Turning towards unity: a North Caucasian perspective on the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic

ABSTRACT This article traces the efforts of the Union of Allied Mountaineers (UAM) to uphold the indigenous North Caucasians’ right to self-determination from March 1917, when the organization hoped for Russia’s restructuring as a federal republic wherein the Mountaineers (gortsy) would enjoy full political autonomy on their own territory (national-territorial autonomy), to May 1918, when the Mountaineer leaders attempted to join the Transcaucasian Federation. After the Bolshevik coup d'état in October 1917, the Mountain leaders declared the autonomy of the Provisional Mountain Government on 2 December 1917 and later the independence of the Mountain Republic on 11 May 1918 – in order to join the newly independent Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR). Since the UAM had been resistant to the idea of administrative unity with Transcaucasia for most of 1917, this article clarifies the logic behind the Mountain leadership’s reorientation away from Russia and towards Transcaucasia in early 1918. And considering the Mountain Republic declared independence at the very moment when the anti-separatist Terek People’s Republic insisted that it represented the political will of both the settler and native populations of the North Caucasus, this article also evaluates these two rival republics’ claims to popular legitimacy among the autochthonous Mountaineers.