Balkars

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Balkar folk dance in Besengi
Settlement area of ​​the Balkars

The Balkars ( own name : малкъарлыла / malqarlyla ) are a Turkic-speaking ethnic group of the Caucasus . They are strongly influenced by Circassian culture and are closely related to the neighboring Karachay people . The Balkars belong to the Turkic people . Their language, Balkar, is a group of four dialects of Karachay-Balkarian , the fifth dialect being Karachay .

Most of the around 112,924 Balkars (2010) now predominantly settle in the autonomous republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, which belongs to Russia (in the Russian census of 2010: 108,577) and in the neighboring areas.

The Balkars are in addition to the Karachay, Russia Koreans , Russian Germans , Crimean Tatars , Kalmyks , Chechens , Ingush and Meskhetians to the nationalities that completely around the Second World War by the Stalinist NKVD deported units to Central Asia.

Language and literature

Bust of the most important Balkarian poet Kjasim Metschijew in the memorial for the victims of the Stalinist deportation of all Balkars in Nalchik

Karachay-Balkar is linguistically assigned to the northwestern Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages. The closest relative is Kumyk in Dagestan .

The Karachay-Balkar language has been documented in writing since the beginning of the 18th century. At that time, the Balkars and Karachays had written their language on the basis of the Arabic alphabet on rare occasions, as was the case for the first time in the so-called "Cholam / Chulam inscription" of 1715, found in the Balkar Aul Cholam, which wrote a political arbitration award from 1709. Since the time of the early Soviet Korenisazija it was written in Latin from 1924–38 , then in Cyrillic as a general written language through compulsory schooling.

There have been several poets and writers since the written language was established. A well-known national writer beyond the settlement area is Kjasim Metschijew (1859–1945).

Tribes and previous social structure

Up until the Soviet era, five Turkish-speaking tribal associations existed in their traditional, geographically particularly high-altitude settlement area (some villages are above the tree line ) between the Elbrus in the west and North Ossetia in the east: the Urusbi on the upper reaches of the Baksan , the Tschegem on the upper reaches of the Tschegem , the Chulam and the relatively few Besengi (only in the village of Besengi), both on the upper reaches of the Tscherek-Chulamski and the actual Balkar / self-designation Malqar on the upper reaches of the Tscherek-Balkarski (from west to east). They were spatially isolated from the more western, similarly speaking Karachai tribe by the Elbrus massif until some mountain inhabitants settled in flatter areas in Soviet times. In the early Soviet policy of the Korenizazija , these tribes were united to form a single official nationality and named after the easternmost tribe as the Balkars; as such, they became one of the two titular nations in Kabardino-Balkaria. The more western Karachay, however, were raised to a separate nationality and titular nation. But both received the common written language Karachay-Balkar . The names of the five Karachay -Balkar dialects Karachay , Baksan , Tschegem , Chulam-Besengi and Malqar go back to the names of the historical tribal associations or their river valleys. The first is spoken by Karachayers, the other four by Balkars. National Karachay and Balkar people are calling for a merger to form a single nationality with a common republic within Russia, but this does not resonate with the entire population.

Like the neighboring Kabardines to the north , the Balkar tribes had a traditional social stratification until their elimination in socialist times, with the rank of princes at the top, followed by a lower nobility and the free and the smaller groups of serfs and slaves (the last two already legally abolished in the Russian Empire).

religion

The Balkars were Orthodox Christians with pre-Christian traditions until the 18th century . From the 18th century they converted completely to Sunni Islam . Today, however, the population is no longer entirely religious.

Alternative names

For a long time the ethnic group of the Balkars referred to themselves as taulu , plural taulula , as "mountain dwellers". Among the Russians and Western Europeans, however, they were known as the "five tribes of the Mountain Tatars " well into the 20th century . The Balkars were also incorrectly referred to as “ Tatars ”. It was not until the Soviet era that the name of the Balkars (own name malqar ) was transferred from the easternmost of the five Balkar tribes to all Balkars.

Origin of name

The first mention of the steppe nomad associations of the Proto-Bulgarians comes from the Aramaic-Armenian historian Mar Abas Katina from the fourth century and in the Latin work " Anonymous Chronograph ". The name for the Balkars in the form болхары / bolchary has been in Russian documents since the 16./17. Century known. This designation could be derived from the original Bulgarian word for mixed or, according to a hypothesis, from the region around Balkh . Most likely, the name of the Balkars comes from the self-name of the historical Proto-Bulgarians (Bolgar). The fact that the name of the Balkars (Malqar) derives from the name of the Bolgars or a splinter group and not, as was previously assumed, from the medieval Caucasian-speaking tribal association of the Malchi or the Malka River , is considered likely because they are even older Russian sources than Bolchary or bolgary . The sound shift / b / to / m / seems to have taken place only afterwards.

