Translated material
Khazret the Wonderworker
The process of changing power in Adygea has dragged on
The little-known Russian Republic of Adygea, which throughout the turbulent 90s gave no reason for interest to anyone except journalists writing about crime, continues to provide political news. The President of Adygea, Khazret Sovmen, again fired the prime minister of his republic this week.Actually, Evgeny Kovalev was acting - in early June 2006 he was introduced to his office colleagues. Mr. Kovalev's position had to be confirmed by the republican parliament. Before the deputies left for the summer holidays, Mr. Kovalev’s candidacy was not presented. And now the deputies will consider a new candidate. It has not yet been announced who will become the eighth chosen one of the current Adyghe president, but ironic journalists have already calculated that before the expiration of Mr. Sovmen’s term of office in January 2007, the owner of the prime minister’s chair may change more than once.
Kovalev is not prime minister
Mr. Kovalev learned about the resignation on Monday from the head of the presidential administration of Adygea, Taliya Beretar. Information has emerged that the presidential administration has ordered not to allow the acting. the prime minister to his workplace, and Mr. Kovalev himself took sick leave just in case. On Tuesday, Russian news agencies reported that the decree on his resignation was missing a reasoning part. And only yesterday the administration of Adygea officially announced that Evgeny Kovalev had failed to cope with his duties. The head of the administration, Talii Beretar, recalled that the acting The prime minister was hired “with a three-month probationary period,” which he, presumably, did not complete.
Before his appointment to Adygea, 44-year-old native of Adygea, ethnic Russian Evgeny Kovalev worked in Sochi as deputy mayor for social issues, and then as an adviser to the governor of the Krasnodar Territory, Alexander Tkachev. As the newspaper “Vremya Novostei” already wrote (see No. 95 of June 2) , Mr. Kovalev, dismissed by the mayor of Sochi two weeks before his appointment to the government of Adygea, is close to the Krasnodar vice-governor, Adyghe Murat Akhedzhak, whom the regional authorities, according to According to some information, he is considered as the most convenient successor to Mr. Sovmen. In any case, Kovalev definitely did not belong to the current ruling group in Adygea, and his appointment could have been a hardware concession from the authorities of the republic, who found themselves in a rather awkward position after Mr. Sovmen’s April attempt to resign and the escalation of the protest of the Adyghe population of the republic against a possible unification with Krasnodar edge. Now the Adyghe elite will apparently try to win back this personnel combination.
However, Mr. Kovalev’s predecessor, Asfar Hagur, was considered a person quite close to the president’s team. He served as head of government longer than the five previous prime ministers, but this did not stop Mr. Sovmen from dismissing him just as easily and without comment. Despite the fact that the presidential administration strongly emphasizes that Khazret Sovmen spends 90% of his time in Adygea or Moscow, “where he resolves issues of the republic,” and rumors about his frequent visits to Switzerland are “baseless,” there are most often signs of the president’s presence in his office No. Most local observers are confident that real management, including making personnel decisions, is carried out by the head of the administration, Talii Beretar.
Sovmen is not Abramovich
President Sovmen himself, who replaced the first post-Soviet leader of the republic, Aslan Dzharimov, in 2002, was considered a person brought by the federal center to “restore order” and ensure better functioning of the “vertical of power” than under Dzharimov - much like Murat Zyazikov, elected in Ingushetia after Ruslan Aushev. But unlike intelligence officer Murat Zyazikov, Mr. Sovmen, the former owner of the Polyus gold mining enterprise, which was eventually sold to Norilsk Nickel, was also considered as a potential North Caucasian Roman Abramovich - according to some estimates, his fortune is about $400 million.
At first, Khazret Sovmen really made expensive gifts to the republic - for example, in the form of a new clinic or agricultural equipment. But his interest quickly faded. According to one of the Adyghe oppositionists, literally a few months after his election, the president conducted consultations regarding his participation in the elections of the new head of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where he worked as an industrialist for many years.
Despite Mr. Sovmen's bright actions, Adygea's economic indicators continued to fall. This was accompanied by a redistribution of property, an unprecedented leapfrog of prime ministers and constant conflicts with various federal authorities, especially with the new presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, Dmitry Kozak. The fact is that Adygea was considered in Moscow and Rostov (the center of the Southern Federal District) as the first candidate for the consolidation of regions. It was supposed to merge with the Krasnodar Territory, which already surrounds it along the perimeter of the administrative border. According to the authors of the project, the unification would help move the local ineffective corrupt elite away from the levers of control and raise the depressed Adyghe economy at least to the level of the region.
This idea caused a surge of ethnic protest in the republic. At several spring events of the public organization of Circassians - the “Circassian Congress” - the most ardent speakers promised, in the event of a merger, to organize a “second Nalchik” in Maykop (meaning the militant attack on the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria on October 13-14, 2005) Actions “ Circassian Congress" were openly supported by the presidential administration and, paradoxically, by the "United Russia" controlled by it.
In April 2006, President Sovmen announced his intention to resign, but just as suddenly abandoned it after a visit to Vladimir Putin. Contrary to all expectations, Mr. Sovmen retained his position, and the project of merging the regions was postponed - as the Adyghe leader was happy to announce, unification would not happen, at least as long as he was in power.
Russians are not Circassians
It turned out that in Moscow they gave up before a possible inter-ethnic aggravation. In fact, both Russian and Circassian activists are still quite peaceful.
