Tamerlan Gadzhiyev: “Dagestan needs an exit strategy to avert crisis”

'The Social and Economic Development Strategy for Dagestan until 2025’ is widely discussed in Makhachkala. Prominent experts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Yegor Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy and  the International Center for Social and Economic Studies contributed to the formation of this strategy. Doctor of History and Professor of Dagestani State University Tamerlan Gadzhiyev told our VK correspondent about his attitude to the document.

- One of the aims of the policy proclaimed in the document is to improve living standards in Dagestan. Is it necessary to identify the desired standards and announce how the average Dagestani person should live?

- That's a great cultural problem. I’m engaged in cultural studies myself, you know. I don’t appreciate the idea of ‘average people.’ There are no average people in Dagestani. There is even such a proverb: “Under my papakha (Caucasian word meaning ‘coat’) I’m my own khan (king).” The existing problems are cultural rather than social or economic. No standards would be appreciated, if they were not fair. The crisis we are undergoing is political and moral but not social or economic.

- However, to avert political crisis one should solve social and economic problems as well…

- A definite strategy is adopted when there is a particular body, something integral. Of course Dagestan is a republic, a defined political body. However it’s not integral. The diversity in our society is extreme. My wife and I can adopt some kind of strategy, but how can I adopt any strategy together with you?! First we have to unite, to register a joint company for instance…

Dagestan lacks unity, I believe. What we need is to cope with our diversity. We need some kind of national idea. In the Soviet Union such an idea was communism. It was our dream to form a communist society. It was impossible, but it still helped us. Can the pursuit of limproved living standards be such an idea? I don’t really think so. People seek justice, they want our social structure to be fair. In the USSR, Rasul Gamzatov, the famous poet, lived better than others, but that was fair, he was a great author. Nowadays there are a lot of people who are very rich, but whose wealth is misappropriated.

- Maybe these problems are based on low living standards?

- This term is very ambiguous. According to the strategy, Dagestan should be in the twenty best-developed regions. Why is this so? The Dagestani people are the third most numerous ethnic group in the Russian Federation. Why should we compete with Kostromskaya Region? Look at how Tatarstan is developing? Kazan is the third capital of Russia! And we cannot persuade federal TV channels to forecast the weather in Dagestan. In the Soviet Union the Dagestani Autonomous Republic was the only one to have its own office at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. All this shows what the general attitude to Dagestan is.

Interview by Musa Musayev, Makhachkala. Exclusively to VK