By Raymond Beauchemin
HAMILTON, Ont. — At the halfway point of these Olympics, the furor over Russia’s anti-homosexuality laws has pretty much died down and no one’s barking anymore about the stray dogs of Sochi. And if anyone mentions the $51 billion it took to build the Olympics venues, it’s with a shake of the head, an acknowledgement of systemic corruption and an “Oh, well, that’s Russia.”
Sadly, this is true. The Russia of Vladimir Putin is different only in a matter of degrees from the Russia of Boris Yeltsin, the Soviet Union before him and the Czarist empires before that.
Nowhere does resentment of Russia’s long-standing chauvinism run more deeply than in the conquered territories on the country’s fringes, particularly in the south, in the Caucasus. There, we find Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, Islamic republics all, which have sought over the past 25 years to separate from the Russian Federation. The bombings in Volgograd before the Games started were part of that struggle.
Forgotten in all the stories about bombs, dogs, corruption and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities is this year’s 150th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of Circassia (missed that re-enactment during the opening ceremonies?).
The Circassians, known among themselves as the Adyghe, established their kingdom about 400 BC. At its height, Circassia stretched from its northernmost point at the Azov Sea southeast along the Black Sea coast — where Sochi is located — and then eastward across the northern Caucasus Mountains toward Ingushetia. The Circassians were a monotheistic people, fiercely independent warriors in the Caucasian tradition. In the 15th century, like their neighbours to the east, they adopted Islam and maintained ties with the Ottoman Empire.
With Russia almost perpetually in expansionist mode during the 18th and 19th centuries, Circassians had to defend their life on the northern slopes of the Caucasus. The Circassians went so far as to sell 200,000 girls and boys into slavery to the Ottomans, just to protect them from death at the hands of the Russians.
When the Crimean War ended, Russia turned its chauvinistic eye southward again. It extracted surrender in 1859 from Imam Shamil, who ruled the eastern Caucasus, then set out on yet another of its major demographic dislocations and crushed Circassia. Between 1860 and 1864, when Circassia capitulated, between 1 million and 1.2 million Circassians fled for Turkey and elsewhere. Of them, 300,000 to 400,000 died. Those who remained were sent from the Caucasus. Only as the Soviet Union was collapsing did the descendants of the displaced return.
Now, an estimated 600,000 ethnic Circassians live in four southern Russian republics. Circassians in greater numbers live in the diaspora: four million in Turkey; 170,000 in Syria and Jordan; 50,000 in the West. A good 4,000 Arab Israelis are ethnically Circassian.
No one ever wants to talk about human rights issues during the Olympics. The time to do so, they argue, is when cities bid for the Olympics. But no one mentioned the Circassians when Sochi made its bid. Many of the Sochi Olympics venues are believed to have been built on the graves of Circassians. Would we hold the Games at Auschwitz? Kigali? I think not. As the medal winners in Sochi lower their heads to receive their medals, they should bow to the memory of the people who once lived on that ground.
Raymond Beauchemin is a former foreign editor of The Gazette. He lives in Hamilton, Ont.