RUSSIA The Nogai Mongols against the Russian Empire

They are spread throughout the North Caucasus. The separatists support the revival of the Mongol Horde. They are active mostly outside the country. They were victims of tsarist and Stalinist deportations. The war in Ukraine has aroused ethnic nationalism.

Moscow () – One of the speakers at the recent meeting of the “Forum of free peoples of post-Russia”, which was held in the chamber of the European Parliament in Brussels, was the representative of the Nogai National Movement, Anvar Kurmanakaev ( view photo). He called on the West to support the revival of the independent state of the Mongol Horde of the North Caucasus, destroyed by the Moscow Empire in the mid-16th century under Ivan the Terrible.

According to official data, today around 100,000 Nogai live in Russia, scattered from the Altai mountains to Dagestan and Karachaevo-Cerkesija. They do not have their own territory, which they partly dispute with Kalmykia, an area of ​​Mongols who more recently emigrated to European territory. According to Kurmanakaev, the Nogai identity is at risk of disappearing, along with its traditions and its language, a Turcophone variant close to the Tatar language.

Nogai living in the Russian Federation have disqualified Kurmanakaev, calling him a “traitor and provocateur”, but he replies that “these people do not represent anything to me.” Over the past year the activist has made several calls to his Nogai compatriots not to send their sons to war in Ukraine, but they “close their eyes to protect their interests and do not deal with the problems of our people.” He considers that “they are not worthy to be called Nogái, nor to marry the women of the Cumuchi”, alluding to the historical practice of marrying another Turkic tribe from the Caucasus region.

The cause of the independence of the Nogai depends on the identification of the historical territories of the former Horde, according to the subdivisions after the invasions of the 13th century. The Nogai separatists want to “build within them a prosperous and strong modern state, which is on a par with the European peoples.” The Nogai were also related to the Crimean Tatars, “famous for their ability to organize, and the creative principle has remained in the memory of our ethnic group, we can reactivate it at any time,” Kurmanakaev guarantees.

The reconquest of the territories must be carried out without conflict, but with a constructive dialogue together with all the other populations now living in the Russian regions of Dagestan, Kalmykia and a number of other republics and districts. He proposes preparing together a series of referendums on different issues in order to respond to the needs of all and “determine the state subject to which the different ethnic lines decide to adhere.”

The autonomist politician explains that “elements of the Nogaic epic can be identified in the songs of the Terek Cossacks [el río caucásico en cuyos islotes se refugiaban los combatientes nómadas]the Bashkirs, the Kazan and Karakalpakstan Tatars, and even the peoples of the North Caucasus, with whom we fight, but also collaborate to form zones of civilization.” He believes that the Russian imperialists, both in the tsarist era as in the Soviet, they feared the most active populations and allowed limited forms of autonomy only to the most submissive.

To keep the most warlike ethnic groups at bay, the Russians resorted to the weapon of deportation, the last and most massive in Stalin’s time, but the Nogai are dramatically reminiscent of the extermination carried out by Generalissimo Suvorov in the late 1700s. some portraits of Catherine II’s commander destroyed after protests by Nogai activists in Astrakhan and Cerkesija. On October 1, the Nogai remember the victims of the genocide perpetrated against their people, but the Russian state prohibits any demonstration for that reason.

At this moment the small Nogai population is spread over six or more regions, especially in the North Caucasus, an area in which there is certainly no shortage of conflicts due to the presence of dozens of different nationalities. The war in the Ukraine is waking them up, with effects that can only be seen in the course of the next few years.