Much More Than a Simple Newspaper, The Free Mountaineer “Volnyy Gorets”

Türkçe Tercüme
When Russian’s Volunteer Army invaded the Caucasus in the spring of 1919 and the parliament of the Union of the Republic of the United Mountaineers of the North Caucasus was forced to suspend its activities, some of the prominent intellectuals and politicians of the Mountaineers moved to Tbilisi and started organizing a resistance.  In exile in Tbilisi, the Parliament of the North Caucasus continued to function as the “Allied Madjlis”, together with the “Defense Council” at the front, and led the struggle against General Denikin and his army, who were trying to restore the monarchy in the Caucasus under the slogan of “one and indivisible Russia”.  The Free Mountaineer newspaper, published in Russian under the leadership of the chairman of the Union Council, Akhmed Tsalykkaty, was not just an ordinary source of news but also served as the official gazette of the Mountaineers’ government.  The newspaper was published without interruption until the occupation of the Bolsheviks’ Red Army, which started immediately after the defeat of the Volunteer Army and its expulsion from the Caucasus. It was published for 68 issues under “Volnyy Gorets” until the end of 1920.  At the beginning of 1921, when the Bolshevik Red Army sieged the Caucasus from all sides, the newspaper was renamed “Nezavisimıy Gorets” (Independent Mountaineer) in January 1921 and published 4 issues under the leadership of Magomed Kotiev (Mehmet Ketey). 

Later, in February, when the Bolsheviks were at the gates of Tbilisi, the management of the newspaper was transferred to the Azerbaijan-Mountaineers Committee, which was organized for the defense of Tbilisi, and it was renamed “Nezavisimiy Kavkaz” (Independent Caucasus).  Publishing activities never lost its importance in the agenda of the politicians of the Mountaineers even in the most critical days. Publishing was always one of the topics that occupied a considerable space in the meeting minutes. Despite very limited financial means, the salaries of the employees of the newspaper were paid without interruption until the last day.  Even advance payments were made to encourage staff to work under difficult conditions.  The last issue of the newspaper was published on February 23, the day the occupation of Tbilisi by the Bolsheviks was completed, and we read the news about how the volunteers of Azerbaijan and Mountaineers defended Tbilisi. 
Although every issue and every article in this newspaper was important, I have selected and translated for you two articles that are particularly important to me.
When the Bolsheviks started implementing populist policies in the regions where they seized power, they first dealt with the most critical issue and the most vulnerable aspect of the Caucasus: the land issue.  In Chechnya, Dagestan, and Kabarda, the lands reclaimed from the Cossacks and local landlords were distributed to the Mountain poor.  These populist practices made it more difficult to maintain public support for independence for Haydar Bammat and his friends in the nationalist-democratic wing. 

In the 56th issue of the Free Mountaineer dated October 4, Haydar Bammat and Ahmet Tsalykkaty wrote an article titled “From the Socialists of the Mountaineers of the North Caucasus to the International Socialist Representatives in Georgia” in which they tried to convey more socialist-oriented messages to the people who were being deceived by the populist policies of the Russian Bolsheviks, while at the same time trying to explain the North Caucasian cause to the socialist politicians who were following the developments in Russia from Tbilisi:

From Socialists of the Mountaineers of the North Caucasus to the International Socialist Delegation in Georgia

