- October 9

Nazhmuddin Panakhovich Samursky (Efendiev)(lezg. Nazhmudin Panagian hwa Samurvi (Efendiyrin); (- August 1) - statesman and public figure of Dagestan, actually the founder and first head of the Dagestan ASSR.

Biography

Nazhmudin Efendiev was born in 1891 in the village of Kurush, Dagestan region, into a Lezgi family. In 1913 he graduated from the Irkutsk Mining Technical School.

He commanded detachments to suppress the uprising of Nazhmudin Gotsinsky.

Nazhmudin Samursky, being the 1st Secretary of the Dagestan Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, personally and in writing addressed Stalin with a request to increase the quota for execution and imprisonment "for fugitive kulaks and anti-Soviet elements", and achieved his goal. From a letter from Nazhmudin Samursky to Stalin:

The answer was satisfactory:

He was arrested in 1937 and sentenced to death on August 1, 1938. Shot on the same day. Rehabilitated June 2, 1956.

Awards

Memory

• The village of Samurkent is now the village of Stalskoe, Kizilyurt District.
• Samursky Street - the name of the streets in various settlements of Dagestan.

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Notes

An excerpt characterizing Samursky, Nazhmudin Panakhovich

THE BEGINNING OF LIFE

• “Highlander from the village of Kurush”
• Studying at the Russian Akhtyn school

To the reader

The book offered to the attention of readers is written in the genre of personalities. According to the requirements of the genre, the author confines himself to covering the life and work of Nazhmutdin Samursky (Efendiev). He speaks about other people, whose services to the revolution are no less great, only insofar as this helps the author to reveal the character of Samursky, to more fully describe his political portrait. Focusing on the personality of one person in no way means belittling the merits of others.

I am sure that books will be dedicated to all major historical personalities of Dagestan. As the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said: everyone writes about one thing, only everyone can write about everyone.

However, there is already an extensive literature about many of them. In particular, about U. Buynaksky, M. Dakhadaev, K. Agasiev, A. Takho-Godi, S. Gabiev, S. Dudarov.

This is the first book about Samursky. When I got acquainted with what had already been written about him, I noticed: perhaps, none of our historical personalities has been said so contradictory as about him.

Even during his lifetime, he was either elevated or, on the contrary, sharply criticized, up to political labels, accusing him of “right deviation” and “pan-Turkism”, “denying the kulak in Dagestan” and “falsification of history”.

In 1937, which was the peak of lawlessness, new accusations were added to the old ones. Mostly in "carelessness", "rotten position" in relation to "enemies of the people", even "resistance" to their "exposing". After Samursky's arrest, many books, even scientific works, attributed to him acts that he actually did not commit. Such, for example, as participation in a “counter-revolutionary bourgeois-nationalist organization”, carrying out a land and water reform in the “interests of the kulak”, “expulsion of the native language from the Dagestan school”, etc.

In 1956, Nazhmudin Samursky was completely rehabilitated. It would seem that one should carefully treat his memory, show maximum objectivity, scientific character and conscientiousness in assessing his views, actions and deeds. But, oddly enough, it was after rehabilitation, when the stigma of “right-wing deviationist”, “pan-Turkist”, “falsifier of history” was removed from him, scientific works began to appear one after another concerning the activities of the organizations he headed. In these works, his role is either not mentioned at all, or his personality is presented in the prism of an “enemy of the people”. In other words, again accusations that he “denied the kulak in Dagestan”, during the years of the civil war “did not let the Red Army into the mountains”, etc.

Attitudes toward him have changed for the most part on one issue. If in 1936-1937 he was beaten from above and below because, as M. Sorokin, the secretary of the Dagestan regional party committee of that time, said, he “talked only in words about the development of Bolshevik criticism, but in fact clamped it down in the most rude way,” then in recent years, when the repressions of the 1930s have been publicly condemned, he is accused of allegedly going “voluntarily to commit crimes,” “being one of the NKVD troika and signing death warrants.”

The reader will be convinced: Samursky's personality was bright, dynamic and talented. The person is very peculiar, mobile, with a broad outlook, active life position, restless. In the 20s - more, in the 30s - less, he lived with the ideas of Lenin, his vision of Soviet power, socialism, cooperation, the New Economic Policy, national problems, autonomy. That is, everything that later, from the second half of the 1930s, more and more fell into oblivion and regained its fundamental importance now, in the period of restructuring public life. Our perestroika would move forward more actively, expand in breadth and depth, if our society had thousands, tens of thousands of people like Samursky.

In order for the reader to be convinced of the extraordinary personality of Samursky, the author abundantly quotes his books, articles, letters, reports, speeches, and other materials, which, I hope, will someday be published separately.

However, the author has the right to note that Samursky was a product of his era. And it is impossible to judge him outside of that complex struggle of opposing forces in which his character was formed. He experienced both the greatness of Lenin's ideas and deeds and the personality cult of his successor. The latter, in particular, was expressed in rhetorical boasting of Stalin at the very time when a real civil war broke out in the country.

The period in which Samursky lived and worked is in itself so complex and contradictory that it is reflected in our public consciousness in all its enormous versatility and confrontation of different visions, approaches and opinions. But it is only necessary that we judge the events, slogans, ideas of that time by the standards of that time, and not ours. Serbs say: every season their vegetables ripen. If now the country is missing something. what we call the class struggle, then at that time it was a reality, and not artificially created by someone, but stemming from the objective alignment of social forces in society.

I consider it a duty of honor to thank every reader of this book for buying it or borrowing it from a friend in the library, but, most importantly, I managed to skim through at least this introductory word. I hope that those who read the book to the end will get to know Samursky not by fragmentary phrases heard somewhere, not by newspaper articles that only copy a track record, but will recognize him from sources, from his own books and articles, documents and eyewitness memories. Someone may like Samursky. It is possible that someone will have a different opinion about him. After all, everyone judges the world and people in their own way.