Ethnogenesis

In the process of ethnogenesis of the Karachays and Balkars in the Western Caucasus, archaeological evidence shows that in addition to Turkic-speaking associations from the steppes to the north, autochthonous Caucasian groups and Western sub-associations of the Iranian -speaking Alans also played a role, with the Turkic language asserting itself in the region.

There are two hypotheses on the question of how the Turkic language came to the region: the older one sees it as the result of the immigration of Kipchaks in the 12th / 13th centuries. Century. In a war against the Kipchak Empire at the beginning of the 12th century, the North Caucasian Alan Empire lost territories to the Kipchaks. During this time, the first three graves of steppe nomads can be found in the Alanian settlement of Nizhny Archys in Karachay-Cherkessia . The archaeologically ascertainable influx increased sharply with the Mongolian migrations in the 13th century. In addition to archaeological evidence, the fact that the language closest to Karachay-Balkarian is Kumyk , and the origin of the Kumyks through their flight from the Mongols is mentioned in sources. A more recent hypothesis indicates that in the 6./7. Century organizations of Turkic-speaking Bolgaren and Sabirs in western parts Alaniens immigrated stood as the region under its rule. The fact that the Swan name for the Ossetians , sawair probably goes back to the Sabirs and the name of the Balkars probably goes back to the Bolgars - suggests that there is a group of Bolgars from the region around Stavropol (the Udar-Bolgar , who belonged to the Kipchak Association) comes into question. Whether in the 6./7. or 12./13. Immigrated in the 19th century, the Turkic-speaking groups were probably part of the Alan tribal union until the 14th century, linguistically assimilated the previous inhabitants and spread their Turkic language in the west, before they evaded or assimilated into the high mountains before the war campaigns of Timur and the subsequent expansion of the Circassian Kabardines were.

Karachay-Balkar national associations have tried in the last decades to propagate that the ethnonym of the Karachay and Balkar people is in reality alan, which they themselves and some neighboring languages ​​use. All Alans were in truth Turkish-speaking, with which the historical Alans are supposed to be appropriated. The leading North Caucasus archaeologist and historian Vladimir Kuznetsov rejects both arguments: the foreign names are inversions. From the fact that the Iranian-Ossetians in the Svanetian neighboring language sawair are called, what the name of the Turkic-speaking Sabirs back, should we not conclude that the Sabirs were iranischsprachig, or from the name of the French people that the early Franks were Romansh , from the name of the Bulgarians that the Bolgars were Slavic, etc. The Karachay-Balkar salutation alan! is not an ethnic self-designation, but means “Hey!”, “Hello!”, “Hey, friend!”, “Hello, sir!”. The alleged Turkic language of all Alans is refuted by medieval Alanic text fragments in an early dialect of the Iranian Ossetian language . Further claims that Turkic languages ​​have existed in the Caucasus since the Bronze Age have no scientific basis. But in the ideological milieu of Pan-Turkism they are widespread beyond the region.

history

Defense tower in the Balkarian village of El-Tübü (Russian: Eltjubju).

The Caucasus region was subjugated in the 6th century by parts of the original Bulgarians and later belonged to the Greater Bulgarian Empire . In the 9th century, parts of the Magyars settled in this region.

Between the years 1219 and 1223, the region was invaded several times by the Mongols . The Caucasian hill tribe fought on the side of the Georgian king. After the Mongol conquest, most of the Caucasus belonged to the empire of the Golden Horde .

In the period between the 14th and 15th centuries, the Balkars were pushed into the mountains by the neighboring Circassians . The Balkars had been allied with the Circassian principality of Kabarda since the 16th century , after fierce resistance in the Caucasus War , after which parts emigrated to the Ottoman Empire as muhajirs , they fell to the Russian Empire in the 19th century . From the 17th to 19th centuries, the Balkars were converted to Islam under the influence of the Nogai and Crimean Tatars . In 1827 they were subjugated by the Russian Empire and lived there autonomously for a long time.

Memorial for the victims of the deportation of all Balkars in 1944 under Stalin to Central Asia in Nalchik.