The Great Russian Empire was created with iron and blood on the graves of destroyed kingdoms and the bones of conquered peoples. The Mountaineers of the North Caucasus are among the peoples conquered by force of arms. For half a century they defended their freedom and independence, their homes and lands from the mighty conquerors advancing from the North.
In August 1859, in the eastern part of the North Caucasus, in Dagestan, the Mountaineers' stronghold, Gunib, fell and the leader of the Mountaineers, Shamil, who had waged a heroic struggle for thirty years for the independence of the Caucasus, was captured, and in 1864, in the western Caucasus, the last fortified point of the Mountaineers, the Circassian village of Akhchipsou, fell. From that moment on, the Caucasus was considered "pacified" and the Mountaineers were "loyal subjects" of the Russian tsars.
The tsarist power that had established itself in the Caucasus and dominated here for more than half a century was organized violence against the mountain peoples. This violence was twofold: class and national.
During this half-century, the mountain peoples were the object of administrative experiments by the Russian bureaucracy, which systematically and artificially delayed their cultural and economic prosperity, killed their national self-awareness, and at the same time fanned their national passions by applying the principle of "divide et impera".
By all means, the Russian power tried to kill the memory of the heroic era of the struggle for independence among the Mountaineers and to extinguish the thirst for freedom and national self-determination that never died out in the souls of the Mountaineers
The Russian Revolution of 1917 broke out. Tsarism collapsed. And together with the broad mass of Russian democracy, the Mountaineers also reached out for freedom. Common historical memories, identical everyday life, the same economic and social skills, and a common religion led to the mountain peoples, with all their ethnographic diversity, spontaneously uniting and forming the Union of Mountaineers. On the day of the great holiday of the proletariat – May 1, 1917, 400 delegates from all the Mountaineers gathered in the city of Vladikavkaz for the first free revolutionary congress. In the order of free expression of will, the Congress of Representatives of the Mountaineers of the North Caucasus proclaimed the Union of Mountaineers as a specific political unit and elected the Central Committee as the leading executive body. During this period of the Russian Revolution, the formation of the Union of Mountaineers was the first form of political self-determination of the mountain peoples. Remaining politically loyal to the Russian state, not seeking to separate from its composition, the Union of Mountaineers began to implement its cultural and national goals, based on the principles of revolution and democracy. However, as the Russian revolution began to deviate from the path of democratic construction and, on the one hand, to the path of Bolshevik anarchy, this is in the center of Russia, and on the other - in the south of Russia, reactionary generals who created the so-called "volunteer army" had a desire to restore pre-revolutionary Russia, as a result of which a civil war unprecedented in its scale in history began on the territory of Russia, the political position of the mountain peoples began to change in the direction of an increasingly decisive separation from Russia. Both polar forces of the Russian public in a mortal fight with each other tried to draw the Mountaineers into the process of struggle. But the forces of Russian reaction in the person of the generals who tried to recreate a "great, united, indivisible Russia" and the forces of the revolution in its anarcho-Bolshevik form turned out to be equally alien to the broad masses of the Mountaineers. Realizing the unshakable legal rights of peoples to self-determination, and guided by the natural sense of physical self-preservation, the Mountaineers on May 11, 1918, like other peoples of the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) proclaimed their state independence, forming the Independent Democratic Republic of the Mountaineers of the North Caucasus. The Democratic Republic of the Union of Mountaineers of the North Caucasus set its primary tasks as the isolation of the Mountaineers from the terrible civil war and the organization of a peaceful state life for the population on democratic principles.
These just demands of the Mountaineers were not destined to be realized. The Mountaineers Republic found itself between two fires. Both the anarcho-Bolsheviks and the reactionary generals tried equally to blow up the Mountaineers' Republic. When in 1919 the Bolsheviks were forced to leave the North Caucasus and in the footsteps of the retreating Bolsheviks volunteers advanced onto the territory of the Mountaineers, then the High Command of the Volunteer Army, supported in its tasks by the allied powers, in 1919, despite all the protests of the representatives of the Mountaineers' government to the allies and the assurances of the commander-in-chief of the allied forces in the North Caucasus, without any reason or basis for the implementation of its imperialist goals, opened military operations against the Republic of the Union of Mountaineers of the North Caucasus. As a result, the volunteer army marched across the territory of the Mountaineers' Republic, leaving behind the ashes of villages, murders, robberies, gallows, raped women, and desecrated mosques. Under threat of hanging and execution, all honest workers of the Mountaineers who worked on their national revival and cultural prosperity were forced to leave their homeland. In their place, reactionary generals from the time of Nikolai Romanov were put in power. Thus, increasingly capturing the territory of the Mountaineers' Republic, the volunteer army approached the capital of the Republic, Temir-Khan-Shura, where in May 1919, by force of arms, it liquidated the parliament of the Union of the Republic of the Mountaineers of the North Caucasus and the government. The yoke of political slavery was again thrown around the necks of the Mountaineers by the reactionary generals of tsarism. In vain did the representatives of the Mountaineers try to influence the diplomatic agents of the Entente who were in the Caucasus. These representatives, acting on behalf of the powers that proclaimed the slogan of protecting small nations and their right to self-determination, were entirely on the side of the reactionary General Denikin and against the freedom-loving mountaineers who defended the inviolability of their homes and the right to live and breathe according to their own desires.
