Unique documents on Denikin's talks with mountaineers brought from France to Chechnya

One of the jewels of the archive, which Chechnya has received from France, are the reports of Europeans on the situation in the Caucasus in 1917-1921, as well as documents about the negotiations of Anton Denikin with mountaineers, said Mairbek Vachagaev, a historian. For a long time, the events in Northern Caucasus during the Civil War were covered one-sidedly and require an independent study, experts say.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in June this year Mairbek Vachagaev, President of the Association of Caucasian Studies in Paris, handed over to the Archival Department of Chechnya 50,000 pages of archival materials on history of the Caucasus, which he had copied in France.

In November 1917, in the territory of Dagestan and highland districts of the Terek Region of the Russian Empire the Mountain Republic was proclaimed. The government of the republic was dissolved in the spring of 1919, after the territory of Dagestan was occupied by troops of General Denikin. From September 1919 to March 1920, the Islamic state of North-Caucasian Emirate existed in the territory of Dagestan and Chechnya.

The study of these documents helps to understand how Frenchmen, Germans, Turks and Britons treated the situation in Northern Caucasus in 1917-1921.

According to Vachagaev, of particular interest are the documents about the characteristics, which were issued to mountain leaders, as well as the correspondence of mountaineers with European states. These materials present a lot of new facts about the relationships of mountaineers with Cossacks and Bolsheviks.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.