Authors

Grigory Grigoryev¹;  ¹ University of Helsinki, Finland

Discussion

A significant part of the work done in the collective memory studies paradigm is devoted to war crimes and genocides, slavery and racism, colonial and post-colonial crimes. In many contemporary studies the ideas of ‘grief’, ‘victimhood’, ‘anger’ and ‘loss’ become not just components of collective memory, but synonyms for it. Yet, in the oral historic narratives I have collected in the North Caucasian republic of Dagestan even indirect indications of such feelings were practically absent.

The ‘heroic struggle’ perspective my informants used to describe the relationship between Dagestan and Russia is assembled on the basis of the Dagestanis’ resistance to the Russian invaders during the Caucasian war (1817–1864) and the Russian Civil war (1917–1922). The beginning and course of this struggle is quite clear – it is a set of stories about the exploits and valour of the Dagestanis defending their homeland. The result and the consequences of this struggle, however, are rather ambiguous. On one hand, there is the historical fact that the Caucasian War (like the Russian Civil War) ended with the annexation of Dagestan by the Russian Empire (or the Bolsheviks). On the other hand, on the narrative level informants’ accounts never end in the defeat, the subjugation of the Dagestanis, or the victory of the Russians.

Even in the most emotional of stories my informants told me about the ‘bloody tsarists’, the ‘deceitful Bolsheviks’, or the ‘foreign invaders’, they did not betray feelings of loss or defeat. In their telling, the Russian Civil War was simply yet another episode of the Caucasian War and the generic struggle of Dagestanis against the foreign invaders (be it Russians, Ottomans, Persians, or Mongols) that goes back to ancient times. In their narratives, political mistakes or military defeats of Dagestani actors becomes logically impossible. In this telling, any defeat suffered by a Dagestani actor changes its semantic ‘minus’ to ‘plus’ and is presented as ‘heroic resistance’ in the spirit of ‘I am dying, but not surrendering’. The local heroes of past conflicts, having ultimately become lost to the invaders, are almost never described by informants as victims of their own or the enemy’s actions – their death becomes evidence of them ‘fighting to the death’ rather than ‘being killed’ or subjugated.

So, what happens at the end of the resistance to the establishment of Russian power in the region? What can be done with the fact that the Caucasian war ended with the capture of the resistance leader imam Shamil and the annexation of Dagestan into the Russian Empire? Does the lack of articulation of the idea of ​​defeat mean that the struggle for independence continues to this day?