All the hypocrisy of the bourgeois diplomats and their self-interest appeared with unsightly clarity before the Mountaineers in the tragic twists and turns of their struggle for freedom and independence. Not only not meeting with sympathy, but, on the contrary, noticing an obviously hostile attitude on the part of the representatives of the great powers of the West, the mountain masses, driven to despair by the violence and abuse of the Russian satraps, various generals and colonels, and their own traitors, took up arms. In August 1919, uprisings broke out in Dagestan and Chechnya, and in a short time, the mountainous parts of Dagestan and Chechnya were cleared of the volunteer army. This movement was carried out under the banner of the formation of the Independent Democratic Republic. The uprising broke out at the moment when the struggle of the voluntary army with Bolshevism was reaching its apogee. The mountainous territory represented the rear of Denikin's army, and the Bolsheviks were straining every effort to use this movement for their own purposes. The Musavat government of Azerbaijan also wanted to take advantage of the uprising of the Mountaineers in the hope of imperialist rounding off of its possessions by annexing Dagestan.
The Azerbaijani government itself did not dare to directly intervene in the struggle, so as not to spoil its relations with the Entente, which supported Denikin. It filled Dagestan with Turks led by Nuri Pasha, hoping to achieve its imperialist goals with the help of the Turks. The Turks enjoy the support of the Musavat government of Azerbaijan, and the Bolsheviks, who have infiltrated Dagestan, enjoy the support of Soviet Russia. Both of these groups unite in the struggle against the democratic, independent movement of the Mountaineers, and, since they have greater material resources, they gain a victory over this trend. But, having gained a victory over the independent Mountaineers' movement, yesterday's allies, the Turks and the Bolsheviks, come to grips with each other, since the political goals pursued by them turn out to be opposite. The struggle between the Soviet and Azerbaijani orientations ends with the defeat of the Turks, who are forced, led by Nuri Pasha, to flee Dagestan. The Bolsheviks seize power. This moment coincides with the collapse of the volunteer army in the North Caucasus and the approach of the Red Army forces from Russia to the Caucasus Mountains.
The so-called workers' and peasants' power reigns on the territory of the Mountaineers. The same Bolsheviks who, through the mouth of the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Chicherin and other representatives of the Soviet power, at the time of the struggle of the rebels of the Mountaineers, promised the mountain peoples the right to full national self-determination, including independence and separation from Russia, as soon as their victory over Denikin became clear, with a cynicism that has few examples, trampled on their solemn promises.
In a region with a weak development of capitalism, with a dominant natural-barter economy, a low level of culture, and a patriarchal-everyday life, with a population poorly differentiated in class terms, the ideas of Bolshevik communism begin to take root. Because there are neither objective nor subjective prerequisites for the implementation of these ideas, the workers' and peasants' power in the region, feeling the precariousness of its position, takes the path of mass terror, trying to hammer its ideas into the consciousness of the people with the bayonets of the visiting Russian Red Army soldiers. There is no more tragicomic spectacle than the attempts to introduce the pseudo-communist ideas of Bolshevism into the life of the Mountaineers. The organized violence of the senile generals of the times of the Volunteer Army, who sought to return the population to the slave state of the times of Tsarism with the bayonets of Russian soldiers, is now being replaced by the no less nightmarish violence of the madmen of anarcho-Bolshevism, striving to introduce the ideas of their pseudo-communism into the consciousness and life of the population, which has no experience of cultural political struggle, no corresponding training, no incentives whatsoever to accept the communist ideas of Russian Bolshevism. The more persistently the anarcho-Bolsheviks try to rebuild the life of the mountaineers in their own way, the more and more resistance they encounter from these peoples. Explosions of indignation have already begun and the hour is not far off when, in response to the pseudo-communist experiments of the Bolshevik commissars, the Mountaineers will respond with a general uprising.
The more hateful the Mountaineers become to all that political confusion and all that social and economic disorder that the Bolsheviks bring into their lives, the brighter the idea of ​​national independence and an independent state government shines in their minds.
We, the socialist vanguard of the Mountaineers, reflecting the interests of the working masses, consider it our historical task to formalize this spontaneous process of the liberation movement of the Mountaineers based on consistent democracy in anticipation of socialism, this immediate world task of our era. We think that the democratic school is a necessary threshold, an inevitable stage in the kingdom of socialism. We consider the self-affirmation of the working masses of each nation in their state sovereignty to be the highest manifestation of democracy.
A free union of free nations, large and small, is the bright future of humanity.
The creator of this future is the world proletariat.
We consider the struggle for the Independent Democratic Republic of the Union of Mountaineers to be an inevitable stage on the path of these peoples to the bright ideals of humanity. We put forward the slogan of the present moment for the Mountaineers to convene, based on universal suffrage, under conditions of all democratic guarantees, a supreme body of the mountain peoples, which should be the embodiment of their sovereign rights, which will determine their state existence and political destinies. Greeting you, representatives of the Western European socialist movement, you, our teachers, in the struggle for the emancipation of humanity, on the soil of the Caucasus, we at the same time flatter ourselves with the hope that our real voice about the struggle that we are waging in the remote slums of the Caucasian mountains against oppression and violence against the free will of the people, will be brought to the attention of the Western European proletariat, this sole bearer in our era of all the values ​​and all the best hopes of exhausted humanity. This faith in the sympathy of the Western European proletariat, the vanguard of humanity, will increase our energy tenfold in the difficult trials of our struggle.
Crushed by the boot of the Russian Red Army Bolshevik, the democracy of the Republic of the Union of Mountaineers of the Caucasus appeals in your person, members of the international socialist delegation, to the proletariat of Europe.

