Between 300-500 Balkars congregated in Nalchik yesterday to mark the
anniversary of the deportation to Central Asia on Stalin's orders in
1944 of the entire Balkar nation -- some 38,000 people.
Even though State Duma Deputy Mikhail Zalikhanov, the most influential Balkar lobbyist, sent a
telegram
asking meeting participants not to raise "political" issues, they
unanimously called on the unofficial Council of Elders of the Balkar
People (SSBN) to initiate the process of "self-determination" of the
Balkar people. They did not spell out what they mean by that term --
presumably the division of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (KBR) into
two separate entities.
That demand will inevitably exacerbate
antagonism between the Kabardians and the minority Balkars. (The
Balkars -- a Turkic-speaking people whose ethnogenesis remains unclear
-- currently constitute approximately 10 percent of the total 786,200
population of the KBR; Kabardians account for 50 percent and Russians
some 32 percent.)
It will also complicate the belated efforts by republic President Arsen Kanokov (a Kabardian) to conciliate the Balkars.
The
meeting participants' stated rationale for that demand for
"self-determination" was that the republic's authorities" have done
nothing" to address the Balkars' long-standing grievances. That
accusation is not, strictly speaking, true.
The KBR parliament adopted legislation last fall that abolishes the
controversial concept
of grazing grounds that do not fall under the jurisdiction of
individual village councils and transfers control of such grazing
grounds in the Elbrus and Cherek raions to Balkar villages.
President
Kanokov has reportedly told Circassian public organizations who
protested that concession to the Balkars that the legislation will not
be amended. And in a personal gesture to the Balkars, Kanokov this year
referred to the
deportation in his anniversary address as "genocide."
The
Balkars also resent the authorities' failure to reconstitute the
Kholamo-Bezengiyev Raion on the southwestern outskirts of Nalchik that
was abolished following the 1944 deportation. Two Balkar-populated
villages in the area
were subsumed
five years ago into the Nalchik municipality. They further complain
that the landmark 1991 law on compensation for those ethnic groups
unjustly deported on Stalin's orders has not been fully implemented
with regard to the Balkars.
Participants at the March 8
commemoration also endorsed a proposal by the SSBN to seek a meeting
with Aleksandr Khloponin, whom Russian President Dmitry Medvedev named
in January to head the new North Caucasus federal district, in order to
discuss "the problems that have accumulated." They also advocated
creating a Council of Elders of Peoples of the Caucasus that would
advise Khloponin.
It is by no means clear what percentage of
the Balkars support the maximalist demands of the SSBN. Former General
Supyan Beppayev, who spearheaded a similar, abortive campaign in 1996
for a separate Balkar republic but now heads a pro-regime public
organization to lobby Balkar interests, told Caucasus Knot that there
is "no real foundation" for demands for a separate republic. He further
pointed out that federal legislation provides for the merger of two or
more federation subjects into one larger one, but not for the division
of individual existing federation subjects.
A second pro-regime Balkar public figure, Aslan Makitov of the Civic Union of Kabardino-Balkaria, told
Regnum that the demand for self-determination is tantamount to rejecting any further attempt at dialogue with the authorities.
http://www.rferl.org/content/Balkar_Activists_Demand_SelfDetermination/1978946.html
