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Defender of Dagestan: A Legendary Hero Embodies a Nation's Quest for Freedom
| Article
# : |
20187 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1992 |
4,140 Words |
| Author
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Ruth Daniloff and photographed by Eduard Gladkov
Ruth Daniloff is a free-lance writer based in Massachusetts.
She spent nine years working and writing in the Soviet Union.
Eduard Gladkov is a Russian free-lance photographer based in
Moscow. Daniloff and Gladkov engaged in field research in
Dagestan in the spring of 1991 |
As Dagestanis try to find their way in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet empire, they idealize Shamil, a nineteenth-century warrior imam. In the 1830s, as Czar Nicholas the First pushed his enormous empire eastward, he found his way to Asia barred by the Caucasian Mountains and local tribespeople united under the banner of Islam. The czar tried to bring the tribes to their knees, burning their villages and crops.
In retaliation, Shamil, a prophet and warrior, called for the gazavat, a holy war against the Russians, in 1834. For almost thirty years, he and his followers waged a relentless guerrilla struggle against the Russian army. The imam became a legend. Dressed in a tight-fitting tunic fastened with a double row of silver cartridge cases, black boots made of paper-thin leather, his beard and hands stained with madder root, his saber in hand and the reins of his horse clenched between his teeth, Shamil would gallop down from the Caucasian peaks to slaughter the infidel soldiers as they struggled up the steep mountain paths with their heavy artillery.
The czar became so frustrated with his generals' inability to defeat or capture Shamil that he resorted to kidnapping the imam's young son, taking the child to St. Petersburg. Infuriated, Shamil retaliated by capturing two Georgian princesses and their French governess. He held the women hostage in his mountain stronghold until an exchange was negotiated.
Eventually, in 1859, the legendary holy warrior was forced to surrender. But his long confrontation with Russia is viewed as one of Dagestan's proudest moments, and the memory of his example is inspiring Dagestanis to a new life after seventy-one years of Soviet rule. Somewhat surprisingly, Dagestanis are today learning the truth about Shamil as an outcome of Mikhail Gornbachev's policy of openness. Previously, their view of this remarkable hero was unjustly colored by Communist Party propaganda. At first, communists tried to embrace Shamil as a revolutionary and progressive figure, but after 1950 Shamil's memory was denounced for its reactionary anti-Russian nationalism.
"When I was growing up we were told that Shamil was a Turkish spy and a reactionary, a bad person. We didn't know what to think," says Achmed Daglarov, a young schoolteacher in Acti, a mountain village near the Azerbaijan border. Daglarov points out a large oil painting hanging in the museum depicting the Russian army laving siege to the village in 1848. "We don't know whether Shamil took part in defending our village against the siege, but now we are
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