On behalf of the social democracy of the Republic of the Union of Mountaineers of the North Caucasus and behalf of the editorial board of the social democratic newspaper "Volny Gorets" (in Russian), "Yangi Duniya" (in Turkic) and "Nog Tsard" (in Ossetian) Akhmed Tsalikov

On behalf of the independent socialists of the Republic of the Union of Mountaineers of the North Caucasus Haydar Bammat

Apart from the importance of the content of this article, Haydar Bammat, who was criticized by his political opponents throughout his life for having an uncompromising, ill-tempered, and quarrelsome personality, drew attention with the fact that he undersigned this article together with Ahmed Tsalykkaty per the needs of the public interest, despite the fact that there were some strong expressions in the article that did not coincide with his political views. This can be explained by the fact that Bammat did not oppose the harsh expressions in this article reflecting Tsalykkaty's Turkophobic tendencies that he developed since the early days when independence was declared,  at this critical period when there were much higher priorities concerning the statehood of the North Caucasus.  On the other hand, Haydar Bammat's call to the Mountaineers, which had been published in the Georgian newspaper Borba on October 5, was republished in the 57th issue of The Free Mountaineer dated October 11, and the public was warned not to engage in activities that would serve the interests of either the Russian Volunteer Army or the Red Army:

When the triumphant Russian reaction was approaching Moscow in an unstoppable burst of victory, when starving and cold Soviet Russia was ready to collapse under the weight of the blows that had befallen it, you raised the banner of rebellion against the black gangs of General Denikin, who had occupied the territory of your republic by violence and deception.
Left to your own devices, without any outside help, almost without weapons or technical means, you threw yourself at an enemy that outnumbered you many times over and was richly supplied with the most sophisticated weapons of destruction.
Then, in those difficult days, the Soviet government, in repeated direct appeals to you and in negotiations with your representatives, expressed its deep gratitude to you for the incomparable assistance you rendered to the cause of the revolution by fighting against the common enemy.
People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Chicherin wrote in his well-known radio that Soviet Russia considers it timely to declare before the whole world the absolute and unconditional recognition of your republic. This was also repeated at various times by other large and small commissars of Soviet Russia - Ordzhonikidze, Narimanov, and others.
At the cost of unheard-of privations, at the cost of thousands of lives of your best sons, at the cost of dozens of villages razed to the ground, you liberated a significant part of your native land from the volunteers and greeted the Red Army as saviors and allies. These troops carried on their banners the lofty slogans of the liberation of the enslaved peoples of the East from the yoke of European capitalists and recognition of your cherished hopes for national self-determination and independent state existence.
But the solemn promises of Soviet Russia, given in the face of the whole world, turned out to be a great lie. Soviet Russia placed a stone in your trustingly outstretched hand. Soviet troops began to behave here as if in a conquered country. The Soviet authorities dispersed your revolutionary body, the Defense Council, which had set the task of creating a free people's government elected by you, and established a regime of violence and tyranny in your cities and villages. They are taking away your last asset - your bread and cattle.
Before you stand the terrible specter of death from hunger, cold, and the diseases associated with them...
The appeal of the Chairman of the Defense Council Sheikh-ul-Islam Ali Gadzhi Akushinsky and myself to the Central Soviet Government with a reminder of the promises made and a demand for the honest fulfillment of the obligations assumed with the Mountaineers remained unanswered. The local authorities responded by killing, arresting, and deporting to concentration camps and interior Russia the best sons of the fatherland who, with their blood and selfless struggle against Denikinism, had imprinted their love not only for the freedom and independence of their homeland but also their devotion to the cause of the Russian Revolution.
Your righteous anger against the stranglers of your freedom is just and holy.
