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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

'The Stalin Affair': How Borders Were Drawn Along Former Russian Outskirts

2025-05-14

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Daniil Pelymov

[REGNUM] One hundred years ago, on May 13, 1925, the III All-Union Congress of Soviets unanimously decided to include two new republics into the Soviet Union - the Uzbek SSR and the Turkmen SSR. But this was not an expansion of borders.

Later, in 1939-1940, the number of union republics and the size of two of them expanded along with the state's borders (the annexation of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, the Baltics and Bessarabia). But that was still a long way off.

And in 1925, there was talk of “redevelopment with the transfer of walls” within the recently established USSR. The Soviet government, on the orders of the ruling All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), redrew the borders in the sands and oases of Turkestan.

This was done in fulfillment of Lenin’s principles of national policy, which were based on the right of nations to self-determination, including secession, as well as “indigenization,” that is, the implantation of the languages of the titular peoples, and the creation (sometimes from scratch) of national elites.

Those who, against the backdrop of the war with the Basmachi, drew the administrative borders of the Central Asian republics, of course, did not predict that 65 years later the country would disintegrate along these borders. That the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century would be marked by new civil wars, uprisings (similar to the Andijan rebellion of 2005), the death and exodus of the “alien population” – the Russians.

And that “low-intensity conflicts” will regularly flare up on the borders of the former fraternal republics.

TO THE BORDERS OF THE 17TH CENTURY
At first glance, to understand the scale of national-territorial demarcation, it is enough to look at two maps of Soviet Central Asia.

Until 1925, the territory of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (as the abbreviation RSFSR was then deciphered) extended to the borders with Persia and Afghanistan. Within the RSFSR were the Kirghiz (Kazakh) ASSR with its center in Orenburg and the Turkestan ASSR with its center in Tashkent.

Two people's Soviet republics were included in the territory of the Russian Federation: the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic, created on the site of the Khiva Khanate occupied by the Bolsheviks, and the Bukhara People's Soviet Republic, organized, accordingly, on the territory of the former Bukhara Emirate.

After the territorial demarcation, Orenburg was "withdrawn" from the Kazakh ASSR, whose capital moved to the city of Perovsk (renamed then to Kzyl-Orda, or - translated from Kazakh - Krasnoarmeysk). To the south of the Kazakh Autonomous Republic, two autonomous regions were allocated - Karakalpak and Kara-Kyrgyz. For now, part of the RSFSR.

Eleven years later, in 1936, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan went from being autonomous regions to full-fledged union republics, and the Russian border acquired its current form, roughly corresponding to the borders of the Russian kingdom in the first half of the 17th century.

But in order to appreciate the significance of this shift in the administrative boundaries of the union republics, it is necessary to briefly recall how Russia moved to the southeast from the end of the 16th to the beginning of the 20th century.

SEMEY AND PETROPAVL
In the last year of Ivan the Terrible's life, in 1584, several hundred Don and Lower Volga Cossacks marched east and occupied the lands of the Nogai Khans along the Yaik River. The history of the Yaik Cossack Host began from that moment. After the suppression of the Pugachev rebellion in 1775, the Yaik Host was renamed the Ural Host, and the military capital, Yaitsky Gorodok, founded in the same 1584, was named Uralsk. This city, which retained its historical name, is the oldest in the European part of independent Kazakhstan.

During the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, in 1640, the merchant Guriy Nazaryev built a fort at the mouth of the Yaik River into the Caspian Sea - the city of Guryev that arose here bore this name until 1991. Now it is the regional center of Atyrau.

Under Peter the Great, in 1718, a detachment of the voivode Vasily Cheredov built the Semipalatnaya fortress in the southern Siberian steppe near the Irtysh, around which the city of Semipalatinsk (now Semey in Kazakhstan) arose. In those same years, in the same place, in the Irtysh region, the Cossacks built the Koryakovsky outpost, where a village of the same name would later arise, which in the 19th century became a city named Pavlodar.

In 1720, by decree of Peter I, the "capital" of Rudny Altai, the fortress of Ust-Kamenogorsk, was founded to strengthen the borders of the Russian state and explore gold veins in the upper reaches of the Irtysh. It is still known as the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk (now the center of the East Kazakhstan region).

Simultaneously with the advancement of the Russian Tsardom, and then the Russian Empire, into the steppe, there was also a counter movement.

In 1731, the Chingizid Abulkhair, khan of the Younger Zhuz (a Kazakh tribal union that roamed from the Southern Urals to the Syr Darya), asked for Russian citizenship, counting on help in the fight against the Dzungar Khanate. Abulkhair and the heads of 27 clans swore allegiance to Empress Anna Ioannovna on the Koran.

But even after this, the southeastern steppes remained permeable to raids on the Russian frontier by slave traders from three Central Asian states, fragments of Tamerlane’s empire – from Bukhara, Khiva and the Kokand Khanate.

Under Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine the Great, fortified lines were built to protect against the nomadic Dzungars and Kyrgyz-Kaisaks of the Middle Zhuz: the Tobolsk-Ishim and Irtysh lines, from Tomsk and Omsk through Ust-Kamenogorsk to Semipalatinsk. A logical continuation were the defensive lines in the steppes near Orenburg, founded in 1730.

Note that in the first half of the 18th century, with a difference of 12 years, the empire founded two outposts with the same name - Petropavlovsk: on Kamchatka and on the bank of the Irtysh tributary, the Ishim River. In modern Kazakhstani documentation, this city is called Petropavl.

At the beginning of the 19th century, on the frontier from the lower reaches of the Yaik-Ural to Altai, on the lands of the Orenburg and Siberian Cossack troops, there were 46 fortresses and 96 redoubts. But the logic of history prompted the empire to move further south.

OUTRUN THE LION
In the early 1820s, the Kokand Khan carried out a devastating raid on the Kazakh nomad camps. At the same time, the ruler of the Middle Zhuz, Vali Khan, transferred his subjects under the protection of Russia. According to the "Charter on the Siberian Kirghiz" developed under Alexander I, the Kazakhs were introduced to Russian-style governance and legal proceedings. A little later, in 1830, the Cossack outpost of Akmolinsk appeared on the Ishim River, which, after changing many names, became the capital of Kazakhstan - Astana.

In 1839–1840, Russia organized its first campaign against Khiva, the center of the slave trade in Central Asia. Vasily Perovsky’s expedition was unsuccessful, but it was only the beginning of counterattacks in response to the raids.

It was no longer just a matter of protecting villages, peasant settlers and "peaceful foreigners" who had sworn allegiance to Russia, but also of the great game that had begun between two empires, the Russian and the British. The Chinese Qing Empire also laid claim to Central Asia, but its forces were incomparable with the might of the "bear" and the "lion".

The empire was forced to move further, relying on new southern outposts such as Lepsinsk (founded in 1846), the Perovsk fort (Kzyl-Orda) built in 1853, the Vernoye fortification built a year later (also known as the Cossack village of Vernaya, the city of Verny), and, finally, the southern capital of Kazakhstan, Alma-Ata.

In 1865, General Mikhail Chernyaev took Tashkent by storm, which became the main stronghold in the region. Cossacks of the new Semirechye army (with its center in Verny) and settlers from Central Russia rushed here. Thus, in 1868, peasants from the Penza, Samara, Voronezh and Tambov provinces founded the settlement of Pishpek (now the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek) near the Verny tract. Only later did the Sarts join the Great Russians - sedentary Turks from Tashkent and the centers of the Fergana Valley: Namangan, Kokand and others.

The imperial government abolished the remainder of the Kokand Khanate in 1876. In response to a series of uprisings, troops under the command of the "white general", the future hero of the Russo-Turkish War Mikhail Skobelev, entered the Khan's headquarters. The Russians began to develop the former Kokand lands much earlier. So much so that already in 1869 Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin could satirically describe the " Tashkent gentlemen " - officials in the newly annexed territories.

"WHO BUILDS SCHOOLS, BUILDS THE FUTURE"
Events in the Khanate of Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara developed somewhat differently. In 1866, in the battles of Irdjai and Chapan-Ata, the troops of Adjutant General Konstantin Kaufman routed the army of the Emir of Bukhara, Muzaffar. Two years later, Samarkand was captured. In all cases, Russian soldiers released slaves. In 1868, the Emir of Bukhara concluded an agreement with Russia: the ruler of the faithful retained the throne, but Russia received the right to station garrisons and determine foreign policy. The territories from the Pamirs to the middle reaches of the Amu Darya were no longer in danger of becoming another pearl of the British crown.

A similar fate awaited the Khiva Khanate. After a quick campaign in 1873, Kaufman signed a treaty with Khan Seid Muhammad Rahim II : Khiva freed the slaves and transferred most of its possessions to Russian Turkestan.

In the late 1870s and early 1880s, it was time to "pacify" the warlike Turkmens (some of whom were vassals of Khiva). The port of Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea, now called Turkmenbashi, was founded in 1869 by the expedition of General and scientist-geographer Nikolai Stoletov. And since the 1880s, the border village of Askhabad has turned into a fast-growing city, the center of the Trans-Caspian region.

At the same time, "soft power" was taking root in the vassal states. "Whoever builds schools in Bukhara, builds the future" - so said the participant of the Central Asian campaigns, artist Vasily Vereshchagin.

Always.

At the end of the 19th century, with the demarcation of the borders in the Pamirs, the "Great Game" in Central Asia seemed to be won by Russia. According to the 1897 census, of the 7 million 746 thousand inhabitants of Turkestan (present-day Central and Southern Kazakhstan and Central Asia), 770 thousand were Russian-speaking - Great Russians, Little Russians, Belarusians, Poles and Germans.

By 1913, the settlers were cultivating the fields of Semirechye and Fergana, working in the mines of Rudny Altai and in the oil fields of the Ural-Embinsky region, and working on the Trans-Caspian, Semirechye, and Altai railways (the last two lines would serve as the basis for the Soviet Turksib). One of the elements of Pyotr Stolypin's agrarian reform was the project to resettle 100,000 peasants from the central provinces to Turkestan.

ANOTHER "BALKANS"
As for the indigenous population, the situation was almost as confusing as the infamous ethnic patchwork in the Balkans.

Under the rule of the rulers of Bukhara and Khiva and in Russian Turkestan lived the Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and "Kipchaks" (as the ruling class called themselves), Turkmens and Karakalpaks close to the Kazakhs. But in the same Bukhara and Samarkand lived many who spoke Persian and called themselves Tajiks. Often people who spoke different languages settled in different quarters of the same city. This was the case, for example, in the settlement of Dushanbe-Kurgan, the current capital of Tajikistan.

The ethnonyms were not established either - the Kazakh zhuzes were called Kyrgyz and Kyrgyz-Kaisaks for a long time, and the modern Kyrgyz ethnic group was called Kara-Kirghiz. It was quite complicated with the above-mentioned Sarts, who simply spoke "Turkic", but often had Persian roots.

And this ethnic diversity, after the upheavals of the civil war and the “march of Soviet power,” had to be territorially demarcated.

According to a number of authors, the civil strife in Central Asia lasted not from 1918 to 1922, but from 1916 (a series of uprisings of the local population against mobilization for rear work, the Russian administration and settlers) until the suppression of organized Basmachi by the end of the 1930s.

The history of the civil war in Turkestan requires a detailed description. Let us just note that, for example, the Fergana Peasant Army under the command of Konstantin Monstrov, a migrant from Syzran, managed to fight for both the Reds and Kolchak's forces. Both times against the Basmachi, who were slaughtering settlers.

And the former leader of the Young Turks, Enver Pasha, who had moved to Turkestan, first acted on the side of the Red Army as an emissary of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR to combat the Basmachi, and soon as a kurbashi (general) of the Basmachi with the blessing of the Emir of Bukhara. But in all cases, this nationalist pan-Turkist acted against the settlers. "Things are going the way I wanted... Many Russians were killed," Enver reported in 1921.

"THERE WAS A FIERCE STRUGGLE"
Despite all the confusion “on the ground,” the Soviet government steadfastly followed the general line formulated in Vladimir Lenin’s letter to the communists of Turkestan in November 1919: “Make every effort to prove… the sincerity of our desire to eradicate all traces of Great Russian imperialism.”

As in other outskirts of the former empire, the party in the 1920s relied on the nationally minded intelligentsia. In the case of Bukhara and Khiva, this was the left wing of the Jadids (“enlighteners,” nationalists, and Islamic modernists), who, in particular, proposed using the original Turkic ethnonym “Uzbek” instead of the word of unclear origin “Sart.”

In 1920, under the supervision of Mikhail Frunze and his troops, "revolutions" took place in the multi-ethnic Bukhara and Khiva. But the overthrow of the emir and khan and the creation of republics under flags with a crescent, star, sickle and hammer were only an interim solution. Then it was time for "national building".

As Vyacheslav Molotov recalled at the end of his life, the implementation of Lenin’s national policy in Central Asia was entirely the merit of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Joseph Stalin, as a great specialist in nationality affairs (and the People’s Commissar for the field in 1917–1923).

"The creation of the Central Asian republics and the border was entirely Stalin's work. There was a fierce struggle. The Kazakhs, for example, their top brass, fought for Tashkent, wanted it to be their capital... Stalin gathered them... looked at the borders and said: Tashkent to the Uzbeks, and Verny, Alma-Ata to the Kazakhs," Molotov said. An equally difficult task was how to divide the Khorezm oasis between the new national states, the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs. Or how to divide the Fergana Valley between Uzbekistan and the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region, still part of the Russian Federal Republic.

However, as recent history has shown, the “filigree” of national borders with enclaves and semi-enclaves did not protect against ethnic cleansing (for example, the massacre in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, in 1990) or border conflicts in the 2020s.

