Russia: Kremlin cannot decide on the burial of the remains of Hadji Murad

The head of the legendary Caucasian rebel, cut off almost 180 years ago excites modern Russia. The authorities are trying to decide where to bury the skull - in a museum or a grave.

Probably Lev Tolstoy, watching how the hero of his story "Hadji Murad" persecutes and torments Russia after almost two centuries, is smiling somewhere. Murat was a formidable warrior, whose name Tolstoy immortalized in his classic work, condemning cruel subjugation of the peoples of the Caucasus by Russia.

Now the Russian authorities cannot decide whether to bury the head of Hadji Murad, stored in the museum in St.Petersburg, along with other remains of it, resting in a little-visited grave in the remote region of Azerbaijan.

Last year, in Daghestan, the at the birthplace of Hadji Murad, activists and his descendants filed a petition for the seizure of his skull from the museum and its burial along with other remains.

"All my ancestors dreamed of burying the skull of Hadji Murad along with his remains ... This dream passed on from generation to generation, I hope that this will happen before I leave this world," said at a conference in Makhachkala last November Magomedarip Hadjimuradov, great-grandson of Murat, reports RIA Dagestan.

The campaign for the burial of the remains of Hadji Murad evoked enthusiasm in Azerbaijan, where it is hoped that the burial will attract tourists who want to visit the grave of Murat in the Gakh region in the north of the country near the borders with Dagestan and Georgia. "If you include this monument in the list of tourist attractions, then surely it will be popular because of the historical personality of Hadji Murad, and because he is a hero of the work of Lev Tolstoy," said Natik Mantash, who works as a geography teacher in Gakh professional lyceum.

In the homeland Hadji Murad, an ethnic Avar, and also beyond, many consider him a national hero. The deceased insurgent is considered the North Caucasian analogue of William Wallace.

Once Hadji Murad managed to escape from the Russian captivity, jumping off the cliff and dragging the guards to which he was chained. The guards were killed, and Hadji Murad, having fallen on one of them, got off only with a broken leg. It was this trauma that helped Azerbaijani researchers to determine its remains a century later.

Hadji Murad was killed in a battle between Russian troops and Caucasian tribes in May 1852. "It seemed to him that he was being hit on the head with a hammer, and he could not understand who was doing this and why, this was his last consciousness of connection with his body." He no longer felt anything, and the enemies trampled and cut his body which did not have there is nothing in common with him," Tolstoy wrote in his novel.

The head of Murad was sent to Tiflis, then the main outpost of Russia in the Caucasus, and the body was buried near the place where he took his last fight. Then the skull was taken to St.Petersburg, where it is under dust in the Kunstkamera - the museum of anthropology and ethnography founded by Peter the Great.

The Azerbaijani authorities did not make public statements about the burial of the skull in the grave of Hadji Murad in the Gakh region, but Dagestani activists maintain that Azerbaijani officials are supportive of this idea. However, the final decision for the Russian court.

Representatives of the Kunstkamera do not particularly want to give their remains. Some Russian scientists reportedly expressed concern that a skull re-burial could somehow contribute to separatism and Islamic insurgency, phenomena that are not uncommon in the North Caucasus since the days of Hadji Murad. Eventually, the Kremlin had to intervene in the case, which instructed the creation of an interdepartmental commission to consider this issue.

The administration of the Kunstkamera now sends all inquiries about the fate of the remains of Hadji Murat to the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, which controls the work of the commission. "In accordance with the decree of the Ministry of Culture, the documents prepared by the commission are classified as" only for internal use. "The museum administration is not authorized to comment on these documents," the Eurasianet.org spokesman said via e-mail.

As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Eurasianet.org, the commission is now engaged in determining all the remains of Murat. "After the results of the forensic medical examination are received, the commission will pass to the next stage, in which all interested parties will be involved," the ministry said.

The Kremlin has reason to be cautious. In the Caucasus, with its developed and multifaceted traditions of burial and commemoration, the questions of death are just as important as questions of life. But the point is not only what is more important - the anthropological value of the remains for the museum or the emotional significance that the burial of the remains has for the descendants and compatriots of Hadji Murad. There are also fears that this case can stir up the historical claims of the North Caucasian people against Russia.

Haji-Murat, as a historical figure and literary hero, personifies the struggle of the peoples of the Caucasus against Russian imperial policy.

Despite his fame as a hero of resistance, Hadji Murad made attempts to enter into tactical alliances with the Russians to cope with its internal enemies - internal strife in those days tore the country of the rebel no less than the Russian invasion. He even once surrendered to the Russians after a quarrel with Imam Shamil, also an ethnic Avar and a powerful leader of the Muslims of the North Caucasus.

But Hadji Murad's hopes that the Russians will give him people and weapons to fight the common enemy Shamil were futile. The Russian officers, who did not trust him, kept him in a gilded cage at the court in Tbilisi, "a very civilized city, quite successfully imitating St. Petersburg," Tolstoy recalled.

"Being a highlander and a pious Muslim, Hadji Murad could only be horrified by the city's sybaritic amenities, its marble corridors, women rudely enough to dare to address him directly, the vine that was poured and sapped before his eyes," wrote British writer Nicholas Griffin in his book "The Caucasus: The Age of Warriors."

In the end, Hadji Murad tried to escape, which ultimately cost him his head. If Tolstoy could join the discussion that has unfolded now, he would probably have spoken in the voice of one of his heroes, Marya Dmitrievna, a compassionate and humane woman who complained about the senseless cruelty of the war. "You are fierce, that's all," she said at the final pages of the book, when Russian soldiers brought Hadji Murat's head: "Dead bodies must be buried, but they will scoff."

Translation of the article made by the agency Turan