THE BEGINNING OF LIFE
(Kurush, Akhty)

"Highlander from AULA KURUSH..."

This is how Samursky Nazhmudin introduced himself in a letter that he sent from Astrakhan to Moscow at the end of 1919. And later many times he called himself "a highlander from the village of Kurush." Apparently, the realization of this life fact gave him special pleasure.

Kurush is a Lezgi village, formed many centuries ago in the heights of the Greater Caucasus Range. It is known as the highest mountain settlement in the entire Caucasus. Moreover, Europe. One of the highlands in Asia. On the back of the Shakhdag massif, to the steep slope of which, like a bee swarm to a tree, an aul has stuck, there is a geographical border separating Europe and Asia, West and East. That is why the Kurush people are both Europeans and Asians, bearers of two cultures and two ways of life. Yes, this feature is reflected in the physical type of the Kurush people.

To say "the highest mountain settlement in Europe" is to say nothing. Highlands are harsh living conditions, where tests await a person at every step. To get to Kurush, you need to turn off the Derbent-Akhta road, in the Samur Valley, near the village of Usukh-chai, on the outskirts of which a mountain river murmurs. At the time when Nazhmudin was a boy, a mountain path wound up steeply from the village of Usukh-chai, which the locals called the horse path, the donkey path, and its more poetic name is the “eagle path”. The ascent is indeed steep and difficult, especially from the village of Mikrakh, which is halfway from Usukh-chai to Kurush. Many turns - each higher than the other by hundreds of meters.

The higher, the cooler and harder to breathe. One of the Russians who visited here wrote: “When you look down into a deep gorge, the reason for the coolness and dampness is clear - we entered and exited the clouds several times, several layers of them were left under our feet. Breathing quickens noticeably, the whiskey squeezes something, there is a slight noise in the ears. Because of the coolness, even in summer, the inhabitants of Kurush wear wadded trousers, quilted wadded short coats and short fur coats. Rawhide chariks are on the feet, colorful socks are tucked into them.

Aul is big. More and Usukh-chai, and Mikraha, and Kara-kure, which is next door. According to the results of the population census conducted in 1907, there were 578 households here. Houses made of adobe are molded to each other, so that the roof of one house, as a rule, is flat, serving as the courtyard of another house located above. Other features of the Kurush housing architecture are connected with this. Due to the fact that the houses are crowded together like a honeycomb, they have only doors. Three walls are blank. Instead of windows, holes cut into the ceilings. During bad weather, winter cold and at night they cover themselves with flat stones. In one of the rooms, which serves as a kitchen, the ceiling window is wide, and smoke from the hearth comes out through it.

There are no forests around the village. The fuel was dung. A spark was struck from flint (at that time, factory-made matches were not yet known here).

The nature in Kurush is harsh. Very rarefied air. In addition, a long winter, an exciting part of spring and autumn. Summer is short. It is not hot, but because of the transparency of the air, the sun burns the skin. The severity of the climate is combined with the limited arable land. Tiny parts of it - terraces - are mostly created artificially. Lots of rocks and boulders. The whole area is filled with them. Between the stones on small arable plots, cultivated with a wooden puruts or manually, the Kurush people sowed wheat and corn. Their bread was enough for no more than a month. Bread for the winter, manufactory and other essentials were brought from Akhty. The most difficult thing is to deliver logs, boards, and other large items to the village. Even dangerous. At short intervals on the Kurush road, stone steles and tombstones can be found - from here people, loaded horses and donkeys fell off into the cliff. They don't say "it's raining" here. They say it's raining. It happens that lead-dark fogs envelop the surroundings of the village for months. Therefore, here is juicy green alpine vegetation.

Specific geographical conditions largely determined the economic structure of the Kurush people. The villagers from time immemorial were engaged in sheep breeding and horse breeding.

Due to the remoteness of grass-rich areas, the Kurush people lead a nomadic lifestyle: in summer they go to pastures located around Shalbuz-Dag and its spurs, and they spend long winters on the other side, on the southern slopes of Shah-Dag. The craft is heavy, but in natural conditions it is the only source of livelihood.

Families in Kurush have many children, mostly three generations. Married brothers who have their own children, often grandchildren, live in a single household.

At the time being described, the population of Kurush was divided into many clans. Each clan occupied a separate quarter, although the boundaries between clans and quarters were not very rigid. Patriarchal-clan life also determined the rules of behavior for people - older and younger, men and women, parents and children. The consciousness of the family was passed down from generation to generation. The division of people into "us" and "them" was mostly based on blood ties. And to this day, the Kurush people do not forget their generic names - katagar, shlevar, maralar, kyizirar, gilegar, falakar.

About the social strength of the patriarchal-tribal way of life, which was preserved in Kurush and in most other auls in the early years of Soviet power, N. Samursky wrote in his book Dagestan (1925): “They kill from a large family numbering hundreds of members, from of which the majority are starving landless poor, one of its members is a prosperous kulak, a shameless exploiter of his own relatives and in everyday life hated by all members of his family. What do we see? His poor relatives, having heard about the murder of a member of their family, according to the custom of blood feud, go to take revenge on the members of the family from which the killer comes, and the unfortunate poor sometimes lay down their lives in dozens for the one who crushed them throughout their lives.