The fact that the city of Skobelev (Fergana) should go to Uzbekistan, Krasnovodsk to Turkmenistan, and Przhevalsk (modern name Karakol) to Kyrgyzstan, did not raise any questions in 1925. It is also not surprising that, in fulfillment of the “desire to eradicate traces of Great Russian chauvinism,” the Kazakh ASSR with its capital in Orenburg included cities of the former Ural, Omsk and Semipalatinsk regions of the Russian Empire.

As is known, in the discussions of 1922 on the principles of creating the Soviet state, "People's Commissariat of Nationalities" Stalin defended the plan of autonomization. National formations were to become a garland of autonomies around the Russian SFSR without the right to secede.

But - again, as is well known - in Moscow in 1922, the Leninist approach of creating equal Soviet states (as the core of the communist " United States of the World ") with the right of each national republic to secession prevailed. Stalin accepted this principle and continued to adhere to it in the 1930s and 1940s, when creating new SSRs - Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tajik and others.

The Central Asian countries that emerged in 1991 within the administrative borders drawn in 1925 have emerged as national states with which modern Russia maintains friendly and, in some cases, allied relations. But for the fact that in the 1990s Russians and other “non-titular peoples” who had lived here for generations found themselves in the position of unwanted migrants, one cannot help but say “thank you” to the creators of Lenin’s national policy.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

'People of the same tribe.' Why the Zaporozhian Cossacks decided to live in Russia

2025-03-23

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Daniil Pelymov

[REGNUM] In the year 7162 from the creation of the world,

…the Creation Era of Constantinople was observed by Christian communities within the Eastern Roman Empire as part of the Byzantine Calendar and formally retained by Eastern Orthodoxy until 1728. The Jews have their own Anno Mundi calendar, which makes this year 5785…

or in 1654 from the Nativity of Christ, in the last days of March, an embassy arrived at the court of the Tsar of all Rus' Alexei Mikhailovich from the Zaporizhian Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky, who had recently sworn allegiance to Moscow.

The Cossack delegation was headed by military judge Samoilo Zarudny and Pereyaslav colonel Pavlo Morzhkovsky, nicknamed Teterya. The Zaporozhians brought with them 23 petitionary articles.

In modern language, this was a draft treaty that was supposed to clarify the status of the “new territories” that were reunited with Russia as a result of the Pereyaslav Rada.

Yes, then in Pereyaslav on January 8 (18) of the same 1654, " a great multitude of people of all ranks" bowed to Tsar Alexei. But under what conditions and in what "format" did the Zaporozhian Host and parts of the former Polish voivodeships of Kiev, Chernigov and Braslav join the Russian Tsardom?

For a whole week, the Kremlin hosted "questioning" and coordination of the guests by boyar Vasily Buturlin (who had recently accepted the oath of allegiance of Hetman Khmelnitsky in Pereyaslav), and okolnichy Pyotr Golovin, and Duma clerk Yerofey Ivanov, nicknamed Almaz. As a result, two dozen Cossack petitions turned into 11 points of the treaty - the "March Articles".

“The Articles” were signed and sealed by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich on March 27 (April 6), 1654, and from that time on he called himself: “Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Duke of all Great and Little Russia, Autocrat.”

Moscow responded to the request that its co-religionists in the western and southern Russian lands formulated long before the start of Khmelnitsky’s war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

IN SEARCH OF PROTECTION
The Zaporozhian Cherkasy (as the Cossacks were called in the Russian Empire) petitioned for Russian citizenship at least three times, during uprisings that were regularly suppressed by the Poles. This was the case under the last Rurik tsar, Feodor Ioannovich, in 1593, when the leader of the rebellious lower Cossacks, Kristof Kosinsky, bowed to him. This was also the case during the time of the first tsar from the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Feodorovich.

Petitions came to Alexei Mikhailovich’s father from the rebellious Cherkassians Karp Guzdan, nicknamed Pavlyuk (1637) and in the following year, 1638, from Yakov Iskra-Ostryanin, the leader of the peasant-Cossack rebellion on the Left Bank of the Dnieper.

Even in the relatively peaceful 1620s, delegations from the Zaporozhian Host came to Moscow. Moreover, the ambassadors were sent by none other than Hetman Petro Sahaidachny, even though his biography included campaigns against Russia on the orders of the king, for which he is revered by modern Ukrainian nationalists, and the schismatic "Orthodox Church of Ukraine" canonized him five years ago. Hetman Sahaidachny was first and foremost a politician, and therefore could not help but take into account the opinion of "his" Cossacks, and they stood for an alliance with the only Orthodox sovereign, the Russian Tsar, against the Latins.

The real defender of Orthodoxy from the union and Polish oppression, canonized by the canonical UOC, Metropolitan Job (Boretsky) of Kiev, in the same 1620s asked Tsar Mikhail to intercede for the Orthodox in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - as for “the Russian tribe of people of the same womb.”

The reason was clear. As the Zaporozhian chronicler Samoilo Velichko wrote, the Poles "ravaged our land, plundering it clean, sparing neither the old nor the young, nor the innocent women, and all this for the Orthodox faith, and because we, the Cossacks, wanted to be free."

In the 1630s, due to the strengthening of Polish-Catholic oppression, a mass migration of Circassians to the border regions of the Russian state began - to the territory of today's Belgorod, Kharkov, Kursk and Sumy regions. Cossacks, entering the service of the Romanovs in Belgorod, Putivl or Chuguev, thus already "joined" the Russian state individually.

THREE PATHS FOR THE HETMAN
But Moscow did not dare to engage in direct combat with the then powerful Polish-Lithuanian state. And there were objective reasons for this - the country was recovering from the Time of Troubles. Let us recall that the Polish intervention began in 1609, back in the days of the "Tushino thief", and lasted until 1618, when the Romanovs were established on the throne. The war that Mikhail Fyodorovich waged in 1632-34 with the former pretender to the Russian throne, King Vladislav, for the Western Russian lands lost during the Time of Troubles also ended in failure.

Only the “explosion” of Khmelnytsky, which undermined the strength of the recent invaders and occupiers – the Poles, made it possible to begin the gathering of Russian lands.

The formal reason for the rebellion was a vendetta against the nobleman Daniel Chaplinsky, who had destroyed Khmelnitsky's farm and beaten his son half to death. The feud between the Chigirin under-starosta and the Zaporozhian commander gave rise to a war that broke out in full force in 1648.

The Khmelnytsky war became a real catastrophe for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The defeats of the Polish troops at Zhovti Vody, Korsun, and Pyliavtsi showed that the noble monarchy was losing its grip, while the Cossack army and Little Russian self-awareness, on the contrary, were growing stronger. However, despite the successes, the forces were unequal. The leader of the Zaporozhian Cossacks understood that external support was necessary to win the war.

Khmelnitsky had three options.

Firstly, some of the Cossack elders were counting on a compromise with the West – with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth weakened by the war. The colonels counted on expanding the autonomy of the registered Cossacks – “The Army of His Royal Grace Zaporozhian”. This path would be followed a little later by the head of Khmelnitsky’s chancery – Ivan Vyhovsky, who would swear allegiance to the Polish king in exchange for a promise to create the Grand Duchy of Rus’ as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (along with the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania).

But for Khmelnitsky, this option was clearly not an option. "The Poles did not want to give us anything, they kept saying that we were rebels and traitors, and that we should be punished with death," confirms Samoilo Velychko. And it was not only the Poles' intransigence - surrender to the Latins would have been perceived by the Cossacks themselves as a real betrayal.

Secondly, it was possible to turn to the south – to the Crimean Khan and his suzerain, the Ottoman Sultan, especially since the Cossacks had already concluded tactical alliances with the Bakhchisarai rulers. This option, although it guaranteed military support, was associated with the risk of subordination to infidels and loss of identity. And tactically, the Crimean Khanate had already let down the rebellious Cossacks.

Finally, there was the East, represented by the Russian Tsardom. The Orthodox faith, cultural closeness and military power made Moscow an attractive ally. It was this last option that was chosen after much thought and bloodshed.

"WE CAN NO LONGER LIVE WITHOUT THE TSAR"
The Tsar's ambassador to the Pereyaslav Rada, boyar Buturlin, reported to Moscow:

The Hetman himself came out under the banner, and with him the Judge and the Yasauls, the clerk and all the Colonels, and the Hetman stood in the middle of the circle... then, when they fell silent, the Hetman began to speak to all the people:

"Gentlemen, Colonels, Yasauls, Centurions and the entire Zaporozhian army, and all Orthodox Christians! You all know how God has freed us from the hands of the enemies who persecute the Church of God and embitter all of our Eastern Orthodox Christianity, that for six years now we have been living without a Tsar in our land in incessant battles and bloodshed with our persecutors and enemies who want to eradicate the Church of God, so that the Russian name would not be remembered in our land, which has already greatly bothered us all, and we see that we can no longer live without a Tsar."

And the only worthy sovereign was called not the “Tsar of Tours”, not the Khan of Crimea and not the King of Poland, but “ the Orthodox Christian Great Sovereign, the Tsar of the East”.

After Bogdan’s speech, the Pereyaslav colonel Pavel Morzhkovsky (Teteria) – one of those who would later go with the embassy to Moscow – “ walked around in a circle in all directions, asking: do you all agree to this? The entire people said: all unanimously.”

The oath in Pereyaslav, however, did not mean automatic submission. Khmelnitsky and the elders understood that clear conditions were necessary that would guarantee the preservation of Cossack liberties and autonomy. Therefore, immediately after the Rada, Khmelnitsky sent an embassy to Moscow.

SEARCH FOR A COMPROMISE
The week before the signing of the March Articles was difficult. Trubetskoy, Buturlin and other boyars understood the strategic importance of Little Russia, but sought to strengthen the tsar's power in the new territories. The Cossack embassy led by Zarudny and Teterya defended the traditional liberties of the Zaporozhian Host, seeking to preserve Cossack self-government, its own judicial system and tax policy.

Questions about the borders of the Zaporozhian Host, the size of the Cossack register, the size of the tsar’s salary and the procedure for collecting taxes caused heated discussions.

As a result of compromises and concessions on both sides, the text of the agreement known as the "March Articles" was developed, which was to legally formalize the union and define the boundaries of the autonomy of the Zaporozhian Host within the Russian Kingdom. This document became the starting point for further, often difficult, relations between the Zaporozhians and the Russian state.

The “March Articles” began with an appeal to the Tsar of all Great and Little Russia and with the phrase: “We, Bohdan Khmelnitsky… and the entire Zaporozhian Army, and the entire Christian Russian world, bow down to the face of the earth…”.

So the formula “Russian world” (i.e. “Russian world” in the Greek version of the spelling) is by no means a modern invention, but a self-identification of the Cossacks who arrived in Moscow.

Tsar Alexei confirmed the election of the Zaporozhian Hetman and the command of the army - the general elders, the independence of the military courts and the preservation of city self-government. The Hetman was still elected by the Zaporozhian army itself, and the Tsar was only notified of this decision. The Zaporozhians even retained the right to conduct "foreign policy", only relations with Turkey and Poland were under the control of Moscow.

The number of registered Cossacks, i.e. those in the service of the Russian Tsar, was determined to be 60 thousand. For comparison, the Zboriv Peace of 1648 with the Poles, which was successful for Bohdan, determined the royal register to be 40 thousand Cossacks, and the Belotserkovsky Peace of 1651, concluded after a series of defeats, cut the number to 20 thousand.

Finally, the commander of the Cossack army himself could be satisfied.

“And Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the entire Zaporozhian Army shall be under the Tsar’s high hand according to their former rights and privileges, and shall be obedient to the Tsar’s majesty in everything” — this formula reflects the main thing: recognition of the Tsar’s authority did not abolish, but guaranteed the preservation of traditional liberties and privileges.

"THAT THEY MAY BE UNITED FOREVER"
Despite all the compromises, the main thing was achieved: 371 years ago, the mother of Russian cities - Kyiv, ancient Chernigov and other historical lands began to return to the Russian world. The beginning of the gathering of a state united by a common history, culture and faith was laid.

Now Kyiv is again at a crossroads - the "elder" who seized power followed the path of the traitors Vyhovsky and Mazepa, choosing to orient themselves toward the West. At the same time, the modern Turkish "sultan" is showing increasing interest in Ukraine. But on the Left Bank of the Dnieper, not to mention the regions of western Novorossiya, from Belgorod-Dnistrovsky and Odessa to occupied Kherson and Zaporozhye, historical memory and cultural ties with Great Russia are felt most acutely.

As for historical Little Russia, it clearly needs a new Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a wise leader who will be able to lead the people along the most favorable path, managing to once again conclude an alliance with Russia while preserving its identity. So that the call that sounded at the Pereyaslav Rada would come true: "God confirm, God strengthen, so that we may all be one forever!"

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

The Path to 'Eternal Peace.' How Kyiv Became Russian, and Russia Made Peace with Europe

2025-02-16

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Denis Davydov and Mikhail Kucherov

[REGNUM] February became a truly fateful month in the relations between the Muscovite state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1667, after many years of war and division of territory, the Truce of Andrusovo was concluded, establishing the border between the states and laying the foundation for the "Eternal Peace".

Negotiations on its terms began almost 20 years later, in 1686, when a large embassy arrived in Moscow, headed by the Polish voivode Krzysztof Grzymultowski and the Lithuanian chancellor Marcian Oginski.

The need not to fight, but to negotiate was dictated by the international situation: aggressive Sweden was pressing from the north, and mighty Turkey was stretching out its hands to Europe in the south. Therefore, the previously unsolvable question was somehow resolved: the ownership of the "God-saved city of Kyiv", the mother of Russian cities, and control over the Zaporizhian Sich.

The truce was concluded for 13 years, which was considered to be a sufficient period to discuss all the important issues.