But the struggle for freedom and independence of the native country must be pure and flawless. There must not be a single stain on the starry red-green banner of the People's Republic of the North Caucasus. There must be no place in your ranks for traitors and betrayers in the name of selfish goals, class privileges, and class interests, trading in the homeland and speculating in your blood. You must mercilessly tear from your midst those who, under the cover of ideas dear to you, bring you new enslavement. The ruins of dozens of Dagestani, Chechen, and Ingush villages, burned by the gangs of General Denikin, are still smoking, the tears of mothers and wives who lost their children and husbands in battles against the Volunteer Army have not yet dried, and already the black reaction, sheltered in the Crimea, is stretching out its greedy tentacles to you. A crafty enemy under the guise of a friend and savior is knocking at your heart. Some traitors and betrayers who have linked their fate with your executioners of yesterday and who, for fear of your punishing wrath, dare not return to their homeland without Wrangel's bayonets, are sending their agents to you, generously supplied with money and false promises. Outside the Crimea, they are supported by nameless scoundrels, alien to our peoples, who have made a means for personal gain out of the people's cause and your blood, and by those mountain activists whose names are associated with the betrayal of the Mountaineers' Republic to General Denikin's oprichniks... Do not believe the deceitful promises of the enemies of the people. Remember that General Wrangel and those around him are doing the dirty work of monarchical restoration. These people have forgotten nothing. These people have learned nothing. They bring you the old chains of national oppression and social enslavement. Wrangel has already made an alliance with the most reactionary elements of the Cossacks and in his address to them openly declared that his goal is to recreate the former "Mother Russia", he does not recognize your right to national self-determination and calls you together with the Cossacks, townspeople, and peasants to the All-Russian People's Assembly (not even the Constituent Assembly). While still sitting in Crimea, he confirms the special Cossack privileges and "the wisdom of the Cossacks to build a life in their lands". The Mountaineers, swollen with hunger - the Ingush, Ossetians, and Chechens know what this wisdom of the mountain Cossacks means. This means that each Cossack must have an average of 4 dessiatines of land when there are only 0.2 dessiatines per mountaineer; this means that 240,000 Cossacks must be a landowning people, sucking the lifeblood out of the million-strong mountain poor, that this poor, driven out by Russian despotism from their fertile valleys and pressed against the bare rocks, must continue to grow wild, degenerate and die... And in the name of these suicidal tasks, your maddened general "rulers", now sheltered by General Wrangel, are preparing new massacres for you. In his address to the unfortunate Kabardian division, which he dragged to the Crimea, the former Denikin ruler of Kabarda, now confirmed in this title by the new commander-in-chief, writes: "Allah will help, soon we will be in our native Kabarda, where in the ranks of the glorious Russian army, not a division of Kabardians, but a cavalry division will forge the happiness of Russia" ... Mountaineers, you have never been, you cannot be, the gravediggers of either your own or someone else's freedom. In the epic struggle between the Russian Revolution and reaction, you must wholeheartedly be on the side of the revolution. Wrangel, the last expression of impotent Russian reaction, in the madness of despair, trying to turn back the wheel of history. He is a political corpse, and those who want to link your fate with him are dragging you to an inglorious death.
The liberating ideas of the Great Russian Revolution are stronger than the will of the perfidious Bolshevik commissars; in its historical course, it will sweep away those who have stained themselves with lies and dishonor to us, and who, instead of the promised recognition of our national ideal and cultural and economic cooperation with us, have brought enslavement, poverty and savagery to the people. Not all stages of the struggle have been passed yet. We still have difficult battles ahead for our freedom and independence. But the future belongs to us. No matter how hard the trials prepared for us by fate, we will bring our struggle to a victorious end. If we are destined to fall in this struggle, let us fall not in the name of alien and hostile goals of black and red imperialism in distant lands, but on our native land at a glorious post, defending our freedom and honor, our homes, our wives and children, as our ancestors died under the glorious banners of Shamil, Kazi Mullah and Sheikh Mansur. In this struggle for national self-determination against the commissar of imperialist power, we are assured of the sympathy of the neighboring and friendly peoples of Transcaucasus, of genuine Russian democracy, and the democracy of all of Europe.

Unfortunately, all these efforts and struggles did not yield any positive results for the Mountaineers of the Caucasus. On February 23, 1921, when the Red Army seized Tbilisi, representatives of the Menshevik government of Georgia fled to Batumi, while Tbilisi was defended by volunteers mobilized by the Azerbaijani-Mountaineers Committee.  The Western world remained indifferent to the events with its usual cynical hypocrisy. On that day, the last issue of the Free Mountaineer was published under the title “The Independent Caucasus”, then took its exceptional place in the archives.

Cem Kumuk
Istanbul, November 23, 2024