The well-known historian M. Pokrovsky in his book "The Conquered Caucasus" noted that the social system of the highlanders of Dagestan in the 19th century was extremely archaic. He compared it with the formation of the Germanic tribes of the times of Caesar. This is perhaps an exaggeration. The tribal way of life in the mountains of Dagestan by the end of the 19th century gave a strong crack. The property and social differentiation of the population deepened. The rich and the poor stood out both between clans and within clans. In Kurush, among the nomads were poor people who did not have their own sheep and were hired as shepherds to large sheep breeders, middle peasants and wealthy sardars, who exploited both their relatives and representatives of other clans. Beks also appeared in the aul - a privileged estate, which consisted mostly in the service of rural and district institutions. Although the Dagestan highlanders were not drafted into the tsarist army (there was no trust in them), some rich Kurush people managed to get into the army. In a word, the class stratification in Kurush was obvious, but the process proceeded under the cover of patriarchal clan life. This made it difficult for the poor to awaken social and class consciousness.

The Kurush people are not just residents of the Lezgin village. They have specific ethnographic features. The dialect of the Kurush people goes back to the Samur dialect of the Lezghian language, but there is a lot of uniqueness in folklore, everyday life, and the figurative structure of speech. Kurush folklore has not yet been collected and described, although it is distinguished by great originality and aesthetic freshness. Especially the songs - almost everything about the life, life, work and feelings of nomadic shepherds.

The ethnic history of the Kurush people is not entirely clear either. In the aul, among educated people, brought up on the old Arabic literature, there is a version that their ancestors go back to the Quraysh clan, to which the Muslim prophet Muhammad belongs. According to N. Samursky, all the peoples of Dagestan are newcomers. He called them "small remnants of large ancient peoples", "absorbed by an incredibly difficult struggle with barren nature", "cut off from the whole world by impregnable mountains." Regarding the Lezgins, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Berger expressed the idea that they are a fragment of a large people of Indian origin. There are other versions in the literature, including those about the generality

Lezgins with other peoples of the Dagestan language group.

Of the celebrities of Kurush in the historical past, one can name ashug, mostly known in Azerbaijan under the name Lezgi Ahmed. He lived in the 18th century. Thanks to the collecting work of Azerbaijani philologists, we became aware of the texts of his ashug competitions with the Azerbaijani singer Heste Kasum. Lezgi Ahmed composed his songs in the Azerbaijani language, which was spoken by all Lezghin nomads. Main themes: lust for life, love, friendship.

At that time, the Muslim religion dominated the spiritual life of the Kurush people. Brought to Dagestan by Islamic missionaries as early as the 8th-10th centuries, it organically took root here. “The Mohammedan religion came to the Dagestanis as according to the measure prepared for them, and therefore it became stronger among them,” N. Samursky noted. The great influence of the Muslim religion on the Kurush people is evidenced by the many mosques in the village. Each tribal community built, equipped and maintained its own mosque.

The all-aul mosque, which is in the center of the village, is distinguished by its larger size and high dome, topped with a spire with a sickle on top. Family (quarter) mosques - there are six of them - are uniform in architecture. They differ little from mosques in neighboring villages. The tribal principle of confession of religion consolidated the differences of the inhabitants by blood ties, allowing the exploiting elite to keep the poor in a spiritual leash.

In the 30s of the 19th century, Magomed Yaragsky was hiding in Kurush. The first murid of Dagestan, the spiritual father of the future imams - Gamzat-bek and Shamil - Magomed called the population to self-restraint in order to gain strength in the struggle against any oppression. “A Muslim cannot submit to anyone, even a Muslim,” he declared in numerous sermons. When the national liberation movement of the highlanders broke out, General Paskevich tried to put him in prison. He even announced captures. The reward is a large amount of gold. Magomed for some time hid from human eyes in the deaf Kurush.

Magomed Yaragsky's stay here coincides in time with the years when Samursky's great-grandfather served as the senior mullah in the main Kurush mosque. His name was Efendi. Hence the name Nazhmutdin. Efendi came from a wealthy family and studied at a madrasah. Becoming a mullah in the aul mosque, he gained fame. At the mosque, he opened his own madrasah, where he taught the Koran to the Kurush children. When he grew old, the service passed to his son Rajab. Rajab gave way to his son - Sefer. This was Nazhmutdin's younger uncle on his father's side. The eldest - Alisultan - first served as a mullah in the family (quarter) mosque of Kurush, then studied higher religious sciences in the Akhtyn madrasah of the second degree. He practiced in Shinaz, Tsakhur and Kurakh. On the way back, he visited Alkadar, where he met with Hasan Efendi. Nazhmutdin was not yet born when Alisultan, leaving the house to his eldest son Sadik, moved to the center of the Samur district - the village of Akhty.

Nazhmutdin's father is Panakh. The only one of the three brothers who did not become a mullah. He shared the fate of the working population of Kurush.

Let's turn to the sources.

In "Dagestanskaya Pravda" dated March 6, 1934, a biography of N. Samursky was published. Small in volume, purely reference in content. The publication is connected with the direction of his Central Committee of the CPSU (b) in Dagestan to the post of first secretary of the regional party committee. Although the text is written in the third person, the author can be identified by the style of presentation - N. Samursky. The Central State Archive of the DASSR contains the “Biography of N. Samursky (Efendiyev)”, dating back to 1925. This is an even shorter summary of the main facts of his life and work. Written at the suggestion of the editor of the regional newspaper "Soviet Yug" for publication in the forthcoming collection "Revolution and Civil War in the North Caucasus". With the note "correct" it was sent to Rostov-on-Don by the secretary of the Presidium of the DagTsIK S. Tymchuk. The party archive of the DASSR contains Samursky's "Autobiography".