But already at this stage, thanks to his dexterity and ability to gain the trust of the Poles, the leader of the negotiations, Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin, a man from a family of humble Pskov nobles who became a prominent diplomat of that era, was able to negotiate Kiev for two years.

Although no one wanted to return it later for obvious reasons: the place where Rus was baptized had to belong to Rus. The city had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1362, and after the conclusion of the Union of Lublin in 1569, it fell under the rule of the Polish kings. The emerging alliance opened a window of opportunity for Moscow.

So the private issue of Kyiv was resolved within the framework of the global problem of uniting the efforts of Russia and European powers, which has happened in history more than once or twice.

DIPLOMATIC SUCCESS
In truth, Ordin-Nashchokin was a Polonophile and consistently advocated the conclusion of a Russian-Polish union, for which he was ready to give the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth not only all of Russia’s conquests in Lithuania, but also the Little Russian cities, leaving only Smolensk for Russia.

The far-sighted diplomat, who was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs (that is, head of the Ambassadorial Prikaz) following the negotiations in Andrusovo, considered it more important to conclude an alliance to counter the Turks and Crimean Tatars and to gain access to the Baltic Sea by punishing Sweden, which is what ultimately happened.

However, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich strictly forbade him to squander state lands. “You do not rely on God, but on your great, glorious, variable, fickle mind,” the sovereign wrote, so the chief negotiator patiently overcame obstacles on the way to concluding peace. He persistently convinced his counterparts of the need to make concessions - suffice it to say that 37 ambassadorial congresses, or, in modern language, rounds of negotiations, took place in Andrusovo

Meanwhile, they had before their eyes a living example of Ordin-Nashchokin being right: on the right bank of the Dnieper, Hetman Petro Doroshenko was in full swing, having decided to stake on Turkey. In December 1666, together with the Crimean Tatars, he dashingly defeated the crown army in the Battle of Brailov. Returning to Chigirin, the Hetman began the siege of the Polish garrison of the castle, and in February 1667, just during the negotiations in Andrusovo, he besieged Bila Tserkva.

So the border was drawn along the Dnieper, Kyiv became the Russian "bridgehead", and subsequently the border with Poland ran along the Irpen River, and they agreed to govern the Zaporizhian Sich together. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich returned the north-eastern part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania conquered by Russia - Vitebsk region, Polotsk, and also Livonia - to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

And Ordin-Nashchokin won universal honor and respect, expanding the activities of the Ambassadorial Prikaz as never before: for the first time in the history of Russia, he organized international mail, did much to develop duty-free trade with Western neighbors. The diplomat consistently promoted the idea of creating a fleet: on his initiative, the first Russian sailing ship, the Oryol, was built, assembled according to the Western European model, and Ordin's foreign policy strategy would then be picked up by the son of his sovereign, Peter I.

Meanwhile, the Poles themselves were looking for an opportunity to form an alliance with Russia against the Porte: they wanted Moscow to join the coalition of Christian empires. So they gave up on Kyiv – although they did not forget to present a hefty bill for it later.

The northern enemy, who had already launched a large-scale invasion of Poland (and had not allowed the Russians to break through to the Baltic Sea), was not to be touched for now. In the south, the growing appetite for conquest of the Ottoman Empire, which was striving for expansion, was fully felt. So, having finally made peace, Moscow and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth concluded an agreement in 1672, according to which the first party was obliged to send Don and Zaporozhian Cossacks and detachments of vassal nomadic peoples to help Poland in the event of an attack by Turkey or the Crimean Khanate.

Soon this happened - the army of Sultan Mehmed IV crossed the Danube and destroyed the fortress city of Kamianets-Podilskyi, brutally killing or taking its inhabitants into slavery. The Poles were terribly frightened and concluded the Buchach Peace Treaty with the Ottoman Empire that same year, giving them Podolia and pledging to pay 22,000 chervonets annually - although four years later the latter condition was cancelled. It somehow immediately became clear that a weakened Poland would no longer be able to give a worthy rebuff, and the Turks clearly had their eye on Left-Bank Ukraine.

NEW VECTOR
In view of the circumstances that had opened up, the Russians decided to act against the Ottomans for the first time. The war lasted a long time - until 1681, when, as a result of the Treaty of Bakhchisarai in Istanbul, Kyiv and the Left Bank were recognized as Russia's and they finally abandoned campaigns in these lands. Which also soon became an argument regarding the belonging of the ancient capital to Rus'.

It is interesting that it was at that time that embassies began to emerge - with the beginning of the war with Turkey, the Muscovite kingdom and Poland sent permanent representatives to each other, who were called residents. Although the effectiveness of their work seemed dubious: for example, representatives of the Lithuanian opposition in Poland accused the resident in Moscow Pavel Svidersky of being unable to reach an agreement, claiming that he supplied the king with "many fables" because of which "strange lampoons" about Russia were spread throughout Europe. So the experiment was considered unsuccessful, and both sides recalled the residents.

Meanwhile, the Turks were developing their success where they had failed: in 1684, the Treaty of Vasvar between the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire expired, so they decided not to wait. In 1683, a huge army, according to various estimates, up to 300 thousand people, entered Austria, immediately rushing to Vienna and laying siege to it. The combined efforts of the troops of the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria and Swabia under the general command of the Polish king and Grand Duke of Lithuania Jan III Sobieski managed to fight back.

Incidentally, according to legend, the famous crescent-shaped Viennese croissant appeared from that time. The Orthodox nobleman from Galicia, Yuriy-Franz Kulchitsky, an expert in the Turkish language and customs, who worked as an Austrian diplomatic courier and translator in Istanbul, played an important role in the victory, passing through the enemy camp with messages. For this, he received many favors - and, at his own request, all the coffee found among the Turks.

Kulchitsky promoted the new drink by opening the first coffee shop in Vienna, and the bagels were offered to be eaten to symbolically defeat the enemy. A century and a half later, the French began baking them from puff pastry, and this is how croissants appeared.

However, the Porte did not go anywhere, and Moscow began to be even more actively inclined towards a military alliance, where an additional incentive was precisely the preparation for signing the "Eternal Peace" with Poland. Although intelligence reported that with it, everything was far from simple.

A certain Andrei Kallistratov, a native of the Polish lands, interrogated in the Hetman's chancery, recalled a conversation between King Jan III and a Venetian resident, which he allegedly overheard by chance:

"I trust in God that I will bring Moscow [to] the Turkish war, for that reason great ambassadors have been sent to Moscow. And when the Turkish is enraged at Moscow, I will also strive to establish peace with the Turks, and I will turn the war against the Moscow kingdom. In what way will I be able to conveniently take Zadnepriye and other places, and I will not hold them in any other way, only I will attract them to the Roman Unes, so that they never look back at Moscow, and then everything will be possible to fix."

Nevertheless, negotiations continued, ending on May 6, 1686: the final version of the treaty was signed by Krzysztof Grzymultowski and the head of the Ambassadorial Office, Prince Vasily Golitsyn.

The results of the Andrusovo Truce were finally confirmed. Russia retained all the conquered territories - this was one of the key conditions for entering the war with Turkey. And the border line established by the agreement existed unchanged until the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772.

At the same time, the Poles agreed not to accept back the inhabitants of the territories that had been ceded to Russia, including the Smolensk gentry: after 1654, many Smolensk residents remained in the service of the Russian tsar and converted to Orthodoxy.

Kyiv greeted the news joyfully, and after the Truce of Andrusovo, the local clergy took an active pro-Moscow position: the northern neighbor was the best guarantor that the rights of the Orthodox would be respected. Although the Poles still stood for the city to the last in the negotiations, and the Russians did not get it for free, having paid compensation of 146 thousand rubles, more than 10% of the state budget. Well, Russia finally joined the anti-Turkish league, and already in 1687 and 1689 Vasily Golitsyn made two campaigns against the Crimean Khanate.

The signing of the “Eternal Peace” completed the “unification of a torn people” – this is how the abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, Innokenty Gizel, called this process, which began with the Pereyaslav Rada.

It took Moscow more than 20 years of diplomatic efforts to secure the “mother of Russian cities,” but the time was well spent.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

The Last of the Romans: How Russia Saved Its Greeks from the Criminal Yoke

2025-01-31

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Ilya Knorring

[REGNUM] On January 27, the Russian Defense Ministry officially confirmed that fighters from the Vostok military group had liberated the village of Velyka Novosyolka, 75 kilometers southwest of Donetsk, near the borders of the DPR with the Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk regions. That same day, reports emerged of fighting on the outskirts of a nearby village with the unexpected (at first glance) name of Constantinople.

The military significance of the capture of the seemingly "small" village of Velyka Novosyolka is obvious. Earlier, the Regnum news agency recalled : this "inhabitant" in 2023-24 was an important hub of the enemy's defense on the line from Ugledar to Gulyaipole, in the summer of 2023, including from Novosyolka, the Ukrainian Armed Forces tried to launch a "counteroffensive" to the Sea of Azov. The current impressive offensive of our troops in this part of the southern Donbas is part of the "breakdown" of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' defense at the junction of two Russian regions, the DPR and Zaporozhye. But the liberation of Velyka Novosyolka and its environs also has a historical dimension.

ROMANS AND URUMS
If you look at the dates of the founding of the villages of Konstantinopol, Nizhnie Yaly, Komar and Velikaya Novosyolka (which until 1946 had a different name - Bolshaya Yanisol), you can notice a coincidence: all these villages and settlements appeared in 1779. And the original population was also similar - these were Greeks who moved with the gracious consent of Catherine the Great from the Crimean Khanate, where Russian troops had entered shortly before.

During the "times of Ochakov and the conquest of Crimea" on the Tauride Peninsula lived two groups of Greeks, who traced themselves back to the settlers of Byzantine times. Both peoples to this day call themselves almost the same: "Rumei" and "Urums". This means the same thing - Romans or, more precisely, Romai (this is what the inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire - Byzantium - called themselves).

In Russian usage, the Rumei were called Greco-Hellenes, since they retained a dialect derived from medieval, Byzantine Greek. The second group, the Urums, were called Greco-Tatars. They had long since switched to the Crimean Tatar dialect. For example, the names of the villages of Maloyanisol and Bolshaya Yanisol come from the Urum (and Tatar) "yeni sala" - new village.

The hypothesis that the Urums are baptized Tatars can be rejected unequivocally: the baptism of Muslims in the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate was impossible and punishable by death. The Greeks who accepted Islam dissolved into the Tatar population, leaving traces only in the gene pool of their descendants.

"Where is our homeland? In Greece? In Asia Minor? No! Our homeland is the mountains of Crimea... There are our holy temples and mountain monasteries, cave cities and impregnable fortresses," writes Urum local historian, professor of Donetsk University Stefan Kaloyorov.

CORRUPTION AND BUREAUCRACY
Catherine's decree on the resettlement of Crimean Christians (Greeks, Armenians and Vlachs) to the empty lands of Novorossiya seemed to bring only good: the empire took the Orthodox peoples under its protection and saved them from persecution by the "Mohammedans". Crimea had already been conquered in 1778-79, but had not yet become ours. The Khan still sat on the throne in Bakhchisarai.

But, on the other hand, the annexation of Crimea to the empire was a matter of time. Catherine's nobles and military leaders asked a reasonable question: was it necessary to organize the resettlement of Christians at all? General Alexander Prozorovsky, whose troops were stationed in Crimea, wrote to the Governor-General of Azov and Novorossiysk, Prince Grigory Potemkin : "When Crimea is taken into subjection... they (the Greeks and other Christians - editor's note) will be the first inhabitants here, so it seems there is no need to remove them from here."

But the empress made a decision. And so - about half of the Taurian Urums and Rumei, 18 thousand out of about 40 thousand who lived in Crimea, took one hundred thousand heads of cattle, left their native mountains and moved to the steppes of Northern Taurida. The resettlement was supervised by the most serene Prince Potemkin, Alexander Suvorov (then lieutenant general) and the Greek metropolitan of Kafa - Theodosius Ignatius.

"Anabasis" - "a march into the interior of the country" turned out to be difficult. Khan's customs officers were stationed at Perekop. The Tatars took 5 thousand rubles from the emigrants for passage - an astronomical sum. It is known that Khan Shahin-Girey "in respect for the withdrawal of Christians" (that is, for his consent) received 50 thousand rubles from the Russian resident in Bakhchisarai Andrei Konstantinov.

After the Crimean corruption, a new test awaited the settlers within the Russian Empire: domestic bureaucracy. The Greeks were sent to register in the Alexander Fortress (future Alexandrovsk, now Zaporozhye), after which they were supposed to determine the places of settlement - but the red tape continued until the spring of 1779.

During the winter of 1778–1779, the settlers “lived in difficult conditions, without any special provision for their needs, in conditions of rampant diseases… in dugouts or in open-air tents,” writes historian Kaloyorov. A letter from Metropolitan Ignatius to the Russian resident Konstantinov has been preserved:

"I suffered great anxiety on the way, and especially the poor Christians... Not having a place to live... some, having caught a cold, died of the cold. My spiritual son! What you spoke about and gave hope for, there is nothing yet."

The difficult circumstances of the resettlement give modern Ukrainian publicists and even historians a reason to declare this event a "deportation" and almost genocide. For example, the publication UArgument wrote:

"The tragedy of the Greek settlers remained a tragedy in the memory of the descendants of those settlers. But some opportunists from politics turn it into a farce, trying to present one of the actions of the expansionist policy of tsarist Russia as such a concern." But Kiev propagandists, as usual, show only part of the picture, distorting it.

