Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus
북캅카스 산악공화국
A North Caucasian state that grew out of the Union of the United Mountaineers of the North Caucasus and Dagestan, founded in Vladikavkaz in May 1917, and declared independence on 11 May 1918. It sought to unite the Chechens, Ingush, Ossetians, Kabardians, Dagestani peoples and others of the former Terek and Dagestan oblasts, but its government dissolved in May 1919 under pressure from Denikin’s Volunteer Army. Russian-language sources date its final end to March–May 1920.
In depth
The May 1917 congress elected Tapa Chermoev, a Chechen oil magnate, as chairman of its Central Committee and the Avar scholar Najmuddin Gotsinsky as mufti of the North Caucasus, and set the goal of autonomy within a federal, democratic Russia. After the October Revolution the union declared autonomy and in December 1917 formed a joint government with the Terek Cossacks, but it lost authority amid the land conflict between mountaineers and Cossacks. When the Bolsheviks took Vladikavkaz in March 1918, the government moved to Temir-Khan-Shura and then to Tbilisi. According to the Russian-language source, independence was proclaimed at the negotiations in Ottoman-occupied Batumi; the English-language source says it was declared in exile in Istanbul. On 8 July the republic concluded a friendship treaty with the Ottoman Empire that included military aid, and Georgy Chicherin sent a note protesting the declaration to the German ambassador. With the help of an Ottoman expeditionary force the republic occupied Temir-Khan-Shura, and on 13 October it raised its flag in Ottoman-held Derbent to celebrate its re-establishment.
After the defeated Ottomans withdrew, Pshemakho Kotsev took over a coalition cabinet at the end of 1918. Britain at first supported the republic but soon pressed it to cooperate with Denikin, who rejected any cooperation. When the Volunteer Army took Petrovsk and Derbent in May 1919, the government in Temir-Khan-Shura dissolved and went into exile in Tbilisi again. In September Uzun Hajji proclaimed the North Caucasian Emirate in Vedeno, whose leaders, according to the Russian-language source, called the Mountain Republic a “mythical state”. The republic ended when the Bolsheviks took over the defence council that had acted as its organ in spring 1920, and Gotsinsky, who refused to cooperate with the Bolsheviks, was captured and executed in 1925. Acknowledging the legacy of these unity projects, the Bolsheviks created the Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921, covering the whole North Caucasus except Dagestan.