Periodicals of the Popular Party of the Caucasian Mountaineers

Türkçe Tercüme
One of the important building blocks of the history of the North Caucasus during the Interwar Years was the Popular Party of the Caucasian Mountaineers (Narodnaya Partiya Gortsev Kavkaza), founded by Said Shamil in Warsaw on November 18, 1926.  Founded as a rival to the Nationalist Democratic Party of the Caucasian Mountaineers of Haydar Bammat, one of the most important figures in the struggle for freedom, statehood and independence in the North Caucasus, the Popular Party of the Caucasian Mountaineers claimed to be the successor of the Peoples’ Party of the Free Mountaineers (Narodnaya Partiya Volnykh Gortsev Kavkaza) of the Caucasus, which had been founded in Prague by Ahmed Tsalykkaty as the political wing of the Union of the Caucasian Mountaineers (Soyuz Gortsev Kavkaza), and its founder Said Shamil even signed some of his correspondence with the title of general secretary of this party before establishing his own party.
The majority of the refugees taken from Turkey to Czechoslovakia with scholarships provided by the anti-Bolshevik Czechoslovak leader Thomas Masaryk and projects supported by the Red Cross were Monarchist Russians, Cossacks, some of Ossetians who were Christians, and North Caucasians who supported the Volunteer Army during the Russian Civil War.   In fact, the North Caucasians who supported the Volunteer Army had emerged as a separate faction in the early days of the North Caucasian political emigration.  After the deep-rooting of the Bolshevik regime in the Caucasus, the Monarchist Mountaineers became unpopular among the Russian monarchists, or some of them realized the truth and abandoned their monarchist tendencies, and the members of the Monarchist Mountain faction merged with other groups.  As one of the anti-Bolshevik leaders, Marshal Pilsudski’s Poland offered better economic opportunities than Masaryk's Czechoslovakia, many members of the former monarchist faction in particular left Czechoslovakia for neighboring Poland.  Therefore, the former monarchists who were part of the cadres of the Peoples’ Party of the Free Mountaineers, founded in Prague by the socialist leader Ahmed Tsalıkkatı, were among the groups that moved to Poland during this transition period.  Some intentionally manipulated perceptions, and obstacles in accessing accurate information caused the North Caucasian emigrants to perceive the movement in Warsaw as a continuation of the Prague movement in the following years. Nevertheless, it would be a huge error to perceive Ahmed Tsalykkaty’s activities as a predecessor of the Warsaw movement.
Unlike Czechoslovakia, Poland wanted to dominate the anti-Bolshevik groups and tried to manipulate their movements in return for financial benefits.  Due to this reason, Haydar Bammat repeatedly warned the Polish interlocutors that he could not accept anyone's interference in North Caucasian affairs, even if this came from an ally.  Therefore, the distinction between Bammat, who refused the financial support of the Polish government, and Said Shamil's group, which welcomed Polish support, started to expand.
Said Shamil rallied around him the Monarchist Mountaineers who fought with the national forces and dealt the biggest blow to the existence of the North Caucasian Republic by siding with General Anton Denikin.  Not limited to this, he appointed Lazar Bicherakhov, a former Tsarist General who had also fought against the North Caucasian National Forces in 1918 as the head of the European organization of the party.  All this led to the party being filled with people who had once fought to revive the Russian Tsardom.  The financial support promised by the Polish government made the party even more attractive to people of this profile. Thanks to this financial aid, Said Shamil not only created a center of power around him but also started publishing periodicals, first The Caucasian Mountaineers (Gortsı Kavkaza / Kafkasya Dağlıları) and then The North Caucasus (Severnyy Kavkaz / Şimali Kafkasya), starting in late 1928.

The leading political rival of the Warsaw Group, Haydar Bammat had indeed published the first issue of the periodical The Caucasus (Kafkasya/ Le Caucase) in January 1924 but was unable to continue due to financial constraints.  Said Shamil and his group's main problem was that they did not have any project and ideology for the future of the North Caucasus beyond their anti-Bolshevik discourse.  Barasbi Baytugan, one of the former officers of General Denikin's Volunteer Army, who played an active role in the party's publishing activities from the first days of the publication of these journals, embraced the ideals of Independence, North Caucasian Federalism, and Greater Caucasus Confederation, which had been voiced by Haydar Bammat and Nationalist-Democratic figures since the first days of the Russian revolution.  On the one hand, Baytugan and his friends were trying to run politics on a slippery slope by becoming the flagbearers of such ideals they were unfamiliar with, and on the other hand, they propagandized centralist state models that were contrary to the basic principles of the federalist models.  As a matter of fact, after Haydar Bammat began publishing periodicals in different languages such as Russian, French, English, Turkish, German, etc. from 1934 onwards, Baytugan and his friends stopped defending federalism and exposed their centralist ideas explicitly.  Even Said Shamil himself, in letters written in the last days of his life, complained about the inability of the party leadership cadres to abandon their centralist monarchist tendencies and said, “The fact that this group of officers, whom we call the commanders, kept repeating the prayer ‘God Bless the Tsar’ from the beginning to the end of the revolution with a seemingly unconscious attitude was a complete spiritual perversion.”

The Caucasian Mountaineers (Gortsy Kavkaza / Caucasus Dağlıları) magazine, which was published in Russian or bilingually in Russian and Turkish for 50 issues from 1928 to 1934 as the party's publication organ, was replaced by The North Caucasus (Severnyy Kavkaz / Şimali Kafkasya), which was published from 1934 to 1939.  Since the Kemalist regime in Turkey wanted to avoid confrontation with the Russian Bolsheviks, and prevented the magazines from entering Turkey, The North Caucasus (Severnyy Kavkaz / Şimali Kafkasya) was published in various time intervals and issues, including The Parth to Freedom (Put Svobody / Hürriyet Yolu), Nation’s Flag (Znamya Naroda / Millet Bayrağı), The Future (Budushee / Gelecek), Our Path (Nash Put / Yolumuz), National Idea (Natsionalnaya Mısl / Milli Fikir), Forward (Vpered / İleri), The Call (Prizyv / Çağırış), The Seven Stars (Sem Zvezd / Yedi Yıldız) and The Voice of Truth (Golos Pravdy / Hakikatin Sesi) were republished under different names in an attempt to circumvent the ban on entering Turkey.  With the last issues of periodicals that were published 3 months before Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany, the Caucasus Mountaineers People's Party ceased to exist from the stage of history.



I have made 152 of these periodicals consisting of 156 issues available to you for the first time on the internet as a whole in our archive at the Historical Memory of the North Caucasus.

https://www.historycaucasus.com/archives?category=3&publisher=Narodnaya%20Partiya&page=1

Cem Kumuk
Istanbul, 4 October 2024