FACTORIES AND GARDENS
One of the three people responsible for the resettlement, Alexander Suvorov, sounded the alarm and managed to squeeze 130 thousand rubles out of the imperial treasury, which were necessary for the settlement. On May 21 (June 3), 1779, Catherine signed a decree in Russian and Greek, which defined the status and privileges of the settlers. The settlers were granted a 10-year exemption from all taxes. The decree also stated:

“You are allowed to build merchant seagoing vessels from your own capital, to establish necessary and useful factories, plants and orchards, from the cultivation of which you can sell all kinds of grape wines… in barrels.”

The Urums and Rumei settled in the area of Mariupol, the "Greek capital" of the Russian Azov region. No less than two dozen settlements appeared here. Familiar names were transferred from Crimea: thus, Urzuf and Yalta (one of whose quarters is called Massandra), Stary Krym and Mangush - the "namesake" of an ancient village near Bakhchisarai - appeared in the Azov region. The village of Anadol reminds us of our ancestors from Anatolia - Asia Minor.

The settlers developed the former Wild Steppe north of the sea, along the banks of the Sukhie Yaly, Mokrye Yaly and Kalmius rivers. Thus were founded Bolshaya Yanisol - Velikaya Novosyolka, Constantinople, the settlements of Novaya Karakuba (today's Krasnaya Polyana) and Beshevo (now called Starobeshevo), as well as the village of Bugas, near which the city of Volnovakha arose.

Viticulture, “granted” to the Greeks by decree of Catherine, actually began to develop only at the beginning of our 21st century, but even in the century before last, agriculture and cattle breeding flourished, and orchards flourished.

SCYLLA, CHARYBDIS AND COMRADE YEZHOV
The Urums and Rumei, along with their neighbors, the Great Russians, Little Russians, Bulgarians, Moldovans, and other peoples who made up the motley population of Novorossiya, survived revolutions, repressions, and the Great Patriotic War. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were Urum schools and a department at the pedagogical institute, but after the implementation of Directive No. 50 215 signed by the head of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov, which ordered the “liquidation of large espionage, sabotage, and nationalist counterrevolutionary organizations of the Greeks,” they ceased to exist due to the arrests of teaching staff.

However, the Azov Greeks managed to pass between Scylla and Charybdis - although in 1944 the Greek population was deported from Crimea, this new disaster did not affect the Donetsk region.

On the contrary, in the post-war decades the people even multiplied. The approximate number of representatives of the Greek-Azov subethnos is 250 thousand people. This is the third largest people of Donbass and the Azov region (the bulk of it is concentrated in the DPR) along with Russians and those who were counted as Ukrainians in the censuses.

Local Greeks are the largest compactly living community in the Hellenic diaspora in the post-Soviet space. True, in the 2001 census, many indicated themselves as Ukrainians - if the census takers filled out the questionnaires, or Russians, if the respondents filled them out themselves.

The Ukrainian ethno-nationalist project clearly did not imply cultural diversity. In 2014, the Greeks, like other residents of the former Donetsk region, mostly chose the DPR and a return to Russia - but the militia here, as in Mariupol, alas, did not have time to gain a foothold.

TYRANNY OF KLEPTOCRATS
Then, in the spring of 2014, Velyka Novosyolka found itself under double oppression: firstly, the SBU was operating in the frontline zone (in 2017, the security forces reported the arrest of the organizers of the "separatist" rallies three years ago). And secondly, the "eastern yoke" was established in the person of the Salama family, which local residents, according to them, fear more than the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the SBU.

As residents of Velyka Novosyolka say, the Salama family (the surname is of Arabic origin, although the Salamas themselves consider themselves Ukrainians) lived in the neighboring village of Krasnaya Polyana and owned a hardware store there. The most media-famous representative of the family, Petro Salama, got involved with the Right Sector* during the ATO and joined the Donbass* volunteer battalion, which, along with Azov*, gained notoriety for kidnapping and torturing prisoners, which was even recorded by the OSCE mission.

In December 2017, Donbass militant Petro Salama, also known by the call sign Vodila, was one of the defendants in the case of the murder of a couple of businessmen in Velyka Novosyolka, Vladimir and Larisa Degtyarenko and their son Valeriy. Ukrainian media reports constantly emphasized that the Degtyarenkos are close relatives of "Viktor Yanukovych's godfather." Larisa Degtyarenko's father, Valeriy Shira, is indeed the godfather of the former president of Ukraine. He is also the former head of the Velikonovoselkovsky District Council and the unofficial owner of the district.

By the way, we will add that Shira also has a criminal trail - suspicion of ordering the murder of a rich farmer and former deputy Ivan Kharaman. In general, the regime that reigned on the lands of the Azov Greeks could well be called by the ancient word "kleptocracy" - the rule of thieves.

Returning to the probable killer Petro Salama, we note that he, having spent about two years with his accomplices in the Mariupol pretrial detention center, was transferred to house arrest in April 2020. Then a "blackout" appears in his biography, and it appears again in the winter of 2022 - then the Salama brothers organize a territorial defense battalion in Krasnaya Polyana.

In May 2022, the village was liberated by units of the Russian Armed Forces, and local residents reportedly looted a household goods store belonging to the Salam family, taking the pillows, blankets, and cleaning products sold there to homes. Salam's brothers, who had chosen the Ukrainian side back in 2014, fled to Velyka Novosyolka, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces had established themselves, and took charge of the local territorial defense.

In Krasnaya Polyana, as local residents say, a sister, Natalya, remained, who reported in detail to the brothers across the front line about the looting of property. Enraged, the brothers ordered a strike from Novosyolka on Krasnaya Polyana with Grad launchers - but, ironically, the strike primarily damaged their own family home.

Needless to say, after this they became even more fierce, residents of Krasnaya Polyana note.

So the liberation of Bolshaya Yanisol - Velyka Novosyolka became liberation from the yoke of criminal authorities associated with the bandit national battalions. But the rampage of "brothers" controlled by no one is, of course, not the only trouble brought by the Kiev tyranny.

The forced evacuation carried out by the Kyiv authorities has hit the entire local population hard, and not only the Urumians. Now the Azov Greeks and their neighbors will once again face "anabasis" - this time returning home to Velikaya Novosyolka, Constantinople and other villages of "Russian Greece". There is one consolation: this road should be easier than that of their ancestors - the first settlers.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

The World That Brought Novorossiya: How Potemkin Gave the Empire New Lands

2025-01-10

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Denis Davydov

[REGNUM] The figure of Empress Catherine the Great, first installed in Odessa in 1900 and restored in 2007, was demolished three years ago, as was the monument to the military leader Alexander Suvorov. As part of “decolonization” and “cleansing Ukraine of traces of its imperial past.” But, as in all such cases, the demolition left an ideological void.

Because the construction of the city of Odessa in 1794 became possible as a result of the Treaty of Jassy, which ended more than two hundred years of Russian-Turkish wars. Ukraine simply had nothing to replace the treaty concluded on January 9, 1792 between the All-Russian Empire and the Sublime Ottoman Porte following the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1791: a permanent Ukrainian population appeared in the Northern Black Sea region only with the beginning of Russia's development of this deserted land.

And the contribution of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to whom a modern myth attributes the founding of a certain settlement "long before Catherine", consists primarily of participating in battles against the Turks in the Russian service. And nothing more, no matter what anyone says.

THE EMPRESS'S FIRST CAMPAIGN
For Catherine II, this was already the second war with the Turks, and it all began long before: the Ottoman Empire sought to repeat the success of the Roman Empire. The Black Sea was already internal Turkish, the Mediterranean and Red Seas almost became so, the Turks had access to the Caspian, under them was North Africa and part of Persia (including modern Syria and Iraq), Greece, the Balkans and, of course, the entire Caucasus.

The Porte was striving for Western Europe, and only the unsuccessful siege of Vienna, in the defense of which, by the way, the Zaporozhian Cossacks who served the Polish king took part, broke the Turkish onslaught. But still, not a single European power, including Russia, could single-handedly win a battle against the world's first army until the 1770s.

That is why there is a monument to Catherine, because only with her accession to the Russian throne was it possible to change the “tradition” of the invincibility of the Ottomans.

In general, only the victory of Russian arms in the first of Catherine's Turkish wars and the signing of the Küçük Kaynarca Peace Treaty in 1774 forced the Ottoman government to officially recognize the Russian ruler's title of empress, equal in status to the title of Ottoman padishah, something the Sultan's court had long refused even to Peter I.

The city of Azov, the steppe lands between the Southern Bug and the Dnieper (eastern Yedisan), including the fortress of Kinburn, passed to the Russian Empire, and ownership of Kerch and the nearby fortress of Yeni-Kale was confirmed. The weakened Crimean Khanate, which had drunk a fair amount of blood over the past centuries, was recognized as independent and not interfering in the affairs of either Russia or Turkey.

Russian ships were allowed free passage through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, as well as the Danube River. Yes, in fact, the Black Sea Fleet appeared under the decree of 1783, initially created as the Sevastopol squadron from the Azov and Dnieper military flotillas, participants in the First Turkish War.

At the same time, the Russian army left Bessarabia, the principality of Wallachia and the Principality of Moldavia, which for a time returned to the hands of Constantinople. And the war, full of brilliant victories, such as the Battle of Chesma and the Battle of the Fortress of Kagul, became the beginning of the brilliant career of Count Suvorov.

But the fruits of the first major victory did not last long. Moreover, inspired by it, Russia annulled the articles of the treaties concerning the independence of Crimea in 1783. The Crimean Khanate was annexed to the empire, which Turkey did not like at all. In Europe, an active offensive policy was also being conducted, the uprising of the lordly confederates in Podolia, who had promised Turkey its "historical lands" as a prize for support, was crushed, the first partition of Poland took place, which excited the English and French.

So the Second Turkish War, which began in 1787, was already a "joint product" of Anglo-French political intrigues with Turkish military power. Accordingly, on the other hand, a Russian-Austrian military alliance arose, which Turkey learned about too late.

THE BLOW THAT BROKE THE EMPIRE
During the campaign, which lasted for four years, Suvorov's military star flared up in the military firmament along with the commanders of the young Black Sea Fleet - Rear Admiral Nikolai Mordvinov, the Montenegrin Rear Admiral Marko Voynovich and the great Fyodor Ushakov, who has already been canonized in our time.

Russian troops took the fortresses of Ochakov and Izmail with great success, the Turkish campaigns on Bender and Ackerman failed, and a decisive battle was fought at Rymnik, for which Suvorov received the prefix Rymniksky to his surname.

The sailors smashed the Turkish fleet in battles in the Dnieper-Bug estuary, near Zmeiny Island, near Tendra Spit and Cape Kaliakra. Upon learning of the fall of Ochakov, the Empress wrote to the commander of the troops, Field Marshal Grigory Potemkin :

“Taking you by the ears with both hands, I mentally kiss you, my dear friend… With the greatest recognition I accept the zeal and diligence of the troops you lead, from the highest to the lowest ranks… I greatly regret the brave men who were killed; the illnesses and wounds of the wounded are sensitive to me; I regret it and pray to God for their healing. I ask everyone to express my recognition and gratitude on my behalf…”

The bodies of the Russian officers who died during the Ochakov assault were, by order of Prince Potemkin, transported to one of the new cities of the Russian Black Sea region - Kherson - and buried within the fence of the Church of St. Great Martyr Catherine. Here in 1791 the prince himself was buried, having also managed to found the city of Yekaterinoslav, conceived as the center of Novorossiya and the third capital of the Russian Empire after Moscow and St. Petersburg. Today it is known as Dnepr and the unrecognized capital of telephone scammers.

Well, Sultan Selim III, who replaced his predecessor who died from the upheavals, was forced to make peace: for Turkey this was a complete defeat.

The Treaty of Jassy secured Crimea and Ochakov for Russia and moved the border between the two empires to the Dniester River in the west and the Kuban River in the east. By the beginning of the 19th century, these borders would expand, having crossed the Dniester and annexed Bessarabia, Russia would reach the Prut and the Danube, and beyond the Caucasus Mountains, Orthodox Georgia would join it, claims to which Türkiye had renounced precisely under the Treaty of Jassy.

As for Iasi, now one of the largest cities in Romania and an important transport hub, in the old days the settlement belonged to the ancient Moldavian Principality and was closely connected with Russia. As early as the 14th century, there was a significant Russian community here, which is why it is mentioned in several chronicle documents as " Yasii Torg on the Prut River". In 1711, in Iasi, the Moldavian ruler Dimitrie Cantemir swore allegiance to our country and became the first Russian orientalist, an adviser to Peter I on eastern issues.

Before the start of the "Potemkin" Russo-Turkish War, there was a Russian vice-consul in Iasi; during the war, Potemkin made Iasi his "campaign capital", and after the end of the hostilities, the Russian consulate was again located in its usual place; the city became part of Romania only in the middle of the 19th century.

The long struggle for access to the Black Sea ended with an intermediate major success - Russia will have to prove its right to own these lands more than once, including in our days. But one thing is unshakable and indisputable: if not for almost 350 years of efforts, there would be no Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia or Armenia on the world map. Bulgaria and Romania would probably remain Turkish possessions, and the fate of Serbia, Montenegro and Greece would be very controversial.

But if in most cases we are talking about long-inhabited lands that had their own statehood, then the wild Black Sea steppes were conquered and first developed by Russia, which founded cities here and built a new economy. And the right to own them was paid for in full with the blood of Russian soldiers and sailors.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

The Mad Empress's Plan: How the French Conspiracy's Failure Saved Novorossiya

2024-12-07

Direct Translation via Google Translation. Edited.
by Igor Ivanenko

[REGNUM] For the fact that Novorossiya appeared on the map of Russia, descendants should thank three women - empresses: Anna Ioannovna, Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II Alekseevna.

