On January 20th 1921 the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (the supreme legislative, executive, and controlling body of the state power of the Russian Soviet Republic) adopted a decree on the formation of the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. For the first time in its many centuries of history, the peoples of Dagestan were united into a republic that united peoples who were historically connected to each other by joint living, economy, history, and culture. “Actually, the date marks the final result of rapprochement between the Dagestan peoples and Russia, which had been continuing for centuries. Dagestan’s autonomy confirmed the unbroken ties which connected Dagestan and Russia, active political, economic and cultural relations which are still developing,” the head of Dagestan Ramazan Abdulatipov stated on the 95th anniversary of DASSR’s formation.
Magomed Omarov, a political scientist, Professor of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, recalled that Dagestan officially became a part of the Russian Empire in 1813 as a result of the Gulistan peace treaty after the end of the Russian-Iranian war. “Although after that there was quite a long Caucasian war, which began in 1834 and ended in the Eastern Caucasus with the capture of Shamil in 1859, and in the West Caucasus in 1864. There were the uprisings of 1877, other periods. But during the Soviet period Dagestan made some changes. Speaking about the rapprochement of Dagestan and Russia, they often use such words as ‘enslaved’, ‘captured’ and so on. In this regard, we recall the expression of Rasul Gamzatov, who said: "We did not enter voluntarily, we would not leave voluntarily either,’’ Omarov said.
According to him, Russia offered a civilizational project to Dagestan: “Countries of the same faith as us Dagestanis, Turkey and Persia, had serious and bloody wars with Dagestan. And Russia has seriously offered a lot of civilizational projects. In Makhachkala, all the infrastructure, roads, factories, industry began to develop in the midst of the war in 1841. This was the year of the foundation of the city of Makhachkala, though the first settlement of Tarqui was created in 1722, when Peter the First lived there during the Caspian campaign. The Russian scientist of German origin, Peter Karlovich Uslar, created the alphabets of many of the peoples of Dagestan. There is the Lak alphabet, the Tabasaran, the Chechen, the Abkhazian. A lot of people before the end of the Caucasian War were sent to St. Petersburg, Moscow and other cities, they were taught to be engineers for the military, and in the other specialties. That is, it was a kind of ‘soft power’. In this respect, the presence of Dagestan in the Russian Empire, in my opinion, brought a lot of positive things.”
According to Omarov, a special stage in the modern history of Dagestan is taken by the formation of the Dagestani ASSR in 1921. “Stalin and Ordjonekidze arrived in the city of Buynaksk, the central city at that time, and declared it. In our difficult times, we speak very little about strengths, opportunities, about the large contribution that Dagestan has made and continues to make in the development of modern Russia,” the scientist thinks.
