Over the past twenty years after the disintegration of the USSR many experts as well as philistines have contemplated a seemingly inappropriate question: which nations deserved their independence and which received it by chance? Such deliberations often come in to conflict with reason and logic, but that’s not the worst thing that can happen: in the hands of politicians and PR-specialists such public discussions become an efficient weapon.
It is amazing how dilettante emotional squabbles are being presented as serious political debates by some media agencies, such as ‘Regnum’. A discussion hosted by the agency’s internet-site touched on the issue of the formation of ‘a political nation of Azerbaijanis’. The discussion was started by the Azerbaijani and Armenian authors Fikrin Bektashi and Viktor Yakubyan.
So a letter from Vagif Kerimov, the head of the so-called Lezgin National-cultural Autonomy of the Tumen district, written in a provocatively nationalist tone, suited the site splendidly (http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1436873.html). The author of the letter tells his readers that he was harassed by the Azerbaijani regime and forced to leave the country. He also compliments the Armenians who, according to him, managed to stand up for their independence and win back Karabakh. Kerimov expresses his desire for
the Lezgin people to do the same: to fight for ‘their own Lezgistan’ (direct quotation of the letter).
If we extract ourselves from Azerbaijani-Armenian discords we’ll see that such a term, ‘their own Lezgistan’, is a blow to Russian statehood more than it is a threat to Azerbaijan’s integrity. The author of this term, of course, corrects himself and says that he stands for the unity of the Russian Federation, but this correction doesn’t change the implication of the previous wording.
It is well known that Lezgins consider themselves to be a divided people, as they live in two different states, Russia and Azerbaijan. Back in Soviet times it wasn’t big an issue, but after the end of the USSR the communication between the two parts of the Lezgin people has been seriously hampered. There was a time when Moscow even closed the border with Azerbaijan in the mid-90s. But no one seems to remember now that it was a necessary step in fighting Chechen separatism. And now, when Krimov proposes fighting Azerbaijani ‘oppression’ of the Lezgin people by creating ‘their own Lezgistan’, we shouldn’t forget that this would inevitably raise the question of separating Dagestan from Russia.
There is no use now in digging deep into history. One should think about people who live now. Of course, it is vital to open borders and help members of one nation to communicate, to remain together. But it is absolutely not true that Lezgin national identity is oppressed in Azerbaijan or in the Russian Federation. There are a lot of successful Lezgin people in Russia as well as in Azerbaijan, and the fact that all citizens of certain countries are required to know and use the country’s official language as well as their native one in no way demeans their ethnic identities.
Internet media and blogs are full of contradictory opinions on state and nationality issues, so each and every respectful media agency should filter this food very carefully to avoid helping separatist provocateurs trying to trigger new conflicts or even wars. And you have to be very naïve to understand the call to create ‘Lezgins’ own Lezgistan’ as a threat to Azerbaijan only. It is a new bomb, capable of undermining the virtually non-existent stability in terrorist-troubled Dagestan even further.
Alexander Novikov, exclusively to VK