During the reign of the first of them, Anna Ioannovna, a fortified line was built on the lands of the former Wild Field, between the Dnieper and the Seversky Donets - the Ukrainian Defensive Line (the "Ukraine" was then the name for the Cossack lands in the middle Dnieper region). While the Russian army was "beating the Turks" in the steppes of the Black Sea region, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, settlers from the Great Russian provinces and descendants of old-timers-odnodvortsy settled at the edge of the empire.

The second, Elizabeth Petrovna, opened the way to the settlement of empty lands with hard-working and loyal colonists - the military-settlement provinces of New Serbia and Slavoserbia were created. As the names suggested, the migrants were refugees of the same faith and similar in language from the Ottoman Empire.

Finally, the third of the female rulers, Catherine the Great, united the Ukrainian line, Slavic Serbia and New Serbia into the Novorossiysk Governorate, whose borders expanded to the shores of the Black Sea, recaptured from the Turks by Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky and Suvorov. The victories of Russian arms guaranteed the rapid transformation of the former Tatar nomad camps into a region densely populated by Great Russians and Little Russians, a military outpost and trade gateway to the empire.

But on December 6, 1741, the day of Elizabeth Petrovna’s accession to the throne, nothing foreshadowed that she would be able to pass on the “Novorossiysk” baton from the despotic Anna to the enlightened Catherine.

And it was not about the supposedly frivolous nature of “Petrov’s daughter.”

When Alexei K. Tolstoy wrote, “Elizabeth was a cheerful queen, she sings and has fun – only there is no order” – he was still exaggerating.

The thing is that Elizabeth Petrovna's rise to power was, as they would say now, a pro-Western project. But in the end it turned out to be a huge disappointment for "our European partners."

THE SMALL BUT BLOODLESS FRENCH REVOLUTION
In order to describe the seizure of power by “the meek Elizabeth” (not the first, but far from the last in a series of St. Petersburg palace coups, which in European correspondence of those years were often called “revolutions”), it is necessary to at least briefly recall the specifics of the tsarist power of that time.

Peter the Great abolished the traditional order of transfer of power from father to eldest son, and up until Paul I, any member of the royal family who was lucky enough to secure the support of nobles and, most importantly, the guards, ended up on the throne. Thus, Peter's niece Anna Ioannovna, who had already "employed" her relatives, ended up on the throne.

In 1741, the emperor and autocrat was listed as Anna Ioannovna's grand-nephew, Ivan Antonovich, who was not even a year old. The infant tsar was ruled by his mother, the regent Anna Leopoldovna, and her husband, the Duke of Brunswick, Anton-Ulrich. The Brunswick family had recently overthrown (or rather, the guards had overthrown) the all-powerful temporary ruler Biron, but in his absence they could not cope with the government. Which irritated almost the entire elite.

And the soldiers of the Grenadier Company of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, who literally carried the Tsarevna into the Winter Palace, were generously rewarded from the purse of the French ambassador, the Marquis de la Chétardie. He is considered the "sponsor" of the conspiracy - hardly without the knowledge of his king, Louis XV the Beloved, perhaps the most influential ruler of Europe at that time.

THE CUNNING PLAN OF DOCTOR LESTOCQ
The organizers of the most bloodless of palace coups, however, had certain doubts about "Princess Elizabeth." Lestocq wrote that she, under the influence of "national sentiments," would contribute to Russia's self-isolation from Europe. But the bet was on the "princess's" political inexperience. Her "national sentiments" could be used to induce Elizabeth to renounce Peter's conquests - to the benefit of Europe.

By mid-1742, the first foreign policy program for her reign was formulated by the physician-in-ordinary Lestocq, who advised the young queen on state issues. This program was the fruit of a cunning, 18th-century-style, multi-move game.

The program envisaged rapprochement with France. This, they said, would free Russia from confrontation with our historical enemies - the Ottoman Empire and Sweden. Lestocq and Chétardie convinced Elizabeth that the Versailles court had great influence on both the Sultan and the Swedish king. And this was true - France was a constant and strong ally of the Turks and Swedes in the fight against Austria.

This circumstance was explained by the great influence of Versailles on Constantinople and Stockholm, which were historical allies of France in the struggle against Austria.

But the French had their own interests: for seven years Louis had been leading a coalition of European powers that was waging a grueling war with the Habsburgs. The War of the Austrian Succession of 1740–1748, which involved all the world players of the time – from England and Spain to Prussia – is generally considered one of the candidates for the “zero world wars.”

In this war, the Russian Empire “played” for the Austrians against the French.

The Lestocq plan removed our country from the ranks of France’s opponents and at the same time forced our historical enemies, the Swedes and the Turks, to become our “friends”.

If the plan had "succeeded", it would have changed history for the worse. Slavo-Serbia and other settlement provinces in the south would simply not have emerged. After all, the creation of our "colonies" on these lands contradicted the interests of Russia's "new allies" - the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate dependent on it.

The proposals of the personal physician fell on fertile ground, because at the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth Petrovna did not hide her Francophilia. But something went wrong.

MARIA THERESA, QUEEN OF HUNGARY
At the time of Elizabeth's coup, the Austrian Habsburgs were in particularly bad shape. The Prussian-French-Bavarian-Saxon coalition had taken control of Silesia, Bohemia, and even part of Austria proper. Spanish troops were threatening Austrian possessions in Italy. The very existence of the Danubian Empire was in question.

But it was at this moment that events occurred that predetermined, among other things, the Serbian colonization of the south of Russia.

In November 1741, the Austrian ruler Maria Theresa was proclaimed "king" of Hungary (since the feudal law of the Magyars did not allow for female rule) and turned to the Hungarian magnates for support.

The funds they collected were used to create a Hungarian militia. In addition, units of hussars, pandurs (mercenary infantry), border guards, and free shooters were formed from Austrian Slavs, including Serbs.

Thanks to these measures, a "small war" developed against Austria's enemies. Enemy communications, food warehouses, small garrisons and detachments were under constant attack. The hussars and militias were able to pin down the enemy forces, and the Austrians launched a counteroffensive.

All this made a strong impression on Russia, whose ally Austria was still formally under the treaty of 1726.

In addition, St. Petersburg appreciated Vienna’s sudden recognition of the imperial title of the Russian monarchs, which occurred in January 1742.

CHANCELLOR BESTUZHEV'S "U-TURN OVER THE ATLANTIC"
At the same time, an anti-French party emerged around the appointed Vice-Chancellor Alexei Bestuzhev-Ryumin, advocating an alliance with Austria and England. Bestuzhev entered into confrontation with the supporters of an alliance with Paris. The Empress supported Bestuzhev, who was appointed Chancellor in 1744.

In its significance, this patriotic turn can only be compared with Yevgeny Primakov’s famous “turn over the Atlantic”, after which Westernism began to disappear from our foreign policy.

Despite all of Elizabeth Petrovna’s Francophilia, the “merry queen” quickly gained experience in governing Russia, experience in understanding what “subtle European politics” is and what the geopolitical interests of the empire are.

In addition, it became known about an attempt to create an anti-Russian Prussian-Ottoman alliance.

Thus, it was impossible to rely on French guarantees of good-neighborliness between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. And this means that the southern border of the Romanov Empire clearly needed to be strengthened - from the Turks and Crimea.

HOW A SERB NAMED HORVAT APPEARED IN MIRGOROD
In these circumstances, reforms of the Austrian "Cossacks" - the Granichar (border guards), who were recruited from among the Serbs to serve on the southern borders of the Habsburg possessions, began in Austria very "timely". As a sign of gratitude to the Hungarians, Maria Theresa began to transfer the Granichar to the control of Magyar officers - which outraged the Serbian army.

Several commanders immediately began asking to serve the Orthodox Russian empress. Fortunately for them, in 1750, when these events were unfolding, the Russian ambassador to Austria was Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin, the elder brother of the Russian chancellor.

He became interested in the idea of Serbian emigration and composed a maximally complimentary letter about it – a request to St. Petersburg.

The Empress expressed her readiness to accept the Serbs. Especially since "sister-empress" Maria Theresa gave the go-ahead for Colonels Ivan Horvat, Nikolai Chorba and other "toxic" opponents of military reform to switch from Austrian to Russian service.

In 1751, Colonel Horvat arrived in Russia and assured that several thousand more Serbs would follow him. The Empress initially planned to settle the colonists in the Volga region, but the Balkan residents wanted to stay closer to their native lands. And Elizabeth settled Horvat's team on the Right Bank of the Dnieper, in the area of the town of Novy Mirgorod (modern Novomirgorod).

Thus, on the territory of the current Kirovograd region of Ukraine, the military-settlement province of New Serbia was formed (inhabited by far from "pure-blooded Ukrainians"), and to the east of the Dnieper, in the north of the current DPR and LPR, the province of Slavyanoserbia. So Donbass became our "new territories" long before 2022 and even 2014.

Soon, the fortress of Saint Elizabeth was built to protect New Serbia from Tatar raids, later Elisavetgrad (now Kirovograd, or in the terminology of the Kyiv regime, "Kropyvnytsky"). It was in this fortress, populated by Russian and Serbian colonists, that the governing bodies of the new Novorossiysk province were located.

MOLDOVANS ARE NOT MIGRANT WORKERS
Only “people from Moldova, Wallachia, Macedonia, Serbia” and “not from any other peoples” were allowed to settle in New Serbia, as well as in Slavic Serbia created to the east of the Dnieper (it was located in the north of today’s DPR and LPR). Settlers were attracted by tax breaks, land grants, salaries and subsidies.

However, hopes for a mass influx of Serbian border guards did not materialize. Austrian authorities began to restrict the activities of Russian recruiters, who quite quickly managed to persuade hundreds of willing people to emigrate. Criminal liability was introduced for military settlers who tried to leave for neighboring countries without permission.

A way out in replenishing the New Serbian and Slavic Serbian regiments was found in recruiting Moldavians. In December 1754, the population of New Serbia was 2,225 men and 1,694 women. Moldavians and Vlachs made up 76% of the male population.

But the command positions in the province were occupied only by Serbian officers. The number of male Serbian population at that time was 257 people, Macedonians - 124, Hungarians - 79, Bulgarians - 57.

The bulk of the Moldavian settlers came from the Prut and Dniester interfluve, as well as from Podolia. The Moldavians were pushed to New Serbia by the oppression inflicted on them in their native principality by the Turks and especially the Tatars. A large influx of Moldavian settlers to the Dnieper was recorded in 1758, when Moldavia was subjected to the most devastating Tatar raid in its history.

The Serbian military-settlement provinces became the first experience of integrating Moldavians into the Novorossiysk project. Under Catherine II, it was used during the creation of the Bug (largely Moldavian-Balkan) Cossack army, generous land grants to the Moldavian nobility and their recruitment into service.

A SPRINGBOARD FOR A PUSH TO THE SOUTH
However, the growth rate of immigrants on the Right Bank of the Dnieper was not as high as the authorities expected. As of 1757, 5,482 immigrants (both sexes) lived here, and as of 1761, 11,179.

The Novoslobodsky Cossack Regiment, located near New Serbia, grew significantly faster. But the Cossacks settled on the border of the Wild Field for free, while the "regular" military-settlement provinces consumed significant resources.

The last episode in the organized migration of Serbs from the Habsburg Empire was 1758. Then a large group of 800 settlers came from the Balkans. When recruited, they introduced themselves as Montenegrins (Venetian subjects with extensive experience in wars with the Turks), but in Russia most of them admitted that they were Serbian "philistines", that is, peaceful residents from the Austrian possessions. Most of them had no military experience.

After the story with the false Montenegrins, the government of Elizabeth Petrovna closed down the very expensive project of resettling foreigners. Especially since there were no free funds in the treasury in the conditions of the tense Seven Years' War.

Seriously strengthening the southern borderland with Serbian regiments in the mid-18th century was not possible, as was demonstrated by the events of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774, which was waged by the third strong woman on the Russian throne - Catherine the Great. Nevertheless, New Serbia played an important political role, limiting the contacts of the Zaporizhian Sich with Poland, which was hostile to us.

It is symbolic that the restless and difficult to control Sich was eventually dispersed by the Russian troops of General-in-Chief Peter Tekeli, a Serb who had switched from Austrian to Russian service.

The demographic echo of the existence of New Serbia and Slavoserbia continued to be felt until recently. According to the last All-Ukrainian population census of 2001, the Kirovograd and Donetsk regions were characterized by some of the most significant Moldavian communities (8.2 and 7.3 thousand people, respectively). It is difficult to explain their formation in the Dnieper region and on the Seversky Donets by anything other than the resettlement policy of Elizabeth Petrovna.

And most importantly, during the joyful reign of Elizabeth, the empire, with the help of military and diplomatic force, steadily advanced to the south. In order to later “grow” with the fertile lands of the Black Sea region – which now have to be returned with a fight.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Briefly on Syria. 01.12.2024

2024-12-02

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
[ColonelCassad] 1. The Syrian army was able to hold the capital of Hama province and move on to stabilization measures in Hama province and in the Al-Ghab valley. Several cities and villages have been liberated. The threat of losing Hama has been temporarily removed.

2. On the other hand, a hole in the front to the southeast of Aleppo remains. After capturing Kuweiris and Al-Safir, the militants continued their offensive to the southeast and captured Khanasser. The situation there is out of control.

3. The militants and the Turks are also clearing out the Kurds in Tal Rifaat. The city has effectively fallen, as has the Menaj airbase. The Kurds in the Sheikh Maksoud area have been given an ultimatum - get out to Rojava or else things will be bad.

Dammit. Not surprising — the Kurds have been a thorn in President Erdogan’s side since the Arab Spring started, and this is clearly a Turkish operation — but even so.