As noted in all documents, Panakh was "a poor man, a nomadic sheep breeder." The poor social origin is also noted in the personnel records filled out by Samursky when he assumed the post of Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the DASSR at the end of 1921, as well as in his numerous

characteristics. It is also confirmed by Panah's daughter Tamam. When I asked why her father did not choose the priesthood, she replied: “The fingers on the hand are different. In the quarter mosque, my father's uncle, Sefer, was a mullah. He was young, they say.” - “Do you remember that your father was a shepherd?” “How can you not remember! How many times I went with him to the pastures and to the mountains, and beyond the mountains. She milked the sheep. Bring him food." “When your brother was imprisoned in 1937, he was accused of being the son of a big sheep breeder. How could such an accusation arise, what do you say? - "Yes, if seven children are counted as sheep," Tamam mocked. And again: "So rich that all five daughters went to shepherds, one poorer than the other." And in the end: “Of course, we did not die of hunger. The Kurush people are a hardworking people.”

Nazhmudin was the eldest of the children of Panah and Ziniyat. Behind him were the sisters - Kafiya, Tamam, Sefiyat, Rukiya and Gabiyat. And only the last, “closing”, a boy was born again. His father named Seifedin.

In order not to return to family members, we note for the curious some biographical information. Having married, Kafiya moved to Geoghchay, in Azerbaijan. She left three children and died in the early 1960s. Gabiyat and Sefiyat lived in Kurush until their old age. They also raised families and children there. Rukia, having married, moved to Usukh-chai. Only Tamam is alive now, lives in New Kurush, has a son Emirbek and grandchildren. Seifedin was not destined to live long. In 1924 or 1925 his life was tragically cut short. He studied at one of the Moscow universities. Somehow, swimming in the Volga, apparently not calculating his strength, he drowned.

In his autobiographies, N. Samursky indicates the year of birth - 1892, but without the month and day. These biographical details are still unknown. As for the year when he was born, he went down in the history of Dagestan as "the year of cholera". Gasan Alkadari wrote about this in the same year. Having completed work on his book "Asari Dagestan" in 1890, Gasan in 1892 made the only brief "addition" to it. It reported: “At the end of 1309 AH (summer 1892), cholera spread in the Dagestan region and many people died. And since this disease appeared in the summer, the household work of the population, namely the harvest of fields and the collection of fruits, was all abandoned and most of the food was lost and died like scattered ashes.

Kurush passed the epidemic. It was located away from the roads, in a stone dead end, from which the exit was mainly to Azerbaijan, and then through three passes - one higher than the other. But Kurush was left without wheat, which the inhabitants bought in Magaramkent and Kasumkent, where cholera was rampant.

Panakh, as was customary in other families, early drew his son into working life. In the mountains, boys at the age of three or four are already rocking their younger brothers and sisters in the cradle, carrying ashes from the hearth into the yard, holding on to the hem of their mother or older sister, going to the spring for spring water. The main thing is that they are taught to shepherd labor, caring for sheep, goats, and when they grow up, also for horses. In the newspaper "Biography" of Samursky there is a line: "His father, a poor man, a nomadic sheep breeder, took Nazhmutdin to nomads in Azerbaijan until the age of ten." It is known that children were taken on a roam from the age of seven or eight. Especially in Kurush. “The Kurush people are a tall, strong, hardy people,” notes one of the Russian travelers who visited these parts. This is noticeable in a simple comparison with the Mikrakhs, Karakyurins and residents of other neighboring Lezgin auls, in which the main occupation is field cultivation, vegetable growing, grain farming, and carpet weaving.

In Kurush, a ten-year-old boy is almost an independent person. He knows the habits of sheep and goats, he will accurately determine the age by eye, indicate which sheep belongs to which lamb. He does not need to suggest the time for herd to pasture, the time for watering, feeding the lambs. He knows the dangers that threaten animals in the mountains, and knows how to avoid them. He has his own morning, afternoon and evening herding routes for sheep. Nazhmutdin, like his peers, helped his father in cooking for the shepherds and feeding the dogs. Special care is taken about the horse, without which the shepherd cannot cope with the herd in a nomadic way of life.

Nazhmudin grew up as a strong boy. Easily for his age he endured the hardships of shepherd labor. Didn't whimper. Grew bold and energetic.

In the "Biography" Samursky notes: "Father ... taught the Koran." This means that the father himself knew the Koran, apparently, he studied in a madrasah. The grandfather, the senior mullah of the aul, could not leave his son without a religious education. It is possible that, like the majority of the poor, who had no time to study in the madrasah, and the means were not allowed, Panakh comprehended the religious teaching on his own.

Teaching Nazhmutdin the Koran was very peculiar. In marching order. During the grazing of sheep in the pastures or on long winter evenings after the rams are driven into the sheds.

This is not to say that the study of the Qur'an is useless. It contains not only the religious dogma and morality of Islam, but also many parables and teachings. It is, moreover, a monument of the spiritual culture of its time. Another thing is the perception of the Koran: someone unquestioningly believes in all its canons, and someone critically comprehends them, comes to his own conclusions.

Teaching Nazhmutdin the Koran was of a scholastic nature. The poor man, who did not speak Arabic, knew the content of the Koran not in the source, but in the paraphrase. When he retold its content to his son, moreover, in nomadic conditions, he misrepresented it even more. Mechanical memorization of dozens of verses and entire passages, and even in an incomprehensible Arabic language, was a real torture for the boy. A teenager, who was beginning to realize himself as a person, could not, of course, come to terms with this. It's insulting to lose a lot of mental energy.

Nazhmutdin was ten years old when his mother begged his father to leave the boy in the winter in the village. She alone did not manage with five girls and Seifedin, who was barely a year old. Panakh himself saw how difficult it was for a wife with a horde of young children. Besides, Rajab, the father of Panakh, was still alive. An elderly man, he no longer served as a mullah in the main Kurush mosque and could have taken up the “education” of his grandson at home.

“From these years, I have been left at home in the care of my grandfather,” Samursky later recalled. “Under his leadership, I am obligated to study the Koran and other Arabic religious books. I was intractable to the perception of all the intricacies of religious teachings, for which I was severely punished, that is, they simply beat me. This went on until the age of eleven, until the death of my grandfather.”

