[NORTH CAUCASIA / PROMETHEISM] Bor’ba za valyu gor Kavkaza... [i.e., Fight for the precious mountains of the Caucasus; at the ceremony of the Prague Group of the People's Party of the Caucasus Highlanders on the 50th Anniversary... last uprising]

TSALIKKATI [TSALIKOV], AKHMED TEMBUTALOVICH (1882-1928).

Narodnaia Partiia Vol’nikh Gortsev Kavkaza, Slavianskoe Otdzl. Pri Typ. Fr. Vonka, Praha (Prague), 1928.

COMPLETE TITLE: [NORTH CAUCASIAN EMIGRANTS IN EUROPE / FATHER OF THE THEORY OF MUSLIM SOCIALISM / THE PROMETHEAN ISLAMIST & UNITARIST] борьба за валю гор кавказа: Bor’ba za valyu gor Kavkaza: Rets’, proiznesennaia, 28-go Aprelia 1927 g. na torjestvennom prajskoi gruppi Narodnoi Partii Voi’nikh Gortsev Kavkaza po povodu 50-tiletiia poslednego vostanniia Gortsev Kavkaza. [i.e., Fight for the precious mountains of the Caucasus; at the ceremony of the Prague Group of the People's Party of the Caucasus Highlanders on the 50th Anniversary of the Caucasus Highlanders’ last uprising].

Original wrappers. Cr. 8vo. (18,5 x 14 cm). In Russian. 27 p. Slight age toning and stains on wrappers. Otherwise, a very good copy.

Extremely rare first and only edition of this pamphlet published for the ceremony held by the Prague organization of the People's Party of the Caucasus Highlanders at the Graf Hotel on April 28, 1927, on the 50th anniversary of the first uprising of the party led by Imam Shamil against Russia. The pamphlet was prepared and published by the Ossetian-born Caucasian patriot, founder of the theory of Muslim Socialism, the Promethean Islamist and Unionist intellectual Tsalikkati. Czechoslovakians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, Georgians, Armenians, left-wing representatives of Turkey and Russia, etc. attended this special ceremony held in Prague.

The text starts with Tsalikkati's fiery speech, which can be considered the Party's manifesto. The rest of the text narrates the history of the independence struggles of the North Caucasus that have been going on since the 18th century. Then, it interestingly describes the situation of the Caucasian people in dialogues such as Circassians, Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis, etc. against the rule of Russia and the Soviet Union.

TSALIKKATI AS A POLITICAL FIGURE AND HIS EMIGRATION TO PRAGUE:

On May 8, 1917, A. Tsalikov became a member of the organizing committee of the Congress of All Russian Muslims and made a report on it. One of the ideas of his report is the cultural autonomy of Muslims within the state. Although Tsalikkati played an important role in the organization and work of the "Congress of All Russian Muslims" (1-11 May 1917) after the February Revolution, Mehmed Emin Resulzade's "federalist" thesis was accepted in the congress, as opposed to his "unitarian" thesis.

At the IVth Congress of the Peoples of the Terek in Vladikavkaz, he was elected a member of the Ossetian faction of the Terek People's Council. In 1918 he headed the Majlis of the mountain peoples of the Caucasus in Tbilisi. In 1919, he was a member of the delegation of this Majlis, sent from Tbilisi to Dagestan to lead the uprising of the highlanders against the army of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin. Member of the Defense Council of the North Caucasus of Dagestan, created in October to fight Denikin.

After the Soviet occupation of Georgia (February 1921) emigrated to Czechoslovakia, and then to Poland. In Czechoslovakia, he was the editor of the magazine “Kavkazskiy Gorets” [i.e., Caucasian Highlander]. In this magazine, he published "Zapitski Kavkaztsa" [i.e., Notes of a Caucasian] which became an early version of the novel "Brat na Brata" [i.e., Brother against Brother], which was published in 1926 as a separate edition in Prague.

In the year when he died in Prague, he published this rare pamphlet in 1928.

PROMETHEISM:

Prometheism or Prometheanism was a political project initiated by Józef Piłsudski, a principal statesman of the Second Polish Republic from 1918 to 1935. It aimed to weaken the Russian Empire and its successor states, including the Soviet Union, by supporting nationalist independence movements among the major non-Russian peoples that lived within the borders of Russia and the Soviet Union.

The Promethean movement, according to Charaszkiewicz, took its genesis from a national renaissance that began in the late 19th century among many peoples of the Russian Empire. That renaissance stemmed from a social process that led in Russia to revolution. Nearly all the socialist parties created in the ethnically non-Russian communities assumed a national character and placed independence at the top of their agendas: this was so in Poland, Ukraine, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. These socialist parties would take the lead in their respective peoples' independence movements. While all these countries harbored organizations of a purely national character that likewise championed independence, the socialist parties, precisely because they associated the fulfillment of their strivings for independence with the social movement in Russia, showed greater dynamism. Ultimately the peoples of the Baltic Sea basin-Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania - won and, until World War II, all kept their independence. The peoples of the Black and Caspian Sea basins - Ukraine, Don Cossacks, Kuban, Crimea, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Northern Caucasus - emancipated themselves politically in 1919-1921 but then lost their independence to Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War.

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY OF THE CAUCASUS HIGHLANDERS:

The party is a Prometheist political organization of North Caucasian emigrants in Europe. Before World War II, the party published several periodicals in Russian and Turkish. The founder and general secretary of the party was Muhammad Said Shamil.

After the establishment of Soviet power in the Caucasus, many North Caucasian politicians emigrated to Turkey and Europe, where they united and continued their activities. One of the main groups of North Caucasian migrants concentrated around Said Shamil, the grandson of Imam Shamil.

The party was founded by Said on November 18, 1925, in the capital of Czechoslovakia - Prague, where a significant colony of North Caucasians was concentrated, most of whom were in the city of Brno. The following year, regular publishing activities began, which continued until 1939. Initially, the association was called the “People's Party of the Free Mountaineers of the Caucasus,” which later turned into the “People's Party of the Caucasus Highlanders”.

The party was based in Istanbul, but soon branches appeared in Prague, Warsaw, and Paris. On June 15, 1926, the party became one of the founders of the Caucasus Independence Committee, which later transformed into the Council of the Caucasus Confederation. In 1927, it was 50 years since the uprising of Chechnya and Dagestan in 1877. On this occasion, the NPGC organized a meeting in the Graf Hotel in Prague, where they invited representatives of the communities of the North Caucasian peoples, Transcaucasian diasporas, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Tatar communities in Czechoslovakia, as well as the left-wing Russian public and the Kuban Cossacks.

As of December 2023, WorldCat does not show any copies in libraries worldwide.