Since 1922, the Balkars and the Kabardians formed a common autonomous area, which was upgraded to the ASSR in 1936 . In the time of the Stalinist forcible collectivization of agriculture 1929–33 and the great terror cleansing of 1936–38, resistance arose in the mountain areas of the Balkars, as well as in the mountain areas of Karachay-Cherkessia and Checheno-Ingushetia , that the collectivization was temporarily had to be canceled. During the Second World War, the settlement area of ​​the Balkars was temporarily occupied by the Wehrmacht from July 1942 ( Operation Edelweiss ) to January 1943 ( North Caucasian Operation ) . Due to their resistance against the Red Army , which re-entered in 1943 , they were on the orders of Josef Stalin under the charge of collaboration with the Wehrmacht and all men, women, children and old people within a few hours of NKVD units on March 8, 1944 at 2:00 am Arrested until March 9th and exiled to Central Asia, with many deportees perishing. The background of the accusation of collaboration against an entire ethnic group has been discussed for a long time. Although there were Balkarian collaborators with the Germans, their support among the population was relatively low as far as we know today. Many historians therefore assume that the widespread resistance before the World War, problems with reaching the volunteer quotas for the Red Army and finally resistance to the reintroduction of Stalinist measures in 1943 were more the cause of the deportations with their large numbers of victims than the official ones cited collaboration in which only a minority participated. The Balkars were officially rehabilitated by Khrushchev in 1957 , but were not officially allowed to return to the old settlement areas until 1967, when many had already returned "illegally" on their own.

After that, they were back with the tscherkessischsprachigen Kabardians together as before the war, the Autonomous Kabardino-Balkar Soviet Socialist Republic , which after the collapse of the Soviet Union to the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria was within the Russian Federation.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Heinz-Gerhard Zimpel: Lexicon of the world population. P. 57.
  2. ↑ Excel table 5, line 42 .
  3. ↑ Results of the 2010 Russian Census , Excel table 7, line 473.
  4. ↑ Hamid Haschimowitsch Malkondujew: About the Balkar-Karachay gates . (a kind of village council) , 2010.
  5. ↑ Cf. Ethnological map of the Greater Caucasus 1774–83 by the historian Artur Zuzijew (Russian) east of Elbrus (white triangle), the Besengi are not on the map, only mentioned in the legend.
  6. ↑ See Victor Shnirelman: The Politics of a Name: Between Consolidation and Separation in the Northern Caucasus. ( Memento from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 784 kB) in: Acta Slavica Iaponica. 23 (2006) pp. 37-73. Here p. 67, last paragraph, 2nd and 3rd sentence on sociological studies 1998.
  7. ↑ История карачаевцев и балкарцев ( Memento of December 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ); Retrieved November 18, 2009.
  8. ↑ For the spatial distribution, see this map by Zuzijew . Red dashed: borders of the Alanian tribal union in the 6th – 13th centuries Century, blue field: Bolgars in Alania in the 7th century, area A: Kipchaks, from which the Karachay-Balkars, area B: Kipchaks, from which the Kumyks, yellow field: Karachay-Balkar tribes in the 17th century .
  9. ↑ Cf. Kuznetsov 9.2, ninth paragraph, he also considers the more recent hypothesis to be quite possible.
  10. ↑ in Mingrelian and Nogai , cf. z. B. Vladimir P. Nedjalkov: Reciprocal Constructions , Amsterdam 2007, p. 971, translated into German : “Alan” is a mutual address of the Karachay and Balkar people. The Mingrelians and Nogaians also call them Alani. ”Documented and taken over by Habichev in 1971.
  11. ↑ Kuznetsov 9.2 ninth paragraph , he describes the assertion of the Balkar nationalist historian I. Miziev as "insincere" (лукавит = he is insincere / he is rascal / he makes trickery etc.).
  12. ↑ On the Karachay-Balkar national movement see Shnirelman, pp. 61–68. ( Memento from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), this theory was also largely developed by I. Miziew.
  13. ^ Gerhard Simon : Nationalism and Nationality Policy in the Soviet Union: From Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist Society. P. 120.
  14. ↑ Jeronim Perović : The North Caucasus under Russian rule. Cologne 2015, pp. 430–441.

literature

  • Heinz-Gerhard Zimpel: Lexicon of the world population. Geography - Culture - Society. Nikol Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-933203-84-8 .

Web links

Commons : Balkaren  - Collection of images, videos and audio files