STUDY AT THE RUSSIAN AKHTYN SCHOOL

Nazhmutdin could not have avoided the fate of his father, other poor people of Kurush, if it were not for the events that took place in the family of his eldest paternal uncle, Alisultan. As mentioned above, he moved to Akhty. At that time it was one of the centers of administrative, cultural

and trading life of southern Dagestan. Homeland of many thinkers, poets and historians. Here were the largest mosques and madrasahs in southern Dagestan, including those of the second degree. In Akhty, local traditions of the population are closely intertwined with Azerbaijani, Persian, Turkic and Arabic.

Gasan Alkadari wrote about one of the most educated people of his time in his book Asari Dagestan. We are talking about Mirzaali-Efendi Akhtynsky, “who learned all the knowledge and sciences from the Arakan Said-Efendi, from the Shinaz Said-Efendi, from the Khachmas Said-Efendi and other scientists, he was both a true scientist and a skillful poet, who has many poems in Arabic, Persian and Turkic languages. It should be added: and in Lezgi. We read further: “This Efendi in 1264 (1848), when Shamil took possession of the Samur district, was ... arrested by the Shamil authorities and, after being detained in Avaria for almost a year, was released.” The reason for the disfavor of the imam was ... some of his poems that Shamil did not like. But as soon as he was free, he again began to censure Shamil and his supporters and composed a poem with the following introduction: "The tormentors woke up and already tormented me."

The reason for the disagreement between Mirzaali Akhtynsky and Shamil was his refusal to take part in the war against Russia. With all the cruelties of tsarism, the thinker believed that it became easier for the peoples of Dagestan, in particular the Lezgins, to live as part of Russia than before under the heel of Persia, Ottoman Turkey, and in the distant past - the Arab Caliphate.

Some more information from the book “Asari Dagestan” about Mirzaali Akhtynsky: “The deceased was a man who had seen the world and experienced troubles; died in 1275 (1858), having lived to the age of ninety. Since I studied philosophy and physics with him and was part of a string of his students, I mourned his death ... "In a word, in his madrasah Mirzaali Akhtynsky taught "students" not only "religious subjects", but also secular ones. First of all - philosophy and physics. Of course, the philosophy of the Aristotelian persuasion, revised by Avicenna, Ulugbek, Ibn Rusht and other luminaries of the Arabic-speaking philosophical thought of the East.

Back in the 20s of the 19th century, Russian influences began to be woven into a dense network of intercultural contacts. They carried a completely different symbolism, a different line of thought. Almost two years before the annexation of Dagestan to Russia under the Gulistan peace treaty with Persia, “the foremen and spiritual qadis of the neighboring mountain villages - Akhtyn, Miskindzha, Akhtyparin, pre-Kuziarin,” notes a representative of the Russian government on January 9, 1912, “also appeared with humility ... . and with a zealous desire to be under the protection of Russia.

Of the peoples of Dagestan, the Lezgins suffered the most from the eastern enslavers. They were the first to meet them and the last to see them off when they left with looted property and livestock, captured and taken into slavery by people. This was the main reason why the Samur Lezgins, having sworn allegiance to the Russian throne, did not inflame with the desire to join the uprising of the highlanders that broke out in mountainous Dagestan. With this in mind, the tsarist administration, which ruled the southern Dagestan provinces, did not allow here the cruelties in which it was zealous in other places.

In Akhty, she also opened the first secular school in Dagestan (1861), and having formed a "world court", she did not liquidate the local Sharia courts. The latter retained many of their traditional rights - the trial of petty criminal, property, inheritance and other civil cases. A district Sharia court was also created.

Each village chose its judges according to the number of tukhums (kinds) in the amount of three to seven people. They were elected by majority vote, as stated in the collection "Adata of the Dagestan region", published in Russian in Tiflis in 1899, "from people of honor, enjoying a good name and mostly elderly."

All courts, and above all the district court, turned out to be a profitable place. Knowing this, Alisultan, when the time came for the next elections to the district Sharia court, began to process the "honorary people" of the Usukhchay Magal. He managed to win over the representatives of Usukh-chai, Mikrah, Kurush and Miskindzhi to his side. He used everything - gifts, plentiful treats. If necessary, threats. Each village and Alisultan himself presented gifts, essentially a bribe in kind, to the head of the district and his associates. Ultimately, it depended on them which of the applicants to become a full member of the district court.

In the election campaign, Alisultan spent more than three thousand rubles. But he reached his goal. Subsequently, he, like the other six members of the court, covered his "expenses" for the election campaign. Firstly, he received 250 rubles a year from the tsarist treasury and, secondly, he took bribes from both plaintiffs and defendants. There was not a single case in court in which money would not flow into the pocket from one side or another, very often from both. It was an unwritten law, which the members of the Sharia and the world court learned quite well. The lamentations of the Akhtyn poet Molla Nuri are not accidental: “O bribe-takers! Judges and qadis! Compassion will not settle in you if you do not receive a bribe in full.

