Recently Moscow hosted the conference “North Caucasus: Peculiarities of political dialogue of cultures. View from Moscow.” The permanent representative of Dagestan in Moscow, who used to be a deputy of the State Duma and the first deputy head of the Committee on Social Union and Religious Organizations Affairs, Gaji Makhachev, expressed his vision of the problem.
“Russia should always be united, should always live in friendship between its peoples, we simply don’t have any other viable option. We’re all Russian citizens, and it's physically impossible to take us and move us somewhere else. We don’t argue that ethnic Russians are our ‘elder brothers‘ and the titular nation of our country, they taught us culture and craft and so on - we remember that. We honor prominent Russian teachers with monuments. We also erect monuments to Russian heroes and to young Russian soldiers who died in recent tragic events and we try to help their relatives,” Makhachev said.
“We’ve created a commission of competent experts who have some influence over our young and we send them to deal with tensions and situations of misunderstanding - and young people listen to them, because they are taught to respect the words of the elders. Of course, there are some sad exceptions who have an anarchic state of mind, but we try to deal with them as well. If any situation of injustice arises, call us, and we’ll deal with our stray young individuals. In your turn, you should try to deal with your young people who behave improperly. It’s absolutely not true that Russians are being oppressed in the Caucasus, in Dagestan. 4 members of parliament are Russian, the first deputy speaker is Russian, the head of the women’s association is Russian, the head of the Kizlyar district is Russian, etc. We have an Azerbaijani ethnic minority as well, and they also have access to the government. Chechens and Jews are represented as well. According to the constitution, our republic is home to 14 ethnicities, and all of them have their representatives in the parliament. And this respect is characteristic of all the Caucasus, not only Dagestan,” Makhachev stated.
He advised “being careful when listening to questionable sources. When we were in Derbent, one young man told us about an incident in Astrakhan, when drunk Russian soldiers desecrated a mosque. And I told him: “Don’t mention this in public ever again. It is obvious that no-one in a clear state of mind would desecrate a mosque or a church or a synagogue. Obviously they were just too drunk to think straight“. There was a similar incident with young Caucasian people and a Christian cemetery - but why make this all so public? We should punish these people, make sure they’ll never behave in this fashion again, but if we let such potentially explosive situations spin out of control… we already have these absurd divisions like “Caucasian-type persons”, skinheads, fascists… It all threatens Russia’s integrity.”
“But in fact we’re all brothers and we should do all in our power to promote this inter-ethnic friendship. We don’t have any other choice. You shouldn’t listen to those wannabe-politicians,” the permanent representative said. “We need to promote a strong and united state so that we can protect each other in case of any foreign incursion.”
VK
