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Aware of the fragility of North Caucasians or the other Caucasians future 
states, the idea of establishing a Confederation comprised of all the former 
Republics of the Caucasus (North Caucasian, Azeri, Georgian, and even the 
Armenian Republics) began to take precedence as the most viable and realistic 
solution for the future of the Caucasus. The ideal of the Confederation was now not 
only a word for coalescing the leaders in seeking a return to power, but it was the 
solution to the intractable internal problems the region faced because of 
nationalism and religious differences. Stemming from this, the leaders of the 
Caucasian emigrants signed several agreements and issued declarations in which 
they accepted that the establishment of a close and brotherly union as absolutely 
essential for the consolidation of the independence of these republics as well as 
enabling the Caucasus to act as a link between West and East, and between the 
Christian and Muslim worlds. Their common fate was the main basis of the Union. 
1934 was a turning point for the Caucasians. They made a last try to 
establish a Confederation, at least on a paper. All the leaders of North Caucasian, 
Azeri and Georgian emigrants heartily signed the document. Armenians, however, 
because of mainly the religious concerns and the possible Turkish domination 
never took part. The contracting committee, however, was dissolved in 1935 and a 
Caucasian Confederation Council replaced it with no concrete contribution. 
Beyond that, the Armenians and Georgians separated themselves and began to 
work together excluding the North Caucasians and Azerbaijanis. 
The War anxiously awaited started without delay. Nevertheless the emigres 
received it with scepticism. The Nazi-German Pact in August 1939 put a dramatic 
end to the expectations of North Caucasians. This caused retrogression of the 

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activities of the émigré groups. Apart from some minor efforts, North Caucasian 
activities for unity and independence diminished. The Germans planned to colonize 
the North Caucasus and had no intention of giving the Mountaineers their desired 
independence. 
The Second World War resulted in the consolidation of Soviet power. 
While the ‘old’ North Caucasian emigrants, Bammat, Chermoev, and others were 
abandoning the struggle in disillusion a small number of ‘new’ emigrants who were 
born and brought up in the Soviet regime, such as A. Avtorkhanov, R. Karça and 
R. Traho continued their struggle against the Communist regime together with 
other émigré groups. Their works, however, far from the political and military 
struggle and only covered some scholarly works on the peoples of the North 
Caucasus in the Soviet Union. 
The most important achievement of this group is probably their success on 
bringing the Soviet deportation of North Caucasian peoples, namely the Chechens, 
the Ingush, Karachays, and Balkars to light and informing the world. In late 1943 
and early 1944 Stalin deported seven nationalities from their native countries to 
Central Asia and Siberia, on the face of it, for collaboration with the German 
armies. Not until the late 1950s were these deported peoples allowed to return. 
Nevertheless, they lost more than half of their populations over the course of 
deportation. This caused the re-change in the balance of the North Caucasus and 
made a profound effect in the minds of deported peoples. Nevertheless, over time 
the North Caucasian émigré movements, in parallel with American-Soviet 
rapprochement and the natural removal of the leading figures came to an end. 
 

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These devoted fighters left a tradition of struggle behind them. In the 
volumes of printed material they scrutinized each and every aspects of the North 
Caucasian society and outlined an extensive blueprint for the unified North 
Caucasian State. 
 
With the developments in the North Caucasus following the election of 
Mikhail Gorbachev as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 
(CPSU) in March 1985, the North Caucasian desire to establish a unified 
independent state came to the stage again. The complex structure, which was 
created by Soviet policies of perestroika and democratization, faced several 
ethnically based conflicts. The re-emergence of nationalist movements within the 
union republics, their feigned blindness towards the existence of other small 
nationalities, and moreover, the possibility of breaking away forced the peoples of 
the North Caucasus to become more reactionary. 
By 1988, similar to the case after the February Revolution of 1971, peoples 
of the North Caucasus, at the outset, started to demand national sovereignty and 
enhanced republican status as an expression of cultural anxiety and demands for 
cultural sovereignty. The opportunity to form regional and national organizations 
was being used to embark on a revival of the national cultures, languages, and 
national identities by the peoples of the North Caucasus. Ethnically based, 
homogenized socio-political organizations sprang up throughout the whole territory 
of the North Caucasus. 
In the final years of Soviet power, the North Caucasian peoples, from Avars 
to Shapsugs, developed and presented images of nationhood within the spheres of 

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these organizations. In the beginning, in almost all these organizations, the main 
concern was national-cultural development and the rights of their peoples within 
the Soviet Union, in compliance with the basic tenets of perestroika and 
democratization. 
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the discourse of national and ethnic 
identity among the peoples of the Caucasus diverted its path. The North Caucasian 
peoples’ post-Soviet demands have broadened to include demands for heightened 
economic and legislative autonomy and even the concepts of a state, whether fully 
sovereign or, as a part of a broader republic. 
Consequently, in the early 1990s, the peoples of the North Caucasus issued 
declaration after declaration upgrading the administrative status of their territories. 
This general tendency of establishing sovereign entities, however, caused the 
emergence of discord among the peoples in question. The already existing ‘land 
question’ arose as a basic reason for possible armed clashes among the peoples 
who had to live together as result of the Soviet policies for almost a century. 
In this context, the peoples of the North Caucasus had to face the heritage 
of the Soviet divide-and-rule policy and of deportations once more. While these 
peoples were asking for the restitution of their ancestral lands, the forcibly settled 
peoples were in turn seeking for to retain existing status. At the same time, Turkic 
groups (Karachays and Balkars) were seeking their own sovereign union republics 
while, smaller entities like Shapsugs and the nationalities of Dagestan were in 
pursuit of reconstituting their autonomous administrative structures. 
Likewise, while Russian nationalism did not yet gain momentum in the 
region, Georgian nationalism, choosing the Osetians and Abkhaz as its target, 

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