Unlike the enterprising father, the children, with the exception of Sadiq, who remained in Kurush, were timid and shy. Knowing this, the Akhtyn boys frightened them, and they sat at home all day, afraid to go outside. When the eldest son grew up so much that he should have been assigned to study, Alisultan got into trouble. Which school to choose? In a religious school, where he studied for many years? Or secular? In the first, education was conducted in Arabic and was aimed at educating young people in the spirit of the Muslim religion. The second school worked in Russian, it was taught by people of Russian nationality. The only exception was Birzneik-Upit, a Latvian. He worked at the Akhtyn Primary School in 1900-1902. Here he wrote his first work of art - the story "Dzhemaldin and the Eagle." “Primary public schools,” stated in the Ministry of Education “Regulations” dated May 24, 1874, “have the goal of affirming religious and moral concepts among the people and disseminating initial useful knowledge.” In Dagestan, they also pursued the following goal: to prepare future officials loyal to the autocracy for local royal institutions. It is clear that the goals did not always coincide with the results. Often the results were opposite to the goals. But be that as it may, Alisultan, himself being a clergyman, identified his son not in his specialty. He preferred the secular school, the "national"-foreign, Russian, "guitar" school, to the religious school. It turned out that religious fanaticism, which he himself affirmed in the minds of the mountain masses, was not so deep in him, did not contradict the sobriety of the mind. He lived at the same time as the author of "Asari Dagestan", who studied in the early 50s with Mirzaali Akhtynsky, looked at the world with the same eyes as he did. “The author of Asari Dagestan,” noted the translator of this work into Russian, Ali Gasanov, the son of the author of the book, “a person of a different generation than Shamil, judges the cultural level of Dagestan no longer from the point of view of Sharia, as Shamil did, but from the point of view of view of Russian material culture. Not knowing himself what they teach in Russian schools, what kind of worldview students receive in them, he felt that doctors, engineers, agronomists, veterinarians and other cultural workers who came out of Russian schools make him a supporter of education of a different order than the one he received. myself".

Alisultan Efendiev, a Qadi of the Samur District Sharia Court, argued approximately the same way when he sent his son to the Akhtyn Russian school. With the boy in the same class studied the same as he, the children of the rich, khans, beks, that is, "respectable people." There were no children from poor families at all. But the son of the Qadi was timid even here. He was bullied by his peers, seeing his shyness. Yes, and in school the boy was weak. It was difficult for him to speak a foreign language. And Russian teachers asked strictly.

Alisultan Efendiev found himself in such a situation before he once again arrived in his native Kurush on his business. In the house of his brother Panah, whom he decided to visit, he saw his nephew Nazhmutdin. The parents were not at home. One children. In response to the question where his father and mother were, Nazhmudin invited his uncle to enter the rooms, and when he entered, he sat him on pillows and, as is customary in Lezghin families, seriously congratulated him on his arrival in the village in an adult way. Alisultan was glad for his nephew and a thought dawned on him. When Panakh returned home, he expressed a desire to take Nazhmutdin with him to Akhty. It was both a command and a request. Panah did not dare to object, especially since Alisultan promised to take up the upbringing and education of his nephew. This event was covered in the "Biography" of N. Samursky with a short line: "In 1902, his father transferred him into the service and for training to his brother, an Arabic scholar, who then headed Sharia cases in the district court of the Samur district."

So Nazhmudin at the age of ten or eleven, without dreaming about it himself, ended up in Akhty. Yes, even in the uncle's family, among cousins. About how he lived there, what he did, Nazhmutdin told in detail, becoming an adult, in his Autobiography.

In the house of the district qadi, his duties included many things. First of all, he accompanied his cousin to school every day. In the morning I took him away, and after classes I went to school in order to return home with him. Alisultan lived with his family in the very center of Akhtov, along Postal Street. In the neighborhood lived the family of the head of the district: a husband, wife and two girls. The courtyards behind the houses were not then separated by a blank wall. Both houses belonged to the merchant Abdulkerim. The school where the Qadi's son went was on the outskirts of the village. The building is one-story, stone, built from stone hewn by local craftsmen according to the project of the Russian civil engineer N. Alekseev. The building is covered with a galvanized steel roof. Good. Withstood the earthquakes of 1913, 1938 and 1966.

The distance between Alisultan's house and the school is about a kilometer along the central Akhtov street, which, beyond the outskirts of the village, turns into a road connecting the district center with Derbent.

In addition to accompanying his cousin to school and back, Nazhmudin did a lot of household chores. He chopped, stacked, brought firewood into the house, stoked stoves, took out ashes. He went to the spring for water, filled the tanks with it. He swept floors, cleaned shoes - boots, galoshes, boots. I put the samovar in the morning, at lunchtime and for dinner. He served tea to the men's and women's halves of the house. Carried out dozens of small assignments uncle, aunt, their children. I had to run a lot to shops and shops, to people with whom Alisultan kept in touch through service or friendship.

Alisultan taught both his sons and his nephew the Koran and other Muslim books. And since Nazhmutdin was already ten years old, he had to observe religious rites. And he visited the mosque, prayed, held an uraza. It was worth disobeying - the "strong hand" of the uncle hung over his head.

Once Akhtyn schoolboys-fighters beat their cousin in order. He fell and hit his head on a rock. There was no great danger, but the boy, already timid, huddled in his mother's hem and did not want to attend any school. My father didn't want to hear about it. “As a result of such a“ joke ”of schoolchildren,” Samursky later recalled, “the son of the qadi suffered, but I won: from now on, I had to not only accompany him to school, but also be there all the time, and this could only be done by identifying me also to school. This is how I was lucky to study at the Russian two-year school in Akhtyn, i.e., the qadi was forced to bring me closer to the so-called “European culture”, which, in his opinion, led through the school to clerks, to “section chiefs”.

Nazhmutdin was interested in studying at a Russian school. She gave other knowledge than what he received from his father, grandfather, and finally, his uncle "in Muslim sciences." Being stubborn and inquisitive by nature, Nazhmudin relatively quickly mastered the Russian script. He made progress in memorizing words, concepts, phrases that introduced him to a completely different cultural world. What the cousin needed a long day for, he was given in an hour or two. Most importantly, an inquisitive thought awakened from contact with useful knowledge. Expanded horizons. Geography, arithmetic, history, literature gave him initial knowledge about the surrounding reality.