“The return of Sovmen looked as if the Kremlin had simply surrendered Dmitry Kozak and with him the entire vertical of power,” say members of the Union of Slavs of Adygea, a political organization of Russians who make up the majority in the republic. The “Union of Slavs” is headed by deputy of the republican parliament Nina Konovalova. The organization very sharply criticizes the regime and believes that the situation in which all key government positions are occupied by Circassians is unacceptable and can be improved by merging with the Krasnodar Territory.
There are also supporters of the idea of merging with the region and opponents of Mr. Sovmen among the Circassians. The mayor of the large village of Yablonovka, Timur Kalakutok, several months ago hung a sign at the entrance with the inscription “Southern District”. The point, however, is not so much in sympathy for Dmitry Kozak, but in the fact that the mayor is seeking the inclusion of Yablonovka in Krasnodar, to which it is closely adjacent. The poster has now been removed.
But in the “Union of Slavs” there is a note printed on a printer: “Attention! Russian order has been established in this territory. We kindly request you to maintain cleanliness and refrain from using foul language.” But although the organization has a reputation for extremism, the atmosphere of pogroms in Kondopoga is not felt there. Conflicts with the main opponent - the “Circassian Congress” - for example, over a pack of stolen newspapers - are resolved immediately with a call on a mobile phone. Several calm people are drinking tea at the table and talking about the very real problems that Russians face throughout the North Caucasus. About the fact that in all positions there are representatives of the titular nationality, about frequent inter-ethnic fights, about the departure of Russians from the cities and the arrival of Circassians from remote mountain villages, who are called here “Chalians,” to the cities.
Many of the Union members, by the way, came from Chechnya in the early 90s. From their point of view, Adygea is “the last republic where it is possible to restore the Soviet-style interethnic peace situation in full, and the Adygs themselves would understand this if they could rise above a purely ethnic point of view.”
The mood is approximately the same in the office of the “Circassian Congress”: they also drink tea there, only on the wall, instead of a slogan about Russian order, hangs a map of the settlement of the Circassian people before the start of the Great Caucasian War, which ended for the majority of the Circassian tribes with death or a dramatic deportation to Turkey. Here they believe that it is the Russians who do not interfere with rising above the ethnic point of view: “For the Circassians, the republic, which they want to merge with the Krasnodar Territory, is the only home in the world, and its liquidation will be fraught with the loss of language and culture.”
Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia are apparently difficult to consider as “homes” due to their “two-part nature”. At the same time, the slogans about repeating Nalchik in Maykop are considered by Congress activists to be a clear exaggeration. It seems that the main grievance of recent times is that in Maykop they erected a monument to Nicholas the Wonderworker and did not erect a monument to the genocide of the Circassians in the 19th century.
The muftiate is not the police
The “Slavs,” on the contrary, are very proud that they managed to erect a monument to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Maykop. The four-meter bronze wonderworker stands on the outskirts of the city, on a part of the Maykop brigade’s territory that is ajar for anyone to access, for which he is already affectionately nicknamed “the son of the regiment.” It faces the snow-white Caucasian peaks and, according to the creators, must protect the country from the evil that threatens it from the south. At the opening of the monument, interfaith peace was symbolized by the Mufti of the Republic Nurbiy Emizh, who, to the surprise of his fellow believers, said that St. Nicholas the Wonderworker is also known in the Islamic tradition. The mufti himself says that he meant that there were no fundamental differences between Orthodoxy and Islam. And Adyghe taxi drivers, whom visitors often ask to take them to the monument, spend a long time clarifying what they mean, and then, when they find out, they clarify: “Well, we know - a new monument to some ancient Russian psychic.”
In boring Maykop it is difficult to imagine a repeat of Nalchik - the main visible obstacle is not so much St. Nicholas the Wonderworker as the army brigade on whose territory it stands. However, Nalchik did not look like a front-line city in September last year, and quite serious units of federal forces were also located there, which did not prevent the militants, most of whom were local Muslims who did not recognize the authority of the official muftiate, from turning it into a battlefield one morning.
When asked about the presence of a religious underground of Wahhabis in the Muftiate of Adygea, they answer this way: “They are not among the parishioners of the Maikop mosque, and if they are somewhere, then this is the concern of law enforcement agencies.”
At the same time, already this year a serious scandal with an “unofficial” imam broke out in the second largest city of the republic - Adygeisk. The head of the city, built for residents of villages that were once flooded by the Krasnodar reservoir, Kim Mamiek, is considered one of the active and popular opponents of President Sovmen. With the help of the police, he actually closed the prayer house, which was attended by residents of surrounding settlements, including Krasnodar, and expelled the imam from the city, who turned out to be a visitor.
Mr. Mamiek knows that the mosque he closed was mainly attended by visitors - Circassians from Turkey and Kosovo, Chechens, Dagestanis and other “neighbors” from Krasnodar. He says that the mufti was expelled when local youth started going there as a preventive measure against dangerous attitudes. Mufti Nurbiy Emizh, who in theory should not protect unofficial imams, is convinced that the secular authorities have exceeded their powers, and it is precisely because of such cases that events similar to the attack on Nalchik occur.
That attack, by the way, occurred exactly two weeks after the appearance of a new president in Kabardino-Balkaria. And in Adygea, a change of power should theoretically happen after the New Year...