4. Iranian proxies

…meaning Hezbollah or meaning various Shiite paramilitaries with poor to fair military skills? It will be interesting either way… UPDATE: we have tweets reporting that columns of Popular Mobilization Forces — Iran commanded Shiite Iraqi paramilitaries — headed toward Syria are being strafed by American Warthogs. Very interesting times…

have left for the front, large columns are coming from Iraq. But it will take them time to reach the front line. Iraq is strengthening its border with Syria.

5. The Russian Aerospace Forces are currently operating very effectively, inflicting heavy losses by striking columns and concentrations of enemy manpower. But air strikes alone cannot stop the enemy's advance.

6. Lieutenant General Kisel has left the post of commander of the Russian group in Syria. His place has presumably been taken by Colonel General Chaiko.

7. In addition to Russia and Iran, Egypt, Iraq, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have spoken out in support of Syria.

Nobody likes President Erdogan even though nobody trusts Iran.

The head of the Iranian Foreign Ministry arrived in Damascus today. The issue of deploying Iranian proxies in Syria was discussed.

8. In the southern regions of Syria, it has so far been possible to contain the unrest of militants in Daraa. But with further failures at the front, there may be a flare-up there too.

9. Assad is now in Syria. Rumors of a coup d'etat are fabrications. As are the statements that Assad is hiding in Russia.

All that might even be true.

10. In general, the crisis continues to develop and it is too early to talk about its containment. The consequences of the catastrophic failure of the Syrian army near Aleppo are currently being collected. In fact, 1.5 provinces were surrendered in a few days. The reasons for this failure have yet to be determined.

They’re Arabs. They don’t trust their fellows to stand and fight, so they do not stand and fight.

SDF says working to evacuate its people from Tal Rifaat
[Rudaw] The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Monday said it is working with "relevant parties" in Syria to safely evacuate the people of the strategic town of Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province to northeast Syria (Rojava) amid intense attacks by Ottoman Turkish-backed krazed killers.

"Our forces have bravely defended our people in Aleppo, Tal Rifaat, and the Shahba region. We are coordinating with all relevant parties in Syria to ensure the safety of our people and facilitate their evacuation from Tal Rifaat and Shahba to our secure regions in northeastern Syria," said a statement from Mazloum Abdi, commander-in-chief of the SDF.

While the Kurdish-led force is still in control of the Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods in Aleppo city, its attempts to establish a corridor connecting Rojava with Aleppo and Tal Rifaat were "disrupted" by Ottoman Turkish-backed krazed killers, according to Abdi.

"Our forces face intense attacks from multiple fronts," he stressed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based war monitor, reported on Saturday that Ottoman Turkish-backed ~~bandidos~~ forces of Evil took control of Tal Rifaat and nearby villages from the SDF.

As a coalition of rebel forces led by the jihadist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else

Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else

...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
(HTS) marched on Aleppo and sent regime soldiers fleeing, the SDF took control of strategic locations in eastern Aleppo and formed a corridor to the city from the Euphrates River, briefly capturing key sites such as Aleppo International Airport.

It later tactically withdrew from many of the sites, while maintaining hold over Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyeh, both long held by the People’s Protection Units (YPG) - the SDF’s backbone.

On Sunday, the HTS-led opposition government in Idlib called on the SDF to withdraw from Aleppo towards northeast Syria, promising to take care of civilians in the Kurdish-held neighborhoods.

But SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami rejected rumors that the Kurdish force had withdrawn from the neighborhoods.

Rojava’s ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) claimed in a statement on X that the Kurdish-held Shahba area in northern Aleppo is "witnessing massacres" by ~~The Sick Man of Europe~~ Turkey
...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor...
-backed krazed killers.

The SDF on Sunday urged the people in Rojava to "heed the call" for a general mobilization declared hours prior by the Kurdish-led administration.

Turkey, which backs various Syrian rebel groups, has threatened in the past to carry out an offensive to remove Kurdish fighters from Tal Rifaat. It said it is closely following the situation and urged the clashing parties not to cause "larger instabilities."

Ankara also accused Kurdish forces in Tal Rifaat and nearby Manbij of "trying to take advantage of the current state of instability.

Fear looms as half a million Kurds, Yazidis trapped in northern Aleppo
Iso
[Rudaw] Fear grows over the fate of approximately 500,000 Kurds and 5,000 Yazidis trapped in the Kurdish neighborhoods of Aleppo province, activists warned on Monday, as Kurdish forces remain under siege in the conflict-stricken province.

“There is now a great fear regarding the Kurdish residents of Sheikh Maqsoud, Ashrafiyeh in Aleppo, and the Shahba region. There are concerns that large-scale retaliation might be carried out against the Kurdish civilians in the area,” Ali Iso, the director of Ezdina, a Germany-based Yazidi rights organization, told Rudaw.

“There is another fear for the Yazidi Kurds, as there are Kurds on one side and Yazidis on the other. According to our information, the fate of a 63-year-old Yazidi civilian is unknown,” he added.

Media affiliated with the Kurdish-led Rojava administration on Sunday reported fierce clashes between the SDF and Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in northern Aleppo province, near the Kurdish-held town of Tal Rifaat near Afrin and Shahba.

Also on Sunday, the Idlib-based Syrian opposition government called on the Kurdish forces in Aleppo to withdraw from the city towards northeast Syria, promising to take care of the Kurdish civilians in the Kurdish neighborhoods.

Link

Afghanistan

Religious Affairs Ministry to Build Large-Capacity Madrasas Across Country

2024-11-25

[ToloNews] The Islamic Emirate plans to build 34 jihadi schools across the 34 provinces of the country, each with a capacity of over a thousand students.

Azizur Rahman Mansoor, Deputy Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs, stated during the inauguration ceremony of three mosques in Jawzjan that in addition to these schools, the construction of three religious schools in every district is also planned.

Mansoor elaborated that each district will have two day schools and one boarding school as part of this initiative.

Azizur Rahman Mansoor said: "Each province will have a large jihadi school—34 schools across the 34 provinces—and in the same way, three schools in every district: two day schools and one with boarding facilities, so that our inner spirit is revitalized, and our faith is strengthened."

Meanwhile,
...back at the wrecked scow, Agent 49 felt gingerly for his head. It was still there. He had been hoping differently...
local officials in Jawzjan stated that three mosques in this province have been constructed with a total budget of over 27 million Afghanis provided by the Islamic Emirate.

According to them, the mosque in Gardan village can accommodate 2,000 worshippers at a time, the mosque in Arab Khana village 200 worshippers, and the mosque in Dasht-e-Laili 150 worshippers.

"The mental and intellectual upbringing of our children and learning religious and Islamic teachings should begin from the mosque—they should learn from the mosque," said Gul Haidar Shafaq, the governor of Jawzjan.

According to officials from the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs, another mosque in Sar-e-Pul

...a city and eponymous province in northern Afghanistan, population about 500,000. Demographically it is majority Tadjik and Uzbek. There are small Pashtun, Arab, and Hazara communities, of which the Hazaras mostly don't bother anyone...
province, which accommodates 300 worshippers, has been completed at the cost of 4.192 million Afghanis and has been handed over for public use.

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Fiasco at Pig Way. How the attack on Kursk 'Ukraines' failed

2024-10-17

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Yaroslav Karpikov

[REGNUM] The invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the Kursk region has obviously not only failed to achieve its goals, but the occupiers are rapidly losing the positions they managed to secure in August-September. If the situation continues to develop at the current rate, Kiev's bloody adventure will soon come to an inglorious end. It seems that the historical experience of the Ukrainians teaches nothing, because this is not the first failure of their military adventure near Kursk.

A similar adventure, the scene for which became the same lands of the Kursk border, was the attack of the Cossacks of the first Little Russian hetman-traitor Ivan Vyhovsky 350 years ago.

The history of the Pereyaslav Rada of 1654 is well known in Russia since school years, and was also known in Ukraine (before history textbooks were rewritten in the key needed by the independent state ). Less well known is what happened after Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Zaporozhian Host took the oath of allegiance to the Russian Tsar.

Khmelnitsky died already in 1657. And if this commander and statesman played a positive role for the general Russian history (with all the complexity of the personality of Bohdan Mikhailovich), then the situation was completely different with his successors, who led such an inconstant and “shaky” mass of people as the Cossacks.

MR. VYHOVSKY'S EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
After Khmelnytsky's death, power was taken over by the former general clerk of the Zaporozhian Host, Ivan Vyhovsky. The Hetman's mace fell into his hands thanks to intrigues combined with repressions, which vividly resembles the modern Ukrainian "politicum".

According to Bohdan's will, the young son Yuri Khmelnitsky was to become the new head of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, with Vyhovsky acting as a sort of regent. But in the end, Yuri Bohdanovich was sent to study at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, and the general clerk seized the reins of government.

He was supported by a part of the "significant" Zaporozhians - the Cossack elders and the Orthodox gentry who joined them, who believed that it was better to receive back the privileges from the Polish king Jan Casimir than to continue to serve - albeit a co-religionist - the Russian tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The Zaporozhian golytba (golutvenny Cossacks) and part of the elders were faithful to the oaths of the Pereyaslav Rada.

Vyhovsky's downside was his "murky" biography.

He was not a natural Zaporozhian, but a nobleman from the present-day Zhitomir region, served in the "kvartsiany", that is, regular army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the battle of the Poles with Khmelnitsky's Cossacks (and the Crimean Tatars, with whom Bohdan was in a temporary alliance) at Zhovti Vody, he was captured, tried to escape and was caught by the Crimeans. It is known that Khmelnitsky bought the prisoner from Khan Islam Giray for a horse.

In gratitude, Vyhovsky swore an oath to Khmelnytsky. The nobleman, who graduated from the Mohyla Academy, was a valuable acquisition - thanks to his diplomatic skills, Khmelnytsky established contacts with the Transylvanian prince and the court of the Turkish sultan. It is not surprising that, by the will of Hetman Khmelnytsky, Vyhovsky headed the General Chancellery of the Zaporozhian Host.

But they did not believe the general clerk "bought for a horse". The Russian historian Sergei Solovyov quoted the words of the Cossack envoys to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich: "We do not want Vyhovsky as a hetman at all and do not trust him in anything... Bogdan gave him life and made him a clerk; but by his nature, he does not want any good for the Army, and his wife is a noblewoman from a noble house."

In the struggle for power, Vyhovsky showed a tough character. Pereyaslav Cossack Colonel Timofey Tsetsyura wrote that he "ordered to flog many colonels who did not want to listen, and shot and hanged others, and gave many Cossacks with their wives and children to the Crimea as Tatars." Needless to say, "Euro-oriented" Ukrainian politicians have always known a thing or two about repressions and reprisals.

Vyhovsky began "European integration" immediately after seizing power. In early September 1658, in the city of Gadyach, Vyhovsky signed an agreement with the Poles. The "Gadyach Articles" promised the hetman's lands the status of a third full member of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - along with the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a "Russian Principality" was to appear. The Cossacks were promised the liquidation of the Brest Church Union.

But the promises remained on paper - Warsaw explained that the Sejm ratified the "articles", but in a greatly reduced form. In reality, the Hetmanate, with a minimum of benefits, received a maximum of problems, finding itself - like today's Ukraine - in the position of the West's battering ram against Russia.

True, Vyhovsky, unlike current figures, looked at things more realistically and, not counting on help from Jan Casimir, just in case swore allegiance to the Crimean Khan Mehmed Giray in the expectation of military assistance.

MATTRESS OF MILITARY SIGNIFICANCE
After the treaty with the Poles in Gadyach, the hetman, together with the previously invited Tatars, conceived an act of intimidation against the Russian state: an attack on the border lands to the west of the defensive structure - the Belgorod line. The "traitor Ivashka Vyhovsky" chose the Kamennoye fortress as the place of the first attack.

This town (now the village of Kamennoye in the Sumy region, about 90 km from the border with the Kursk region) can be compared in its location to today's Sudzha - a border town without great strategic importance, chosen for a show of force. But behind the fortress there were critically important and vulnerable roads - Bakayev Shlyakh and Svinoy Shlyakh, along which the Crimean Tatars could break through.

The city of Kamennoye was built in the summer of 1651 through the efforts of the governor Fyodor Arsenyev, who erected Ostrogozhsk the following year (now a city in the Voronezh region).

The fort in Kamennoye was built from oak forest and consisted of eight towers - six blind and two passage towers. The main tower - "Moskovskaya" - was about 20 sazhens (slightly less than 43 meters) high. The total length of the fort wall was about 600 meters. The city's artillery consisted of one iron messenger pishchal - a long-barreled aimed gun, three regimental copper pishchals, three iron regimental pishchals (all on mounts). The defenders were armed with 11 iron zatinny pishchals - heavy fortress muzzle-loading guns, as well as one iron mattress.

At that time, a mattress was the name given to a primitive firearm, a tube 40–130 cm long, welded at one end and with a conical socket at the muzzle.

The beginning of the invasion. "And the churches of God and the bread he burned..."

We can judge the events under the walls of Kamenny from the letters of the city governor Prokofiy Karpov, who had been in charge of the newly built fortress since 1658, which have been preserved in the archives. In addition, the chief of the Discharge Order, Prince Grigory Romodanovsky, reported to Moscow about what was happening.

The first raids of the "Cherkasy" - Vyhovsky's Cossacks on Kamennoye began on August 18, 1658, when they drove away "horses and all kinds of animals" and also killed a boyar's son (as one of the classes of service people was called) and a Cossack in Russian service.

On September 10, 1658, large forces of Cherkass and Tatars appeared near Kamennoye, who “… laid siege and took away the entire settlement and became camps” — that is, they captured the suburbs and set up camp.

In a report that reached Moscow only on November 10, Governor Karpov wrote: Vygov “burned the Church of God, and the settlement, and the threshing floors, the grain and the mills, destroyed everything down to the foundations, not a single house remained.”

