Instituto do Oriente

Tiago Ferreira Lopes

There are few places in the world in which the word complexity reaches its maximum potential like in the Caucasus. In the beginning of the XX century, John Frederick Baddeley explains that «the Caucasus is inhabited probably by a greater number of different tribes, races, and peoples than any similiar extent of territory on the surface of the globe, speaking, too, a greater variety of languages» (1908:xxv). Dagestan is by far the most complex of all the Caucasus subjects. The name of this republic with less than 3 million inhabitants derives from a hybrid between Persian and Turkish words meaning Land/Country of the Mountain. In the thirteen century the Mongol invasions erased the Arab influence (that had erased the Avar Christian kingdom of Sarir) putting the native clans and tribes under the influence of Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde into which, curiously, Moscow also pledge allegiance (Miller, Vandome, McBrewster, 2009). Russia begins its military campgns in the Caucasus in the XVI century, but only in the XIX century it ensured the dominium over the region. During the Caucasian Wars several Russian strategies used local athno-complexity as a tool, to minimize bloodshed and maximize results (Gammer, 1994). Soviet officials followed a similiar path adding to these strategies the impact of the nativization and sovietisation policies. In the end an already diverse region became even more complex. The goal of this paper is to explore, in an historical perspective, the role of Russia to the augmentation of Dagestan's ethno-complecity. This paper will be divided in four parts corresponding to four historical moments: 1.) Dagestan previous to the Russian conquest; 2.) Dagestan under the Russian empire; 3.) Dagestan in the Soviet Union; 4.) post-soviet Dagestan.