The Presidential Library evolves cooperation with Dagestan cultural centers, adding its holdings with rare materials about the mountain republic

Cooperation between the Presidential Library and the Republic of Dagestan began in March 2016, when the Director General of the Presidential Library, a member of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art A. P. Vershinin was in the region with his working visit. In the Ministry of Culture of Dagestan the parties have discussed the issues of cooperation within a process of formation of an interregional network and the implementation of joint cultural, outreach and awareness raising projects. During the visit, agreements on mutual work on linking the region to the information resources of the Presidential Library were reached.

As a result of work, which was done in accordance with the concluded agreements, in the National Library of the Republic of Dagestan named after Rasul Gamzatov, in August 2016, the remote electronic reading room of the Presidential Library started its work. Library users received unlimited access to the entire Presidential Library stock, including a substantial array of archival materials and editions protected by copyright.

In turn, part of the work of the Dagestan subdivisions became the constant replenishment of the information holdings of the Presidential Library with the digitized sources of the region, both printed and hand-written, photo documents, audio-visual materials, etc. With the aim of popularizing the objects of Dagestan's cultural heritage, the Republican Center for the Protection of Monuments of History, Culture and Architecture offered the library photographic materials and historical information. In the Architectural monuments of Dagestan collection there are 44 albums with 823 black and white or color photographs of defensive and iconic constructions of the IV-XX centuries located in various regions of the Republic of Dagestan.

This allowed the Presidential Library to create and publish on its website a large-scale electronic collection dedicated to the 2000th anniversary of one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in Russia: Derbent (Republic of Dagestan). Numerous studies, essays, archival documents, photographs and other materials presented in the collection, reflect the diversity of the historical past of the city.

Derbent is considered the southernmost and most ancient city of the Russian Federation. Now it is a regional center in Dagestan, but for its long history the city was a part of many states and empires. As Y. Nikitina writes in his article Fortification defense system of Derbent: the great Dagestan wall in the “Russian Reporter” magazine No. 47 for 2013, “Derbent changed hands many times. The ancient Greeks, Romans, Huns, Scythians committed the raids on it. Initially, the city was part of the Caucasian Albania, then was conquered by the Persians, then became part of the Arab Caliphate, then — the Golden Horde. Actually, it is simpler to list which states and nations did not have any relation to it.”

In 1722, Peter I annexed Derbent to the Russian Empire, but not forever. For several decades the city stayed under the rule of Iran, and only in 1813 it became the Russian territorial center again. The conquerors and the ancient city owners left behind themselves a fortification system consisting of a fortress that can be seen on the digitized photographs of the electronic collection of the Presidential Library Naryn-Kala Citadel. VI century, and continuing it walls, which fan-out down to the sea and up to the mountains. Together with Kizhi, the historical center of St. Petersburg and another 22 sites, Derbent fortifications represent Russia in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

“Dagestan, according to the very nature of the terrain, and the population, splits into two main parts… Nagorny (up the hill), or Inner, Dagestan and along the very shore of the Caspian Sea is a near the Caspian, Coastal Dagestan.” “While the coastal countries of Dagestan were a great road through which the warlike tribes penetrated from Asia, Dagestan Nagorny, closed and fortified by its eternal mountains, remained unapproachable and forbidding. An ancient Avar tribe lived there, calling itself by the common name of maarulal, but is known by its neighbors under the name either the Tavlin people, or Lezgins.” “The tough nature of the mountains imposed the same stamp on all the mountaineers, creating an original and bright type of Dagestan highlander,” — V. A. Potto wrote in his study.

“The rich mountaineer was always covered with weapons, glistening with silver and gold kubachy notching, dressed in expensive Lezgins clothing, approaching closer to the Persian, rather than to the Circassian,” — V. A. Potto describes further. “But this suit was worn by them only on official occasions; going to the campaign or while were at home, the Lezgins wore just Circassian clothes, common to all the inhabitants of the Caucasus, and many tribes did not wear swords at all, replacing them with daggers of enormous size…” But each casually, in hiking outfit dressed mountaineer, “clutching the handle of a dagger or… leaning on a rifle, looked so majestic and proud, as if he were the master of the universe, trampled by his morocco leathers.”

In the mountains of Dagestan, since a long time ago, some rules of a good tone were worked out. They were based on an especially guarded sense of self-respect and did not allow a slightest deviation from the established etiquette. At least one of these immutable rules:

“There is no such aul in Dagestan, in which neighbors would not come to greet a mountaineer, when he returned from a distant trip. Everyone who came into the house, say “salam” and on the request of the owners sat down. It was customary to ask a few questions to those present first, and then to let the other, and go to a quiet conversation with the nearest neighbor. So some came, others left. Everyone, leaving the room, had to say: “Wherever you go, you will return safe and healthy,” — V. A. Potto writes.

As K. D. Ushinsky mentioned, “education, created by the people themselves, and based on people's principles, has an educational power that does not exist in the best systems based on abstract ideas.”

Deeply aware of Dagestan, V. A. Potto in his book Dagestan (before its inclusion to Russia) also pointed out the role of Russian influence and the preservation by the Caucasians of their identity, emphasizing the beneficial role of the Russian language, which united all the peoples of Dagestan and, more broadly, the entire Caucasus: “A variety of mountain dialects remained in the field of everyday life, while the Russian language became the link that makes the state out of a multi-lingual community.”

The Presidential Library, which traditionally pays much attention to the development of scientific thought, published the author's summary of the thesis of Walid Ali Mohamed Mahmud entitled Islam and Islamic traditions in the spiritual and material culture of the population of medieval Derbent (2009) on its website within the Dagestan collection.

Also on there are some documents relating to the administrative, socio-economic and land issues of the region. For example, one of the earliest archival cases, dated 1846—1847, is called On the new division of the Caucasian region, as well as the establishment there again of two provinces of Kutaisi and Derbent, and an assigning of Military Governors, who also govern the Civil Division in the Transcaucasia.”

In the final part of the collection are some photographs of the heroes of Derbent during the First and Second World Wars, as well as the images of the memorial sites of the Great Patriotic War handed to the Presidential Library within the “Victory is one for all” project.

On the Presidential Library website there is also a selection of the first color photographs of the Dagestan territories that became part of Russia. The photographs were taken at the beginning of the XX century by the founder of color photography Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, by the decree of Emperor Nicholas II. In 1905, he made his first major trip across Russia, which goal was to capture the beauty of nature and the wealth of the country's culture in all its manifestations.

There is every reason to assume that the cooperation of the Presidential Library with Dagestan will further develop. About 550,000 documents on the history of Russian statehood, the Russian language, the territorial division of the country, the books with autographs of the largest politicians and writers, public figures, a multi-thousand archive of photo and newsreels could be virtually “leafed through” over the computer monitor in the remote electronic reading room of the Presidential Library by all those who are interested of the Republic of Dagestan.