Around the city, the Cossacks built trenches - positions for cannons. On Vyhovsky's orders, the cannons fired for "three days." One of the targets of the shelling was "God's Cathedral Church," which brings to mind the fate of the temple in Sudzha.

Vyhovsky "broke the city and killed many of your Sovereign's people with cannons," wrote Karpov. On August 19, there was a "cruel attack" - Cossacks and Tatars tried to break through the Moscow Gate and dug tunnels under the tower. But, "by the grace of God," the enemy's attack was repelled, many Cherkassy colonels and Tatar murzas were beaten "and the city was defended."

Along with the siege of Kamenny, the Tatars and Cherkassy of Vyhovsky decided to expand the zone of military operations and, having crossed the Psel River (flowing through Sudzha and Sumy), they besieged the royal fortress of Lebedin (now a city in the Sumy region) in the northeast.

The fighting here lasted from September 10 to 19. The trading post was burned, but the Russian city was never taken - this can be found out from the message sent by the Lebedinsky voivode Kirill Mishkov.

SEVEN REGIMENTS CAN'T COPE. MYSTERIOUS NEGOTIATIONS
The Cherkasy captured under torture near Akhtyrka informed about Vyhovsky's forces participating in the attack on the Russian borderland. The voivode of the Russian fortress of Akhtyrka (now a city in the Sumy region) Maksim Telegin sent two captured Cossacks of the Mirgorod regiment, Ivashka Yunchenko and Danilka Samoilov, to the voivode Romodanovsky in Belgorod.

The Mirgorodians showed that the hetman who had defected to the Polish side brought seven regiments: Chigirinsky, Cherkassky, Prilutsky, Nezhinsky, Mirgorodsky, Lubensky and Kanevsky. Crimean Tatars arrived to help the invasion forces under the command of Karach-bey Murza, a well-known organizer of raids on the "southern Ukraines" of Russia.

The Tatars alone, according to the captives, had 40 thousand sabres. The figure is clearly exaggerated. But if we consider that all the invasion forces "in the Ukraine" consisted of several tens of thousands of Cherkassians and Tatars, this can be compared with the current grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region (30 thousand at the beginning of October, according to The Washington Post).

After unsuccessful assaults on several fortresses, the enemy's morale began to decline. During interrogation in Belgorod, prisoners Yunchenko and Samoilov reported that the Poltava Regiment had "seceded" from Vyhovsky. The residents and Cossacks of the Poltava Regiment's cities who remained loyal to their oath to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich locked themselves in their cities and disobeyed the traitor hetman.

On the other hand, the situation of the Kamennoye garrison was difficult - three dozen of the 200 defenders died. The city fought back, but the fighters were exhausted, there was a problem with food, and famine began.

Nevertheless, in view of the failures, Vyhovsky abandoned the siege of Kamennoye, and on September 22 ordered the preparation of a crossing over the Psel River in order to go to other tsarist cities. In the testimony of the captured "Vyhovskys" there is an interesting detail that is not in the reports of the governor Karpov. Before lifting the siege, the hetman had a personal meeting with the governor of Kamennoye and a local priest: "The Kamenovsky governor and the priest went from the city to the hetman's camp and spent the night with him, the hetman. And on September 23, the hetman... let the governor and the priest go to the city."

It is unknown what the negotiations were about. Perhaps about some guarantees for Vyhovsky in case his “operation” fails and he is captured by the Russians?

VYHOVSKY AT THE WALLS OF OLESHNYA. "THERE WAS A BATTLE UNTIL NIGHT..."
Be that as it may, on September 23 the siege of Kamenny was lifted, and Hetman Vyhovsky with all his forces headed across the Psel River towards the next Russian city - Oleshnya.

The city of Oleshnya (now a village in the Akhtyrsky district of the Sumy region) stood on the western edge of the Belgorod line, on a plain near the river of the same name. During the Time of Troubles, it was captured by the Poles, but the Russian state managed to recapture the city shortly before the events described. Oleshnya, following Kamenny, had to withstand the onslaught of Vyhovsky's army.

According to the archives, the city's artillery consisted of a one-and-a-half copper cannon, three copper cannons on mounts, two iron arquebuses without mounts (sent from Tula gunsmiths). The Ostrog in Oleshny was smaller than in Kamennoye - a wall with a total length of less than 400 meters, four corner towers and one roadway gate about three meters wide.

It was in 1658 that the newly appointed governor Alexei Bovykin took over the estate. Even before the arrival of Hetman Vyhovsky near Oleshnya, the garrison was reinforced by a company of dragoons numbering 60 men with captain Ivan Golenskin sent from Belgorod by Prince Romodanovsky.

Vyhovsky's troops and the Tatars approached Oleshnya on September 25 "at the seventh hour of the day." In advance, even before the enemy arrived, the governor Bovykin ordered the church books and icons to be transferred from the Cathedral Church of the Transfiguration, which was in the settlement, to the prison.

“There was… a battle until nightfall,” the inhabitants of the settlement became the first victims of the Tatars and Cherkassians, the governor “is under siege,” communication with the city is broken, Romodanovsky reported.

But Bovykin not only sat under siege, but also made a successful sortie from the prison. Later, the Oleshansky voivode reported that during the siege, more than 20 poods of "potion" (gunpowder) were spent (out of 90 poods of the total arsenal), 100 cannonballs from large and small cannons.

The city was defended by a little over three hundred people. Among the defenders were both service children of the boyars from the Great Russians (117 people plus 60 of their children and relatives who "came in time" for service) and 117 Cherkassian Cossacks, loyal to the oath to the Russian Tsar. Judging by the same document, only three Cherkassians fled to the enemy - ironically, three Fedors: Fedka Savostyanov, Fedko Savchenko and Fedko Borovik.

Hetman Vyhovsky stood for three days at the walls of Oleshnya, burned the settlement, greatly ravaged the county and on September 28 lifted the siege, leaving for Little Rus'. The hetman began to have problems in the rear, and Prince Romodanovsky's army set out from Belgorod to clear the captured lands and help the besieged cities.

LESSONS OF RUIN
The rebellious Cossacks were driven back from the Kursk and Sloboda "Ukraines", which, however, did not mark the end of the special operation against Vyhovsky. It was just an episode in another clash between Russia and the "outpost of the West" Poland - the war of 1654-67. The Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, and the Swedish Kingdom all tried to turn the southern Russian lands into their sphere of interests, and local Cossack leaders sought an alliance with them and fought with each other. The result was an era that went down in the history of Little Russia under the eloquent name of "Ruin".

These events, as well as Vyhovsky's further adventures, require a separate story. Let us note only that the Russian state won the protracted and difficult war, but as a result of this victory it was able to secure only Kyiv and the left bank of the Dnieper. The right bank, where the main events of the Khmelnitsky uprising unfolded, remained under Poland for another hundred and fifty years.

Lessons were also learned from Vyhovsky's raid on the Russian borderland.

On the one hand, the attacks on Kamennoye, Oleshnya and other cities came as a surprise to the tsarist government. The unprotected districts and settlements were devastated by the people of the "Polish Crown Hetman" and the Tatars. Only a month after the attack, the governor Romodanovsky was able to gather sufficient forces of the Belgorod Discharge Regiment and set out to "cleanse" the districts of the invaders.

On the other hand, the fortress cities were able to hold out and withstand the siege thanks to well-built forts and other fortifications. This helped them hold out until the main forces arrived. The result of Vyhovsky's "demonstrative" campaign was an inglorious retreat - similar to what can now be seen in the Kursk borderland.

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Home Front: WoT

Yazidis build new Shingal in America's Midwest

2024-09-29

Long. But happy human interest.

[Rudaw] Shahab Bashar spends hours every day working on a 12-acre farm in Lincoln, Nebraska where he improves his English and plants the vegetables that he grew up eating in his hometown of Shingal. He is one of thousands of Yazidis who are calling the American city home. They are establishing a new Yazidi heartland in the heart of middle America.

Bashar had to flee his Shingal home in northwestern Iraq a decade ago in the face of the Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) assault. Despite the eventual liberation of the district, he could not see a stable future there and chose Lincoln as a more fertile land to plant the seed of hope.

He used to work as a translator for the United States army and then as a teacher before the brutal ISIS attack in 2014.

"Before ISIS came, I had a stable life, working at a laboratory and teaching at a school close to my home," Bashar reminisced with deep sorrow in his voice. "We enjoyed our lives."

Like many others fleeing the radical group, he spent a week on top of the nearby Mount Shingal, suffering under the intense August sun with limited food and water and the constant fear of ISIS. He then lived in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Sulaimani province until returning to Shingal in 2016.

Bashar tried to resume his life as a school teacher. He received funds from various non-governmental organizations to run the school and tried to start a new life in his hometown.

"I opened the school and started from scratch," Bashar recounted.

But Shingal was not the same. The infrastructure was in ruins, various gangs were moving in, and most of the Yazidi population had not returned. Restoring the normality that he knew before ISIS was inconceivable.

ISIS committed genocide in Shingal. The terror group kidnapped 6,417 women and kiddies, forcing a large number of them into sexual slavery and labor. So far, 3,581 have been rescued, Hussein Qaidi, head of the Office for Rescuing Abducted Yazidis, which is affiliated with the Kurdistan Region Presidency, told Rudaw in August.

According to unofficial figures from Qaidi, between 120,000 and 130,000 Yazidis have left Iraq since ISIS swept through Shingal. Iraq has failed to provide the community with protection and prosperity and a huge number of Yazidis no longer consider the country home.

Bashar had been reluctant to make such a life-changing move, but finally decided that his best chance of creating a home again lay outside of the country.

The journey in pursuit of a better life was somewhat easier for those who had worked with the US army during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and for those sponsored by European countries, but many Yazidis had to take irregular routes, putting their fate at the mercy of the waves of the sea and snow-covered forests in search for a better life.

Lincoln, Nebraska, already home to thousands of Yazidis, became the favorite choice for those who used to work for the American army and were fleeing ISIS atrocities. Bashar was one of them.

He arrived in Lincoln along with his wife and daughter in 2017. The couple had two more daughters born in the US. In 2018, he joined Community Crops, a non-profit organization that supports local agriculture. He began working as a translator but soon found an unexpected love for farming. Today, he is responsible for 12 acres of farmland, in addition to providing translation services for Yazidi farmers.

"When I first came here, it was really difficult as I could not speak good English and I had to work at a factory for three to four months and also worked at markets," Bashar said, stating that the Yazidi Cultural Center helped him improve his English and join Community Crops.

"I joined this job to improve my English. Then I started to love nature and soil and wanted to help my community to find the right seeds of vegetables we could not find in USA markets," he told Rudaw English.

In addition to wanting to grow the familiar vegetables that are part of the northern Iraqi diet, Bashar wished that Nebraska’s plains had mountains like Shingal.

Bashar’s success story has been widely featured in US media. He has given many interviews about the tragedy he witnessed in Shingal and the start of a new life in Lincoln.

"We are a small Shingal here. We are building it and we have our freedom to talk and work and feel we are not second class, we feel we are home," he said.

Lincoln is home to the largest community of Yazidis in the US, numbering about 3,500, according to unofficial figures Rudaw English obtained from the Yazidi Cultural Center - the most prominent Yazidi center helping im~~migrants~~ colonists start new lives in the US and integrate into the American community. The center is affiliated with the non-profit organization Yazda.

Ahmed Mastto, the director of the center, told Rudaw English that they offer Yazidis translation services and help them find jobs. The American government has been financially supporting the center since its establishment in 2017.

Bashar also works as a translator at the center.

The first Yazidi family is believed to have moved to the city in the late nineties. They faced many challenges, primarily when learning English and finding jobs. Those who fled ISIS atrocities struggled with the additional challenge of overcoming the trauma they experienced.

Mastto was in the town of Khanasor, on the north side of Mount Shingal, when ISIS attacked. He was displaced to a camp in Duhok’s Zakho district before moving to the US along with his wife and four children in 2016. Working as a translator for the US army in 2004 paved his path of immigration to Nebraska.

His aunt and her family were kidnapped by ISIS. She was able to escape, but her husband and their son remain missing.

Asked why he chose to live in Lincoln, Mastto replied, "because the largest Yazidi community is here and we practice our religion freely and we do whatever we did back in Shingal."

He said Yazidis are also treated with a lot of respect by the local community.

Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird told Rudaw English that they are "proud" to host the largest Yazidi community in the US.

"In Lincoln, Nebraska, we are proud to be home to the largest community of Yazidi refugees in the United States. Through years of collaborative efforts by local organizations and individuals, we have created strategies to ensure that refugees are fully included in our community's economic, social, civic, and cultural life," she said.

"We believe that, by fostering a welcoming and inclusive community, we create new opportunities for everyone in our capital city," added the mayor.

She visited Bashar and other Yazidi farmers in 2021.

Community Crops has helped Yazidis wanting to farm.

"Our nonprofit program has worked with New American families from all over the world in our garden program for many years. Many Yazidi were gardeners with us. As they asked for more and more land and we learned more about their backgrounds, we realized this community had many experienced farmers that might want to create new farm businesses here in Nebraska. From this, the Yazidi Farmers Project was born," Megan McGuffey, Community Crops program coordinator, told Rudaw English.

Bashar has been working with them as a translator and interpreter since the early days of the project. It was through this program that he and his wife decided to become farmers.

Bashar has become "an integral part" of the organization, McGuffey said.

About ten Yazidis have participated in the Yazidi Farmers Project over several years.

Bashar said farmers from Shingal grow vegetables in large quantities, including several types of produce that are new to Lincoln markets such as varieties of pepper, eggplant, and cutting celery.

