Russia’s Republic of Grief: One of the country’s poorest regions, Dagestan, is also the region that has lost the most men to the war in Ukraine.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-...c-of-grief
EXCERPTS: . . . the army executing Putin’s “special operation” features a striking number of young men from the ethnic republics. [...] This apparent overrepresentation of minorities is partly a function of demographic trends -- but also of economic inequality and lack of opportunity in many of the areas outside the wealthy metropolises of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Because a majority of the Russian force consists of kontraktniki, or soldiers on contract, and because the contracts are relatively lucrative (as much as forty-seven hundred dollars a month, according to some sources), the men who sign up are often those who were unable to find gainful employment elsewhere.
[...] The republic that has seen the most war dead, according to official figures -- and where poverty, a martial tradition, and relative loyalty to Moscow intersect -- is Dagestan. ... The republic is predominantly Muslim but incredibly multiethnic, with fourteen official languages. It’s also one of the poorest republics in the country.
[...] Khadizhat Saikumov is a schoolteacher, in her late forties, who lives in the beautiful hillside village of Verkhneye Kazanishche, about an hour’s drive from Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala. She and her husband, Rasul [...] are mourning their eldest son, Makhach, who joined the military right out of high school.
[...] on March 17th, Makhach was hit by shrapnel in the back of the head near the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv. It was impossible to evacuate him, and he died later that day. He was twenty-four.
The parents are bereft. [...] Khadizhat is more stoic. In her large, tidy home, she said that she supported the war simply because Makhach had fought in it.
“Makhach was a very religious boy,” she said. “If it wasn’t a just operation, he would not have gone to fight.” Her explanations aligned with Kremlin messaging --
the Ukrainians were Nazis, and they wanted to spread homosexuality to Russia.
“I love Ukraine and Ukrainian culture,” Khadizhat said. “They’re a very good people. But the ones who have taken over there . . . I don’t know. I think, as a teacher, they must not have been given tenderness when they were little. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
[...] There are so many funerals that one runs into them by accident. At one crossroads, a column of cars blocked the way: relatives of a soldier who had recently died in Ukraine. ... Abraham Arabchanov, a local teacher and imam, estimates that thousands of men from Tabasaranskiy Rayon are serving in Ukraine...
[...] Khadizhat told me that the family had received significant financial compensation for Makhach’s death: thirteen million rubles, equivalent to about two hundred and forty thousand dollars... (
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Aug 17, 2022 06:54 PM
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