moved to Schwandorf in Baviera, where he lived until March 26, 1946. On this date, he and his wife were detained by the Allies and put in the Mittenwald concentration camp and interrogated there until February 12, 1947. They were later transferred to the Grugliasco concentration camp in Italy. They stayed in Italy until the day they returned to Turkey on the ship named "SS Istanbul", which departed from the port of Genoa on February 13, 1949.

From the 1950s until his death on October 18, 1961, he continued to work among the North Caucasian immigrant circles in Turkey and wrote articles for the magazine "Svabodny Kavkaz" (Free Caucasus) which was published in Munich.

Vassan-Girey and Halime Jabagi had three daughters.  His eldest daughter, Khalimat Dzabagy, lived in the United States and died in 1981.  His youngest daughter, Tamara Cankat Dzabagy, lived with her family in Turkey until her death on April 22, 2005.  Tamara's life story was published by her daughter in Turkish in September 2022. His middle daughter, Djennet, was not as lucky as her other siblings.  Her tragic life has been the subject of numerous articles and books.  While her father was negotiating an alliance with the German Nazis for the liberation of the Caucasus, she was an officer of the Polish Army for the liberation of Poland and was actively engaged in the war against the Germans at the front.  On May 17, 1992, during a visit to her homeland, Ingushetia, she died in Djokharkale (Grozny) due to a sudden health complication. 

Cem KUMUK
Istanbul, 19 October 2023