In addition, Nazhmudin borrowed fiction from Russian girl neighbors for home reading. Of course, the school in which he studied was royal. She gave her religious and moral education in her own way. It also taught the Muslim faith. It was reduced to memorizing religious prayers in Arabic. The teacher was Molla Mirza. Classes in the Russian language were conducted by Mstislav Robak, in arithmetic and other subjects - by Nikolai Demchenko.

Nazhmudin finished school when he was about fifteen years old. At this age, interest in everything around is increased. Especially in Akhty. Although the village is located almost a hundred kilometers from the railway, high in the mountains, of all the settlements of Dagestan, it is most connected with the proletarian Baku. In almost every working family, someone - father, husband, brother or son - worked in Baku in the oil fields, in factories or factories, on the railway. “The Samur region,” noted the historian G. Osmanov, “has had the closest economic ties with Azerbaijan for a long time. The Lezghin worker has been known in Baku ever since oil production began to be of industrial interest. Already in 1892, 6395 people left the Samur district to work, and most of them went to the Baku oil fields. By the time Nazhmudin was in the fourth grade, the number of otkhodniks from the district began to be about 18 thousand people, including more than seven thousand from Akhty.

The Akhtyn workers nominated from their ranks a group of Bolsheviks loyal to the cause of Lenin, professional revolutionaries who worked hand in hand with S. Shaumyan, Azizbekov, I. Stalin, A. Dzhaparidze, A. Mikoyan and others. Shaumyan considered the Akhtyn revolutionary worker K. Agasiev "one of his old best comrades." Together with M. Aidinbekov, K. Agasiev created, under the Baku Committee of the RSDLP, back in 1904, the Lezgi organization Faruk, similar to Gummet, which carried out Bolshevik agitation and propaganda among the Azerbaijani poor. "Faruk" spread revolutionary ideas among the workers and peasants of the Lezgi and other nationalities of Dagestan. His cells worked underground in Akhty and Kasumkent among local residents, farm laborers and otkhodniks. Proletarian Baku had such a strong impact on the social life of Akhty that the head of the provincial gendarmerie in 1905 admitted: "Baku has a pernicious influence on the workers living in Akhty."

An interesting recollection of the artist of the Lezgin Drama Theater Tarikuli Emirbekov. This theater arose in the village of Akhty back in 1906 on the initiative of Shamkhalov, Kisriev, Sarydzhi, who were playwrights, directors, and actors. In 1935, the Akhtyn amateur theater came on tour to Makhachkala. Here he was visited by N. Samursky - the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU (b). Together with the Deputy Director of the Research Institute of National Cultures G. Gadzhibekov (a native of Akhty, a playwright and critic), after the play "Namus" he went backstage. Having talked, N. Samursky, according to Tarikuli, admitted that in 1908-1909, when he lived in Akhty in the house of Alisultan, he attended performances of this theater. He especially remembered the play "Perikhanum" based on the play by Shamkhalov. Social motives were very strong in it. The performance called for a fight against injustice and oppression.

The social and cultural environment in which Nazhmutdin grew up greatly influenced the formation of his view of the sensually perceived world. He is burdened by his uncle's rudeness towards his children and towards him, Nazhmutdin. “In this new environment,” he later confessed, “I saw all the ugliness of the existing order and the lies of religion. I saw hypocrisy, flattery, servility and hypocrisy of those who wanted to be close to him, and on his part - bribery, extortion, which have become common for bliss. From the conversations of people with Alisultan, fragments of which he heard when he served them tea or carried out any other orders of his uncle, he concluded: court cases were decided in favor of the one who gave the big bribe. The young man often witnessed how the highlanders, who came to their house on business, brought food: meat, butter, cheese, sultanas, even carpets.

Nazhmudin remained Alisultan's domestic worker for some time after graduation. Many of his peers went to the gymnasiums of Derbent, Temir-Khan-Shura, Stavropol, Baku.

From the point of view of assessing the mindset of Nazhmutdin in those years, his reasoning about further events is of considerable interest: Dokuzparinsky district, to a certain Shakhmardanov. All my requests and prayers have been in vain. My uncle believed that by giving me the opportunity to graduate from a two-year school and freeing me from homework, he was doing a good deed and that there was no need for me to study further, the knowledge that I received thanks to him in a rural school was quite enough.

Nazhmudin was eager to continue his studies, but his father was poor and needed help himself. Besides, he was already in his fifties. Big family. Seven children. Five daughters are poor helpers for a nomadic father. You will not take them as shepherds-shepherds to distant summer yaylags, especially to winter pastures. It's time for Nazhmutdin to take up the yarlyga. Would be a great shepherd. Although not very tall, like other Kurusians, but he is strong. Dense, broad-shouldered. Extraordinarily businesslike. Always focused. The sister of Nazhmutdin Tamam, who now lives in Novy Kurush, recalls: “When my brother was constantly looking at one point, my mother asked: “Son, what are you drilling with your eyes?” He replied: "Heaven." "What for?" "See what's behind it." - "Do you see?" - "Great world!"

An unexpected event helped Nazhmutdin. Cousin Sadik, who lived with his family in Kurush, killed the son of a wealthy Kurush in a fight. The name of the victim is known - Musabek and his father - Rahimbek. Modern villagers differ in the definition of the social status of both. According to M. Gadzhiev, an eighty-year-old kurush resident, a former teacher, Musabek served in the Akhtyn fortress and was an officer.

It was in Akhty that Musabek's life ended at the hands of Sadiq. According to Tamam, Musabek was a titled bek and lived in Kurush. This is where the bloodshed took place. Sadiq killed him with a shot in the back of the head. The reason is unknown to her. The killer didn't reveal the secret to anyone.