"We are trying to help farmers to sell their vegetables through Yazidi markets or Arab markets. We are building our relationship to sell to other American markets too," he said.

McGuffey said that although farming requires extremely hard work and marketing the products is a challenge, Yazidi farmers have "shown real resilience in pursuing their farm business dreams."

Some of the Yazidis, who used to farm on Mount Shingal before the ISIS attack, have transferred their experience to Lincoln.

"The knowledge and skill of the Yazidi farmers we work with is impressive. They are constantly experimenting to improve their farms and are always willing to learn new skills and ideas to improve their farm businesses," McGuffey said, adding that a "bright" future awaits them.

Murad Ismail, a prominent Yazidi activist, told Rudaw English that the United States is one of the most hospitable countries and that American people respect Yazidi faith and culture, "something we lacked in our environment back home."

He recently visited Bashar and other Yazidi farmers and was impressed by their work. He explained why most Yazidis prefer Lincoln to other American cities.

"The main reason people settled here is that when the first group of Yazidis came in the '90s, they were Yazidi Iraqis who became refugees in Syria. A group of them settled in Lincoln randomly by the resettlement agency; others were sent to other states, but the Lincoln group became a kind of attraction for them. Lincoln makes sense as it is a small town, easier to live in than big cities, and it's economically doing well too. When new Yazidis arrived after 2007, it was natural for them to come to Lincoln because a large community was already here," he stated.

He explained that preservation of the Yazidi culture and faith is one of the advantages of living where there is an existing community.

"There are weddings here every month, Yazidis have a cemetery where they bury their dead, and people come together all the time. In many ways, they have recreated the life they once had," said Ismail, who co-founded Yazda.

There are challenges as well, he noted, including how much Yazidis can integrate into American society and accept American norms.

Khalida Shamo was only a baby when ISIS attacked her home in Shingal. Her family fled and moved to Nebraska when she turned four.

Now 16, Shamo told Nebraska Public Media on the tenth anniversary of the genocide that she teaches her school peers about the massacre.

"It was really scary. Even though it didn’t impact me directly, it still did because it was my family... It’s hard hearing your grandma cry over the phone because she doesn’t want to leave the place that she grew up in," she said.

Her grandmother finally joined them in the US, but her grandfather chose to stay in Shingal.

Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US State Department, said on the tenth anniversary of the genocide on August 3 that the survivors "bear the painful scars" of that catastrophic day.

"We urge continued implementation of the Yezidi Survivors’ Law and full application of the security, reconstruction, and administrative provisions of the 2020 Sinjar Agreement, in consultation with the communities that call Sinjar home," he said in a statement.

Iraq’s parliament passed the Yazidi Survivors Bill in 2021, after it languished in the legislature for two years. It offers reparations to the survivors of ISIS, but implementation has been criticized as flawed.

"Implementation of the law will need to be focused comprehensively supporting & sustainably reintegrating survivors," Nadia Murad, one of the survivors of the genocide said in a post on X (then Twitter). She is a prominent Yazidi activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

The 2020 agreement Miller referred to was signed between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in a bid to normalize the situation in Shingal, especially its security. Both sides have accused the other of not implementing it.

The presence of several gangs, including ones linked to Baghdad and Erbil, has hindered efforts to restore life in the town, making many Yazidis sheltering in the Kurdistan Region reluctant to return to their homes, despite pressure from the Iraqi government.

Bashar still considers Shingal his home, but does not plan to return.

"I see Lincoln as my second home after Shingal," he said, adding that he prefers living in Lincoln. "I have a normal life now."

He hopes for better lives for his relatives who have chosen to remain in Shingal or have not yet had a chance to leave.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Munchausen's War: How Weak Diplomats Deprived Russia of Access to the Sea

2024-09-19

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Dmitry Gubin

[REGNUM] September 18 marks 285 years since the signing of the Belgrade Peace Treaty. It ended the fifth Russo-Turkish War, the campaign of 1735–1739. This war, fought during the time of Empress Anna Ioannovna, which could have been one of the most striking episodes of Russia's advance to the south – as striking as the later campaigns of Rumyantsev, Potemkin and Suvorov – has now fallen out of current historical memory.

Yes, a trace of that war remained in the book, although not a domestic one, although popular in Russia. The events of the chapter "The Adventures of Munchausen", in which the baron flies on a cannonball and rides half a horse, take place precisely during the Turkish campaign.

Such a Brunswick officer - Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchausen - was indeed in Russian service, and his heroism during the storming of the Bendery fortress is documented. But they, of course, cannot be compared with the fantasies of the author of "Adventures" Rudolf Erich Raspe.

But the victorious campaigns of our ancestors under the command of Russified foreigners - Field Marshals Burkhard Munnich and Peter Lassi - are remembered much less often than they deserve.

But Ochakov, and Bender, and Khotin, and the capital of the Crimean khans, Bakhchisarai, were first taken by the Russians precisely then, under Anna Ioannovna.

Our ancestors entered the capital of the Moldavian Principality - Iasi and won a brilliant victory over the Turks and Tatars in the battle of Stavuchany, where the Russian troops were commanded by Minikh, and the enemy troops by Ilyas Kolchak Pasha, a distant ancestor of the famous admiral.

In what way was this "lost" war unsuccessful for Russia? In that the Petersburg diplomats turned out to be much weaker than the military.

WHY DID THE WAR START?
Peter I's niece Anna Ioannovna, or rather her court, had an ambitious task - to continue the work of the great sovereign in advancing the Russian borders from the outskirts of the Wild Field to the Black Sea coast.

The reason for the war with the Ottomans and their vassal, the Crimean Khanate, was the increasing raids of the Tatars on the lands of Little Russia and Slobozhanshchina.

In addition, the Turkish Sultan Mahmud, who had recently taken power, declared himself the protector of the Muslims of the North Caucasus. In practice, this meant that the Kabardian, Chechen and Dagestani lands could come under the rule of the Crimean Khan.

Khan Kaplan-Girey himself, with his army, “marched” across the Caucasus from Kabarda to Dagestan in 1735, brazenly violating the 1724 treaty on the delimitation of spheres of influence in the region between the Russian and Ottoman empires.

The Turkish-Tatar raid also affected the possessions of the Persian Shah, who was our ally at the time. War became inevitable, especially since Austria and Persia promised support.

According to contemporaries and historians, the Turks were incited against Russia by the then hegemon of Europe – France, where Louis XV the Beloved ruled. The great European War of the Polish Succession had just ended in 1735 – and in it the coalition for which France “played” lost to the alliance of which Russia was a member.

Ironically, the same Versailles court would later reconcile Turkey and Russia in Belgrade.

THREE CONQUESTS OF CRIMEA
At the beginning of the war, in the autumn of 1735, the Russian army under the command of a relative of the royal family, General-in-Chief Mikhail Leontiev, set out on a Crimean campaign.

But they did not reach their goal then - mud and ice prevented them. The sad fate of the campaign of Prince Vasily Golitsyn, the favorite of Tsarevna Sophia in 1687-89, was repeated - as then, the exhaustion of a large army even before the military actions proved fatal.

The following year, 1736, Field Marshal Burchard Christoph Munnich, a brilliant military engineer and intelligent strategist, took up the matter and carried out careful preparations for the offensive.

According to memoirist Christoph Heinrich von Manstein (from that same military dynasty), “Münnich’s army never set out on a campaign without being accompanied by a convoy of 90,000 wagons.” And it worked.

In May 1736, Minikh's Dnieper army broke down the gates to Crimea - the fortifications of Perekop. Unlike the commanders of later eras, General-in-Chief Vasily Dolgorukov-Krymsky and Army Commander Mikhail Frunze, Minikh needed only a few cannon shots to scare off the enemy.

Then Gözlev (Evpatoria) was taken, and in June the capital of the treacherous Kaplan-Girey, Bakhchisarai, was burned.

Then, in June 1736, Azov (which, let us recall, was taken under Peter, but had to be ceded to the Turks) and the Ottoman fortress at the mouth of the Dnieper - Kinburn - were captured. But the army that participated in the Crimean campaign was exhausted by heat and disease. Field Marshal Minich decided to continue the war the following year.

In the spring of 1737, Pyotr Lassi led his Don Army to Crimea, and Minikh to Ochakov. In July, the latter was captured, and the Don Army, having crossed the Sivash, defeated Kaplan's successor, Khan Fethi-Girey, on the Salgir River.

Against the backdrop of Russian successes, Austria entered the war, whose troops entered Turkish Serbia.

VICTORIES DURING THE PLAGUE
But difficulties also emerged. Even during Minikh's first campaign, the Tatars used the scorched earth tactic - they destroyed food and forage supplies, poisoned wells, and drove away the population.

In the campaign of 1738, Lassi's army again managed to take Perekop and invade Crimea. But the Russian troops, cut off from their supply bases, were unable to gain a long-term foothold on the peninsula.

Soldiers and officers did not understand why they were being driven to Crimea for the third year in a row, since it had never been truly conquered. In addition, epidemics began to rage among the troops. And the plague began to penetrate the "frontier" territories, which included, for example, the environs of Kharkov, along with the military trophies.

For example, Colonel Ivan Kvitka of the Izyum Sloboda Cossack Regiment recalled the events of 1738: "In August, the plague became obvious... Through September, the plague continued in Kharkov and other places. Through October, the plague was very strong in Kharkov, and many houses died out to the last soul. The air was stinking."

But from a military point of view, the campaign continued quite successfully.

On August 28, 1739, the above-mentioned battle took place near the Moldavian village of Stavuchany (in the present-day Khotyn district of the Chernivtsi region of Ukraine). In it, Minikh's army routed the army of Veli Pasha and Ilyas Kolchak Pasha, which was superior in size and strength. After this defeat, the Turks surrendered the Khotyn fortress, and about 90 thousand janissaries and soldiers were captured. Kolchak Pasha also surrendered to the Russians.

Even then, Russia could have taken Moldova out of Turkish rule - our troops occupied Iasi. This was a turning point in the war in our favor - and victory was entirely expected.

The young poet and naturalist Mikhail Lomonosov responded to the events with the " Ode on the Capture of Khotin ": "Love for the fatherland strengthens, The spirit and hand of Russian sons; Everyone wants to spill all their blood, The menacing sound invigorates them."

DIRECTED BY VILLENEUVE
But the Austrian allies and, perhaps even more so, domestic diplomats “helped” to nullify the victories of Minich and Lassi.

Due to the inconclusive actions of the army of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI of Habsburg, the Turks recaptured Belgrade and a number of other Danube lands. The most talented Austrian commander, Prince Eugene of Savoy, died in 1736, played a fatal role.

Austria, through France, asked the Turks for negotiations, and on September 1, 1739, separately made peace with them, returning Serbia and part of Wallachia to the Sublime Porte.

Russia was left alone with the Ottomans, but thanks to military victories, we were in a strong position from which we could dictate terms in the negotiations. The Versailles court entrusted the mediation to the French ambassador in Constantinople and namesake of the famous modern director, the Marquis Louis de Villeneuve. The negotiations took place in Belgrade, which had been returned to the Turks.

The problem was that the head of the Foreign Ministry, Count Andrei Ivanovich (Heinrich Johann Friedrich) Osterman, was not the strongest diplomat. At the start of the Belgrade negotiations, Russia could lay claim to Crimea, the south of Novorossiya, Bukovina, Moldova and even part of today's Romania.

But judging by the chronicle of the negotiations, the Russian side was continually giving in. Perhaps Osterman wanted to end the conflict as quickly as possible, fearing complications with the European powers - first and foremost with Sweden, with which another war did indeed soon begin.

Some of the acquisitions were defended. In addition to Azov and Taganrog, lost under Peter I, Zaporizhia returned to Russia, where the New Sich arose on the territory of today's Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporizhia regions. The "Zadneprovskie places" - territories within the borders of today's Kirovograd region of Ukraine - also remained part of the empire.

But the main thing, alas, was that as a result of the Belgrade Peace, the access to the Black Sea was lost for a long time – until the Rumyantsev campaigns – and remained with the Ottomans. There was no talk of control over Crimea – on the contrary, Tatar raids continued for almost another half century. For example, Kharkov landowner Anna Danilevskaya recalled in 1769: “Tatars and Nagays, I tell you, scurried here even during my time.”

THE CAPITAL IS HAVING FUN, THE WINNERS ARE BEING JUDGED
However, in St. Petersburg they hardly thought about the hardships of the border residents - here the big "information occasion" was the court amusements, described in detail a century later by Ivan Lazhechnikov in the novel "The Ice House".

For example, the wedding of the jester Prince Golitsyn and the Kalmyk woman Avdotya Buzheninova that took place in 1740. “ Now is the time for you to have fun, Now the travelers should go wild in every possible way,” wrote the poet Vasily Trediakovsky on this occasion.

In 1740, Anna Ioannovna died, and then, after the accession of her cousin Elizabeth Petrovna, Minikh went into exile to Pelym for two decades, and Osterman to Beryozov. The figures of Anna's reign were tried, however, not for the campaign, but for intrigue at court.

It became unacceptable to remember this campaign for many years. After all, how can you explain to the average person why the army of Rumyantsev and Prince Dolgorukov, and then Potemkin and Suvorov, had to fight where Minikh and Lassi had already been before them?

But - if we ignore diplomatic blunders and take into account only the military component - it became clear: the status quo, which has been in place in the Black Sea steppes (in the future Novorossiya) almost since the Middle Ages, can be completely broken in our favor.

During the course of the campaign, it became clear to the outstanding Russian commander and engineer Burkhard Christoph Minich that the Wild Field needed to be developed and populated.

And not only within the defensive lines built according to his design south of Izyum and Slavyansk, but all the way to the sea coast. In the following reigns, this issue was resolved, but without the participation of the heroes of the forgotten war.

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