Be that as it may, Sadiq was arrested and deported from his native land. The Siberian city of Irkutsk was determined as the place of serving the sentence. After serving a three-year term, he came to Kurush for his family, with him Nazhmudin shared everything that tormented his soul. The cousin was imbued with sympathy for him and decided to take him with him: “Nazhmudin will not be a burden to me,” he thought. “He is already sixteen years old. Speaks Russian. Persistent. Yes, and there will be a native person. It is easier to endure the hardships of exile life.

Nazhmuddin Panakhovich Samursky (Efendiev) Nazhmudin Panagian hwa Samurvi (Efendiyrin); (1891 - 1938) - statesman and public figure of Dagestan, founder and first head of the Dagestan ASSR.

Nazhmudin Efendiev was born in 1891 in the village of Kurush, Dagestan region, into a Lezgi family. In 1913 he graduated from the Irkutsk Mining and Technical School.

During the years of his activity in Dagestan, especially as chairman of the Dagestan Central Executive Committee (1921-1928) and first secretary of the Dagestan Regional Party Committee (1934-1937), he made a significant contribution to the economic, political and spiritual development of the republic, to in particular, in the development of the electric power industry, mechanical engineering, the oil, fish, canning industries, in the implementation of the land and water reform, in the resettlement of the highlanders on the plane.

Author of scientific works on the history of the civil war in Dagestan, on Soviet construction, on the economy and culture of the republic. Being devoted to the ideals of Soviet power, he opposed the routine and conservatism in the activities of state bodies. Often acted as an opponent of the central state authorities, when the constitutional rights of the republic were curtailed, various local initiatives were curtailed.

N. Samursky, having become the head of the Republic of Dagestan, first of all, raises the question of the real independence of the republic, since the latter at that time was subordinate to the South-Eastern Bureau, located in Rostov-on-Don. Despite the desperate resistance of Rostov, Samursky and the Dagestan Central Executive Committee headed by him continued to insist on real autonomy. The struggle for the independence of Dagestan continued for another six months. Only on April 1, 1925, Samursky, in a report to the IV All-Dagestan Congress of Soviets, reported “The first question is about separating Dagestan from the South-Eastern Territory and establishing direct links with Moscow. Here the Dagestani government can proudly declare that the decision of the third congress, which is of extreme importance for our republic in terms of raising both the economy and cultural life, has been fully implemented ... "

The real autonomy of Dagestan, as Samursky thought of it, could not exist without its own budget, self-financing and economic independence. From this it followed that all enterprises operating outside the territory of the republic should be subordinate to its government and bring him income. Meanwhile, it was on this issue that the interests of Dagestan and the Center diverged. The stumbling block was the fisheries and the fishing industry, which produced significant marketable products that were exported and brought a lot of money to the treasury of the RSFSR. The debate over this article dragged on for nearly three years. In the end, they were crowned with the victory of the Dagrespublika headed by N. Samursky.

He commanded detachments to suppress the uprising of Nazhmudin Gotsinsky.

From the autobiography of N. Samursky: “The suppression of this uprising was an extremely difficult matter. I started organizing and formalizing partisan detachments ... The liquidation of the uprising lasted 10 months. In the first four months, with great effort and sacrifice, we managed to liberate the fortresses of Gunib and Khunzakh; after a detachment of 700 people was defeated and destroyed, guns and ammunition were captured, heading through the Arakan Gorge, I was cut off from the center with some of my units and was forced to endure a siege in Khunzakh, which we liberated, which lasted two months in the complete absence food and with an extremely meager amount of equipment and ammunition.

Using the necessary military tactics, we managed to get food from the mountain population. We were already running out of horse meat, there were a lot of diseases, some were already talking about the need to surrender, but I, knowing the psychology of the mountain masses, turned to the rebels themselves with a corresponding appeal in the spirit that if they are the sons of Shamil, if they consider themselves heroes, brave men etc., etc., they must give food to the besieged and after that, in an equal struggle, go against us. And now, oddly enough, they began to present fruits, bread, and so on. For almost a month and a half, we kept on the food of the population itself, and thus the siege of the fortress was sustained. The garrison was saved."

It should be noted that there are many documents confirming the huge contribution of N. Samursky to saving the population of Dagestan from starvation in the twenties. For his work in combating the consequences of the famine, he was awarded a gold token of the Central Committee of the last goal at the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In other words, Samursky fully paid off those who saved the besieged garrison from starvation.

"After the liquidation of the uprising in 1921 g. ... I held congresses of the poor all over Dagestan, and at these congresses I managed to achieve the consent of the population to the widespread liquidation of Sharia courts with their replacement by people's courts, which was a turning point in the replacement of Sharia law by people's courts. At the end of 1921 By the second Congress of Soviets, I was appointed Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the DSSR, in which position I remain permanently.

Samursky has a special history with regard to Sharia law. At one time he exposed in his autobiography “prudence, flattery, obsequiousness and hypocrisy of persons who wanted to be close to uncle-qadi, and on his part those bribes, those extortions that became a habit in everyday life of this “respectable” Arabist, bearer of Sharia religious law”.

His convictions did not always coincide with Stalin's views on this problem.

I.V. Stalin, who then held the post of People's Commissar for Nationalities, speaking on November 13, 1920 at the Extraordinary Congress of the Peoples of Dagestan on behalf of the government of the RSFSR, stated: “It has also come to our attention that the enemies of the Soviet government are spreading rumors that the Soviet government is forbidding Shariah. I am here on behalf of the Government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic authorized to declare that these rumors are false.

Samursky, the most influential party leader in Dagestan, the author of scientific works on the history of the civil war in Dagestan, on Soviet construction, on the economy and culture of the republic, often acted as an opponent of the central state authorities, especially when the constitutional rights of the republic were curtailed, various local initiatives were curtailed. Perhaps it was for this that he had to pay with his life.

He was arrested in 1937 and sentenced to death on August 1, 1938. Shot on the same day. Rehabilitated June 2, 1956